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Hollywood nights

Review by bookpagedev

Alas, Vanity Fair’s annual Oscar night bash is “by invitation only.” But we mere mortals can party-crash with Oscar Night: 75 Years of Oscar Parties, From the Editors of Vanity Fair . Along with VF’s Oscar night pics, this monumental tome (measuring 11-by-14 inches) raids the to-die-for archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks behind the Oscars. With captions featuring trivia and gossipy dish, it’s the definitive look at Oscar-night partying over the decades.

Kicking off with the first-ever 1929 Oscar gala, held at the Roosevelt Hotel, the book takes us to the various ceremony venues, after-show hot spots like the Bistro and Spago, and into the living rooms of notable notables. The guest lists are a “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not” panorama, depicting changing fashions, hairstyles and attitudes. Take a look: there’s Madonna with bad hair and Pamela Anderson in a denim miniskirt with a blouse she forgot to button. They’re no match for the elegantly coifed, dazzlingly bling-blinged Liz Taylor. Now she’s someone we want to party with. Pat H. Broeske is the co-author of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, which would also make a terrific holiday gift.

Alas, Vanity Fair’s annual Oscar night bash is “by invitation only.” But we mere mortals can party-crash with Oscar Night: 75 Years of Oscar Parties, From the Editors of Vanity Fair . Along with VF’s Oscar night pics, this monumental tome (measuring 11-by-14 inches) raids the to-die-for archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts […]
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The conscience of a nation

Review by Martin Brady

In the service of economy, student texts on Civil War history usually sum up John Brown’s famous October 16, 1859, abolitionist raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry by noting that Robert E. Lee, then a colonel commanding a modest squad of U.S. soldiers, was responsible for bringing Brown and his associates to bay. Yet as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz describes in his engrossingly detailed Midnight Rising, Brown and his ill-fated, motley band of insurrectionists were in fact thwarted thoroughly enough by the local citizenry and hastily organized militia. Lee, later to head up the Confederate Army once war broke out, did eventually arrest Brown and his surviving associates, delivering them to the Virginia authorities, who shortly thereafter tried them for treason and hanged them for their deeds.

Horwitz’s potent prose delivers the facts of this bellwether incident in riveting fashion. He also chronicles the New England-born Brown’s peripatetic existence as the nation’s leading activist freedom fighter in the cause of ending slavery, including his exploits combating pro-slavery forces in “Bleeding Kansas” on the heels of the passage of the incendiary Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Harpers Ferry episode is center stage here in all its complexity, yet Horwitz further offers a mini-biography of the fanatical Brown, with insight into his brooding religious beliefs, his penchant for fathering children, his failures as a conventional businessman and his Spartan, gypsy-like lifestyle. It is an absorbing portrait of the often frustrated but passionately driven firebrand who successfully convinced a country of the shame of slavery and, to the South’s great regret, earned martyr status in the aftermath of his execution.

Brown qualifies as America’s first important post-revolution terrorist—marshaling resources from many places, expecting unquestioning allegiance from his followers, successfully maintaining an underground existence—yet his legally ignoble actions, while responsible for death and destruction, also pointed the inevitable way for a conflicted nation destined to tread the path of hard-won righteousness and morality. Horwitz brings events to life with almost cinematic clarity, and for American history and Civil War aficionados, Midnight Rising is required reading.

In the service of economy, student texts on Civil War history usually sum up John Brown’s famous October 16, 1859, abolitionist raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry by noting that Robert E. Lee, then a colonel commanding a modest squad of U.S. soldiers, was responsible for bringing Brown and his associates to bay. […]
NonfictionMemoir

Didion faces loss and her own twilight

Review by Amy Scribner

Blue Nights, it must be said, is almost unbearably sad. As in 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking, for which she won the National Book Award, Joan Didion here writes starkly about the death of a loved one. She also muses on her own failing health and her fears of growing old. Yet despite the bleak subject matter, Didion’s writing is as crisp, candid and thought-provoking as ever.

Didion and her husband, the writer John Dunne, adopted daughter Quintana Roo as a newborn in 1966. She was a precocious girl who traveled the world with her parents when they went on assignment. It was this lifestyle that Didion believes made Quintana “the child trying not to appear as a child.” She recalls “the strenuousness with which she tried to present the face of a convincing adult.”

Quintana also showed early on what Didion now recognizes as warning signs of impending mental illness (she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as an adult). At age five, Quintana called the local psychiatric hospital to find out what she needed to do if she were going crazy. She obsessed about what would have happened to her if her parents had gotten in an accident on the way to adopt her. She assumed a mole on her scalp was cancer. She had suicidal thoughts.

Still, Quintana realized some happiness. She attended Barnard College, worked as a photographer and got married in 2003. But in 2005, just a year and a half after her father died from a massive heart attack, Quintana died at age 39 of acute pancreatitis. Thus, in her late 70s, Didion found herself not only grieving two terrible losses, but also living alone for the first time in decades. This is a precarious situation for an older woman whose doctor suggests she has made “an inadequate adjustment to aging.”

“I had lived my entire life to date without seriously believing that I would age,” Didion writes. “My skin would develop flaws, fine lines, even brown spots . . . but it would continue to look as it had always looked, basically healthy. My hair would lose its original color but color would continue to be replaced by leaving the gray around the face and twice a year letting Johanna at Bumble and Bumble highlight the rest. . . . I believed absolutely in my own power to surmount the situation.”

Blue Nights is Didion’s bravest work. It is a bittersweet look back at what she’s lost, and an unflinching assessment of what she has left.

Blue Nights, it must be said, is almost unbearably sad. As in 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking, for which she won the National Book Award, Joan Didion here writes starkly about the death of a loved one. She also muses on her own failing health and her fears of growing old. Yet despite the […]
Nonfiction

New discoveries in free will

Review by Heather Seggel

Contemporary science is for the most part attached to determinism, or the belief that physical laws govern the physical world, of which we humans are a part. This potentially eliminates the concepts of free will and personal responsibility. After all, it wasn’t me that ate that tray of brownies. That was just a biological response to stimulus! Right?

Not so fast, says Michael Gazzaniga. In Who’s in Charge?, the neuroscientist argues that the brain is governed by the mind, which he defines as a sort of self-created system of brain government. Sound nutty? Yes, a little. But the ramifications extend through science into psychology, ethics and law, and repeatedly argue for responsible behavior. In the author’s view, “We are people, not brains,” effectively revoking our free pass to pig out.

Gazzaniga’s extensive work with “split-brain” patients (whose right and left brain hemispheres have been medically separated) gave him insight into the ways we make sense of seemingly senseless information. When Gazzaniga showed a picture of a wagon only to a patient’s left eye (which is connected to the brain’s right hemisphere), the word “toy” came to the patient’s mind. The left hemisphere could not explain why the patient thought of that word, but nevertheless tried, describing “an inner sense” that called the word to mind. This act of interior storytelling in order to make sense of things, referred to here as “the interpreter,” makes a strong case for the existence of a mind that is part of the brain yet separate from it.

Who’s in Charge? is based on talks presented at the Gifford Lecture series, known for its focus on religion, science and philosophy. This ramble through fields that would seem to be at odds with one another is one of the book’s main pleasures. Another is Gazzaniga’s commitment to humanizing science at every turn. He writes, “It is the magnificence of being ‘human’ that we all cherish and love and that we don’t want science to take away.” As long as there are scientists who endorse that view, humanity should be safe for years to come.

Contemporary science is for the most part attached to determinism, or the belief that physical laws govern the physical world, of which we humans are a part. This potentially eliminates the concepts of free will and personal responsibility. After all, it wasn’t me that ate that tray of brownies. That was just a biological response […]
NonfictionHumorEssays

How to laugh at a ludicrous life

Review by Pete Croatto

Initially, it doesn’t appear that Merrill Markoe’s latest essay collection, Cool, Calm & Contentious, features a theme. She revisits her embarrassing, sometimes tragic teen years, engages her dogs in conversation and speaks (very briefly) at a truly dreadful college career fair in Lafayette, Louisiana. But a connection emerges as the pages pass: Markoe’s goal is to find the absurdity in everyday life. That, coupled with her sharp wit, makes her writing sublime—and surprisingly educational.

Markoe, a novelist and essayist who was the first head writer for “Late Night with David Letterman,” isn’t content just to mine situations for laughs. Anyone can mock; it takes real talent to illuminate. And Markoe is skilled—and fearless—in retracing the missteps both large and small in her life.

Her youthful misinterpretation of Jack Kerouac’s works—“I knew that what I had to do to join my artistic destiny was to get roaring drunk”—becomes a warning about the dangers of co-opting a culture based on highlights. A writing assignment to cover an all-women’s whitewater rafting trip becomes personal for Markoe, who learns the value of doing something different. Her remembrance of her late, hypercritical mother contains its share of chestnuts—the woman’s travel diaries read like a never-ending bad review of the international scene—and a key revelation: Mom was a textbook narcissist. Markoe does thank her mom for urging her to learn about narcissism. It made her equipped to live in Los Angeles.

In each essay, there’s a sense that Markoe wants to impart a lesson to readers; indeed, some chapters could double as courses in common sense, including “How to Spot an A**hole.” Yet she never resorts to the kinds of know-it-all proclamations of fluffy life advice usually dispensed on a talk show set. By being herself, Markoe’s straightforward tales of navigating the annoyances of life are genuinely helpful—and legitimately funny.

Initially, it doesn’t appear that Merrill Markoe’s latest essay collection, Cool, Calm & Contentious, features a theme. She revisits her embarrassing, sometimes tragic teen years, engages her dogs in conversation and speaks (very briefly) at a truly dreadful college career fair in Lafayette, Louisiana. But a connection emerges as the pages pass: Markoe’s goal is […]
NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Dictionaries: words for the wise

Review by bookpagedev

One sure way to give your child a head start on a successful school year is to stock your home bookshelves with up-to-date, reliable reference material. Whether your student is tackling a spelling test, a term paper or a creative writing assignment, an excellent dictionary is an indispensable tool.

The most popular choice is the college dictionary, aimed at students (from high school to graduate level), but also widely used in the home and office. This year, the college dictionary market includes a new competitor: the Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary, released in July. Billed as “the first dictionary for the Internet age,” the Encarta dictionary is also the biggest in its category, with more than 320,000 entries. A previous dictionary created by the same team, the Encarta World English Dictionary, provoked an uproar when it was published in 1999 with the stated goal of capturing the English language as it is spoken all over the world. The new Encarta College Dictionary takes a more traditional approach, sticking with American English, and using the opinions of American college professors on questions of usage. The new volume includes several helpful features, such as Spellcheck (common spelling errors), Quick Facts, Correct Usage and Literary Links, which are interspersed with the definitions. In tackling the college dictionary market, the Encarta entry faces competition from four long-time favorites that dominate the category. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition is the best-selling dictionary in America, known for its clarity and reliability. Noah Webster wrote the first American dictionary in 1806, and the Merriam brothers later bought the rights to his work. Merriam-Webster is thus the true heir to Noah Webster’s achievement, but the name Webster, having become synonymous with dictionary, has entered the public domain and is freely used in many titles. Take for example, Webster’s New World College Dictionary, fourth edition. No Webster was involved in compiling this volume, but it has become an authoritative source for journalists and writers, as well as students. Many organizations, including the Associated Press and The New York Times, use Webster’s New World College Dictionary as their official standard on matters of spelling and usage.

Two other top college dictionaries to consider for your budding scholar are Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 2001 edition and American Heritage College Dictionary, third edition. Random House updates its college dictionary each year, and the 2001 edition includes more than 100 new words everything from DSL (digital subscriber line) to hottie (a sexually attractive person). The American Heritage College Dictionary includes interesting asides on word histories and regional usage, as well as an attractive design with numerous illustrations and maps.

One sure way to give your child a head start on a successful school year is to stock your home bookshelves with up-to-date, reliable reference material. Whether your student is tackling a spelling test, a term paper or a creative writing assignment, an excellent dictionary is an indispensable tool. The most popular choice is the […]

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