bookpagedev

Biography

The public and private Mandela

Review by bookpagedev

One of Nelson Mandela’s closest friends and colleagues, Joe Slovo, noted in 1994 that "Without Mandela South African history would have taken a completely different turn." Mandela’s appeal was as a moral leader who sought unity and justice, reconciliation and forgiveness (but not forgetting). His many laudable personal qualities—including dignity, charm, loyalty, and a willingness to be conciliatory, combined with his inherent optimism about human nature and a shrewd and insightful intelligence—helped him to succeed in establishing democracy in South Africa. Above all, as Anthony Sampson makes clear in his outstanding new study, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, Mandela is a master politician who has understood what needed to be done and how to do it to achieve short-term objectives and long-term goals.
 
Sampson, a noted British journalist and author of many books, including The Anatomy of Britain, met Mandela in 1951 when Sampson was editor of the black South African magazine Drum. Like others through the years, at least once Sampson underestimated his subject. In writing a book at the 1957 Treason Trial, Sampson focused on other prominent African National Congress Leaders, "but not Mandela; I thought he was too detached to be a future leader, and would be less forthcoming." What Sampson failed to notice was that even at that early stage "the defense lawyers noticed that he had a quiet authority over his fellows, who often sought his legal advice; and his own testimony would reveal how deeply he considered his commitment to the cause."
 
To understand Mandela it is important to appreciate his commitment to the African National Congress, the country’s oldest (founded in 1912) and largest anti-apartheid organization. "Loyalty to an organization," he says, "takes precedence over loyalty to an individual." A Canadian diplomat pointed out in 1953: "The ANC is a great deal more than a political party. Representing as it does the great majority of articulate Africans in the Union, it is almost the parliament of a nation. A nation without a state, perhaps, but it is as a nation that the Africans increasingly think of themselves."
 
Sampson makes a strong case for his belief that Mandela’s 27 years of imprisonment was "the key to his development, transforming the headstrong activist into the reflective and self-disciplined world statesman." During that difficult period Mandela was not only a role model for other prisoners, but, in a sense, the leader of a government in exile.
 
Mandela’s devotion to the cause led to painful relationships with members of his own family; his political commitment "was at the expense of the people I knew and loved most."
 
Sampson explores both the public and private Mandela in this "authorized" biography. It is authorized in that Mandela gave the author personal interviews, "reading the draft typescripts and correcting points of fact and detail," but not interfering with the author’s judgments.
 
This book perfectly complements Mandela’s own autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, published in 1994. It allows us to see Mandela through the eyes of others and brings the story up to the present. Sampson was given access to important papers, including Mandela’s unpublished prison diary. He interviewed hundreds of people who have known the subject, and the result is a balanced portrait of a man who is, in his own words, "no angel." One example: "He has been right about one big issue where so many have been wrong. His persistence had a difficult downside: he could be very stubborn in thinking he was right about everything, and sometimes loyal to doubtful allies who brought him much criticism. But his loyalty to his own principles and friends gave him the edge over other world leaders who had forgotten what they stood for."
 
Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage. 

One of Nelson Mandela's closest friends and colleagues, Joe Slovo, noted in 1994 that "Without Mandela South African history would have taken a completely different turn." Mandela's appeal was as a moral leader who sought unity and justice, reconciliation and forgiveness (but not forgetting).…

Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ere is a book written in the language of hurt, learned from childhood and refined through years of intensive education, both by the world he lives in and the person he is.

Nasdijj, whose pen name in the Athabascan tongue means “to become again,” was born on the Navajo Reservation, the son of a “white cowboy daddy,” and a mother “whose people were with the Navajo.” Migrant workers, they were “always going somewhere else,” but their nomadic existence was the least of his teachers. Far more pivotal in his life were the unaccountable contradictions of his father’s physical and emotional abuse, his mother’s alcoholism, their story-telling, their song-singing, and his own mixed heritage.

Nasdijj admits he “cannot account for the demons of adults,” and wants “the good things to blot out the bad things,” but they don’t always. The mineral traces of his experiences show up time and time again in the “blood that runs like a river” through his imagination. The chapters of this memoir can be read alone with a certain amount of emotional constraint, but taken together they carry the pain from a hundred tributaries and spill into an ocean of barely dammed despair.

In his modified, stream-of-consciousness bravado, Nasdijj never just treads water. He dives into it, and spits it out.

Homelessness, horses, the San Francisco Tenderloin, the Navajo Long Walk Home, fishing all these and more figure one way or another in his own trail of tears, but most unforgettable is the death of his six-year-old adopted son, Tommy Nothing Fancy, from fetal alcohol syndrome. “I was so damn determined I would do good by Tom. Tommy was my sweet revenge. That he could experience joy and all the good things that make life worth living was my salvation. Now he is gone. Writing is my new revenge.” It’s an uneven trade, but in the end, Nasdijj gives us a sad, wild, vital world, beholden to history and nature, that will never surrender either its better spirits, or its devils.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.

ere is a book written in the language of hurt, learned from childhood and refined through years of intensive education, both by the world he lives in and the person he is.

Nasdijj, whose pen name in the Athabascan tongue means "to…
Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Ladies and gentleman, a man who needs no introduction for once this overused line is true. Practically everybody knows who Stephen King is, so we’ll skip the biographical stuff. Do you want to write popular fiction? Then you need to read On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. There are other categories of people who may profit from this friendly book: those who don’t aspire to a writing career but who nevertheless find the process interesting, those who enjoy candid personal memoirs, and those who want to learn more about Stephen King. Added up, these categories probably come to half the human race, so it seems that King has done it again.

On Writing is indeed a memoir of the craft as practiced by one of the most popular authors in history. It is pure Stephen King slangy, energetic, sloppy, unexpected, vulgar, and impressively frank. It begins with some of King’s horrifc memories of early childhood, including his abuse at the hands of a babysitter and his excruciatingly painful treatments for ear infections. He describes his early interest in reading, particularly about horrors, and his natural tendency to write the sort of things he read. As in much of his nonfiction, King seems to be chatting about his enthusiasms over a beer with a friend.

You will find the author speculating on why he’s drawn to the graveyard side of fiction instead of the domestic comedies and family melodramas on the sunny side of the street. However, King doesn’t delve too deeply into his own psyche, for fear of jinxing his muse. His theme throughout On Writing is that you must trust your instincts and write about whatever moves and interests you not what you think others might want, and not what you think might sell. Of course, King knows he’s not Tolstoy or Proust, and he makes a clear-headed appraisal of his own talents. King discusses dialogue, description, motivation, and imagery. Surprisingly, he is skeptical of the need for plot. He wants the characters to move the story. Perhaps he’s more literary than he realizes.

Like all of the better guides, Stephen King’s On Writing inspires the reader to create. "Writing," King says flatly, "isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well."

Ladies and gentleman, a man who needs no introduction for once this overused line is true. Practically everybody knows who Stephen King is, so we'll skip the biographical stuff. Do you want to write popular fiction? Then you need to read On Writing: A Memoir…

Fiction

A mixed-up family

Review by bookpagedev

Edith Reardon, looking back at her childhood through the lens of years, says she once thought that everyone in her family had to be good in order for any one of them to be good. She knows better now.

"If you get mixed up in something just happening, you can get submerged or you can get raised up. With or without your being good. Sometimes your skill can help, but sometimes what’s happening is just too big for your little dog-paddle efforts."

It’s 1979 in Charlottesville, Virginia. A rip-tide is about to surge through Edith’s family. Mike and Joss Reardon, parents of Edith and her sister Nora, are at the center of a volatile group of intelligent and talented friends and family members. Mike is a Jesuit-educated lawyer in his forties, a former congressional staffer, whose knowledge of history, religion, politics, and art is formidable, but to his family, often stultifying. Joss, an experimental film maker, is a punster par excellence and a dedicated mother with the temper of a virago.

The narration of The Half-life of Happiness by the author of the excellent Spartina, winner of the 1989 National Book Award, alternates between the point of view of Mike and that of daughter Edith. From both we hear of Mike’s realization that his wife has fallen in love with a woman — the fiancee of one of the family’s group of friends. Mike, furious about Joss’s affair, decides to funnel his rage into a run for Congress.

The pacing of The Half-life of Happiness is slow up to the point of Mike’s realization and decision, but the contrasts between the public image of Mike’s family and the private truth, as well as between Mike’s viewpoint (at the time) versus Edith’s (looking back), are among the triumphs of this book. The reader is both inside and outside the story simultaneously.

Mike himself — with his particular mesh of loyalties and flirtations, great ideas and flaws — is another of the strengths of this book, as is Edith’s unsparing but loving assessment of her parents, their friends, and their times. Notable also is author Casey’s sense of comic timing, best seen in Mike’s hapless encounters with the daughter of his political opponent. The writing throughout is sharp, witty, fine.

It’s Edith who makes sense of it all, understanding as she does, ". . . that the last scene of certain happiness becomes the first scene of uncertainty." And brief is the interval between "the alarms and sadnesses of childhood" and "the first squeeze of perspective toward your vanishing point."

Edith Reardon, looking back at her childhood through the lens of years, says she once thought that everyone in her family had to be good in order for any one of them to be good. She knows better now.

"If you get mixed up in…

NonfictionEssays

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he political face of Europe changed more between 1989 and 1999 than in any other decade since the period between 1939 and 1949. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism, new opportunities arose in Europe for freedom and democracy. But these were often accompanied by difficult economic challenges and sensitive political problems such as what role the former Communist leaders should play. In the former Yugoslavia there was the ultimate nightmare of war, ethnic cleansing, and thousands of refugees. How can we in the West understand what has happened in that part of the world? For many of us, the most authoritative and readable guide has been Timothy Garton Ash. For the last 20 years his incisive reporting and insightful analysis in The New York Review of Books and such books as The Uses of Adversity and The Magic Lantern have illuminated complex issues and introduced us to a broad range of diverse personalities. Ash is both an Oxford historian and a sharp-eyed journalist with a passion for accuracy. His magnificent new collection, History of the Present, offers an abundance of riches. There are reflective analytical pieces that help the reader understand events in historical perspective. He notes, for example, that if a diplomatic observer had gone to sleep after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and awoke now, there would be a few surprises, but much would be familiar. “In the so-called Contact Group, he would see representatives of the same powers France, Britain, Germany, and Russia pursuing their national interests through their national diplomats and national armies. . . .” He continues, “It begins to look almost as if the whole twentieth-century European story of postimperial federations and communist multinational states was merely an interruption of a longer, underlying process of separating and molding peoples into nation-states.” Other pieces offer the immediacy of encounters with individuals whose lives have been transformed by events. One particularly memorable person is Ash’s friend Helena Luczywo in Warsaw. When he first met her in 1980 she was deeply involved in preparing a samizdat (underground) magazine allied with Solidarity and the workers’ revolution. “Today she is the key figure behind the most successful newspaper in the whole of postcommunist Europe,” the author writes. Why did she initially get involved as a political activist in the 1970s? “Oh, I don’t know. Just a sense of decency,” she told Ash.

In 1992, Ash visited former East German Communist Party leader Erich Honecker in prison. Honecker relates that he had often spoken on the phone with West German chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl. “A quarter century of divided Germany’s tragic, complex history,” Ash writes, “is, it seems to me, concentrated in this one pathetic moment: the defiant, mortally sick old man in his prison pajamas, the dog-eared card with the direct number to Chancellor Kohl.” Ash, who describes himself as “an agnostic liberal,” has lavish praise for Pope John Paul II, whom he describes as “simply the greatest world leader of our times.” None of the other credible candidates for this designation Gorbachev, Kohl, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher matches the pope’s “unique combination of concentrated strength, intellectual consistency, human warmth, and simple goodness.” By emphasizing the inalienable rights of each human being, the pope has supported the cause of those without economic, political, or cultural power.

Anyone who wants to better understand the last decade in Central Europe will benefit from reading this stimulating and perceptive book.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

he political face of Europe changed more between 1989 and 1999 than in any other decade since the period between 1939 and 1949. With the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism, new opportunities arose in Europe for freedom and democracy. But…
Fiction

A blend of truth and poetry

Review by bookpagedev

Fruit trees and family trees intertwine in The Family Orchard, Nomi Eve’s semi-autobiographical novel that traces a fictional Israeli family from the early 19th century to the present. The title refers to the family business: growing citrus.

The Family Orchard treats the reader to characters like Avra, a lovely compulsive thief who doesn’t keep her booty, but artistically relocates stolen objects into humorous contexts. We also meet Miriam, an activist who trains in grenade throwing well into her second pregnancy. Spanning almost the entire 19th and 20th centuries in Israel, The Family Orchardtouches significantly on Jewish history in other parts of the word as well. Readers see the Holocaust, not close up as in much recent fiction, but from a great distance. Instead of seeing the victims of genocide, we read about the Haganah, the Israeli underground movement that helped European Jews flee Europe by immigrating illegally to Israel. We read about surviving cousins finally located after a long search and brought to Israel. The greatness of The Family Orchard lies not in its politics, however, but in its exploration of family psychology. How can one couple maintain a lifelong passion while, in the next generation, a secret tragedy makes irreparable tears in the fabric of happiness?

Eve leads you through this family saga in much the same way children are led through the family album, one page, one couple at a time, until the photos become familiar those of the current generation. The early chapters, about distant ancestors, capture the way families mythologize their roots, blending known fact with powerful faith. By inserting herself directly into the last pages of her novel, without even changing her name, Eve inventively challenges conventions concerning the separation of fiction and autobiography. Families rarely observe those conventions in the way they pass on ancestral stories from one generation to the next, and Eve gives us a novel based on that flagrant blending of truth and poetry.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

 

Fruit trees and family trees intertwine in The Family Orchard, Nomi Eve's semi-autobiographical novel that traces a fictional Israeli family from the early 19th century to the present. The title refers to the family business: growing citrus.

The Family Orchard treats the…

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Most people who have enjoyed a day at the beach have experienced something like it: a crashing wave that blindsides you out of nowhere. One moment you’re enjoying the sun and the surf; the next you’re plunged into a disorienting vortex of green water, your mouth and nose filled with brine, leaving you unsure of even the way to the surface. In a similar fashion, storm-spawned waves reaching the size of a 13-story building exerted the same effect on a fleet of racing sailboats during the 1998 run of one of Australia’s more revered and prestigious races, wreaking havoc and costing lives. Martin Dugard’s Knockdown vividly retells the story of these boats and their crews as they battle the tempest. (The title is derived from a term describing a sailboat driven near to capsizing by towering waves.) The traditional race from Sydney to the Tasmanian port of Hobart began the day after Christmas in 1945 to test the friendly boasts of a group of avid sailors. By 1998, the race had attained a prestige in Australia surpassing the America’s Cup. Its route threads the notorious Bass Strait, a vast expanse of relatively shallow water separating two mighty oceans. Strange tides, rogue waves, and sudden storms are common occurrences in the Strait. The 735-mile Hobart race is widely regarded for its difficulty, and each boat is required to number three race veterans among its crew. Among the 1998 participants were expert sailors predicted to win the 2000 Olympics, middle-class workers for whom boating is a weekend passion, corporate honchos enjoying the perk of a ride on a company-sponsored yacht, and a painstakingly restored wooden boat that participated in the very first Hobart race. Whatever their background, these sailors expected a challenging race and intended to brave drenching waves, seasickness, and unpredictable currents. But as three storm systems combined to form what amounted to an instant hurricane, they found themselves in a common struggle for survival, with numerous opportunities to display heroism or cowardice.

Like Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm, Dugard renders complex weather patterns comprehensible to the lay person indeed, as the reader understands what the sailors are approaching, suspense increases all the more. Dugard maintains suspense in two equally effective ways. Foreseeing the tragic fate of certain boats, the reader can only watch tensely as the sailors approach disaster. Other times, both tragic drownings and miraculous escapes come as surprises. In relating a story probably unknown to many, Dugard’s book tells a thrilling tale of survival.

Gregory Harris is a writer and editor.

Most people who have enjoyed a day at the beach have experienced something like it: a crashing wave that blindsides you out of nowhere. One moment you're enjoying the sun and the surf; the next you're plunged into a disorienting vortex of green water, your…

FictionShort Stories

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker’s writing has a way of creeping up on you, taking you unawares, and affecting you long after you’ve put the book on the shelf. This collection of short stories, a work of “mostly fiction,” begins and ends with semi-autobiographical recollections of a failed yet compelling marriage. Walker pushes us headlong into the difficulties and pleasures of relationships confounded by the frustrations of race, children, and varying expectations of what relationships should be. The movement of the book carries us through several episodes, each inhabited by wounded people who carry the scars, some old and shiny and some unhealed, inflicted both by loved ones and by society.

There is Rosa, a writer misunderstood by and alienated from her family, who is admonished not to put family matters in her writing. But Rosa’s curse is “never to be able to forget, truly, but only to appear to forget. And then to record what she could not forget.” There are Orelia and John, a couple who, although they understand each other deeply, constantly underestimate each other’s ability to forgive. There is Anne, a passionate woman whose “Grandma,” the voice of conscience and ideas, brings her closer to herself and others. There is also Girl, who introduces her mother to lesbian pornography and wonders about the intolerance still found in the South. Although not always set in the South, the idea of the South, with its hot steamy summers and underlying violence, provides the sense of place for these characters and shapes their interactions.

These stories offer brief glimpses into lives both familiar and unfamiliar. The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart captures moments of clarity about others and ourselves. Many times this clarity is won with consequences both painful and joyful. We are reminded that life is fragile, but that with love, we can move forward and heal our wounded souls. Walker’s dedication, “To the American race,” signals hope that we will find the way forward, but a reminder that it will come only after grief and healing.

Kelly Koepke is a freelance writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

ulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker's writing has a way of creeping up on you, taking you unawares, and affecting you long after you've put the book on the shelf. This collection of short stories, a work of "mostly fiction," begins and ends with semi-autobiographical recollections…
Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The psychology of money and work Twenty years ago, personal finance writer Andrew Tobias produced a best-selling book with a boastful title. It was called The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. Rather than scare away the competition with that all-encompassing name, the book’s huge success may have helped spark what’s become a growth industry unto itself: the avalanche of books intended to provide care and feeding to the emboldened individual investor. In 1978, very few people actively controlled their own investments, from automated payroll savings to retirement accounts. In 1978, there was no CNBC, no Internet stock trading, not even any Internet stocks to trade. In 1978, the mutual fund industry was a fraction of its current size. Given the enormous change that’s engulfed the world of personal finance, Mr. Tobias decided it was time to return to his original theme. So we have The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and Updated Throughout (Harvest Books, $13, 0156005603). As for the compelling title, Mr. Tobias says it was his publisher’s idea, and he agreed in a weak moment. He notes that there are other good investment guides around (and many poor ones), but accurately adds: . . . reading three good investment guides instead of one will surely not triple, and probably not even improve, your investment results. So how does Mr. Tobias’s one-stop shopping site for investors hold up? Quite well. The author is a knowledgeable guide and a gifted writer. The book is a pleasure to read, which is important since so many people regard reading about investment options as an unpleasant if important chore. He covers most of the waterfront, and he is forthright in his opinions. For example, he doesn’t think much of investing in commodities or gold. On commodities, he writes: It is a fact that 90% or more of the people who play the commodities game get burned. I submit that you have now read all that you need ever read about commodities. On gold he offers, Gold itself pays no interest and costs money to insure. It is a hedge against inflation, all right, and a handy way to buy passage to Liechtenstein, or wherever it is we’re all supposed to flee to when the much ballyhooed collapse finally materializes. But if you’re looking for an inflation hedge, you might do better with stocks or real estate. Mr. Tobias is particularly strong in an area many people wouldn’t consider the province of an investment guide: frugality. Simply stated, spending less of your income is a great savings and investment strategy. Given effective tax rates, keeping an after-tax dollar in your pocket rather than in some merchant’s cash register is probably the equivalent of going out and earning two dollars before taxes. The author advises buying in bulk and hard bargaining on big purchases. He takes the reader through the pros and cons of most investment options in an engaging, common sense manner.

Every investor is different, of course. Mr. Tobias, for one, describes himself as rather chickenhearted. People should take on levels of risk that are not only appropriate for their income, goals, and stage of life, but also in line with their psychological ability to withstand risk. In other words, you want your investments to allow you to sleep at night.

Despite our differences, there are some psychological foibles most of us share when it comes to thinking about money. That’s the subject of a fascinating new book, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich. The authors (Belsky is a journalist who wrote for Money magazine for seven years; Gilovich is a professor of psychology at Cornell University) take us into the world of psychoeconomic theory, which explains how widespread human behavior patterns have an adverse impact on our pocketbooks.

Take the concept of mental accounting, which deals with how we categorize money and treat it differently depending on its source. For example, we more easily fritter away money that was won at the racetrack the night before than we would rashly spend the contents of our hard-earned paychecks. Like other ideas of psychoeconomic theory, the various aspects of mental accounting are presented here through hypothetical scenarios in which readers can participate. This fun approach makes the issues at hand easy to identify with and clear. The bottom line solution to the mental accounting problem is this: Make sure you treat each dollar in your possession equally, no matter whence it came. This popularization of the work of psychologists hits on many interesting issues, including the fact that losses hurt more than gains please. That makes a lot of people more risk averse in their investment decisions than rational investigation would likely lead them to be. And then there’s the sobering fact that most of us are not as smart or as savvy as we imagine. The authors write: . . . for almost as long as psychologists have been exploring human nature, they have been amassing evidence that people tend to overestimate their own abilities, knowledge, and skills . . . in financial matters the tendency to place too much stock in what you know, or what you think you know, can cost you dearly. For most of these interesting tendencies, knowledge that they exist can help you fight them. The authors of this well-researched and clearly written book also offer specific remedies for the financial aspects of these psychological peccadilloes.

Psychology doesn’t abandon us once we put away the bills or monthly investment statements; it accompanies us to work (and everywhere else, for that matter). The ability to cooperate, collaborate, and even inspire our colleagues is a crucial factor in our own personal success as well as in the prosperity of our employer. In 1995, Daniel Goleman wrote a bestseller called Emotional Intelligence, which challenged the dominance of the IQ in measuring smarts. Now he’s taken those concepts to work in Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam, $25.95, 0553104624; Audio Renaissance, abridged, $16.95, 1559275154; unabridged, $39.95, 1559275162). Goleman received a doctorate from Harvard University and spent a dozen years covering behavioral and brain sciences for the New York Times. His essential message is an upbeat one: Those qualities that in an earlier time might have been labeled character or made one considered a good person are also the qualities that should help us get ahead at work.

There’s more good news. Your fate isn’t determined by some stagnant measure of your intelligence; you can improve on your emotional intelligence at any stage of life. In today’s work world, hierarchies have been flattened and the success of team work often depends on people’s ability to get along. Emotional intelligence has never been more important.

In readable detail, based on research and corporate profiles, Goleman lays out the personal competencies of emotional intelligence, which include self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, as well as social competencies, such as empathy and social skills. (Each category has more specific sub-categories.) This is an important and helpful book.

The changes in the American workplace in the past couple of decades haven’t all taken place within our heads. One seismic change has been the vastly expanded role of women in the work force, both in terms of number and influence. That change is the subject of Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America (Longstreet, $22, 1563525216) by Matt Towery. For a book about the growing strength of women in business, entertainment, and politics, as well as their dominant place as consumers and voters, the title strikes one as a tad irreverent. Mr. Towery, a former Georgia state legislator, says, however, that many influential women have willingly and proudly accepted the new term. As for why a man wrote this book, the author cites an old newspaper adage, to wit, You don’t have to die to be qualified to write obituaries. Mr. Towery has produced a glowing testament to women in a host of industries who have made it to the top or near top. Through numerous interviews, they tell of their motivations and of obstacles overcome. Among the many interesting points made are that corporate inflexibility might partly be behind the surge in female entrepreneurship and the description of a social phenomena he calls the female bachelor. This describes high-income, high-status single women with lots of disposable income who don’t feel pressured to marry.

Neal Lipschutz is managing editor of Dow Jones News Service.

The psychology of money and work Twenty years ago, personal finance writer Andrew Tobias produced a best-selling book with a boastful title. It was called The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. Rather than scare away the competition with that all-encompassing name, the book's huge…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

n his new novel, Where I’m Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.

These soldiers were under more than one gun, since their capture meant almost certain death by hanging or the firing squad. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, told his generals that officers of black regiments were to be “put to death” at the discretion of a military court. The black soldiers were to be returned to their masters, sold, or put to work helping the Confederate troops.

What usually happened was that black troops were hanged or shot when captured. At Fort Pillow, for instance, black soldiers surrendered their arms after being promised that all who did so would be treated as prisoners of war. Instead they were shot “without mercy,” according to eyewitnesses.

Where I’m Bound tells the dramatic story of black cavalry scout Joe Duckett, whose regiment roamed the Mississippi Delta, seeking slaves held by the Confederates and trying to keep vital waterways open for Union gunboats. The pictures of war are dramatic as seen through the eyes of black slaves who tried to escape to freedom and the troops who were fighting for the same freedom. It was not a pretty war for most, and cruelty was not the sole transgression of the Confederate troops. This is the first novel by Ballard, who teaches history and African-American studies at the State University of New York at Albany. He has written two nonfiction books on African-American history. Most of Ballard’s novel is historically correct, although he has fudged a bit for the sake of greater realism here and there.

Where I’m Boundis an absorbing story that will touch the reader in different ways, but it will entertain and educate about a war that is history, if it is, indeed, sad history.

Where I’m Bound should be required reading for true Civil War buffs, but it is well worthwhile for those who simply like a well-told story.

Lloyd Armour is a former newspaper editor.

n his new novel, Where I'm Bound, Allen Ballard does a masterful job of filling in the most underreported annals of the Civil War, the fighting exploits of the black soldiers of the Union Army.

These soldiers were under more than one…
LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The actress Rachel Roberts wrote in her memoirs that everybody has a story and a scream. The Italian novelist Cesare Pavese said, No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide. Both Roberts and Pavese killed themselves.

What Mark Seinfelt has done in his new study is to give us the stories, the screams, and, inasmuch as they can be determined, the reasons for suicide of 50 celebrated writers of the past 100 years. Defining his parameters, Seinfelt notes that suicide was a rare phenomenon among writers and artists before 1900. In Greek and Roman times, when self-murder was often viewed as a noble way to defy persecution or stand up for one’s principles, such figures as Socrates, Cato, and Seneca chose suicide as a virtual affirmation. But in our century, only a few ideologues have deliberately sacrificed themselves to a cause, a protest, or a dogma. In the literary world, Yukio Mishima is perhaps the most striking example of such martyrdom.

Sometimes it seems that once Freud unlocked the subconscious and he had several writers as analysands a Pandora’s box of suicidal impulses was opened among the literati. Chronic depression, madness, alcoholism, drug addiction, existential despair, inconsolable feelings of worthlessnessÐall these things had plagued writers in earlier epochs. Yet suicide, once considered the gravest sin, was usually held at bay. Only in a century of unprecedented martial slaughter, nuclear holocaust, and genocide has it become a near-commonplace of intellectual life. For the Dadaists (whom Seinfelt does not address), it was the only act that made sense in a world in which reason played no part. It is not Seinfelt’s intention to illustrate theories or put the suicides he recounts into an overarching historical/psychological paradigm. His approach is that of the mini-biographer, with each writer’s life story discretely sketched, his or her career outlined, and the events leading up to suicide summarized. The chapters, one per writer, are often meager on analysis but are satisfyingly generous on vital detail. About a few of the most famous authors, such as Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, Seinfelt is both short-sighted and uninspired. But with writers less read, like Hart Crane (the subject of his longest chapter) or Stefan Zweig, he performs a more valuable service than merely rendering a downward spiral: He makes you want to read their work.

Final Drafts is an intriguing bedside-table book, better for dipping into than for reading at a stretch. The stories are necessarily grim and disturbing, but the subjects rarely fail to fascinate.

Randall Curb writes for The Oxford American, Southern Review, and American Scholar.

The actress Rachel Roberts wrote in her memoirs that everybody has a story and a scream. The Italian novelist Cesare Pavese said, No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide. Both Roberts and Pavese killed themselves.

What Mark Seinfelt has done…

LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Although some may lament the decline of handwritten letters, many people are writing more than ever, whether it is e-mail, reports, newsletters, memoirs, or family histories. Writing programs continue to cite increases in enrollment. Patricia O’Conner, former editor at the New York Times Book Review and author of the successful writing book Woe is I, offers readers a new guide to writing entitled Words Fail Me. Designed to ensure that our words do justice to our ideas, O’Conner’s book provides practical advice on how to improve our everyday writing. Words Fail Me is divided into short chapters that offer witty and detailed solutions to a range of issues such as verbs that zing and the Ôit’ parade. O’Conner also tackles issues writing professors repeat every semester to their students: know your subject, know your audience, and know your position. No one, O’Conner reminds us, can avoid having to organize one’s writing. She also discusses the difficult subject of jargon, words that many feel they have to use in their company’s memo. (The comic strip Dilbert masters these.) She warns that jargon is often too complicated and sounds contrived. While the majority of the book focuses on writing style, O’Conner also confronts the one issue many fear: grammar. She explains grammar rules in a short, concise manner with humorous anecdotes, making even passages on prepositions enjoyable. And if readers should forget all of her advice, she provides a check list at the end of the book.

Charlotte Pence is an English professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Although some may lament the decline of handwritten letters, many people are writing more than ever, whether it is e-mail, reports, newsletters, memoirs, or family histories. Writing programs continue to cite increases in enrollment. Patricia O'Conner, former editor at the New York Times Book Review…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he small town of Halley’s Landing is unexceptional in most respects. Its main attractions are the site of a supposed touchdown by its namesake comet, an old canal, and a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation every eighth of August. But the eclectic inhabitants of Halley’s Landing are the town’s real hallmarks.

In An Eighth of August by Dawn Turner Trice, family matriarch Cora Riley Hoskins welcomes family and friends to her large three-story house every year for the homecoming celebration. It’s a party marked by good food, thanksgiving, and town events. Some years are more memorable than others, and a select few are not to be forgotten, no matter how painful.

Set in 1986, the story weaves together a chorus of narrative voices, including the head-strong Flossie Jo Penticott and her spindly sister-in-law Thelma Gray. There’s also wayward Pepper, loyal Uncle Herbert, confused Sweet Alma, and saucy May Ruth. Together they tell the story of a family coming to terms with a tragic event and the healing power of forgiveness.

Trice, author of Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven, probes deeply into the question of what makes a family. She blurs the color line with the inclusion of a white British woman running away from her own family traumas into an African-American family.

The novel flashes back to 1973, when Sweet Alma was a pregnant teenager, disappointing her mother’s dreams. It retells the choices made by Flossie Jo to keep her daughter respectable and recalls the family tragedy of 1985. But the novel is also the story of May Ruth and her journey from a married woman with a child to a drinking bird-watcher saved by Cora.

Because the story does not focus on one main character, the novel continuously evolves as the central tale unfolds. Each contributor gives it an added depth and sense of community. Trice’s writing style and chapter headings keep readers from getting lost in the various narratives.

An enjoyable novel with a cacophony of voices, An Eighth of August is a sometimes humorous, insightful tale of family, community, and homecoming. Already compared to Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place, Trice has cemented her reputation as an able chronicler of the African-American experience.

Amber Stephens is a freelance writer in Columbus, Ohio.

he small town of Halley's Landing is unexceptional in most respects. Its main attractions are the site of a supposed touchdown by its namesake comet, an old canal, and a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation every eighth of August. But the eclectic inhabitants of Halley's…

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