Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
Chang, Jung. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. Knopf. Nov. 2013. 352p. ISBN 9780307271600. $30. BIOGRAPHY First a Red Guard, then the recipient of a doctoral degree in linguistics from England’s Bristol University, then the hugely best-selling author of Wild Swans and Mao, Jung Chang has a remarkable life story. And the [...]
Chen Guangcheng. Untitled Memoir. Times: Holt. Oct. 2013. 304p. ISBN 9780805098051. $28. MEMOIR Chen has been named a 2012 Brave Thinker, 2012 Rebel of the Year, and 2012 Global Thinker by the Atlantic, GQ, and Foreign Policy, respectively. And no wonder. Blinded by illness in infancy and illiterate until his teens, Chen taught himself law [...]
Buffett, Howard. 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World. S. & S. Oct. 2013. 352p. ISBN 9781451687866. $26. MEMOIR Farmers can anticipate 40 growing seasons—that is, 40 chances to improve their land’s yield. Son of mega-investor Warren Buffett, who once challenged him to consider what he really wanted to accomplish in life, Howard Buffett [...]
Bushkin, Henry. Untitled on Johnny Carson. Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2013. 304p. ISBN 9780544217621. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780544217737. MEMOIR/TELEVISION Johnny Carson’s attorney for nearly two decades, at a time when the Tonight Show was at its height and Carson went through two divorces, Bushkin ultimately served as his “counselor, partner, employee, business advisor, earpiece, mouthpiece, enforcer, [...]
Some stories of survival leave powerful imprints on human consciousness: a wrist stuck under a boulder; a teenager stranded with only a hatchet; cloned dinosaurs on a rampage.* Such images leave us white knuckled with tense jaws and a ferocious desire to know what will happen next. Still, survival may mean something as simple as putting one foot in front of the other each morning, joining a choir, moving into a van, getting sober, or leaving the country. This month’s memoirs column features acts of survival that may seem small but are in fact indispensable steps taken in the direction of a more fulfilling life.
Reviews of Terry Brooks’s The Annotated Sword of Shannara, Peter Høeg’s The Elephant Keepers’ Children, and Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone, plus a full list of audio reviews in the Apr. 1 issue.
Dallek, Robert. Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House. Harper: HarperCollins. Oct. 2013. 576p. ISBN 9780062065841. $32.50. lrg. prnt. HISTORY Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and aides Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger: these were the courtiers of Camelot, the smart and [...]
Beard, Mary. Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations. Liveright: Norton. Sept. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9780871407160. $28.95. HISTORY Described by the New York Times as “the closest thing, if it exists, to a celebrity classics professor” in a story about her having stood up to some naysayers who abused her on the Internet, Cambridge scholar [...]
Reviews of Lynda LaPlante’s Prime Suspect #1, Michael Schofield’s January First, and Rod Stewart’s Rod: The Autobiography, plus a full list of audio reviews in the Mar. 15 issue.
Bacon, John U. Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football. S. & S. Sept. 2013. 336p. ISBN 9781476706436. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9781476706443. SPORTS College football is currently beset with scandal and sanctions, so one can be forgiven for expecting this report from Bacon to be a downer. And, indeed, drawing on [...]
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