Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Previous
Next

All Nonfiction Coverage

Filter by genre
Review by

Few among us can look back without regret at some silly youthful decision that had unforeseen consequences. Canadian journalist Jan Wong has had an even bigger burden to bear than most: A Chinese Canadian, Wong was one of the first Westerners allowed to study at Beijing University in the early 1970s. The Cultural Revolution was under way, and Wong, an inexperienced enthusiast of 20, was a Maoist. When a Chinese student acquaintance named Yin Luoyi asked Wong to help her get to the U.S., Wong promptly reported Yin to her Communist professors. Years later, as a foreign correspondent with few illusions, she covered the Tiananmen Square massacre for the Toronto Globe and Mail. When she ultimately remembered her casual betrayal, she realized she had “thoughtlessly destroyed a young woman I didn’t even know.”

A Comrade Lost and Found, Wong’s second book on China, is about her quest to make amends to Yin—and to tell the story of Beijing’s evolution from its grim, xenophobic Maoist past to its recent pre-crash incarnation as flamboyant boomtown. Wong is known for the amusing but ruthless candor of her celebrity interviews, and she brings that quality to her own tale. She structures the book as a search for Yin, as she travels back to Beijing with her husband Norman, himself an old China hand, and their very Canadian teenage sons. With little to go on, she pesters old friends and professors for information.

She learns through them how many Chinese have failed to come to terms with the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, even as they return to a pre-revolutionary culture of entrepreneurism and conspicuous consumption. Old Beijing is disappearing; the new city lacks distinction. Her university Red Guard pals now vie for the biggest homes and sneer at rural migrants, while remaining silent about their own tragedies and betrayals.

As the book’s title indicates, Wong does eventually find Yin, with unexpected results. It turns out to have been worth the trouble, for Wong and for readers of this honest, funny, illuminating book.

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

Few among us can look back without regret at some silly youthful decision that had unforeseen consequences. Canadian journalist Jan Wong has had an even bigger burden to bear than most: A Chinese Canadian, Wong was one of the first Westerners allowed to study at…

Review by

Noted historian Nell Irvin Painter goes back even further than the days of the covered wagon with Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings: 1619 to the Present. Painter blends striking visual depictions with extensive analysis, covering everything from the extent of the African slave trade in North and South America to slavery in the U.S., Reconstruction, and the emergence and development of black culture, politics, economics and community life. She blends candid photos, stills and action shots of key community leaders and hard-working regular folks by artists ranging from Romare Bearden to Kara Walker, and her descriptive portraits are equally diverse, including familiar figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and lesser-known names such as Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves able to record his own account of captivity). Exhaustive yet easily understood and digested,Creating Black Americans supplies plenty of knowledge without ever becoming pedantic or dry.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paperand other publications.

Noted historian Nell Irvin Painter goes back even further than the days of the covered wagon with Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings: 1619 to the Present. Painter blends striking visual depictions with extensive analysis, covering everything from the extent of the…
Review by

The sinking of the steamboat Sultana in late April 1865 is an episode whose horrific importance has eluded wider coverage in Civil War history. The grotesquely overloaded ship—filled with businessmen, families, idle travelers and, most critically, nearly 2,000 Union troops recently discharged from Confederate prison camps—went down into the cold Mississippi north of Memphis after its boiler room exploded. Approximately the size of a smallish football field, Sultana took on the task of transporting the soldiers mainly because the army paid per head, but also because the war was over, and bedraggled, undernourished and sickly ex-POWs needed immediate care. When the crowded vessel caught fire early in the dark morning, chaos ensued and about 1,700 lost their lives, eclipsing the death count of Titanic 50 years later.

Sultana is Mississippi-based journalist Alan Huffman’s account of the disaster, and his moment-to-moment description of desperation and death is totally riveting. But Huffman doesn’t get to the Sultana until the final third of his book, which up to that point is loosely focused on three soldiers and their service in the Civil War’s western theater, which led to their incarceration and eventual harrowing trip home as survivors of the ill-fated voyage. Huffman’s early narrative focuses on profiles of the trio—two Indiana farm boys, Romulus Tolbert and John Maddox, and also J. Walter Elliott, a man who later recorded his experiences of the river tragedy.

More generally, Huffman describes the mental state of humans while in battle mode or in extreme circumstances of self-protection, which serves as a kind of foreshadowing of the grim behaviors of the Sultana passengers. He draws upon the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga to set the stage for his conjecture—many of the soldiers aboard the boat had fought in that brutal campaign—and also details the conditions in Southern prison camps. More committed Civil War buffs won’t mind plowing through Huffman’s lengthy set-up, but the climactic events make for adventurous reading for anybody who loves a true-to-life disaster story.

The sinking of the steamboat Sultana in late April 1865 is an episode whose horrific importance has eluded wider coverage in Civil War history. The grotesquely overloaded ship—filled with businessmen, families, idle travelers and, most critically, nearly 2,000 Union troops recently discharged from Confederate prison…

Review by

There’s an entire subgenre of travel literature about English people who seek out better weather and spicier food than they find at home. In The Caliph’s House, travel writer Tahir Shah shares his family’s experiences with Dar Khlalifa, a ramshackle old estate in one of Casablanca’s least desirable neighborhoods. The story features exotic locales and plenty of culture shock, but is largely one of renovation, as the Shah family live huddled on the floor in one room for nearly a year while walls are moved, a stairway installed, and age-old techniques used to create colorful mosaics and traditional terracotta tiles. They must also contend with Jinns and a house staff whose suggestions for appeasing those angry spirits include avoiding the toilets completely, sacrificing at least one lamb per room and asking the kids to sleep in the oven while the Jinns are fooled by life-sized mannequins in their beds.

There's an entire subgenre of travel literature about English people who seek out better weather and spicier food than they find at home. In The Caliph's House, travel writer Tahir Shah shares his family's experiences with Dar Khlalifa, a ramshackle old estate in one of…
Review by

Delayed language, tantrums, arm flapping, hyperactivity, incontinence—Rupert Isaacson’s son, Rowan, possessed all the signs associated with autism. Rather than helping, behavioral therapies, diet changes and special classrooms seemed to bring out the worst of the boy’s behaviors. Only when they were riding their neighbor’s mare, Betsy, across a Texas range did Rowan exhibit lucidity and calmness and his father feel some reprieve from his incessant grief and fatigue. Isaacson’s astonishing memoir, The Horse Boy, reveals how, inspired by these rare moments in the saddle, he began a quest through Mongolia to heal his five-year-old son.

A travel writer, accomplished horse rider, and activist for the Bushmen of the Kalahari, Isaacson (The Healing Land) had witnessed the shamans’ indescribable healings and had even borrowed Rowan’s middle name, Besa, from a Bushman healer and good friend. He set his sights first on the shamans of the horse people of Mongolia and then on finding Ghoste, the most powerful shaman of the nomadic reindeer herders in Siberia.

With intensity and candor, Issacson describes their travels by horseback, shamanistic rituals, Rowan’s small leaps forward and continuing setbacks, his own fears and worries after dragging his family across the world, and the miraculous transformations that eventually changed Rowan and brought peace to the family. There’s a reason extreme locales are referred to as Outer Mongolia; the author weaves the flavor of this remote region into his story, from exotic foods that required him to overcome his gag reflex, to river crossings that put both horse and rider in danger.

Isaacson’s journey to heal his son is just that, a healing, not a cure. But he wouldn’t want it any other way. While the author’s purpose was to draw Rowan out of his autism, he came to realize the overlooked gifts it entails. The Horse Boy will leave readers with a new appreciation for autism and the healing techniques of other cultures; like Rowan, they, too, will be changed forever.


Angela Leeper is an educational consultant and writer in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Delayed language, tantrums, arm flapping, hyperactivity, incontinence—Rupert Isaacson’s son, Rowan, possessed all the signs associated with autism. Rather than helping, behavioral therapies, diet changes and special classrooms seemed to bring out the worst of the boy’s behaviors. Only when they were riding their neighbor’s mare,…

Review by

The last time I saw Paris all right, the only time I saw Paris was a few years ago in April. It was neither warm nor cold, which meant I had no chance of packing the right clothes, and it rained seven of the eight days I was there. None of that mattered; all was just as it should have been. Drinking hot chocolate at Angelina’s, walking home in the rain after a 21-sample cheese-tasting, or watching street vendors sell Eiffel Tower trinkets under the real thing, Paris was wonderful. This spring, two books give readers the chance to live or relive the dream of spending April or indeed any time in Paris.

Paris is to haute cuisine as it is to haute couture. Understandably, Gourmet has featured stories about the city since the magazine’s inception. Many of these essays have been collected in Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing From Gourmet. Far from consisting only of food stories though the pieces on particular restaurants, chefs or dishes are, well, scrumptious the writings are also portraits of the city itself, its inhabitants and those fortunate enough to land assignments there. They range from Don Dresden writing about how chefs and customers alike cope with the cream and butter shortages of postwar Paris to Joseph Wechsberg (author of several pieces in the book) writing about the lost joy of walking through the city. But food is the main topic of Remembrance of Things Paris and reading it on an empty stomach is probably not a good idea.

Foodies and fashionistas aren’t the only ones attracted to the French capital, as demonstrated by the wide assortment of writers found in Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, edited by Adam Gopnik. This fascinating collection is arranged chronologically starting with pieces by influential thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams and Thomas Paine. Popular culture is represented by a Cole Porter lyric, an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story and a piece by modern dancer Isadora Duncan. James Baldwin writes of spending Christmas in a Paris jail, while James Weldon Johnson head of the NAACP in the 1920s writes of experiencing equality for the first time during a 1905 visit. The variety of people represented in the book from Mark Twain to Elizabeth Bishop to M.L.K. Fischer, for example and the wide spectrum of their experiences gives Americans in Paris a broad appeal, making it accessible to an audience beyond that of Francophiles and lovers of literature.

Both these books are good for reminiscing about or anticipating a trip to Paris. Read them from a comfortable chair at home, during a transatlantic flight or at a small cafe table in the city itself.

 

The last time I saw Paris all right, the only time I saw Paris was a few years ago in April. It was neither warm nor cold, which meant I had no chance of packing the right clothes, and it rained seven of the…

Trending Nonfiction

Author Interviews

Recent Features