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NonfictionBiography

The forces that shaped our first black president

Review by John Slania

The advance buzz for Barack Obama centers on the diary entries kept by Genevieve Cook, who was the one-time girlfriend of the man who would become the 44th president of the United States. Obama was 22 at the time, a recent graduate of Columbia University, living in New York and searching for his place in life. The diary entries, excerpted in Vanity Fair prior to the book’s publication, are intriguing because they reinforce the image of Obama being cool and aloof. Indeed, the 18-month relationship collapses under the weight of inertia as Obama decides to move to Chicago to become a community organizer. The rest, as they say, is history.

While Cook’s often-whiny diary entries are juicy, they represent only a fraction of what makes Barack Obama a great book. Author David Maraniss, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, uses his skills as a journalist to uncover new details about Obama and his ancestors. The book traces the Obama family tree back to his great-grandparents in Kansas and in Kenya. It follows Obama as a young boy as he hopscotches across the globe from Hawaii to Indonesia, and then as a young man attending college in Los Angeles, and later New York. The chronicles of this circuitous journey only reinforce how remarkable a story it is that Obama ended up in the White House.

Barack Obama fills in the blanks of Obama’s own memoir, Dreams from My Father, because Maraniss is such a thorough reporter and researcher. The author of a memoir has a singular perspective, and can be selective with the particulars, while a biographer strives to find all the facts. Obama’s book creates the frame for the portrait. Maraniss’ book connects the dots.

What is fascinating about Barack Obama is that it ends before Obama enters politics. In fact, the protagonist doesn’t appear until the seventh chapter. Maraniss explains that he took this approach to delve deeply into Obama’s background and discover what shaped his character: Growing up as a biracial child with no father and a mother who was often gone; raised by white grandparents who struggled with their prejudices, the future president faced many challenges. “It helped explain his caution, his tendency to hold back and survey life like a chessboard,” Maraniss writes. As Obama finishes his fourth year in office, some say he is even more of an enigma. Barack Obama is a book guaranteed to bring more clarity to his story.

The advance buzz for Barack Obama centers on the diary entries kept by Genevieve Cook, who was the one-time girlfriend of the man who would become the 44th president of the United States. Obama was 22 at the time, a recent graduate of Columbia University, living in New York and searching for his place in […]
NonfictionMemoirCookbooks

A life of chasing flavors

Review by Amy Scribner

Marcus Samuelsson made his name as one of the youngest executive chefs in Manhattan and a familiar face on the Food Network.

What might be less familiar is Samuelsson’s fascinating personal history, which he lays bare in Yes, Chef. Born in Ethiopia, Samuelsson and his sister became dangerously ill with tuberculosis. Their mother walked with them from their remote village to Addis Ababa, where she died. The children were adopted by a loving Swedish family.

Samuelsson spent much of his childhood at the elbow of his Swedish grandmother, an excellent home cook, and went on to work at restaurants in Europe. But after a horrific car accident killed one of his closest friends, Samuelsson sought an apprenticeship to take him away from his grief. He landed at New York’s Aquavit, a restaurant that is, he writes, “more Swedish in its menu than any I had ever worked in.”

This was the beginning of a love affair with New York City. To read his descriptions of the food he eats, from steamed buns in Chinatown to roasted meats from street vendors, is to almost viscerally experience the smells, sounds and sights of the city.

Although he traveled the world learning about every cuisine from French to Mexican, Samuelsson was at a loss when a student asked him to describe trends in African cooking. He had not set foot on the continent since he was a toddler. Rediscovering his Ethiopian roots led him to open the successful Red Rooster in 2010, deliberately choosing the underappreciated streets of Harlem as the site for the restaurant.

Samuelsson’s is the most unlikely of journeys, and he takes readers along every step of the way in this delicious memoir.

Marcus Samuelsson made his name as one of the youngest executive chefs in Manhattan and a familiar face on the Food Network. What might be less familiar is Samuelsson’s fascinating personal history, which he lays bare in Yes, Chef. Born in Ethiopia, Samuelsson and his sister became dangerously ill with tuberculosis. Their mother walked with […]
Social Science

Pushing the racial question

Review by Heather Seggel

Some of My Best Friends Are Black looks at integration and the ways it has failed from a fresh perspective. While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, Tanner Colby realized he didn’t know any black people. Asking around, he found that his friends didn’t either. There were very few circumstances when blacks and whites, as Colby would phrase it, hang out and play Scrabble together. He set out to learn why.

Four related stories come together here: a Birmingham school system’s gradual integration; a Kansas City neighborhood that fought housing discrimination; the separate and unequal strata occupied by blacks and whites in advertising; and the intergration of a Louisiana Catholic parish whose parishioners were separated only by a parking lot.

There’s no “a-ha” moment in the book, promising an easy solution and more Scrabble nights if we all follow directions. As Colby writes, “White resistance and black reticence are hopelessly entwined with one another, endlessly variable from situation to situation.” It’s not the recipe for racial harmony, but Some of My Best Friends Are Black moves the discussion forward and out into new territory.

Some of My Best Friends Are Black looks at integration and the ways it has failed from a fresh perspective. While campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008, Tanner Colby realized he didn’t know any black people. Asking around, he found that his friends didn’t either. There were very few circumstances when blacks and whites, as […]
Arts & Culture

If these walls could talk

Review by bookpagedev

The princes and artists of the Italian Renaissance strove mightily to revive the glories of classical Greek and Roman culture. In one respect, they certainly hit the mark: Even the more outlandish of the Caesars had nothing on the colorful bunch of men who ascended to the papacy in those years, though most of the popes were a tad less likely to kill their relatives.

From the intellectual Nicholas V through the warrior Julius II and on to the Counterreformation popes, these were guys with big ideas. The biggest, at least in material terms, was tearing down the hallowed Basilica of St. Peter, dating to 326, and replacing it with the St. Peter’s that many today consider the architectural highpoint of the Roman Catholic Church. While Nicholas conceived the idea around 1450, it was Julius who laid the first stone of the new church on April 18, 1506 500 years ago. To mark that anniversary, author R.A. Scotti has written Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal, Building St. Peter’s, a brisk and satisfying narrative history of the two-century building project that involved a procession of hero-artists: Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini. Raphael was a young man during his brief tenure running the project, but Scotti makes it clear that it was old men in a hurry who really drove the work forward. That was particularly true of the storied dome, an engineering marvel. Scotti writes of Bramante setting the foundation piers that made the Basilica his own, Michelangelo approaching his 89th year and staving off death to assure that his dome would crown the mother church, [Pope] Sixtus V holding his architects to a frenzied schedule. By the time Bernini put the finishing touches on the basilica in the mid-17th century, the world of the Roman Church had changed. The project itself helped trigger the Reformation, as Martin Luther protested what he perceived as the popes’ outrageous fundraising to pay its massive expense. The popes who followed responded aggressively, in part with the crowd-pleasing Baroque style that Bernini’s work epitomized. Combining as it does Renaissance brilliance and Baroque drama, Scotti writes, the Basilica was truly catholic. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

 

The princes and artists of the Italian Renaissance strove mightily to revive the glories of classical Greek and Roman culture. In one respect, they certainly hit the mark: Even the more outlandish of the Caesars had nothing on the colorful bunch of men who ascended to the papacy in those years, though most of the […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Impatient patience

Review by bookpagedev

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can’t help but get outside and dig something. The last frost doesn’t come until mid-April, but that never stops me from putting some little thing out that would have preferred to stay inside. I am very, very impatient. This year a number of books are helping me take a breath, step back, and find patience in waiting for the seasons to change. I have enjoyed the work of Ken Druse for many years. His first book, The Nat-ural Garden, was a revelation, filled with pictures of places that hardly looked like “gardens” at all. Artful jungles is more like it. Druse is not trimming topiary; he is creating subtle, elegant gardens that feel like they were planted by Mother Nature herself. He is all about staying close to the place you are gardening: use native plants, be sensitive to the microclimate of your property, remember nature. Each book he writes is an occasion for joy, and his new book, The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime (Clarkson Potter, $50, 256 pages, ISBN 0517707888) is his most joyful yet.

Druse has covered a lot of technical ground in his previous books, the “what” of gardening. Here he focuses on the ineffable “why”: what is it that draws people to the garden? He introduces us to gardeners who share his passion for gardening as a lifelong pursuit. A varied group of gardens (one with a topiary, even!) is at the heart of this book, each photographed in a beautiful, careful way. At the core of these gardens is a lot of knowledge and talent and vision. But most of all, there is a passion an infectious kind of love that will inspire all of us who love to make gardens.

Dutch treat Cousins to Ken Druse might be Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsen, a renowned pair of gardeners from the Netherlands who are getting a lot of attention for their idea of the natural garden. For the past 20 years, they have scoured Europe and the United States for plants that are sturdy and low maintenance, but have the beautiful appearance of familiar cultivated perennials and annuals. Their gardens have the same looseness and unmanicured appearance that Ken Druse’s have. Planting the Natural Garden (Timber, $34.95, 144 pages, ISBN 088192606X) is their magnum opus of plants a Hall of Fame listing of their time-tested favorites. Included are cultivation details and photographs of each plant, along with suggested combinations and planting diagrams. Anyone who longs to move beyond the basics will marvel at this book for its fresh notion of a natural garden that holds up without looking weedy.

The basics? Begin here I am a Taylor’s junkie. When I first got serious about gardening 10 years ago, Taylor’s Master Guide to Gardening was my bible. If Taylor’s liked a plant, so did I. If it wasn’t in Taylor’s, it wasn’t in my garden.

The latest Taylor’s Guide a whopper as big as the Master Guide continues the same concise, clear format that has helped me so much. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (Houghton Mifflin, $45, 447 pages, ISBN 0618226443) is filled with more than 1,200 plants: perennials, annuals, grasses, trees, shrubs. It’s not every plant ever propagated; it’s every plant that the Taylor’s Guide experts feel is a good choice for North American gardens. A plant encyclopedia can be many things: a reference, a wish book, a troubleshooter. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants is all these, produced in the most straightforward, lovely way possible.

One small note: Taylor’s gives the pronunciation of each plant, which is a merciful thing when you are trying to sound all smart and name that little blue flower but can’t figure out how to say “platycodon.” (It’s “plat-ee-KOE-don.”) Getting the yard you want The only television channels safe to watch anymore are the Food Network and HGTV. The worst beating you’ll see on Emeril Live is a meringue in process; the most violent act on Landscapers Challenge is the brutal ripping-out of a crummy deck. The landscaping shows on HGTV are mesmerizing, the sort of armchair gardening that is perfect for those evenings when you have had it with your own plot of land. Those enterprising HGTVers have now turned to books, and there’s much to absorb in Landscape Makeovers: 50 Projects for a Picture-Perfect Yard, edited by Marilyn Rogers.

This book gives the details of projects you may have seen on HGTV programs. Curb appeal, privacy, overcoming problem areas there are tons of ideas in here to help make your landscape beautiful. Each project is rated in difficulty, time, cost and skills required. Landscape Makeovers is as satisfying as a night watching HGTV. Unlike the shows, however, this book explains exactly how to achieve the results you want. In this book, all seems possible.

The ultimate in patience Sometimes, impatience is bad for the environment. Terrible, in fact. Now that I have read The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food by Tanya L.K. Denckla (Storey, $22.95, 484 pages, ISBN 1580173705), I promise I will never spray my roses again with that toxic, brain-eating stuff. It only takes a few minutes to pick off those Japanese beetles, and all the good bugs in my garden will thank me.

Denckla is such a gentle advocate for organic gardening that you can’t help but want to try it, too. There is nothing shrill or dogmatic about the way she explains her subject. She debunks all the myths of organic gardening (it’s expensive/difficult/time consuming) with sensible truths, and the result is this manifesto of how to grow food that is in tune with nature.

In the book, Denckla reveals her own evolution as an organic gardener. Wanting to learn about the old ways, she began collecting information, and after four years, she discovered she had a book. A wonderful one, in fact. She explains how to grow every imaginable vegetable, nut and fruit, explaining the importance of rotating crops, planting a diverse garden and growing certain plant allies near each other. There’s a rogues’ gallery of evil pests, with non-toxic remedies; a list of plants that grow well together allies; and appendices full of organic gardening standards and resources. You will learn a lot with this book, and it may change the way you treat your garden.

A soggy epilogue At the end of Ken Druse’s Passion for Gardening is a stunning photograph of his garden, his beloved garden, flooded by the river that runs beside it. However traumatic this was for him (it had to be akin to Hemingway losing a manuscript), he writes about it with equanimity. I am taking to heart his conclusion: “I am indeed the junior partner in this collaboration with nature” a partnership that requires nothing but patience. Ann Shayne is a former editor of BookPage. She tends her garden in Nashville.

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can’t help but get outside and dig something. The last frost doesn’t come until mid-April, but that never […]
Memoir

Hard memories from the author of ‘Jarhead’

Review by John T. Slania

Join Anthony Swofford on his journey toward true manhood. Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails is a road-trip book, an account of Swofford’s cross-country trip with his father in a 44-foot-long RV. The physical trip is a distance of 1,000 miles. The spiritual trip they make is immeasurable.

At the beginning of the excursion, Swofford believes that a true man is a warrior, both on the battlefield and in bed. The ex-Marine was a scout/sniper in the first Gulf War. He turned his experiences into the bestseller Jarhead, which later became a movie. Flush with success from those projects, Swofford parachuted from his first marriage and embarked on an extended period of debauchery. He traveled the world, drinking too much, using too many recreational drugs and sleeping with too many women. Then he got a call from his father, who told him he was dying of lung disease.

When Swofford visits, we learn that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It turns out his father, a Vietnam veteran, was a chain smoker, a hard drinker and a womanizer. Swofford has never forgiven his father for his infidelity to his wife and his strict discipline with his children. In one vivid scene, Swofford recounts how as a young child, when he failed to clean up the dog droppings in the backyard, his dad grabbed his neck and shoved his nose in it. Swofford shares his anger, resentment and disappointment with his father on the RV ride, and by the end of the adventure, he has forgiven his father for his shortcomings. It is now time for Swofford to grow up and stop taking a reckless path similar to his father’s.

Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails is a powerful and sometimes painful book to read. The writing is short, staccato and rhythmic. More importantly, it’s honest. Swofford doesn’t spare anyone in his account, not his lovers, not his family, not himself. He paints himself as a fast-living philanderer and a failure at being human. Fortunately, he is a studious traveler, and the journey ends on a hopeful note, with Swofford learning lessons from his dying father on how to lead a more meaningful life.

Join Anthony Swofford on his journey toward true manhood. Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails is a road-trip book, an account of Swofford’s cross-country trip with his father in a 44-foot-long RV. The physical trip is a distance of 1,000 miles. The spiritual trip they make is immeasurable. At the beginning of the excursion, Swofford believes that […]

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