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The song remains the same

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Hitting the shelves this fall are several new biographies and autobiographies of rock, country and jazz stars that reveal never-before-heard refrains of personal anguish, as well as triumph.

In 1969, Crosby, Stills & Nash emerged as a supergroup, showcasing sweet harmonies and tight arrangements. One year later, Neil Young joined the band, and the quartet rocketed to superstardom on the strength of Graham Nash’s song “Teach Your Children.” Behind the scenes, though, life wasn’t so harmonious. In his honest and well-crafted memoir, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, Nash reveals the fierce struggles between Stills’ and Young’s titanic egos that eventually destroyed the group (although they have never officially broken up). With the lyrical flights of his best songs (“Carrie Anne,” “Our House,” “Chicago”), Nash carries readers on a journey from his often difficult childhood in the industrial north of England and the formation with Allan Clarke of the band that eventually became the Hollies, to his encounters with Mama Cass Elliot (who introduced him to David Crosby), Joni Mitchell, the Everly Brothers and Bob Dylan. While Nash holds back little, unveiling his disappointments with his own work and that of others, his love of songwriting and harmony remains: “I am a complete slave to the muse of music.”

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

While Nash tells his own story in his own words, Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant told journalist Paul Rees that he had no intention of writing a memoir because it was “too early in his career to do so.” Instead, Plant allowed Rees to have unparalleled access to his closest friends and associates to tell the story in Robert Plant: A Life. Rees chronicles Plant’s childhood as the son of an engineer in England’s industrial Midlands, where he would often hide behind the sofa and pretend to be Elvis. Deeply influenced by the blues (in particular the music of Robert Johnson), Plant began singing with local bands around Birmingham and left home at 17 to pursue a music career. But it was not until he teamed with Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page in 1968 that his ascension to rock-god status truly began. A few months later, after the band’s name was changed to Led Zeppelin, their rapid rise to fame exceeded even Plant’s wildest expectations. Rees traces the successes and excesses of Led Zeppelin, from limos, groupies and sudden wealth to plagiarism charges and “poisonous” reviews. He also explores Plant’s recent work, including his acclaimed collaboration with bluegrass fiddler Alison Krauss. Plant comes across as a confident but agreeable superstar, a “preening peacock” whose long locks and powerful voice secured his place in the rock pantheon.

HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH

Although Johnny Cash told his own story on at least two occasions—in Man in Black (1975) and, with Patrick Carr, Cash: The Autobiography (1997)—he nevertheless remains an enigmatic figure whose life story is surrounded by as much legend as truth. Until now. Drawing on previously unpublished interviews with Cash as well as previously unseen materials from the singer’s inner circle, former L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn gives us the definitive biography of the Man in Black in Johnny Cash: The Life. In intimate detail, Hilburn—the only music journalist at Cash’s legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968—elegantly traces the contours of Cash’s life and career. After a hardscrabble childhood in Dyess, Arkansas, Cash built on his early love of music and made insistent attempts to get Sam Phillips’ attention at Sun Records. Hilburn chronicles Cash’s early hits such as “Folsom Prison Blues,” his foray into television in the late 1960s with “The Johnny Cash Show,” his failed first marriage and his deep love for June Carter, as well as his drug addictions. Most importantly, Hilburn compiles an exhaustive record of Cash’s enduring contributions as a songwriter and singer to both rock and country music.

TAKE THE “A” TRAIN

In the almost 40 years since his death, Duke Ellington has remained an enigmatic figure, even as his reputation as one our greatest and most culturally prominent orchestra leaders and jazz composers continues to grow. Following his acclaimed biography of Louis Armstrong, Pops, culture critic Terry Teachout draws on candid unpublished interviews with Ellington, oral histories of the orchestra leader and his times, and other little-known primary sources to tell a mesmerizing story in Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. Teachout follows Ellington from his childhood in Washington—where he gained his name “Duke” because of his stylish dress—and the first band he formed at 20, to his move to Harlem at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance and his emotional distance from family and friends for the sake of composing his music. Teachout traces Ellington’s deep influence on various cultural movements, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Duke’s own renaissance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Teachout brings Ellington to life in this richly detailed and engrossing biography.

OLD FRIENDS

We often remember our favorite album covers and photos of our favorite musicians as much as their music. For more than four decades, Columbia Records staff photographer Don Hunstein snapped memorable shots of figures as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Sly Stone, Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Mitch Miller, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan, catching rare private moments of public lives. A collection of gorgeous, never-before-seen photos from the Columbia Records archive, Keeping Time: The Photographs of Don Hunstein illustrates Hunstein’s ability to capture artists relaxing and being themselves. Photos of Johnny Cash on his family’s farm in 1959, a weary Duke Ellington talking to Langston Hughes at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, and Cassius Clay and Sam Cooke teaming up in the recording studio in 1964 are just a few of the gems included here. In the words of New York Times music writer Jon Pareles, who contributes the book’s brief text, Keeping Time is “a quietly revealing close-up of artists who graced and transfigured the twentieth century.”

Hitting the shelves this fall are several new biographies and autobiographies of rock, country and jazz stars that reveal never-before-heard refrains of personal anguish, as well as triumph.

In 1969, Crosby, Stills & Nash emerged as a supergroup, showcasing sweet harmonies and tight arrangements. One year…

NonfictionMemoir

Theme and Variations: Two ballerinas reflect on the dancing life in new memoirs

Feature by Julie Hale

Early in her new memoir, Dancing Through It, when Jenifer Ringer writes, “It would take a while for us to realize that the world we were entering might well prove impossible to survive in,” she sounds as though she’s crossing into a combat zone or embarking on an expedition to Everest. But it’s the ballet world and the unseen hazards it holds for her younger self and fellow students that she characterizes so grimly. As the book progresses, Ringer—recently retired from her position as an acclaimed principal dancer with the New York City Ballet—becomes so fixated on her art form that she loses the ability to enjoy it. The ballet realm itself, so orderly and pristine, where she experiences both spectacular success and crippling pressure, morphs into a kind of “monster.” It “warped and twisted my spirit until I was almost destroyed,” Ringer recalls.

Ballet is, of course, an uncommon vocation—an extreme career that often inspires extreme behavior. Performers who push themselves (sometimes right over the edge) with unusual intensity are standard in the dance world, and Ringer, as Dancing Through It makes clear, was no exception. In her case, “the ballet-centric lens” through which she perceived her life led to problems that forced her to step back, take stock and grow outside of the studio. The core of her story lies in her personal metamorphosis—a slow, often difficult transformation from an eager-to-please, up-and-coming dancer into a secure and confident artist.

It’s a quality her narrative shares with another upcoming ballet-related memoir, Life in Motion by Misty Copeland (on sale March 4). As the only black woman at American Ballet Theatre, an 80-member troupe that’s one of the nation’s best, Copeland has spent her professional years defying the status quo. Her background and upbringing differ dramatically from Ringer’s, but the two have much in common. As adolescents, they devoted their lives to dance (neither started dating until she reached her early 20s) and were sidelined by injuries. Both have grappled with eating disorders and refer to themselves as perfectionists. Both have struggled to find ways to practice their craft without being undone by it. And both make it clear that the physical demands of their career are severe but not impossible to manage. The dancing is indeed doable. It’s the psychological stuff that’s the real killer.


Ballerinas Misty Copeland (left) and Jenifer Ringer

A LATECOMER TAKES HER PLACE AT THE BARRE

 “Ballet has long been the province of the white and wealthy,” Copeland writes in Life in Motion. Indeed, women of color are rare in America’s most prominent ballet companies. When American Ballet Theater (ABT) promoted Copeland from corps member to soloist in 2007, she was the first African-American woman in two decades to achieve that rank in the company. Prior to her promotion, in its 76 years of existence, ABT had only two black female soloists.

In her engaging autobiography, Copeland, now 31, traces the complex chronology of her unusual personal life and her remarkable rise as a performer. She’s a poised, intelligent writer whose temperament—disciplined, determined, driven—gives the book a special spark.

Along with her five siblings, Copeland grows up poor and—for the most part—fatherless in San Pedro, California. Her childhood is rocky thanks to her half-Italian, half-black mother, an exotic beauty whose succession of husbands results in frequent upheaval for the family. At one point, they relocate to a grubby motel where the kids are forced to bed down on the floor.

Despite the instability at home, Copeland develops into an overachiever, channeling her anxiety and energy into excelling at school. She applies the same drive to ballet. At the age of 13, she takes her first class at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and proves to be a prodigiously gifted mover with the ability to mimic any step or gesture she sees. Although she’s a latecomer to ballet, she quickly blossoms.

Copeland is able to prepare for a professional ballet career through scholarships and the aid of sympathetic patrons. She trains with typical tenacity and focus—until she’s blindsided by family friction. The custody conflict that arises between her mother and her dance teacher, Cindy Bradley, is one of the most extraordinary occurrences in her very eventful life. The incident results in a media circus, landing Copeland on national TV at the age of 16.

When she’s in her late teens, Copeland’s hard work pays off, and she’s invited to dance with ABT. She’s thrilled to become a corps member but disappointed to discover the prejudice that lurks in the big-time ballet world—a place where conformity counts. Copeland learns the hard way about those “who believed there was no place in ballet for a black swan.” She writes openly about her outsider status at ABT and the ways in which it eroded her confidence and made her question the future. Would certain coveted classical roles always be off-limits because of her skin color? And would she ever have the chance to dance principal parts like Juliet and Odette?

These are questions that remain unanswered. After 13 years at ABT, Copeland is a celebrated ballerina who’s still climbing the ranks, hoping to be promoted to principal dancer. Yet she’s arrived at a place of acceptance. In Life in Motion, she looks back on the past without bitterness or anger, only gratitude. Hers is an out-of-the-ordinary story about defying stereotypes, and she shares it in an inspiring narrative that’s enlivened by her own grace and generous spirit.

FINDING BALANCE IN THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION

Compared to Copeland’s against-all-odds autobiography, Jenifer Ringer’s Dancing Through It reads like a fairy tale at times. As she recalls in this smoothly recounted chronicle of her rise from the small studios of the South to the hallowed ranks of New York City Ballet (NYCB), Ringer was blessed with advantages Copeland lacked, including a secure family life and money to pay for training, which she started at the age of five.

Yet Ringer encountered obstacles of a different kind, and because they were, for the most part, deeply personal and interior, hers is a darker story.

A North Carolina native, Ringer is raised by supportive parents who encourage her to dance. She joins NYCB, one of the country’s top companies, at the age of 16 and a mere three years later is being cast in plum roles and praised in the press. The quintessential ballerina, she spends her days in the studio and her nights on the stage of the New York State Theatre. Her very first kiss occurs during a performance of Romeo and Juliet.

Despite her early and overwhelming success, though, Ringer is miserable. She’s plagued by self-doubt and frequently exhausted by the pressures that come with life as a performer. But—despite the stress—she’s determined to maintain a “perfect” exterior.

Ringer’s façade cracks when, after a few years at NYCB, she develops an eating disorder. She writes with unsparing honesty about the loneliness and shame that accompany her condition.  “I could make myself feel better with food,” she says. “Or I could just somehow not feel with food.” When Ringer gains weight and loses her job at NYCB, she’s despondent. But out in the “nondancing world,” she grows in new ways, finishing her college degree and achieving a sense of normalcy that allows her to overcome her disorder. She also finds comfort in the Christian faith.

After a year’s absence, Ringer returns to NYCB in full force and as a new person—an adult comfortable in her own skin. In 2010, when her curvy physique is criticized in the New York Times, she bravely faces the media blitz that follows and appears on "Oprah" to discuss body-image issues.

Ringer is a more reserved and measured narrator than Copeland. But the survey of her 23-year-career that she presents in Dancing Through It has immediacy and an emotional rawness, and in its focus on the dangers that often attend the pursuit of perfection, it’s just as compelling as Life in Motion. Despite her past difficulties, Ringer isn’t a whiner. She’s a modest, likeable figure with the ability to laugh at herself, and her book contains many funny moments (she doesn’t shy from sharing memories of mid-performance falls and other unglamorous, on-stage occurrences). Now married to NYCB alumnus James Fayette and a mother of two, Ringer danced her final ballet with the NYCB on February 9. She has clearly found her balance. 

Her memoir, like Copeland’s, illuminates the ballet world in a distinctive way, providing fascinating access to an environment that can seem mysterious to outsiders. Both books demonstrate that a ballerina’s achievement of radical grace is a battle of the mind as well as the body—one that involves more grit than glamour. There’s a strange kind of necessity in the struggle. Ringer isn’t exaggerating when she says of Serenade, one of her favorite ballets, “If I were not allowed to dance these steps to this music, something would always be missing from my life.” On the page, as on the stage, both ballerinas earn ovations.

As adolescents, they devoted their lives to dance . . . Both have grappled with eating disorders and refer to themselves as perfectionists. Both have struggled to find ways to practice their craft without being undone by it. And both make it clear that the physical demands of their career are severe but not impossible to manage. The dancing is indeed doable. It’s the psychological stuff that’s the real killer.
NonfictionMemoirBiography

A grand slam for baseball books

Feature by John C. Williams

There are certain years that trigger immediate associations in any baseball fan’s mind. 1903: the first World Series. 1927: Murderer’s Row. 1961: Mantle and Maris. 1994: the players’ strike. Whether 2014 will produce such a season is yet to be written, but a tremendous crop of baseball books guarantees this year to be one for the publishing annals.

Is there any more complicated figure in the modern baseball era than Pete Rose? Consider the brief of Kostya Kennedy, author of the magnificent new biography Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. Those with even casual baseball knowledge are familiar with the outline: “Charlie Hustle,” Cincinnati Reds stalwart, the man who always slid headfirst and who attained the Major League record for base hits, is evicted from the game—as well as from eligibility for the Hall of Fame—for betting on those Reds while serving as their manager. Kennedy takes that familiar story and delves deeper, presenting an artful portrait of the blue-collar world Rose came from, the dream world he ascended to and the bizarre world he slipped into after his banishment.

In doing so, Kennedy touches on a theme well beyond baseball: the inherent contradictions of human nature. How could someone who willed himself to the top of his profession with such clarity of purpose throw away his legacy with such singular dissipation? The tragic element of Rose’s life—his ability to bend circumstances to his will in one context yet to lose all sense of rationality in another—is stuff worthy of Shakespeare. Kennedy handles it just fine, though. For the market, the book is pitched as a re-evaluation of Rose’s fate now that baseball has suffered though steroids, arguably a graver sin than gambling. Kennedy doesn’t break new factual ground or suggest “answers” so much as refocus the question. And he presents a compelling case that whether Rose deserves his lifetime suspension should be evaluated separately from whether he should be eligible for the Hall. It’s interesting enough material for the baseball reader, but the appeal of this book goes further. With writing of such quality and a subject of such complexity, it deserves to be read by anyone who appreciates good biography.

HARD-BOILED BASEBALL
No baseball book in recent memory has been as uproarious as They Called Me God, written by legendary umpire Doug Harvey with an assist from longtime sportswriter Peter Golenbock. Harvey, one of only nine umpires in the Hall of Fame and considered by many—including himself—to be one of the best of all time, worked the National League from 1962 to 1992. Stylistically, the book is a marvel, particularly while recounting Harvey’s origins. Its staccato style and fatalistic tone are on par with classic noir. Take, for example, this setup: “The regulars had been drinking, I’d had a few myself, and I was sitting there wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life.” Or this meditation on his professional plight: “There was just one perfect umpire, and they put him on the cross.” I won’t spoil any more gems.

The book is billed as a tell-all. No kidding. Man, does Harvey settle some scores. His first wife, coaches who disrespected him, cheating pitchers and the league officials who enabled them—no one, it seems, is safe. But the book is written with such good humor and honest feeling that you can hardly begrudge Harvey these takedowns. Harvey only blows one call, so to speak, by including a painfully awkward story about the late umpire Eric Gregg that should not have seen the printed page. That aside, the book offers refreshing insight into an umpire’s world, and with considerable panache.

FROM THE FRIENDLY CONFINES
About 20 years ago, the band the Mountain Goats produced a tune called “Cubs in Five.” The title was a joke—the song is about stuff that is unlikely to happen—but it encapsulates nicely the futility of rooting for Chicago’s National League squad. Even if renowned columnist and Bunts author George F. Will hasn’t heard the song, he gets the sentiment, as is apparent from his latest baseball foray, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred.

Appropriately for a topic as inherently funny as the Cubs, Will takes a droll approach. In about the amount of time it takes to soak in a ballgame, the reader is treated to a romp through Cubs history, from the origins of Wrigley Field up to the Steve Bartman debacle. As this is George Will, there’s a dollop of evolutionary psychology and economics on the side, though nothing much heavier than an Old Style. 

About that field. The title evokes it, and it is the focus of the book’s thesis: that the beauty of the ballpark is in large part responsible for the consistently poor quality of the product on the diamond. Will has discovered, through the work of some authors he cites, that ticket sales at Wrigley bear a smaller-than-normal correlation to the team’s record and actually are more sensitive to the price of a beer in the stadium than the cost of admission. By providing a good place to watch baseball, Will hypothesizes, management has relieved itself of the need to provide a good baseball team. At least the theory has the virtue of explaining the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon that is the Cubs.

BACK TO THE MINORS
Every kid dreams of hitting a game-winning homer in the World Series. No kid dreams of hitting anything at all for the Montgomery Biscuits. That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball, a thorough and enjoyable profile of the players, coaches, umpires, radio announcers and pretty much everyone else besides the peanut vendors who are associated with minor league baseball. By focusing on eight different people over the course of the 2012 season, Feinstein ably shows how the tantalizing promise of working in the bigs—not to mention the attendant compensation and creature comforts—shapes the lives of those who are still down on the farm. The book has a nice pace: casual and a little rambling, though a bit repetitive at times and with lags here and there. Not so different, come to think of it, than a midsummer Double-A tilt.

There are certain years that trigger immediate associations in any baseball fan’s mind. 1903: the first World Series. 1927: Murderer’s Row. 1961: Mantle and Maris. 1994: the players’ strike. Whether 2014 will produce such a season is yet to be written, but a tremendous crop of baseball books guarantees this year to be one for the publishing annals.

NonfictionParentingMemoir

What does it mean to be a mom?

Feature by Alice Cary

These four books add unique insights to this essential question, with subjects including an irrepressible immigrant mother, birth mothers and adoptive mothers, and a crusading mom who wants to liberate others from their guilt.

One can only imagine what Elaine Lui’s mother wants for Mother’s Day.

Lui, creator of the popular blog LaineyGossip.com, details her relationship with her uniquely irrepressible mother in a sparkling new memoir, Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What’s a Daughter To Do?

Lui explains that her mother loves to be honored on any occasion, even when it’s her daughter’s birthday: “There is no better way to demonstrate gratitude for Ma giving birth to me than to give her money. If it’s not the first thing she says when she sees me, it’s definitely the second thing out of my ma’s mouth when she sees me: ‘Where’s my money?’”

In this hilarious account, readers learn that Lui’s mother grew up in Hong Kong, loves rhinestone-studded clothes that her daughter describes as “China Woman Elvis,” and, most notably, has a grating voice that has earned her the nickname “the Squawking Chicken.” Despite a trauma-filled, poverty-stricken childhood, her mom persevered, remaining strong, even in later life when faced with a rare blood disorder. And she is certainly a woman who continues to be heard.

The Squawking Chicken has always been an in-your-face, controlling mom, and Lui describes numerous incidents when her and her mother’s wills have clashed. The details are fascinating, and the many cultural differences between China and the West are particularly intriguing.

Her mom usually ends up being right, Lui says. She’s also gotten used to the texts her mom sends after Lui appears on TV, such as “STOP MAKE UGLY FACE WHEN YOU TALKS.” Lui has made her peace with her mother’s intrusions; in fact, she would almost certainly be lost without them.

As she explains: “I am the Squawking Chicken’s only daughter and her only true friend. It can be a burden, sure. But mostly, it is my life’s honor.”

ADOPTIONS AND REUNIONS
When Caroline Clarke, an award-winning journalist, faced some health issues, she contacted the agency that had handled her adoption in 1964. She ended up discovering that her birth mother was Caroline “Cookie” Cole, the adopted daughter of Nat King Cole.

Clarke writes beautifully about this unexpected discovery in Postcards from Cookie: A Memoir of Motherhood, Miracles, and a Whole Lot of Mail.

Cookie had led a life of privilege, but when she became pregnant, she was sent away to a home in New York for unwed mothers. She wanted to keep her baby and, after her birth, delayed signing adoption papers. However, when she heard on the radio that her beloved father was hospitalized with end-stage lung cancer, she felt that she had no choice but to obey her domineering mother, sign the papers and head back to California to his deathbed.

When Clarke contacts her newly discovered birth mother decades later, their lives are forever changed. “This means everything to me,” Cookie says.

As a psychotherapist tells Clarke, “In every way, you got the fantasy.” Not only does she suddenly belong to a well-known, highly accomplished birth family, she has a wonderful, supportive adoptive family who nurtured her every step of the way. Still, the connection becomes at times overwhelming for both mother and daughter, and there are problems as everyone gets used to this new reality.

In a parallel but very different story, at age 18, Diane Burke got pregnant during a summer fling with a co-worker, a Muslim on a work visa from Jordan. Burke writes about how this event transformed her life in One Perfect Day: A Mother and Son’s Story of Adoption and Reunion. The young lovers quickly decided not to marry, and Burke’s horrified parents sent her off to secretly give birth in a home for unwed mothers. Burke wanted to keep her baby, but with no immediate way to support herself and the child, she gave him up for adoption.

Burke continued to mourn the loss of her son as she later married, had two more sons, divorced, remarried and became a writer of romantic mysteries. During turbulent times, she turned to religion for strength.

Years later, a stranger on the telephone asks, “Mrs. Burke, did you give up a child for adoption in 1971?” It was a question that would lead to Burke’s reunion with her son, Steve Orlandi. This riveting account describes the multitude of conflicting emotions that both mother and son share as they meet and get to know each other. (Steve also wrote parts of the book, explaining the emotional impact of reuniting with his birth family).

As Burke explains: “All reunions are intense, emotional, and complicated. It is the past colliding with the present and being faced with an uncertain future. It is joy and pain and hope and disappointment. But it can become a relationship founded on love and blessed with commitment and happiness.”

GUILT BE GONE
Daisy Waugh is a busy, accomplished mother of three. She’s also a British novelist and journalist, and the granddaughter of literary lion Evelyn Waugh. In The Kids Will Be Fine: Guilt-Free Motherhood for Thoroughly Modern Women, Waugh makes it clear that she loves being a mother, but adds that “there have been many moments when I felt bewildered and alienated by society’s inflexible expectations of me as a mother.” As a result, she offers “some potentially liberating observations for mothers” who’ve been led to believe they should focus solely on their child’s every need.

Her blunt and amusing advice is divided into sections on Pregnancy and Birth, Baby Care, Child Care, School, and Charm School. After three kids, Waugh has learned which battles aren’t worth fighting, such as the harangues parents make about kids wearing coats in cold weather. She advises a live-and-learn policy: “As often as not, the children are only taking eight short but breezy steps from hallway to the back of a heated car. . . . It shouldn’t matter much, even in a snowstorm, if they made the journey in their underpants.”

Waugh’s views on parenting without guilt are bound to be controversial, such as her thoughts on organic food, which she describes as “a waste of money.” I myself disagree with a number of her notions, such as her dislike of having children write thank-you notes.

Whatever your thoughts on motherhood, Waugh’s eye-opening approach offers a new perspective on what makes a “good” mother.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

These four books add unique insights to this essential question, with subjects including an irrepressible immigrant mother, birth mothers and adoptive mothers, and a crusading mom who wants to liberate others from their guilt.

NonfictionMemoirEducation

Better teachers, better schools

Feature by Angela Leeper

As a new school year begins, four new titles reveal that teachers can but do change lives in classrooms every day. Chronicling how teachers adapt to change, improve their methods and even learn from their own students, these books will appeal to all those interested in the impact of education. 

LEARNING TO TEACH
Do some teachers have natural  qualities that make them more effective educators? Elizabeth Green, editor-in-chief of website Chalkbeat New York, explores that question in Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (And How to Teach It to Everyone). Expanding on an essay she wrote for the New York Times Magazine, Green gives a historical overview of studies on teaching, from the perspectives of such experts as behavioral and cognitive psychologists, educational specialists, economists and entrepreneurs. Among those cited are noted individuals in the field of education, including Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion, and mathematics teaching specialists Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. Green also reflects on whether such recent developments as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and Common Core have influenced teacher performance. Using numerous examples of instructional methods and students’ reactions to math problems, Green shows how teaching is anything but natural work. In this era of high-stakes standards, with an emphasis on accountability but little guidance, the author makes the case through thoughtful details that great teachers are made, not born. As Green advocates for practice-based teacher education, she brings hope and renewal to the field.

OUR CHANGING SCHOOLS
Just as he reflected on the state of dying bookstores in The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Lewis Buzbee turns to the plight of declining public schools in the slim yet moving Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom. Admittedly an average student, Buzbee attended California public schools when they were ranked first in the nation. Now these same schools scrape the bottom at 48th or 49th. To try to understand this fall, the author returns to the same schools he attended as a child and teenager. As he recalls visceral moments during his education, from learning to read with Ginn and Co. textbooks to the terror of locker room nakedness in P.E., Buzbee offers short, appealing histories of such staples as kindergartens, blackboards and school buses, and explains how they transformed the American school environment. He never forgets the most important asset in any school—the teachers—and recalls how they changed his own life after his father died. But in this era of budget cuts, metal detectors and teachers forced to take second jobs to make ends meet, Buzbee also draws attention to the social, political and economic changes needed to create better schools. Part personal recollection, part history lesson, part call to action, Blackboard is all eloquence.

BACK IN THE CLASSROOM
When his wife changed jobs and his family needed health insurance, Garret Keizer returned, after a 14-year hiatus, to teaching at the same high school where he started his career 30 years earlier. A contributing editor of Harper’s magazine, author (Privacy) and a former Guggenheim Fellow, Keizer documents a one-year stint as an English teacher in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, one of the state’s poorest regions, in Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher. This candid month-by-month account describes his time with his working-class students, as he wonders what they will do for employment and how to prepare them properly. Trying to make connections with his students and peers and keep his “ancient” teaching techniques alive—despite his students’ reluctance to consult books and a decimated library replaced with computers for reading—he finds education vastly transformed since he last set foot in a classroom. Much of Keizer’s memoir is dedicated to the biggest changes: uniform instruction (i.e., state and Common Core standards) and computerized productivity tools. Ironically, the latter make him devote more time to data and less time to educational substance. Readers will empathize with Keizer’s bittersweet feelings in June, when school is out and another year is not an option.

CONTINUING EDUCATION
When Kim Bearden began her career as an educator, she assumed she would be the one doing all the teaching in her classroom. Instead, she recognizes the insight and wisdom she’s gleaned from her students in Crash Course: The Life Lessons My Students Taught Me. Drawing on 27 years of experience as a teacher, curriculum director, middle school principal and cofounder of the Ron Clark Academy (an innovative, internationally renowned middle school in Atlanta), Bearden offers anecdotes, analogies and examples of creative problem-solving. Related in Bearden’s down-to-earth voice, these honest and uplifting lessons show the importance of relationship building, tenacity, gratitude and even magic and play. Bearden explains how she and her students “do see color,” embracing and celebrating differences in culture. She shows that we sometimes have to identify the greatness in others before they see it for themselves, and that our individual talents, which may seem like misshapen puzzle pieces, can fit together to make a beautiful picture. While the author gives a teacher’s perspective, the recommendations here are applicable to anyone who works with youth or the public.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As a new school year begins, four new titles reveal that teachers can but do change lives in classrooms every day. Chronicling how teachers adapt to change, improve their methods and even learn from their own students, these books will appeal to all those interested in the impact of education.
NonfictionMusicMemoirBiography

That’s what makes the jukebox spin

Feature by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs. 

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN’
Over a two-year period, maverick Southern author Rick Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’) sat down with Jerry Lee Lewis and let the Killer walk “day after day through the past and come back, sometimes bloody, with the stories in this book.” Not simply an “as-told-to” memoir, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story is a harmonious blend, with Lewis providing the details of his life and Bragg weaving a narrative around them to add historical and cultural context. “He did not want to do a first-person book,” Bragg writes, “and I had no interest in trying to pretend to be him. Instead, this is one man talking of a remarkable life and another man writing it down and shaping it into a life story so rich that, if I had not been there, I would have wondered if it was real.”

And Lewis’ story is definitely remarkable: Full of life from birth—“I come out jumpin’, an’ I been jumpin’ ever since”—Lewis discovered his “reason for being born” when he saw a piano in his aunt’s house as a child. He knew he wanted to be a star, so he pursued his dream relentlessly, appearing in clubs when he was 14 and lying about his age. Lewis burned down many roadhouses with his raucous style, rising to fame with songs such as “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and leaving in his wake broken marriages and mangled friendships. The book candidly catalogs his problems with drugs, alcohol, taxes and women (his seven marriages included a union with his 13-year-old second cousin that caused an international scandal). Lewis also acknowledges his fear that he may have led people astray with his music, but confesses that music was the purest part of his life. Lewis tells his story here for the first time, and it’s every bit as frantic, ugly, joyful and searing as you’d expect from the Killer.

A NATURAL WOMAN
While Lewis hypnotized audiences with manic energy, Aretha Franklin grew up in the Detroit church where her father preached, playing soulful gospel piano and developing her unmistakable voice. Franklin collaborated with music writer David Ritz in 1999 on a less-than-revealing memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. As Ritz explains in his new book, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Franklin asked him to work with her on a second volume, but he declined, citing her insistence on steering clear of certain topics. Instead, Ritz chose to write an independent biography, drawing on his earlier conversations with the singer, her friends and family to provide a full and frank account of the Queen of Soul’s career. Moving album by album, the book recounts her rise to the top of the soul charts in the late 1960s and her fall from the throne in the early 1970s. She struggled to find her style in the disco era, and reinvented herself in 1985 with the hit “Freeway of Love.” Franklin isolated herself for almost 20 years after the deaths of her father, sisters and brother, only to come out of the shadows once again in 2008 to sing at President Obama’s first inauguration. Franklin’s life is rarely pretty, however, and Respect is ultimately a poignant and disappointing tale of a singer who never reached the pinnacle for which she aimed.

SOUL SACRIFICE
In 1966, a young guitar player named Carlos Santana filled in one night at Bill Graham’s famous Fillmore West with an impromptu group of musicians; the rest, as they say, is history. Three years later, Santana and his band mesmerized the crowd at Woodstock, and soon after, the band’s first album climbed to #4 on the Billboard charts. Reaching this level of success wasn’t easy, as Santana reveals in his new memoir, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light, which he co-wrote with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller. Although the book’s prose is sometimes flat and repetitive, the details of Santana’s story are nevertheless compelling. He traces his path from his childhood in the Mexican town of Autlán to his earliest gigs at El Convoy in Tijuana. Santana recounts his sometimes ragged family life and reveals for the first time the sexual abuse he suffered at age 11 at the hands of a man who took him to San Diego and molested him, leaving the boy with “an intense feeling of pleasure mixed with confusion, shame, and guilt for letting it happen.” Above all, however, Santana’s memoir recounts his spiritual quest to find the “story behind the stories, the music behind the music. . . . I call it the Universal Tone, and with it you realize you are not alone; you are connected to everyone.”

 

Paul McCartney added psychedelic illustrations to his handwritten lyrics for “The Word,” a song on 1965’s Rubber Soul album. 
From The Beatles Lyrics, reprinted with permission. Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

 

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
Although the life stories of musicians continue to fascinate us, we’re just as intrigued and perplexed by the lyrics of popular songs. Few songs have been as scrutinized as those by the Beatles, and in his new book, The Beatles Lyrics, Beatles biographer Hunter Davies not only probes the meanings of the Fab Four’s songs but also gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at their writing process. For John Lennon and Paul McCartney, songwriting could happen anywhere—songs might begin as a scribble on the back of an envelope or on hotel stationery. “Strawberry Fields,” for example, was written by Lennon when he was in Spain, far from home and thinking back on his childhood in Liverpool. This stunning collection explores the stories behind all the Beatles’ classics and includes more than 100 original handwritten manuscripts.

CRYING, WAITING, HOPING
The hallways of rock ’n’ roll history are littered with volumes that move mechanically through a year-by-year chronicle of important events. Noted cultural critic Greil Marcus wasn’t interested in writing a typical history of the genre, however. His provocative The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs chronicles the music through an exploration of 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008. In his typical gnostic style, Marcus examines the ways in which each song transcends its era, gathering meaning as it is recorded by artists in completely new times and places. For example, he observes that the Teddy Bears’ 1958 hit, “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” took 48 years to find its voice. “When Amy Winehouse sang it in 2006, her music curled around Phil Spector’s [who wrote the song], his curled around her, until she found her way back to the beginning of his career, and redeemed it.”

Marcus’ unconventional history captures the unruly, unpredictable nature of rock ’n’ roll.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This fall, music keeps playing around in our heads thanks to a crop of books by and about some of rock's most elusive artists, as well as its most treasured songs.
Memoir

Pearls of hard-won wisdom

Feature by Arlene McKanic

How much of an understatement is it to say that we need inspiration in this day and age? When the world is riven with war, pestilence and those other horsemen of the Apocalypse, a bit of hopefulness is just the thing.

AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND LEGEND
The late Louis Zamperini—the Olympic athlete and war hero who died in July at age 97—was indeed an inspiration. He wrote about his POW nightmare in Devil at My Heels, and Laura Hillenbrand chronicled his experiences in the bestseller Unbroken. In the last book from Zamperini, Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life, co-written with David Rensin, he mines his experiences for advice that will encourage others. Even as a young man, he had the gumption to turn his excess energy into something positive and became a champion athlete. His ebullience led him to set up camps for delinquent boys. In his twilight years, Zamperini carried the Olympic torch and went skateboarding. He also fully appreciated getting hugs from Angelina Jolie, whose film of Unbroken opens on Christmas Day.

THE POWER TO FORGIVE
Thank goodness for Anne Lamott. Her writing style, both unfussy and diaphanous, her congeniality, loopy humor and dogged optimism are balms. Her latest book, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace is a gem. In addition to hope, she also brings anger, even rage, and uses it like a finely honed weapon. Because of her rage—at ridiculous men found on match.com, at politicians both heartless and gormless, at perfect, stay-at-home moms who wear size 0 and run around in biker shorts, at her rather grotesque mother, long-dead father and the state of the world in general—much of the book also focuses on forgiveness. Forgiveness may be a useful thing, she says, but people often need to be dragged to it kicking and screaming. According to Lamott, forgiveness probably needs one of those improbable moments of grace to happen at all. Surely, when it comes to questions of faith, Lamott is to essay writing what Marilynne Robinson is to fiction. Awesome.

ABOVE & BEYOND
Eric Metaxas, author of Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life, certainly believes in miracles, those eruptions of the ineffable into the mundane. He has no patience with those who think what the human being can discern with five senses is all there is. The miracles Metaxas writes of here range from the spectacular to what can be called “miracle light.” One of his acquaintances, a very British, High Church Anglican type, sees 50-foot angels in full battle rattle. Others see an incandescent Jesus or are healed at the last minute from deathly illnesses. Metaxas has no use for subtlety; these miracles only happen through the intercession of Jesus. But his writing, and the miracles he describes, encourage all of us to ponder the possible.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

How much of an understatement is it to say that we need inspiration in this day and age? When the world is riven with war, pestilence and those other horsemen of the Apocalypse, a bit of hopefulness is just the thing.
NonfictionMemoirLiteratureBiographyArt

The season’s best picks for serious readers

Feature by Julie Hale

If you’re shopping for a book-obsessed guy or gal who geeks out over all things literary, then you’ve turned to the right page. The holiday selections featured below offer the sort of author anecdotes, book-related trivia and top-notch storytelling that bibliophiles are wild about. 

LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE
Countless young readers have warmed to the novel form thanks to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. Images from Ingalls-family lore—silent Indians, swarming locusts, interminable wagon journeys with Jack the bulldog trotting behind—are now part of America’s collective literary consciousness. Followers of Wilder’s prairie adventures have something new to look forward to with the release of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. Wilder wrote this factual account of her life in 1929-30, and when publisher after publisher passed on it, she repurposed it for the Little House books, using it as the foundation for her fiction. The newly released manuscript displays the forthright style and easy grace associated with the Wilder name and delivers an unsentimental look at the reality behind her novelized life. In a compelling introduction to the book, editor Pamela Smith Hill examines the evolution of the manuscript and offers insights into Wilder’s development as a writer. Maps, photos and other memorabilia make this a must-have for the beloved author’s many fans.
RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Pamela Smith Hill on Pioneer Girl. 

WRITERS ON THE ROAD
The armchair escapist on your gift list will love An Innocent Abroad: Life-Changing Trips from 35 Great Writers. A wide-ranging anthology that pays tribute to the transformative power of travel, the volume features contributions from an impressive lineup of literary celebs. Far from being savvy explorers, the authors in this globe-trotting collection confess their incompetence when it comes to crossing borders and cracking maps. Ann Patchett’s Paris sojourn contains a quintessential coming-of-age escapade: As a teenager made giddy by the City of Light, she toys with the idea of getting a cow (yes, cow) tattoo. Mary Karr’s Belize eco-tour results in personal growth, as she sheds her civilized self and becomes one with the jungle. Alas for Richard Ford—his hair-raising run-in with kief sellers on a remote road in Morocco demonstrates that danger is all too often the traveler’s companion. Yes, vicarious voyages are sometimes the best kind, and this travel-writing treasury offers an instant—and expedient—adventure fix.

AUSTEN IS AWESOME
Fans of Emma and Persuasion may OD on the eye candy contained in Margaret C. Sullivan’s Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Covers. A fascinating survey of the visual treatments Austen’s work has received over the centuries, this charming anthology opens with marble-boarded first editions of Sense and Sensibility from London publisher Thomas Egerton and ends with a roundup of foreign translations that range from old-fashioned to funky (a 1970 Spanish edition of Pride and Prejudice has a disembodied eye on its jacket). Sullivan, author of The Jane Austen Handbook, tracks how the presentations of the novels changed along with the publishing industry to reflect graphic design trends and technological advances. Austen’s many disciples will swoon over traditional covers from Penguin, Signet and the Modern Library but may cast a skeptical eye at graphic-novel and zombie editions of Austen’s work. It seems every company under the sun has done Austen, and this irresistible album provides an intriguing overview of their efforts.

THE MAN FROM HANNIBAL
Imagine it: Mark Twain on Twitter. With his carefully cultivated persona and gift for succinct verbal expression—it seems his every utterance was a perfect epigram—the author’s following would’ve been off the charts. Viewing the humorist through just such a contemporary lens, Mark Twain’s America: A Celebration in Words and Images proves that his voice and his work are as resonant today as they were in the 1800s. Harry L. Katz, a former Library of Congress curator, teamed with that institution to produce the book, which features a treasure trove of archival materials, including maps, photos, cartoons and correspondence that depict the rough-and-tumble America of Twain’s era. Documenting the many manifestations of Twain—gold prospector, riverboat pilot, newspaperman, novelist—this lavish volume provides a fascinating portrait of a multifaceted figure who was ahead of his time and whose influence, today, is everywhere. With a foreword by Lewis H. Lapham, former editor of Harper’s Magazine, this is a stunning appreciation of a true American original.

20 QUESTIONS
The arrival of the popular “By the Book” column in The New York Times Book Review is the peak of the week for many literature lovers. A writer-in-the-spotlight feature overseen by editor Pamela Paul, “By the Book” made its Review debut in 2012 (the first subject: David Sedaris). A new collection of Paul’s insightful interviews, By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from The New York Times Book Review, contains Q&As with 65 writers, including Donna Tartt, Junot Díaz, Hilary Mantel, Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman. In their candid conversations with Paul, the great writers come clean about their reading tastes, work habits and inspirations, the books that moved them and the ones that left them cold. Jillian Tamaki’s pencil portraits of the authors are a plus. (Test your writer-recognition skills using the grid of famous faces that graces the cover.) With a foreword by Scott Turow, this is a book that will give bibliophiles a buzz.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re shopping for a book-obsessed guy or gal who geeks out over all things literary, then you’ve turned to the right page. The holiday selections featured below offer the sort of author anecdotes, book-related trivia and top-notch storytelling that bibliophiles are wild about.
TechnologyMemoirGraphic Novels & ComicsCrafts, Hobbies & HomeCookbooksComicsArt

Something for the well-rounded man

Feature by Martin Brady

With every passing day, our world seems ever more gender-neutral. Nevertheless, some topics still fit pretty comfortably into the category of the “historical purview of men,” and some fine new publications have arrived to stake their claim as appropriate holiday gifts for special guys.

THE SPORTING LIFE
Bob Ryan recently retired after clocking in close to 50 years as a print sports reporter. But Ryan’s career also encompassed television, and through the miracle of ESPN, this less-than-obviously-telegenic fellow came to be known far and wide for his knowledge of sports and no-nonsense opinions about the controversial personalities who played them. In Scribe: My Life in Sports, Ryan offers an enjoyable memoir that spans his early days as a sports-crazy lad in Trenton, New Jersey, the launching of his career with The Boston Globe and on to the decades spent covering local teams, in particular his beloved Celtics. Ryan also covered baseball, football, the Olympics and golf, but it is no surprise that his most interesting words here concern basketball figures such as Red Auerbach, Bobby Knight and Larry Bird. Ryan’s on-air activities with ESPN continue, so this volume really serves as the capper to his newspaper days as a man on a steady beat.

FIXER-UPPER
Guys are certainly not alone these days when it comes to home repairs and general Mr. (or Ms.) Fix It concerns. Yet the phrase remains “nice to have a man around the house,” and the new fourth edition of The Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual updates a volume that’s been of value to amateur handymen since 1973. The coverage is exhaustive, from descriptions of the basic tools and accessories necessary to tackle any job to wonderfully detailed instructions for completing all manner of interior and exterior repair and remodeling projects. The editors assume the reader’s can-do spirit and dive right in with thorough descriptions of plumbing, electrical, landscaping, masonry and woodworking projects, along with step-by-step instructions supplemented by color photos and drawings. Even for those guys who may not muster the chutzpah to actually replace a toilet or asphalt shingles, this hefty tome will serve as a superior, safety-conscious general guide and reference for home use.

FIRE IT UP
In a health-conscious modern world, meat—especially red meat—has endured its share of revisionist dietary criticism. But that doesn’t stop acclaimed U.K. food writer Nichola Fletcher from providing endlessly supportive and knowledgeable text for The Meat Cookbook, which emerges as a salutary—and heavily illustrated—celebration of all things carnivorous. Fletcher’s lengthy opening section, “Meat Know-How,” is a storehouse of general info on meat, from assessing the various cuts to using cutlery, from modes of cooking to preparing sauces. The individual chapters focus on the specific meat categories—poultry, pork, beef, lamb, game and even offal (organ meats that require special cooking attention). A final section, “Home Butchery,” goes where most of us regular folks fear to tread, but it provides valuable information and useful diagrams for home kitchen prep, including good reminders on hygiene and safety. The hundreds of recipes by Christopher Trotter, Elena Rosemond-Hoerr and Rachel Green look nothing short of spectacular and provide a survey of meat dishes from across the globe.

FULL STEAM AHEAD
“Stunning” is one word that describes Train: The Definitive Visual History. This massive, gorgeously produced volume is nothing short of a feast for the eyes, at once an impressive publishing achievement and probably the definitive popular work on its subject. Produced under the supervision of the Smithsonian and general consultant Tony Streeter, the book’s beauty and authority outweigh even its serious poundage as it chronicles the development of locomotives and railroads, describes more than 400 train engines and railcars, explores worldwide rail journeys and features plenty of side trips over bridges and through tunnels. The detailing of the trains themselves is spectacular, all in vivid color and including the minutiae of technical specifications, which will enthrall any train buff. For those happy enough with the history alone, the text is enjoyable and comprehensive, filled with profiles of early 19th-century pioneer inventors, interesting facts about the industry’s expansion from England to Europe to the U.S., plus sidebars on the train’s roles as a prime mover of people and an engine of war.

WHAT A MARVEL
Finally, there’s Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art, yet another gloriously hefty volume. This one celebrates that perennial obsession of just about every young guy—and even some older ones. Historically, there was always a divide between lovers of DC Comics (Superman, Batman, etc.) and those who favored Marvel Comics, purveyors of Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, X-Men and many other iconic superheroes. Yet comparisons are odious, and at their best, Marvel’s covers were (and are) wonderful. This compelling gallery of enlarged examples pops with dazzling color and dramatic action, backed by Alan Cowsill’s captions and sidebars describing each print, along with capsule profiles of important artists such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr. The covers are divided into four historical periods—Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Modern Age—offering a striking overview of the development of the art form’s style, as well as comics’ reflection of societal changes. One cover even features President Obama!

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With every passing day, our world seems ever more gender-neutral. Nevertheless, some topics still fit pretty comfortably into the category of the “historical purview of men,” and some fine new publications have arrived to stake their claim as appropriate holiday gifts for special guys.
Pop CultureMemoirFilm

The cult of Hollywood

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

Santa’s gift bag is heavy with books celebrating enduring filmmakers, the making of a Golden Age screen classic, two beloved cult films and a toast to Hollywood’s drinking circuit.

Scorsese on the set of Goodfellas, copyright ©1990 The Kobal Collection. From Martin Scorsese, reprinted with permission from Abrams. 

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MASTER
Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective celebrates one of America’s most original and audacious filmmakers. Written by incisive film critic Tom Shone and lavishly illustrated, this book—like a Scorsese film—packs a passionate wallop and is elevated by scrutinous attention to detail.

The film-by-film format encompasses Scorsese’s student films, B-movies (the Roger Corman-produced Boxcar Bertha), slick Hollywood entries (New York, New York), curiosities (The Last Temptation of Christ), documentaries (The Last Waltz) and iconic titles that established him as “the patron saint of blood and pasta” (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas).

A SINGULAR STYLE
In The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion, author Jason Bailey—film editor for Flavorwire—focuses on professional output, not controversial personal life, as he moves through nearly 50 years of Allen’s films—from What’s Up, Tiger Lily? to Blue Jasmine. The book’s lively, intuitive essays include surveys of Allen’s recurring themes (Jewish mothers, magic and magical realism, Groucho idolatry, infidelity, younger women, hypochondria), intermingled with charts and pages on related subjects including New York (complete with a map showing locales of film scenes), his favorite leading ladies and more.

BEHIND THE ULTIMATE EPIC
Lawdy! Who’d have guessed—after all these years and so much dissection—that The Making of Gone with the Wind would be as startlingly informative as it is sumptuous? But, then, author Steve Wilson, curator of the film collection at the University of Texas at Austin, had the benefit of access to the archives of David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, and his business partner. As a result, more than 600 rarely seen items, including storyboards, telegrams, contracts, fan mail, concept art and more, are grandly reproduced and scrutinized.

The book doesn’t skirt the racial controversies that have dogged the movie over the decades, but in this, its 75th year, neither is there any denying of its influence—and endurance.

AN IMPROBABLE CLASSIC
It was at a 25th anniversary gathering for the 1987 cult movie The Princess Bride that Cary Elwes—Westley to the film’s many devoted fans—was inspired to pen, with the help of Joe Layden, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride.

The filmmakers and stars share their stories as Elwes charts the film’s unlikely journey from modest hit to cult status (thanks to VHS sales) to a timeless favorite featuring derring-do, pirates, giants, oversize rodents and the quest for true love.

UNABASHEDLY CAMPY FUN
Thanks to a magical blend of music, madness and gender bending—the lead, played by the riotous Tim Curry, is a transsexual mad scientist—a strange little musical became a pop culture legend. The Rocky Horror Treasury: A Tribute to the Ultimate Cult Classic, by devotees Sal Piro and Larry Viezel, follows the film’s history, includes lots of fun facts (an entire episode of TV’s “Glee” was devoted to RHPS) and has a side panel with eight buttons that play musical clips of songs like “Dammit Janet” and more. An envelope in the back contains extras: a poster, temporary tattoos and an instructional Time Warp dance chart.

RAISE A GLASS
And finally, hoist a glass to Of All the Gin Joints: Stumbling Through Hollywood History, a clever compendium of equal parts showbiz and booze. Written by Mark Bailey and illustrated by Edward Hemingway, the book includes often outrageous stories of famed inebriates (John Barrymore and Liz Taylor among them), the bars they frequented, hangover cures and cocktail recipes.

Read all about that bastion of Tiki glory, Don the Beachcomber, and discover the origins of Chasen’s Shirley Temple (yes, it was created expressly for the tiny starlet). Sprinkled with celebrity quotes (Dennis Hopper: “I only did drugs so I could drink more.”), this book also works as a kind of tour guide—find “Open” signs hanging over sections in which the bars and other alcohol-centric joints are still serving. My personal favorite bartender, the legendary Manny Aguirre of Musso & Frank Grill, gets a shout-out and shares his martini recipe. Cheers!

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Santa’s gift bag is heavy with books celebrating enduring filmmakers, the making of a Golden Age screen classic, two beloved cult films and a toast to Hollywood’s drinking circuit.
NonfictionMemoir

Reckoning with the power of love

Feature by bookpagedev

Ah, love—everyone wants it, but many feel unsure how to get it or keep it. These titles offer valuable, often entertaining insight on many facets of love. Personal stories, wit and wisdom abound. Go forth and be romantic!

FINDING A LATER SPARK
The New York Times “Modern Love” column has launched many memoirs, and Eve Pell’s popular 2013 essay has grown into Love, Again: The Wisdom of Unexpected Romance. “How do old people meet new loves?” Pell writes. “Here’s how it happened for me: I schemed.” She, 67 and twice-divorced, asked a mutual friend to invite Sam, a 77-year-old widower, to a party. Next came a movie date . . . and three years later, they married. Pell shares their stories, plus those of 14 more couples who found later-life love. Times are changing, Pell notes: “Old people who follow their own hearts are not considered exceptional or outlandish—less Auntie Mame and more Judi Dench.” She adds that, since there will likely be a caretaker (and grieving spouse) in every older couple, “old love” can feel risky, but some find the best way to face the truth of mortality is to seek happiness and enjoy each moment. Pell’s greatest lesson learned: “Trust yourself. Whatever your age, you have the right to live as fully as you can, as fully as you want to.” This lovely, poignant read will bring out the romantic in readers of any age. 

DEVOTION’S DARK SIDE
Lisa A. Phillips tackles a timely, deeply personal topic in Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession. Phillips admits that, 20 years ago at age 29, she became obsessed with “B.” The two dated despite his long-distance girlfriend, but as Phillips (fresh off a breakup) fell in love, he pulled away. “For years after I stopped pursuing B.,” she writes, “I could not acknowledge that I’d gone too far.” Friends comforted her, but if she’d been a man, “They would have accused me of stalking.” Phillips acknowledges that, and uses it as a powerful jumping-off point for her far-ranging exploration of women’s obsessive love and its consequences. Unrequited features women’s personal stories and examines obsessive behavior through the lenses of psychology, literature and popular culture. Phillips herself eventually decided that unrequited love was not to be her fate. Meeting her now-husband and years of self-assessment got her there; for others, cognitive behavioral therapy helped with “disrupting the unsatisfying cycle.” Phillips also explores obsession’s impact on its objects, and cautions readers against the “gender pass” (downplaying women’s stalking behavior as somehow less dangerous than men’s). This is a compellingly written, eye-opening guide.

FUN AND MARRIAGE
Tim Dowling professes to be surprised at his evolution from Manhattan bachelor to London husband of 20 years and father of three boys. Of course, as the humor columnist for The Guardian reveals in How to Be a Husband, he’s not really surprised—but he does find it amazing he had the gumption. His relationship started with a meet-cheat: He decided he must be with his now-wife so he cheated on and dumped his long-term girlfriend to do so. It wasn’t characteristic of him, but with new love came more changes, like visits to her London home, immigration-related stress and finally, “We simply agreed —we’ll get married—with the resigned determination of two people plotting to bury a body in the woods.” Dowling admits this is far from a self-help book, as his “successful marriage is built of mistakes.” But he shares lessons despite himself, like the Twelve Labors of Marriage (“Housework,” “Finding Things,” “Nameless Dread”) along with the 40 Precepts of Gross Marital Happiness: “It’s okay to steal small amounts of money from each other” and “Go to bed angry if you want to.” With these clever lists and remembrances of joy, grief and hilarity, Dowling has crafted a heartfelt tale of his married life so far. He pokes fun at stereotypes and advises the hapless: “I’ve always felt that being a good husband and father is a simple matter of occasionally reminding one’s wife and children that they could do a whole lot worse.”

LONG-LIVED LOVE
When you want to learn something, you look to the experts. It worked for Karl Pillemer’s 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans, and he knew it would work for 30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage. The seeds of Pillemer’s second book originated from the Marriage Advice Project: He and his team interviewed 700 older Americans in committed relationships lasting from 30 to 70 years, including cohabitants and widows/widowers. Pillemer writes, “For them, it’s no longer a mystery as to how everything will turn out —it’s already happened.”

According to stories the elders share, what we all hear about long-term love (don’t hold grudges; share the chores!) aren’t just empty phrases, but rather words to live by. Readers can start with one of the book’s five sections (“Lessons for Finding a Mate”; “Communication and Conflict”) or delve into 30 lessons on topics like manners, in-laws, work and children. Pillemer, married 36 years, shares his own perspective-shift: “I came to a revelation. They are talking about marriage as a discipline . . . a developmental path where you get better at something by mindfully attending to it and continual practice.” Also, seeing is believing: “Nothing convinces you of the value of making a lifelong commitment like being in the presence of couples who have done just that.” Long live love!

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ah, love—everyone wants it, but many feel unsure how to get it or keep it. These titles offer valuable, often entertaining insight on many facets of love. Personal stories, wit and wisdom abound. Go forth and be romantic!
NonfictionMemoir

A mother lode of treasured advice

Feature by Alice Cary

The lessons we learn from our mothers shape who we are, even the lessons we don’t particularly appreciate. Those lessons keep coming year after year,  and their most valuable messages stay with us forever.

NPR journalist Scott Simon’s mother was a character in every way, a funny, gorgeous, gracious woman whose last days inspired her son to write Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime. Simon’s memoir expands upon tweets he sent to his 1.25 million Twitter followers as his mother lay dying of lung cancer in a Chicago hospital in the summer of 2013.

Her devoted son found his mother so funny and interesting that he decided to share her final moments with the world. As he explains, “She was an old showgirl who gave a great last performance.” And tweets such as this one helped him process what his family was going through: “I just realized: she once had to let me go into the big wide world. Now I have to let her go the same way.”

Patricia Lyons Simon Newman married three times, and over the years, her many jobs included being a model, secretary, typist and an ad agency receptionist. She had worked in nightclubs and dated mobsters, and Simon’s father was an alcoholic comedian.

Simon interweaves memories of their colorful life together with descriptions of their time in the ICU. He recalls frustrating moments when needed medicine was delayed and moments of supreme grace as his mom rallies for a final visit with Simon’s wife. No doubt Patricia Newman would be proud of her son and his extraordinarily compelling, heartfelt tribute.

THERE IN SPIRIT
Alice Eve Cohen certainly has a complicated relationship with motherhood, and it smacked her in the face during a daunting period she chronicles vividly in The Year My Mother Came Back. Strangely, the ghost of her mother suddenly appeared, 31 years after her death, just when Cohen faced seemingly overwhelming personal challenges.

In a previous book, What I Thought I Knew, the divorced mother of an adopted daughter wrote about finding out at age 44 that she was six months pregnant, after years of infertility and months of strange symptoms.

In her latest book, her beloved surprise daughter, Eliana, is an active fourth-grader in need of painful surgery. At the same time, Cohen (now happily married) is diagnosed with breast cancer, just as her mother was years ago. Meanwhile, as Cohen’s older daughter, Julia, is about to leave for college, she gets in touch with her birth mother.

This collision of events results in a maelstrom of emotional upheaval for Cohen, who finds much-needed comfort in the presence of her mother’s spirit: “We revisit events from our past together. Sometimes we just talk. Always, my mother is there and she is not there.”

This thoughtful memoir shows how our past and present remain constantly intertwined, and how being a mother is a complex journey that’s often full of stunning surprises.

THE FAMILY TABLE
Cookbook author Pam Anderson and daughters Maggy Keet and Sharon Damelio, the trio behind the food blog Three Many Cooks, have always centered their lives on food, family and faith. When they began to collaborate on a cookbook, they realized they had much more to share than recipes. The result is a delectable biography of their family’s food history, Three Many Cooks.

They chronicle their “incredible, messy, hilarious, powerful, screwed-up, delicious, and life-changing love affair with food, with one another, and with the people we have come to cherish.” The book is told in alternating chapters by each of the three, with every reflection accompanied by a relevant recipe.

Anderson begins with memories of learning to cook comfort food like chicken and dumplings in the Southern kitchens of her mother, aunt and grandmother. In subsequent chapters she tells how as a young mother and wife of an Episcopal minister, she mastered the styles of Child, Beard and Claiborne.

These well-written, captivating accounts describe such things as Keet’s most memorable meal (at the home of a colleague in Malawi, Africa); the three women’s weight struggles; and an unforgettable dinner to celebrate Anderson’s mother’s 89th birthday.

This book will make readers hungry, not only for the wonderful meals, but for the camaraderie that accompanies each feast. As Pam says of a lunch shared with a dying friend: “I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the moment I started caring less about perfection and more about connection.”

MANY TYPES OF MOMS
Want to broaden your Mother’s Day experience beyond the greeting-card-and-box-of-candy routine? Dip into the wildly varied essays in Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now.

In 2010, blogger Ann Imig (Ann Rants) organized a live reading called “Listen to Your Mother” to celebrate the holiday. It was such a success that more readings have been staged. This collection of the readings is refreshingly diverse, touching and funny. It’s a book that’s easy to dip into and likely to bring immediate rewards.

In “More Than an Aunt, Less Than a Mom,” Jerry Mahoney writes about his husband’s sister’s decision to become an egg donor for their unborn child. This was tricky business for everyone involved, he acknowledges, adding: “But that didn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed. It just meant we’d have to educate people, to show them what a functional family we had and demonstrate that our family, like any other, was built on love.”

No matter what the makeup of a family might be, isn’t that what Mother’s Day is all about?

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The lessons we learn from our mothers shape who we are, even the lessons we don’t particularly appreciate. Those lessons keep coming year after year, and their most valuable messages stay with us forever.
NonfictionFictionMemoir

Paris is a woman’s town

Feature by Kelly Blewett

There is something irresistible about a talented American woman in Paris. She feels sexy and alive while strolling the city’s streets, confident the world will unfurl in her hand like a blossoming flower. 

Such young women are featured in new books by Kate Betts and Christine Sneed, and both tell wonderful stories—one true, one fictional—about taking risks and pursuing dreams abroad.

Betts’ memoir, My Paris Dream, recalls her years in the city of light after graduating from Princeton in the 1980s. Her Paris was a ladder whose climb began with freelance writing assignments for travel magazines and culminated with a position as a fashion editor and associate bureau chief of Women’s Wear Daily. Betts, who later became the editor of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, is an instantly likable storyteller. She takes you to the Parisian boulevards and describes in terrific detail what people were wearing. Perhaps occasionally too much detail. “Only the French could invent seamless stockings that stay up with a rubber sticky band that grips the upper thigh,” she writes. As a young woman looking to make a good impression, she bought several pairs. “Fashion is tribal,” she explains. “It’s not about who you are but where you belong.” This is a story of how one American woman came to belong in the fashion capital of Europe, and how she wrote about that world for an American audience. Along the way, Betts made some terrific friends, fell in love and witnessed the world of style up close during a time of major transition. Full of slangy French, delectable food and swoon-worthy fashion, Betts’ memoir is well worth the read.

If Betts’ Paris is a ladder, then Sneed’s is an escape hatch. Jayne Marks, the protagonist of Sneed’s novel, Paris, He Said, is an aspiring artist in New York who can’t find time to paint. Then she meets gallery owner Laurent Moller. Decades older and maybe a little too suave, Laurent sweeps Jayne away to Paris to be his girlfriend and to live in his luxurious apartment. In her new life, Jayne has hours each day to paint, cook and work in Laurent’s French gallery, which is located on the same street as the Louvre. “I am closer to my twenty-year-old self here,” she thinks, “closer than I am at home.” Yet she finds it hard to settle into such a decadent existence. Can she maneuver the complexities of Laurent’s social world? Will her paintings ultimately be any good? Is Laurent being totally faithful to her? And why can’t she stop thinking about her ex-boyfriend in New York? Sneed, whose previous novel, Little Known Facts, drew considerable acclaim, expertly keeps the pages turning in this delightful novel. Paris, He Said offers readers, too, an entertaining escape from the mundanities of daily life. With clever and graceful prose, Sneed deftly guides a story that explores whether satisfaction follows when all one’s deepest wishes come true.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There is something irresistible about a talented American woman in Paris. She feels sexy and alive while strolling the city’s streets, confident the world will unfurl in her hand like a blossoming flower.

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