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James Madison remains one of the most important political thinkers in American history. His eloquently expressed opinions and leadership were indispensable to the development of the young republic and remain crucial and relevant to our lives today, yet some of his many contributions in a long career are often misunderstood or even forgotten. Fortunately, Kevin R. C. Gutzman, relying for the most part on primary sources, gives us an authoritative, vivid and wide-ranging exploration of Madison’s public career in James Madison and the Making of America.

Madison is often called “the father of the Constitution,” and he certainly was a major figure in its drafting and ratification by the states as well as its implementation. Gutzman makes all of this activity come alive in such a way that it is easy to imagine you are watching it firsthand. Before the 1787 Philadelphia Convention Madison engaged in research, reading deeply in ancient, medieval and modern writings on history and politics, and was the chief note-taker for the proceedings. Considering that he was a leader, thinker and orator who spoke more than 200 times himself, this last role seems almost impossible. A delegate from Georgia, who was neither his ally nor his opponent, described Madison as a combination of a profound politician and scholar and the best-informed man in every debate. But Madison himself was not enthusiastic about the prospects for the Convention before it started and remained ambivalent about its value after it was over. In a letter to his close friend Thomas Jefferson recounting the entire session, Madison described how difficult it had been to reconcile different views, by far the most difficult being how to resolve the division of powers between the federal government and the states. He felt that without a federal veto of state laws and with members of the Senate elected by state legislature, the Constitution was bound to fail.

Despite Madison’s major role with the Constitutional Convention, Gutzman thinks that his greatest accomplishment was his work with Jefferson on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Madison felt strongly about the separation of church and state, writing that for legislators to overstep the bounds of their authority and try to regulate religion would make them “tyrants.” Gutzman emphasizes that freedom of religion, freedom to emancipate one’s slaves and free trade were critical elements in Madison’s overview of society and government.

Gutzman gives a careful analysis of Madison’s major contributions to The Federalist Papers and a riveting account of the debate for ratification in Virginia. Madison had never felt the necessity for a bill of rights as part of the Constitution. When he finally did propose what evolved into the Bill of Rights, there was contentious legislative activity, but its adoption seemed far less momentous than we regard it today.

A perfect example of the high esteem in which Madison was held came right at the beginning of the new government. It was Madison who drafted his friend George Washington’s first inaugural address. Madison also drafted the House response and then the Senate’s response to that address—and he also drafted Washington’s responses to the House and Senate.

Gutzman points out that “Madison was at his best in mastering large bodies of data, in synthesizing extensive bodies of information, in wrestling measures through parliamentary assemblies.” As Jefferson’s secretary of state and as president, Madison did have some successes, but his most significant achievements had come earlier as thinker and legislative strategist. Madison’s presidency is usually remembered for the British burning of the White House and the Capitol during the War of 1812.

James Madison and the Making of America is a solid and insightful biography that should appeal to both those readers who know a lot about Madison and those who want an introduction to him.

James Madison remains one of the most important political thinkers in American history. His eloquently expressed opinions and leadership were indispensable to the development of the young republic and remain crucial and relevant to our lives today, yet some of his many contributions in a…

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Who was Dwight Eisenhower? His extraordinary leadership of the Allied forces in Europe led to victory in World War II. Under his presidency the nation enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity. Yet several years after his death, when his widow Mamie was asked whether she felt she had really known him, she replied, “I’m not sure anyone did.” Jean Edward Smith, whose last book was the best-selling FDR, explores the public and personal life of the man he regards, second to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the most successful U.S. president in the 20th century in his absorbing Eisenhower in War and Peace.

Eisenhower wrote of himself: “I’m just folks. I come from the people, the ordinary people.” Smith goes behind such statements and perhaps comes as close as a biographer can in capturing those qualities of personality and judgment during his military career that so impressed his superiors. His affability and common sense enabled him to deal effectively with such strong personalities as Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, his longtime friend George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Early in his career, Eisenhower worked with General John Pershing and General Douglas MacArthur; the latter found Ike so indispensable to him in Washington as a speechwriter and in other ways that he requested that he go with him to duty in the Philippines.

Smith emphasizes that Ike was not a battlefield commander, nor a great soldier, but outstanding as a theater commander and military statesman. He also had exceptional ability as an executive and knew how to assume ultimate responsibility and yet delegate to others. Among the many achievements of his life, Smith discusses his crucial role in the formation of NATO, his presidency at Columbia University and his “behind-the-scenes” approach in dealing with Senator Joe McCarthy’s abuse of power.

One clue to Eisenhower’s successes comes from his belief that his mother had by far the greatest personal influence on him and his brothers. All four of his remaining brothers (another had died as a child) agreed that Ike was the most like their mother. In contrast to their rather distant father, she was the constant presence who organized their lives, soothed them if necessary, praised their achievements and could often see the humor in virtually every difficult situation. When General Dwight Eisenhower was hailed as an international hero at the end of WWII, a newsman asked her if she was proud of her son. “Which one?” she responded.

As president, Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative, but he was not an ideologue of any kind. He was for a balanced budget but also aware of the need for such significant public works projects as the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system, the largest public works project ever attempted. Among other initiatives, he expanded Social Security in 1954 to provide coverage for an additional 10 million self-employed farmers, doctors and others; he established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and he approved funds to provide the Salk polio vaccine to the nation’s underprivileged children. He said that the decision to send federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the law regarding integration of the schools was the hardest he’d ever had to make except for the decision to go ahead with D-Day.

Meticulously researched, Smith’s book gives us a fresh and insightful understanding of the many aspects of Eisenhower’s full life.

Who was Dwight Eisenhower? His extraordinary leadership of the Allied forces in Europe led to victory in World War II. Under his presidency the nation enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity. Yet several years after his death, when his widow Mamie was asked whether…

Historian Julia Fox’s absorbing new dual biography of Katherine of Aragon and her sister Juana, Queen of Castile, gives fans of Showtime’s “The Tudors” an engrossing, star-crossed family history of Henry VIII’s first wife. Epic in scale, Fox’s Sister Queens shows how Katherine and Juana were groomed by their parents, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, for royal marriages and political intrigue.

Using ample primary sources, such as letters Katherine wrote to her father from England, Fox goes behind the scenes to reveal the sisters’ heartbreak and stoicism as they lived out the royal fates allotted to them. Katherine was originally sent from Spain to marry Prince Arthur, Henry’s older brother, but when Arthur died suddenly after a few weeks of marriage, Katherine’s position in the English court—and Spain’s alliance with England—was thrown into question. Seven years of holding firm to her marginalized position finally won her betrothal to Henry VIII—but how much of a victory was it?

Juana’s life story is even more dramatic. Married to Duke Philip of Burgundy—“Philip the Handsome”—Juana became a duchess, with the promise of one day becoming the Holy Roman Empress. An initially passionate attachment to her husband lapsed into bitterness and estrangement due in part to his many affairs, but also due to her violent response to them (she physically attacked one of his mistresses). Known to history as “Juana the Mad,” she may have suffered from mental illness exacerbated by the political machinations of her husband, her father and, later, her son. After Philip’s untimely death, when she refused to be parted from his coffin, the legend of her madness was firmly established. By confining her to convents, both Ferdinand and her son Charles were able to usurp Juana’s political power after her ascension to the Spanish throne following her mother’s death.

Fox examines the myths surrounding Juana and Katherine in light of the historical record, and her biography of the sisters provides a balanced scholarly assessment of such legends as Juana’s attachment to Philip’s corpse. Sister Queens balances history and drama in telling a fascinating story about larger-than-life characters in a dramatic political climate.

Historian Julia Fox’s absorbing new dual biography of Katherine of Aragon and her sister Juana, Queen of Castile, gives fans of Showtime’s “The Tudors” an engrossing, star-crossed family history of Henry VIII’s first wife. Epic in scale, Fox’s Sister Queens shows how Katherine and Juana…

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Steve Lopez is a newspaper columnist somewhat in the mold of Mike Royko or Jimmy Breslin. He’s worked in Philadelphia and Los Angeles – also with Time magazine – and has turned out a few novels. Several years back, Lopez came upon an L.A. Skid Row denizen named Nathaniel Ayers, who impressed him with his violin playing, despite the fact that his instrument had only two strings. Sniffing a story, Lopez set out to learn more about his new acquaintance and discovered that Ayers had been enrolled at Juilliard more than 30 years earlier. Lopez’s initial column on Ayers drew wide attention, and eventually spawned many more, as Lopez gradually became intimately involved in his subject’s past and future. The Soloist directly recounts this unusual, ultimately heartwarming tale, but not before the author takes readers on a harrowing journey through the tougher elements of both mental-health treatment and the lower depths of downtown L.A.

It turns out that Ayers, after indeed spending two years at Juilliard as a promising string bass player, succumbed to a form of schizophrenia, thus disrupting his functionality, destroying his ability to continue in music school and eventually spiraling his life downward into the underclass. Encouraged by some of his concerned Los Angeles Times readers and also by cautious but supportive psychiatric professionals and social workers, Lopez forges a friendship with Ayers and for two years helps him get off the streets, pursue his music with renewed vigor, and take the huge emotional strides necessary to begin a modest re-entry into more conventional everyday living.

Lopez’s writing is as propulsive as good fiction, and his central character is nothing if not a singularly fascinating gent – prone to disjointed stream-of-consciousness outbursts as well as brief informative lectures on classical music. Yet for all its positive-striding spirit, Lopez’s book is rife with suspense, mainly because Ayers’ complex personality problems emerge as all too real and – especially since he adamantly refuses meds – require unending patience on the part of those aiding his progress. The Soloist is inspirational but also very gritty stuff; a film adaptation starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. is in the works.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

Steve Lopez is a newspaper columnist somewhat in the mold of Mike Royko or Jimmy Breslin. He's worked in Philadelphia and Los Angeles - also with Time magazine - and has turned out a few novels. Several years back, Lopez came upon an L.A. Skid…
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The writings of George Orwell (Animal Farm) and Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) engaged and electrified international audiences in the first half of the 20th century. In that, these British literary lions – each with decidedly different lifestyles – are similar. Writer David Lebedoff (Cleaning Up) uncovers deeper similarities in The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War, a refreshing dual biography that compares and contrasts the lives and works of these authors, both of whom held the same (dim) views of totalitarianism, morality and the future of our modern world.

At a glance, the lives of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh seem no more alike than chalk is to cheese. Though both were born in 1903 England into the same social class, their paths diverged as they were educated, grew to manhood against a background of world war, and pursued their literary callings (meeting only once). During his boarding school days, the sensitive Orwell was cruelly bullied (torture he later chronicled in the essay “Such, Such Were the Joys”). Waugh had a brash lineage (his grandfather’s nickname was “The Brute”), and was a schoolboy bully who would later habitually torment both friend and foe alike. Orwell, a socialist and atheist, chose a hard life of near poverty. Waugh, a conservative and an ardent Catholic convert, was an unabashed social climber who courted the moneyed, aristocratic echelons of British society. Waugh lived into his 60s, gaining early success as a writer; Orwell’s writings remained fairly obscure until shortly before his death at age 46.

The conceit of examining opposites to excavate similarities has driven many classic tales, and it is employed with deft honesty here, despite Lebedoff’s effusive fondness for these authors. The Same Man is a first-rate read, an adroit portrait of two prescient thinkers who feared, with the steady upward and so-called progress of the Modern Age, our collective fall into “a bottomless abyss.” Enlivened by Lebedoff’s trenchant observations of the authors’ inner and outer worlds, it is pulled down slightly by the final chapter, which strays occasionally into unfocused conjecture irrelevant to this biography’s worthy premise.

Alison Hood plans to re-read Animal Farm and Brideshead Revisited before summer’s end.

The writings of George Orwell (Animal Farm) and Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) engaged and electrified international audiences in the first half of the 20th century. In that, these British literary lions - each with decidedly different lifestyles - are similar. Writer David Lebedoff (Cleaning Up)…
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The spirit that animates – or at least haunts – Deborah Baker’s excellent account of the Beats in India, A Blue Hand, is not the spirit of its main protagonist, the troubled, sweet-natured poet-mystic Allen Ginsberg, but rather an elusive seeker, chanter of Swinburne and one-time girlfriend of poet Gregory Corso, Hope Savage.

Ginsberg left New York for India in the fall of 1961, after months of delay and indecision, propelled by a vision of God he had in a Harlem apartment years earlier. He was met eventually by his lover, Peter Orlovsky, and the pair joined poet Gary Snyder and his then-wife Joanne Kyger for some weeks in exploring India, while Corso (the one truly unlikable figure in this history), remained ambivalently, fearfully at home, and William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac followed other paths. Driven by unknown dreams or demons, Savage had long ago slipped the bonds of her eminent South Carolina family and of Corso and traveled by herself to Iran and Afghanistan. By the time Ginsberg arrived in India, she was already there.

Drawing with marvelous artistry from the papers and archives of Ginsberg and others, Baker presents readers with the manifold textures of the Beats’ inner quest – the dreams and nightmares, the drug use (which Ginsberg almost comically hoped would fast-track enlightenment), the personal and artistic rivalries, the poetry and the sometimes-numbing, sometimes-uplifting encounters with India itself. Baker, who was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for a biography of poet Laura Riding, wields here a scalpel-like pen: "Allen Ginsberg lay in a sweat-drenched puddle of self-pity," she writes early in the book. "He had so wanted to be a saint, but what was he supposed to suffer for?"

In May of 1963, Ginsberg headed home. According to Baker, "despite his passion for the idea of India, there was something improbable about Allen Ginsberg’s pilgrimage there. Unlike many of those who came after him, he neglected to leave much of his past behind. Instead, he brought most of it with him."

Savage, on the other hand, had cut her ties with the past and, it seems, absorbed the Eastern spiritual ideal of self-abnegation. Baker writes that she searched assiduously for Savage but never found her, not even a trace.

 

The spirit that animates - or at least haunts - Deborah Baker's excellent account of the Beats in India, A Blue Hand, is not the spirit of its main protagonist, the troubled, sweet-natured poet-mystic Allen Ginsberg, but rather an elusive seeker, chanter of Swinburne…

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From 1929 to 1934, Florence Wolfson faithfully recorded the details of her life in a diary she received on her 14th birthday – and what a life it was. A precocious, exquisitely attired Manhattanite with an artistic bent, Florence took advantage of every opportunity for adventure, sometimes flirting with scandal. She frequented the Metropolitan Museum of Art, newly opened in 1929; saw live performances by actresses Helen Hayes, Katherine Cornell, Lynn Fontaine and Eva La Gallienne. She had a copy of the banned Ulysses and read Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga novels as they were published. Among her classmates at Hunter College, where she edited the literary magazine, were Joy Davidman (whose marriage to C.S. Lewis was chronicled in Shadowlands) and Bel Kaufman, who recalled “a young woman who used to appear in class in fawn-colored riding breeches. . . . How I envied those riding breeches and the exotic life she lived.” That life is presented in cinematic scope in Lily Koppel’s The Red Leather Diary.

Koppel, a New York Times reporter, came across Florence’s diary in 2003, when she happened upon a Dumpster loaded with old trunks, vintage clothing and other unclaimed items from the recesses of her building, where Florence had once lived. Intrigued, Koppel tracked her down with the help of a 1930s-fascinated lawyer-turned-detective.

Florence’s life reads like E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime in places, with all the famous paths crossed and situations experienced; while descriptions of city life recall Marjorie Hart’s Summer at Tiffany. Together, Koppel and Florence take readers through a world dizzy with new ideas, rhythms and inventions, but not immune to the effects of the Depression and later the coming of world war.

From 1929 to 1934, Florence Wolfson faithfully recorded the details of her life in a diary she received on her 14th birthday - and what a life it was. A precocious, exquisitely attired Manhattanite with an artistic bent, Florence took advantage of every opportunity for…
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In the midst of Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, well-known biographer Sally Bedell Smith’s solidly traditional new life story of Queen Elizabeth II is a great pleasure. Smith approaches the Royals the right way, with hundreds of interviews with friends and associates, personal observation and thorough research into the historical record. The effort has produced in Elizabeth the Queen a book that ably blends a chronological account of the 85-year-old queen’s life with an inside look at her household, personality and private interests.

One theme emerges with great clarity: Elizabeth Windsor was thrust willy-nilly into her full-time job when she inherited the throne, but her true passion is horse breeding and racing. Corgis aside, she has always spent as much time as possible, given her circumstances, at stable and horse track, with considerable success. If you want to break through the queen’s reserve, ask her about yesterday’s most exciting race at Ascot.

More seriously, Smith convincingly describes a remarkable woman—not flawless, certainly, but with the discipline, intelligence, emotional balance and physical stamina to shine at a dauntingly tough job. Whatever their preconceptions about the monarchy, every one of her 12 prime ministers, from Churchill to Cameron, has come to admire her brains, knowledge and sound counsel.

Elizabeth’s record as matriarch of her own family is, of course, more checkered, and Smith doesn’t whitewash it—though her view of the queen’s various predicaments is sympathetic. Elizabeth accepted bad advice about her sister Princess Margaret’s romance with Peter Townsend. To some extent, she neglected her children to focus on her job and her husband (who emerges in the book as a more interesting person than one might have realized). And from beginning to end, she mishandled Princess Diana. But she was capable of learning along the way, and seems to be a more successful royal grandmother than she was a royal mother.

As Elizabeth approaches her Diamond Jubilee—60 years on the throne in 2012—Smith is able to make an overall judgment about this second Elizabethan Age, and her assessment is positive. Elizabeth has weathered the storms; the monarchy is as popular among the British as it has ever been. And that, says Smith, can be credited to the queen’s “steadfast determination and clarity of purpose.”

In the midst of Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, well-known biographer Sally Bedell Smith’s solidly traditional new life story of Queen Elizabeth II is a great pleasure. Smith approaches the Royals the right way, with hundreds of interviews with friends and associates, personal observation and thorough research…

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An admiring Henry Kissinger noted in 1979 that “George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history.” The origins of what became known as America’s Cold War policy of “containment” began with Kennan’s “long telegram” from the U.S. embassy in Moscow in February 1946 to his superiors in Washington. A much larger audience read his essay dealing with the same subject, in which the author was identified only as “Mr. X,” in the June 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs.

The 5,000-word telegram was provoked by a speech by Josef Stalin. The Soviet dictator congratulated his army, party, government, nation and, by implication, himself, on winning World War II. He only briefly mentioned his British and American allies and talked of increasing industrial production in his country because of capitalism’s tendency to produce conflict, as, he said, it had in 1914 and 1939.

Kennan, officially second in command at the embassy, was temporarily in charge as Ambassador Averell Harriman had departed and a new ambassador had not yet arrived. A keen observer of events in the U.S.S.R., steeped in Russian history and literature, as well as Marxist-Leninist ideology, Kennan’s telegram contained a brilliant analysis of where the U.S.S.R. government stood and what strategy could be devised to combat it peacefully. What came to be known as the “containment” policy was interpreted in different ways by others over the years. In his memoirs Kennan lamented that it had been applied to “situations to which it has, and can have, no proper relevance.”

The telegram was only one aspect of an incredibly long and productive life. Among other achievements, Kennan played a key role in the formation of the Marshall Plan and later served as U.S. ambassador to both the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia. As a policy strategist at the highest levels of government, he often disagreed with his colleagues. Later, as what we would today call a public intellectual, he was often critical of U.S. foreign policy and American culture. One of the lingering paradoxes of Kennan’s life was that he understood the Soviet Union better than he did the United States.

With such a distinguished career as a diplomat it may come as a surprise that, at least as early as 1934, Kennan wanted to become a writer. As noted Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis points out in his outstanding and surely definitive biography, George F. Kennan: An American Life, when Kennan was a student at Princeton University, “Literature, inside and outside of class, sparked [his] greatest interest, especially contemporary American novels.” Just as he was graduating, The Great Gatsby was published and, Kennan said later, “it went right into me and became part of me.” Kennan did go on to become an acclaimed author with two volumes of memoirs and works of history such as Russia Leaves the War. He received two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards and the Bancroft Prize for his literary works.

Gaddis began working on this book almost 30 years ago. He conducted many interviews with Kennan, who lived to be 101 and died in 2005, members of his family and former colleagues. He was given access to Kennan’s papers, including his diaries, even a diary of Kennan’s dreams. Poetry by Kennan is included. Kennan understood that the book would not be published until after his death.

Kennan was a complex personality, and Gaddis does a masterful job of sifting through diaries and letters and recollections of those around him to establish what his true feelings may have been at any particular time. The biographer singles out three aspects of Kennan’s character which began to take shape when he was a young diplomat and would be retained for the rest of his life. One was his professionalism, both as a diplomat and as a historian. Secondly, there was a cultural pessimism (could what he regarded as “Western civilization” survive the challenges to it from outside forces and its own internal contradictions?). Thirdly, there was personal anguish and self-doubt. Gaddis also discusses his subject’s personal religious faith and is very good at showing what a stabilizing force Kennan’s wife, Annelise, was in his sometimes tumultuous life.

This excellent work brings us as close as we are likely to get to the life of an important American foreign policy strategist and historian.

An admiring Henry Kissinger noted in 1979 that “George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history.” The origins of what became known as America’s Cold War policy of “containment” began with Kennan’s “long telegram”…

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In fleshing out the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus, writer Joshua Kendall faces something of a dramatic and structural problem: How does one enliven and sustain interest in a man who didn’t make his major intellectual contribution until he was 73 years old? The man in question is Peter Mark Roget, a physician by training and a wordsmith by choice. Kendall ties his chronicle together by demonstrating that Roget (1779-1869) was obsessed with classifying and list-making from early childhood onward. These habits of mind proved crucial when he finally decided the time had come to compile and publish his exhaustive list of English synonyms and their opposites (the term"antonym" was yet to be coined).

Roget’s life was not particularly exciting – even to him. True, he had a smothering, self-centered mother who eventually went mad, a rich and politically prominent uncle who committed suicide and a harrowing escape from French-held territory in 1803 after Napoleon resumed his war with Britain. But there were long periods during which Roget pursued his career only desultorily, seemingly indifferent to the cause that would ultimately immortalize him.

To compensate for the lack of intrinsic drama, Kendall amasses details of places and personalities that were significant to Roget, frequently drawing on tangential and recently discovered sources. Uneven as his personal life was, it is clear that Roget was unwavering in his fascination with science. He wrote and delivered papers on subjects ranging from anatomy to optics to improving the slide rule. Roget completed the first draft of his "Collection of English Synonyms classified and arranged" in 1805, but he did not publish it – and then in a much expanded form – until 1852.

In his epilogue, the author explains how Roget’s Thesaurus has survived as a reference book and valuable literary property (selling almost 40 million copies) despite the advent of online parallels and a withering criticism from author Simon Winchester, who maintained that the work made possible, and thus encouraged, an indiscriminate attitude toward word choices and writing style. Kendall correctly notes that this judgment demands too much from the book and too little from its users.

 

In fleshing out the creator of Roget's Thesaurus, writer Joshua Kendall faces something of a dramatic and structural problem: How does one enliven and sustain interest in a man who didn't make his major intellectual contribution until he was 73 years old? The man…

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Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) considered himself a man of three lives: one as an ethnic Pole born in the Ukraine who lived the early part of his life in what is now Poland; one as a widely traveled seaman; and another as a writer in England. A master of reinventing himself, Conrad occasionally applied his fiction-writing skills to autobiography. To further complicate matters, some of those close to him gave inaccurate accounts of his life. John Stape, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad and co-editor of two volumes of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, is the ideal biographer for such a complex subject. An intrepid researcher, Stape debunks some Conradian myths in his latest book, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad.

An orphan by his teens, Conrad decided to go to sea, inspired by sea novels and youthful rebellion. During this period he read widely and developed two defining lifelong characteristics: acute observation skills and a habit of living beyond his means. Of particular interest are Stape’s exploration of Conrad’s travels as sources for his later novels and stories; for example, his 1890 trip to the Congo inspired his most famous tale, Heart of Darkness. As Stape writes, “His experience of the depths of rapacity, inhumanity, and cynicism was to alter his views of life forever, and his contact with the climate permanently damaged his health.” Stape deals with the related questions of why Conrad became a writer and why he decided to write in English (his third language after Polish and French), dismissing Conrad’s insistence that he just sat down one day and started to write. Though Conrad’s extraordinary talent was recognized by many in literary circles early in his career, it would be years before he gained a significant readership. Conrad’s relationships with publishers and his close friendships with Stephen Crane and John Galsworthy are also discussed.

This authoritative and insightful book should be appreciated by all who enjoy Conrad’s work, as well as readers who like good biography.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) considered himself a man of three lives: one as an ethnic Pole born in the Ukraine who lived the early part of his life in what is now Poland; one as a widely traveled seaman; and another as a writer in England.…

Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin now turns her attention to Charles Dickens in a substantial new work. Building on her earlier biography of Ellen Ternan—the young actress Dickens left his wife for—Tomalin surveys the broad expanse of Dickens’ life, from his professional successes to his personal failings. The result is an engaging, clear-eyed account of a most complex writer and man.

Tomalin gives each of Dickens’ biographical personae its due: We meet the child-laborer son of a bankrupt father, the energetic and talented young man sketching sympathetic portraits of London workers, the actor and performer, the champion of the poor and finally the writer, dipping his head in cold water to keep working through the night. Dickens’ preternatural energy as an author—seen in his ability to write two novels, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, simultaneously for monthly serial publication—and his lifelong concern for the underdog brought him acclaim, wealth and enthusiastic readers in both England and America.

Haunted, however, by his lonely and impoverished childhood, Dickens could also drive a hard bargain, alienating friends and publishers in his single-minded pursuit of financial security. And despite claiming that his marriage to Catherine Dickens was unhappy, he nonetheless fathered 10 children in 20 years by her, increasing the domestic and financial stresses he felt so keenly. His attraction to innocent girl-women resulted not only in the creation of impossibly virtuous characters like Little Dorrit, but also in an abiding interest in London prostitutes.

Dickens’ affair with Ternan ultimately tore apart his family and dissolved some of his professional relationships. Tomalin carefully and fairly considers the evidence for the birth and death of an illegitimate child born to the couple, shedding light on a biographical secret that went unspoken for decades. In doing so, she brings the light and dark of Dickens’ personality into focus, the virtue he pursued and the vice that bedeviled him.

Tomalin’s Charles Dickens is a masterful balancing act, presenting the great artist as a fallible human without ever losing sight of the miracle of his literary achievements and the generosity of his spirit.

Award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin now turns her attention to Charles Dickens in a substantial new work. Building on her earlier biography of Ellen Ternan—the young actress Dickens left his wife for—Tomalin surveys the broad expanse of Dickens’ life, from his professional successes to his personal…

In April 2011, the Library of America permanently established Kurt Vonnegut, who died in 2007, in the literary firmament with its publication of Novels and Stories: 1963-1973, a collection of four of Vonnegut’s most popular novels and a selection of his stories, interviews and speeches. While Vonnegut might have welcomed this recognition, he might also have made light of it with his typically playful harpooning of all matters related to the literary establishment.

As Charles Shields’ crisply delivered and exhaustively detailed new biography, And So It Goes, makes abundantly clear, the enigmatic Vonnegut both relished and loathed literary fame. Writing never came easy for him, and in the early ’50s he struggled at it mightily, for he didn’t have a clear vision of the audience he wanted to reach. He aimed at both the high-paying markets, such as The New Yorker, and the lower-paying pulp magazines like Astounding Science Fiction, to which his writing was much better suited. In August 1952, Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, which introduced many of the themes that would dominate the rest of his literary output. In this novel, Vonnegut demonstrates his love of debunking fixed ideas and institutions that are usually treated with reverence: in this case, General Electric. His characters—as they were in the novels up through Slaughterhouse-Five, at least—are people struggling to avoid corruption and the traps laid for them by circumstance or the environment.

Drawing on interviews with Vonnegut—conducted mostly in the last year of his life—and his family and friends, along with more than 1,500 letters, Shields deftly traces Vonnegut’s life from his early grief over the loss of his mother, his struggles with his siblings and his recognition that humor could get him noticed, to his horrific experiences as a POW in Dresden in WWII and his quite meteoric rise and fall as a novelist. Vonnegut’s work peaked with the publication of Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969, and, as Shields points out, the novels that appeared after this popular success were not nearly as well received nor as critically acclaimed, in part because these later books tended to bog down in autobiographical diatribes.

Vonnegut once said that he kept losing and regaining his equilibrium, and Shields dexterously captures the ups and downs of Vonnegut’s life and work in this definitive biography.

In April 2011, the Library of America permanently established Kurt Vonnegut, who died in 2007, in the literary firmament with its publication of Novels and Stories: 1963-1973, a collection of four of Vonnegut’s most popular novels and a selection of his stories, interviews and speeches.…

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