bookpagedev

Memoir

Teacher Man

Review by bookpagedev

McCourt adds to his string of memoirs with a fascinating book about his years as a high school English teacher in New York City. Looking back on a three-decade career in the classroom, McCourt begins his account in 1958 with his tenure at McKee Vocational and Technical School. Still reeling from his impoverished Irish upbringing and trying to come to terms with his painful past, he finds himself at odds with school administrators, who advise him to keep his private life to himself and to be a disciplinarian when dealing with pupils. McCourt, naturally, takes the opposite tack. Concocting provocative writing assignments, sharing his personal experiences with students, and making an effort to get to know them, McCourt tries hard to inspire and excite his charges. Sometimes he succeeds; sometimes he fails. Along the way, he becomes adept at dealing with the public school system, red tape and all. Fans of McCourt will enjoy reading this new chapter in his remarkable life. His lyrical prose style and wonderful sense of humor are present throughout the narrative, making the book vintage McCourt and a must-read for lovers of Angela’s Ashes. A timely and spirited narrative, Teacher Man entertains even as it provides valuable insight into the life of an educator.

McCourt adds to his string of memoirs with a fascinating book about his years as a high school English teacher in New York City. Looking back on a three-decade career in the classroom, McCourt begins his account in 1958 with his tenure at McKee Vocational…

One a day

Review by bookpagedev

Now here’s the perfect New Year’s book for the office. Instead of those insipid Deep Thought A Day calendars, place The Daily Drucker on your desk or in your car for quick access to core thinking on the philosophy of business. Peter Drucker, for the uninitiated, is one of the most widely followed economics and management thinkers of our time. Many business academics consider him the founding father of the study of management. He has published more than 25 books, was a longtime columnist for The Wall Street Journal and has written extensively about individuals, management, society and change in the marketplace. The Daily Drucker will allow you to read and integrate his keen business insights at work. The day-by-day format presents a quick but excellent primer on Drucker’s philosophy as well as a work exercise (which could be completed in less than five minutes) that integrates the reading into the business day.

Now here's the perfect New Year's book for the office. Instead of those insipid Deep Thought A Day calendars, place The Daily Drucker on your desk or in your car for quick access to core thinking on the philosophy of business. Peter Drucker, for the…
Cookbooks

Recipes for success

Review by bookpagedev

Unlike the days when the European apprentice system was the only way to become an established chef, today there is no one route to the kitchen. Nowhere is that better illustrated than in How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations of the World’s Greatest Chefs, a collection of essays by 40 acclaimed chefs. Edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Peter Meehan, the book is a satisfying follow-up to Don’t Try This at Home, their collection of culinary catastrophe stories. While the first book was heavy on entertainment, this one delivers more in the practical wisdom department.

Each essay in How I Learned to Cook opens with a short bio of a chef, hardly necessary in most cases (Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, Marcella Hazan), essential in others (Raymond Blanc, Chris Bianco). Each chef takes a slightly different tack, telling about childhood experiences in the kitchen, early inspirations and mentors, twists of fate or epiphanies that came later in life. All the essays are less than 10 pages long and hold a reader’s attention with their sheer diversity.

This is not just a book for culinary school students or aspiring professionals the inspiration in these chefs’ tales works for the weekend cook as well. Despite the breadth of experiences recounted from cooking under the master French chef Paul Bocuse (Daniel Boulud) to deep-frying at the snack bar of the local swim club (Tom Colicchio) cooks of every ability level will recognize the one constant throughout: passion for good food.

Lisa Waddle is a pastry baker and food writer in Nashville.

Unlike the days when the European apprentice system was the only way to become an established chef, today there is no one route to the kitchen. Nowhere is that better illustrated than in How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations of the World's Greatest Chefs,…
Memoir

Delectable morsels for foodies

Review by bookpagedev

The latest entry in the memoir-cum-recipes category is truly a mouthful. In Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food playwright and New York Times food columnist Jonathan Reynolds recounts the delights and drama of his remarkable life through meals he’s made and ingested. In each chapter, Reynolds offers a recipe or two to go with the narrative of his life. The wonderful thing is that these recipes which are all over the map as far as cuisine and complexity are directly relevant to whatever tale he’s telling, and not just tacked on as an afterthought. For example, there’s the Tournedos Rossini Reynolds that was served onboard the S.S. France during his college graduation cruise. Then there’s the Monterey County Jail Oatmeal, which Reynolds experienced in his 20s after trespassing at Kim Novak’s house.

What makes this memoir worth reading is that it offers a peek into a life far different than most, and lived with gusto. Reynolds was raised on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a privileged child who decided to become an actor. His career path was far from straight, and included working on Eugene McCarthy’s 1972 presidential campaign, writing a book on location during the filming of Apocalypse Now and producing The Dick Cavett Show. Reynolds has lived on both coasts, traveled extensively, divorced and remarried (to scene designer Heidi Ettinger) and has two sons and three stepsons. It’s appropriate that this rich life is filled with rich dishes like Fontainebleau Lobster and Cinderella Truffles.

Lisa Waddle is a pastry baker and food writer in Nashville.

 

The latest entry in the memoir-cum-recipes category is truly a mouthful. In Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food playwright and New York Times food columnist Jonathan Reynolds recounts the delights and drama of his remarkable life through meals he's made and ingested. In…

History

Constructing an icon

Review by bookpagedev

History has all too often dismissed Marie Antoinette as a simple, frivolous queen with expensive taste. But in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, Barnard College professor Caroline Weber makes the clothing of Marie Antoinette startlingly relevant. She argues that, like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Empress Josephine and countless other iconic women, Marie Antoinette used fashion to make powerful political statements that shaped the public’s perception of her and still resonate today: More than 200 years after her death, her style is still mimicked on fashion runways.

Queen of Fashion depicts a sadly human woman desperate to signal her allegiance to an increasingly bitter public. In the face of accusations that her extravagant wardrobe and lifestyle were bankrupting the nation, Marie Antoinette chose to dress more simply and cheaply in taffeta and somber colors. Yet even this choice was ridiculed by nobility and common folk alike, who then complained that she did not appear adequately royal.

Although Weber has clearly done her homework, Queen of Fashion never succumbs to textbook tediousness. Just the opposite: It’s a rollicking account of fashion and power in Versailles. Weber’s empathy for the queen is palpable, and her fascination with fashion is contagious. Frivolous? Never. Fascinating? Every single page.

History has all too often dismissed Marie Antoinette as a simple, frivolous queen with expensive taste. But in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, Barnard College professor Caroline Weber makes the clothing of Marie Antoinette startlingly relevant. She argues that,…
FictionHistorical Fiction

A royal introduction

Review by bookpagedev

In the beginning of Abundance, Sena Jeter Naslund’s astonishing, richly imagined novel, 14-year-old Maria Antonia stands naked on an island in the Rhine River, neutral territory between her Austrian homeland and France. Poised to marry the heir to the French throne, the princess must shed every thread of her Austrian existence and be remade into Marie Antoinette, future Queen of France.

It’s a fitting metaphor for a woman who would spend the rest of her life in the prying public eye. Long before Princess Diana was chased by paparazzi, Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first child in front of hundreds of people and was dressed and bathed each day by bickering noblewomen. Tabloid-like pamphlets filled with false allegations of the queen’s scandalous sexual escapades regularly papered the streets of Paris.

Bolstered by meticulous research and delivered in glowing prose, Abundance reminds us why Marie Antoinette remains one of history’s most beguiling, contradictory women. Naslund, the author of the bestseller Ahab’s Wife, digs deep into the queen’s story, exploring her loving yet ultimately unfulfilling marriage to the ineffective King Louis XVI and her often frivolous pastimes, including a serious gambling addiction. We all know how this story ends, yet Abundance will have you holding your breath until the final march to the guillotine.

In the beginning of Abundance, Sena Jeter Naslund's astonishing, richly imagined novel, 14-year-old Maria Antonia stands naked on an island in the Rhine River, neutral territory between her Austrian homeland and France. Poised to marry the heir to the French throne, the princess must…
Memoir

He thinks different

Review by bookpagedev

Steve Wozniak’s iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, written with Gina Smith, is part confessional, part strategic overview and part business memoir. In it, the engineer/inventor and occasional concert promoter and philanthropist recounts his adventures, triumphs and missteps in the world of high technology. Wozniak invented the Apple computer in a manner he admits was more accidental success than tactical masterpiece: He was experimenting with both a TV screen and keyboard and later he stepped back and realized that he’d not only reduced the size of the machinery required to generate the programs and data, but also given individuals access to landmark technology.

iWoz corrects some misconceptions and outright inaccuracies previously presented about Wozniak’s life. His interest in social justice and progressive politics triggered his later involvement with music and charitable giving, and the book covers such events as his sale of Apple stock to 40 employees prior to the company going public. iWoz traces the life and times of a brilliant, gifted and sometimes exasperating individual whose contributions to the scientific, business and cultural realms are extensive.

Steve Wozniak's iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, written with Gina Smith, is part confessional, part strategic overview and part business memoir. In it, the engineer/inventor and occasional concert promoter…
Technology

iPod, therefore I am

Review by bookpagedev

Newsweek technology writer Steven Levy’s The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness not only looks at how the notion of downloading and compiling a personal song library has affected the music industry, but how the demand for this technology helped rescue a company (Apple) reeling from setbacks in the personal computer field. Levy shows that while Apple didn’t invent the technology, the company recognized long before its competitors that MP3 players represented the next wave in consumer preferences.

As Levy shows, the iPod’s popularity has forced music labels and publishers to scramble, seeking ways to legally allow downloading yet also ensure fair artist royalties. But, with the Podcast, the iPod has also created a way for everyone from performers to radio hosts to newspapers to present themselves to the public without the support of a big radio or television studio. Though Levy is careful to couch most of his presentation in generally understandable language, there are still some sections of The Perfect Thing where appreciation may be directly related to whether you know the difference between an iPod and a transistor radio. Meanwhile, in a nod to the iPod’s shuffle feature, the book comes in four different mixes, or arrangements of the chapters.

Newsweek technology writer Steven Levy's The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness not only looks at how the notion of downloading and compiling a personal song library has affected the music industry, but how the demand for this technology helped…
Technology

Going inside Intel

Review by bookpagedev

While there’s been plenty written about Andy Grove, longtime chairman and CEO of computer chip-maker Intel, no one has ever chronicled his business acumen and personal attributes more thoroughly than author Richard S. Tedlow in Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American. Tedlow managed to talk to virtually anyone and everyone who has ever worked with, met or confronted Grove, and their opinions run the gamut from admiration to resentment, though no one questions his basic business savvy and strategic brilliance.

Grove’s past (he was a Holocaust survivor who came to America as penniless immigrant at 20) made him excel at sizing up both friends and enemies. He turned the fledgling Intel into a phenomenal enterprise, survived problems with chips and machinery, and ultimately made his company a model for success in Silicon Valley. Tedlow shows how Grove anticipated the growing demand for information and access in the Internet age, and how he helped transform the personal computer from a luxury item to an almost mandatory purchase. The book also includes a wealth of fascinating side stories, from Grove’s relationship with Bill Gates to how he maneuvered through tricky relationships with Intel cofounders Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce. Andy Grove is part business primer, part profile and part technology history work, as Tedlow uses Grove as the lens through which he examines the evolution of the computer era and the shifting role of the CEO in a constantly changing marketplace.

While there's been plenty written about Andy Grove, longtime chairman and CEO of computer chip-maker Intel, no one has ever chronicled his business acumen and personal attributes more thoroughly than author Richard S. Tedlow in Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American.…
PhotographyArts & Culture

The years in pictures

Review by bookpagedev

Annie Leibovitz has photographed some of the most famous faces of our time, creating iconic portraits in her work for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Gap, American Express and others. The images in A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005 go from color to black-and-white, landscape to portraiture, artists (Baryshnikov, Welty, Avedon) to revolutionaries (Mandela, Bill Gates), Hollywood to war-torn Sarajevo. Leibovitz makes frequent use of four-panel spreads, especially when documenting her family. Sometimes, however, one photograph is enough: waves crashing into the Havana shore; Philip Johnson at his Glass House; a portrait of Susan Sontag, Leibovitz’s companion, with cropped white hair melting into a thick black turtleneck. Intimate photos of Sontag working, breakfasting in Venice, coping with and finally succumbing to cancer punctuate the years chronicled in A Photographer’s Life.

A companion exhibition to the book opened at the Brooklyn Museum in October and a documentary about Leibovitz (directed by her sister Barbara) will air on PBS’ American Masters series in January. After emotionally draining years during which Leibovitz lost both her father and Sontag and then celebrated the birth of twins, it’s a particularly apt time for a retrospective of her life and career.

Annie Leibovitz has photographed some of the most famous faces of our time, creating iconic portraits in her work for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Gap, American Express and others. The images in A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005 go from color to black-and-white, landscape to portraiture,…

PhotographyArts & Culture

Grandest of all

Review by bookpagedev

The vast spaces and close confines of the Grand Canyon, from rim to canyon floor, are given their due in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. This book, made all the more beautiful by author Stephen Trimble’s words, is an homage complet to a much-loved space one that is imperiled by an excess of visitation and environmental pollution.

The Grand Canyon has been explored and photographed since the mid-19th century. Lasting Light faithfully chronicles the photographers, their photographic technologies and their artistic visions from the early expeditionary years to the middle, more iconic (in terms of photographic innovation) times, through to the large field of contemporary photographers still mesmerized by this mysterious and challenging geography. From the Kolb Brothers to Eliot Porter to Jack Dykinga, each photographer and their unique interpretation of the canyon’s features are included. This collection is a superlative explication of America’s very own world wonder. Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The vast spaces and close confines of the Grand Canyon, from rim to canyon floor, are given their due in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. This book, made all the more beautiful by author Stephen Trimble's words, is an homage complet to…
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Exercise for Everyone

Review by bookpagedev

While thousands of diet and exercise experts claim to have the answer, Harley Pasternak really does have a catchy and worthwhile concept in Five-Factor Fitness: The Diet and Fitness Secret of Hollywood’s A-List. Pasternak, who has a master’s degree in exercise physiology and nutritional sciences from the University of Toronto, developed the simple, sensible five concept to work within anyone’s typical week, based on five meals a day and five intense but short cardio/strength training workouts. His nutrition advice favors quality proteins and low-to-moderate glycemic index foods (forget net carbs); daily meal plans, eating tips and easy five-ingredient recipes are included. His illustrated workouts require dumbbells, which Pasternak considers superior to gym machines, a bench and some amount of discipline, if only for five minutes at a time. But the book’s succinct approach and fresh facts (one orange juice or coffee drink per day can add 38 pounds to your frame each year; whey beats meat and eggs as quality protein) make getting in shape in five weeks seem straightforward and manageable surely the point of fitness books after all. Deanna Larson is a writer in Nashville.

While thousands of diet and exercise experts claim to have the answer, Harley Pasternak really does have a catchy and worthwhile concept in Five-Factor Fitness: The Diet and Fitness Secret of Hollywood's A-List. Pasternak, who has a master's degree in exercise physiology and nutritional sciences…
PhotographyArts & Culture

Art in the parks

Review by bookpagedev

Frenchman and award-winning photographer Philippe Bourseiller explored many of America’s famous and lesser known national and state parks for an entire year. The result, America’s Parks, is a heady and dramatic volume of his photographs, bookended by a triad of provocative essays (two by fellow countrymen, one by an American), that give both European and American perspectives on the origins, history and development of America’s parks, as well as a thought-provoking look at the future of national parks worldwide.

The photography in America’s Parks is almost over the top; photographic artistry, in the form of extreme technical manipulation, reigns supreme in this collection. We see mind-blowing sunsets, almost unreal close-ups of flowers in a cracked desert and the minute gradations of feathered texture found in a bird’s wing. While Bourseiller’s photographs are masterful, they are not fully representative of the parks they are supposed to depict; Niagara Falls is given short shrift, shown in a single photo of powerfully flowing waters, with no background perspective or setting. Bourseiller’s work, though beautiful, is somewhat inaccessible: there is no elucidation of his motivation and vision, and his photos are not captioned; the reader must take their location and meaning from an appendix that gives a general description of the park in which they were shot.

Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Frenchman and award-winning photographer Philippe Bourseiller explored many of America's famous and lesser known national and state parks for an entire year. The result, America's Parks, is a heady and dramatic volume of his photographs, bookended by a triad of provocative essays (two by…

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