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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.
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The best in holiday humor

Review by bookpagedev

A collection of seasonal miscellanea from America’s wittiest weekly, Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art from the Editors of The New Yorker is a timeless treasury of literary delights. This jolly volume is the latest entry in a best-selling series of anthologies from the magazine. Offering antics aplenty, both visual and verbal, it spans 75 years and features classic, holiday-themed selections cartoons and covers, prose and verse drawn from the publication’s extensive archives.

Contributors to this twinkling collection include William Steig, James Thurber, John Updike, Ann Beattie and Alice Munro, all sharing their singular visions of Christmas. Stand-out offerings from Roger Angell, whose poem “Greetings Friends” is an extended exercise in holiday hilarity, and John Cheever, whose story “Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor” will awaken the spirit of giving in readers, are among the many funny and poignant pieces capturing the essence of the season. Choice extracts from the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” feature are sprinkled throughout the volume. There are newer offerings from the likes of Ken Kesey and Richard Ford, as well as gems from E.B. White and H.L. Mencken. There’s nothing humbug about it: when it comes to spreading Christmas cheer, The New Yorker has the best in holiday humor.

 

A collection of seasonal miscellanea from America's wittiest weekly, Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art from the Editors of The New Yorker is a timeless treasury of literary delights. This jolly volume is the latest entry in a best-selling series…

Sports

Hanging with the greats in their glory days

Review by bookpagedev

As the holiday season nears, men’s thoughts turn to . . . sports. Of course, for some guys any occasion will do: “Is it Groundhog Day again? Hmm, I wonder what’s on ESPN.” This time of year, though, a happy convergence occurs with the publication of handsome gift books, the tradition of giving and the need for much of male America to recover from a morning of riotous unwrapping by lying on a couch and looking at pictures of athletes pounding on each other. And who knows? You may have a sister or aunt with similar taste; just lock her in the attic with these three coffee-table volumes, and she won’t bother you until spring.

A whirlwind review of gridiron greats In Pro Football’s Heroes of the Hall (Sporting News, $29.95, 399 pages, ISBN 0892047127), Ron Smith honors each member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame with a concise writeup, in language that notes the most critical facts with minimal gushiness. If these sketches are too much to digest, highlighted quotes boil every entry down to one or two sentences, like flash cards. Then there’s the photography and there’s plenty of it from dusty old black-and-white portraits to high-drama, full-color snaps of some especially memorable collisions and sprints.

Still, the most provocative moment occurs before this parade begins, in the “overview.” Here, Smith traces a thread from the Hall of Fame’s first, modest admission ceremony to the 11-day annual bacchanal that’s taken its place, complete with “a queen pageant, a fashion show, a golf tournament, hot air balloons,” and other hoopla that seems to distract from rather than honor the history and essence of the game.

Big finishes and a bonus DVD Time to split hairs: some of the moments noted in Not Till the Fat Lady Sings: The Most Dramatic Sports Finishes of All Time (Triumph, $29.95, 148 pages, ISBN 1572435585) didn’t take place exactly at the finish, such as the famous “long count” of 1927, which transpired three rounds before boxing champion Gene Tunney rallied to beat Jack Dempsey. But who cares? Each episode recalled here by primary author Les Krantz and other contributors recalls the kind of high, human drama that converts otherwise normal people into sports fans.

A vast chronology unfolds throughout these pages, going back to the famous “Merkle blunder” of 1908 and continuing all the way up to 2003. Many may argue over this inclusion or that omission, and that’s good, because this is supposed to happen when sports fans get together. The visuals are splashy, and the bound-in DVD is a big plus, proving that at least in this genre, moving pictures can beat even the most gripping printed material.

A boxing giant’s endless appeal Muhammad Ali: The Glory Years stands out in this crowd on several counts. First, it focuses entirely on one person. Second, almost all of its photos are black and white. Finally, the text-to-picture balance is just about even. As a result, a less sensational, more reflective tone emerges, as well as a more focused sense of time and drama. From the opening shot, a breathtaking look at the young Cassius Clay holding a pose in profile and under water, the imagery restricts itself to his glory years, when his looks were as potent as his punches and as dazzling as his footwork. And in capturing him in gritty gyms, or in some quaint neighborhood with his mother, and of course in the ring against opponents both hapless and deadly, the storyline unfolds on the power of image alone.

It’s the text, though, that completes these pictures. Authors Felix Dennis and Don Atyeo meet the challenge of finding angles that haven’t already been explored a hundred times, such as the struggle for allegiance at the early stages of his career between Cassius Clay Sr. and Officer Joe Martin, the young fighter’s first coach. It takes a little work to find these insights, but in the end the story proves so compelling that it’s hardly work at all. Robert L. Doerschuk is the former editor of Musician magazine.

As the holiday season nears, men's thoughts turn to . . . sports. Of course, for some guys any occasion will do: "Is it Groundhog Day again? Hmm, I wonder what's on ESPN." This time of year, though, a happy convergence occurs with the publication…
Memoir

Kidder’s revealing Vietnam memoir

Review by bookpagedev

There have been enough Vietnam memoirs, and memoirs thinly disguised as novels, to fill dozens of library shelves. Some, such as those by Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien and Philip Caputo, have become modern classics of war (or anti-war) literature. Though perhaps not destined for such enduring status, Tracy Kidder’s convincing <b>My Detachment</b> offers an often brutally candid portrait of one young man who, even as he left for Vietnam, was not quite sure why he went.

Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for <i>The Soul of a New Machine</i>, a penetrating study of the computer industry that presaged our microchip-driven world. He has applied the same mode of anthropological journalism to such subjects as education and the building of a house. So it is interesting to see how this perceptive writer, for whom the devil is always found in the details, dissects his own experience.

Fresh out of Harvard, Kidder joined the Army for reasons he still seems somewhat unsure about. It was neither the expected nor the popular thing for someone of his class and education to do. The expression baby killer had recently entered the lexicon, flung at men in uniform by protestors on college campuses across the country, including Harvard, and Kidder’s liberal friends were dumbfounded by his decision. Rudderless and unhappy in love, the disconsolate young Kidder figured he might be drafted anyway, and as an officer with his elite education, he was thinking he would land a cushy desk job at Arlington Hall.

Signing on for intelligence work, Kidder endured basic training, then Army Security Agency school in Massachusetts, which allowed him to spend schizophrenic weekends in Cambridge among his old anti-war crowd. Then it was off to Vietnam, where, with nary a moment’s training on how to command, he was put in charge of a small band of intractable enlisted men. Those who still believe that the picture of the Army painted in <i>Catch-22</i> was fiction need read no further than Kidder’s unadorned account for proof that absurdity is a fact of life in the wartime military.

Yet while there is humor to be found between the lines and in some of the Kafkaesque situations, <b>My Detachment</b> largely captures the gloom and futility that the young soldier found far from home. He romanticizes his humdrum days in letters he never sends, imagining himself taking a pair of young Vietnamese boys under his wing, or telling of a non-existent girlfriend in a nearby village. In fits of rage directed at the girl he left behind, who is slowly breaking up with him by letter, he writes about killing men in battles never fought. In fact, Kidder never saw combat, which is both a source of relief and of disappointment. I think it might have sufficed if I’d been an infantry platoon leader, he writes. As it was, I felt, increasingly, that everything I did was worse than pointless. And still, perversely, I wanted the war, with all else it had to do, to lend my life some meaning. As an officer among enlisted men, young Kidder wants desperately to be liked, a touchy scenario when your charges are all too happy to run roughshod over you. While he establishes a certain rapport with his sergeant, it takes time for him to win the uneasy trust of his men. Still, you get the sense that Kidder, despite his background, is more comfortable with these guys than with his fellow officers, especially the lifers who take it all so very seriously. Mostly, though, one gets the sense that he is marking off the days on his calendar until he can leave.

<b>My Detachment</b> has no blood-splattered violence or foreboding sense of menace (though Kidder does include excerpts from an overwrought, unpublished war novel that he wrote after his tour of duty, which points up the marked differences between reality and the fiction writer’s imagination). The menace here is in Lieutenant Kidder’s muddled head. The double-edged title of this probing book expresses the state of mind of a young man eager to do what is right, what he was trained for, but in a climate less conducive than he had imagined. At a time when our military is once more engaged in a controversial war, Kidder’s brooding ruminations lead one to wonder what some of today’s soldiers might be thinking and ponder what books they might write 40 years from now. <i>Robert Weibezahl is the author of the novel</i> The Wicked and the Dead.

There have been enough Vietnam memoirs, and memoirs thinly disguised as novels, to fill dozens of library shelves. Some, such as those by Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo, have become modern classics of war (or anti-war) literature. Though perhaps not destined for such…

Pop CultureMusicMemoirBiographyArts & Culture

Behind the music

Review by Ron Wynn

There won't be many more honest and revealing works this year than Clapton: The Autobiography. The man often termed a guitar god and considered an icon by many music fans isn't interested in affirming that notion. Instead he repeatedly cites his flaws and failures, doing so in graphic detail and without offering excuses for his lapses in judgment and behavior. Clapton writes about his drug and alcohol problems, his adultery and depression in spare, unflinching prose. He's determined to let readers know that not only is he human, but that he's paid a heavy price to reach the top. There's also a full discussion of his interaction, romance and ultimate failed relationship with Pattie Boyd, who was married to Clapton's good friend George Harrison when he began pursuing her. Particularly painful is Clapton's account of the death of his four-year-old son Conor, who fell to his death in 1991 from a New York high-rise.

Yet the book also has plenty of rich musical detail, from his description of being awed by first hearing Jimi Hendrix to accounts of playing with the Rolling Stones and Beatles, teaming with longtime idol B.B. King, and reshaping the classic blues and soul he adored into a more personalized and individual sound.

DREAM WEAVERS

As a staff photographer for Rolling Stone, Robert Altman visually documented the changes that rocked the '60s with a scope and clarity no one has surpassed. His remarkable photographs comprise the bulk of the compelling new collection, The Sixties. Whether you were there or not doesn't really matter, Altman writes in an author's note, maintaining that these pictures do the talking in recapturing the excitement of Woodstock, be-ins and the Summer of Love. Whether in funny (and sometimes frightening) crowd shots of anonymous war protesters or intense individual portraits of such famous '60s figures as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jane Fonda, Grace Slick and Joni Mitchell, Altman brings it all back in unforgettable style. Journalist Ben Fong-Torres adds perspective with a brief introduction and Q&A with Altman.

Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is a companion work to the documentary film by Peter Bogdanovich, and it contains comprehensive and candid interviews with Petty and company on such subjects as life on the road, the music business, the failures of contemporary radio and Petty's devotion to the classic rock and soul that shaped his heartland sound. His determination not to let trends affect or influence his work is noteworthy, and there's also enough levity and humor to balance out some spots where his disillusionment at changes in the landscape becomes evident.

THE CHAIRMAN AND THE KING

Both Charles Pignone's Frank Sinatra: The Family Album and George Klein's Elvis Presley: The Family Album are loving insiders' collections rather than probing investigative surveys or detached evaluations. Pignone was a close Sinatra friend and is now the family archivist, while Klein was a high school classmate of Presley, and even had the King serve as his best man. Both books are full of warm remembrances, rare photographs and views of the family side of these performers. You won't get any outlandish tales of excessive behavior here, but there are interviews with family members and associates who've never talked about their relationships before, plus detailed accounts from Pignone and Klein that emphasize the character and generosity of both these superstars.

For those interested in why we enjoy listening to music, there's Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by neurologist Oliver Sacks, best known for books that recount some of his highly unusual cases (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, etc.). In Musicophilia, Sacks investigates the medical effects positive and negative of listening to music. He does so in a manner somewhere between scholarly and weird, using amazing stories to validate his theories and illustrate how important music appreciation can be. Whether talking about a disabled man who has memorized 2,000 operas or children whose ability to learn Mandarin Chinese has given them perfect pitch, Sacks offers tales that will fascinate any music lover.

There won't be many more honest and revealing works this year than Clapton: The Autobiography. The man often termed a guitar god and considered an icon by many music fans isn't interested in affirming that notion. Instead he repeatedly cites his flaws and failures, doing…

Religion & SpiritualityInspirational Fiction

Finding faith on the page

Review by Sarah White

For people who are not biblical scholars and who have not traveled to the area where the Bible stories took place, it's sometimes hard to visualize exactly where these events occurred in relation to today's world. Biblica: The Bible Atlas by Barry J. Beitzel, professor of Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is a massive and beautiful volume that places the Bible in geographical context. From the Garden of Eden and the flood through the great judges, kings and prophets, the life of Jesus and how the word spread after his death, Biblica details the history of Christianity through maps, works of art and text. A section on the geography and history of biblical lands pinpoints the locations of significant events and explains what life might have been like in those places during biblical times. Tables of the books of the Bible, the judges, prophets, kings, Egyptian rulers, apostles, even Jesus' wondrous acts and the gospels in which they are located, as well as a glossary and Bible family trees, give readers a quick reference for details or a fascinating basis for browsing. Biblica is a complete education in the Bible and will illuminate any reader's experience of the ancient text.

A WORK OF ART
The Book of Exodus, inscribed and illustrated by 92-year-old artist Sam Fink, was a 17-year labor of love envisioned as a gift to Fink's family living in Israel. It includes 40 watercolor paintings, one for each chapter in the Book of Exodus, along with the hand-lettered text of the book in Hebrew and English. Each painting is a representation of the sky some are dark, some uncertain, some hopeful, just like the chapters of Exodus. This gorgeous coffee-table book tells the story of the Jewish people's enslavement in Egypt and their long journey to freedom with God's help. It would be a lovely gift for anyone interested in the Bible as art, and especially for Jewish readers who want to see this classic text in a new way.

A LIFE IN PICTURES
Instead of focusing on the whole Bible, The Messiah: An Illustrated Life of Jesus Christ by Jacques Duquesne focuses on the life and acts of Jesus. Illustrated with a variety of paintings from throughout history, including such masters as Da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt and El Greco, The Messiah tells Jesus' story based on what is known from the Bible and how biblical scholars have interpreted that information. It discusses, for instance, the controversy surrounding whether Jesus had true brothers and sisters Catholics view Mary as having been a virgin throughout her life, while Protestants tend to accept that Jesus actually had siblings. The book details the story of Jesus' life from the Annunciation to Pentecost, as well as providing sidebars about the life of Joseph, the role of high priests in the time of Jesus, the adoption of the cross as a symbol for Christianity, the symbolic meaning of the water-into-wine story and much more. This beautifully illustrated portrait allows readers to delve more deeply into the life of Christ and to gain a better understanding of his experiences on Earth.

NOTES FROM THE FAITHFUL
Many people who have come to faith on their own have stories about how they gave their lives to God. For many Americans alive today, that story has something to do with Billy Graham. Led to Believe: Inspiring Words from Billy Graham and Others on Living by Faith is a collection of essays describing how Graham helped people from all walks of life accept Jesus. There are stories of medical ailments being healed by prayer, a man who narrowly escaped death because he attended a revival, and kids whose lives were turned around through the power of faith and persistence. The voices represented here include a sports announcer, a baseball player, a nurse, an investment counselor and other people from all kinds of jobs and all kinds of backgrounds. Their common thread is the power of Graham's words, which allowed them to understand Jesus and want him in their lives. A story written by Graham's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, when their children were young illuminates what life as a famous preacher's wife was like, and an essay by Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, tells of an incident when she was a teenager when her father's reaction taught her a powerful lesson about the love of her father on earth and her father in Heaven. While it would have been nice to have these stories placed in context with the year they were written and biographical information about the authors, this book is still a lovely collection of stories about the power one person can have to change the world.

THE SPOKEN WORD
The Bible is at its most powerful when it is read aloud and shared with others. The Word of Promise New Testament Audio Bible is an unabridged dramatic reading of the New Testament of the New King James Version of the Bible. More than 120 actors were involved in the project, including Jim Caviezel of The Passion of the Christ as the voice of Jesus, Michael York as the narrator, Richard Dreyfuss as Moses, Stacy Keach as Paul, Lou Gossett Jr. as John, Lou Diamond Phillips as Mark, Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene and Kimberly Williams-Paisley as Mary. Accompanying sound effects and an original musical score combine to make the reading lively and dramatic, an approach that makes the recording more interesting and accessible for people who might not be able to read the New Testament cover to cover. An excellent gift for any busy person who wants to include a daily Bible reading in their schedule, this audiobook would also provide an excellent introduction to the Bible for young listeners.

KINGSBURY KICKS OFF A HEARTWARMING TALE
If it's inspirational fiction you're looking for this holiday season, a Karen Kingsbury book is a good place to start. With more than five million books in print, and bestsellers such as Ever After and One Tuesday Morning to her credit, Kingsbury can accurately claim the title of America's favorite inspirational novelist. Surprisingly, Kingsbury got her start in the 1980s as a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times (where she began as a college intern) and later for the Los Angeles Daily News. She returns to her sportswriter's roots in her latest novel, which she developed in collaboration with NFL player Alex Smith, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. The two met at a 49ers game, and when Kingsbury discovered that Smith was deeply involved in the issue of foster care for children, she settled on a plan to help by writing a novel that features two NFL players who take vastly different paths toward helping a young boy in foster care.

The result is Between Sundays, which features a high-rolling, hard-living NFL quarterback (imagine that) who comes under the wing of a compassionate veteran. The two connect with a boy in foster care who will change both of their lives forever. Non-sports fans shouldn't worry that they'll be turned off by the football action in typical Kingsbury fashion, this isn't a sports book, but an uplifting story of human connections.

For people who are not biblical scholars and who have not traveled to the area where the Bible stories took place, it's sometimes hard to visualize exactly where these events occurred in relation to today's world. Biblica: The Bible Atlas by Barry J. Beitzel, professor…

LifestylesFashion

Height of fashion

Review by MiChelle Jones

If you were in London at just the right time this fall, you were able to see both Queen Elizabeth's wedding gown at Buckingham Palace and the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum's latest fashion exhibition. The queen's gown was designed by British couturier Norman Hartnell for her 1947 wedding, a much-heralded dash of splendor after the austere war years. But it was another designer, Christian Dior, who ushered in what was dubbed the New Look of postwar fashion that year. Dior's full-bodied skirts and use of luxurious fabrics are the jumping-off point of The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957, the companion volume to the V&A show, edited by senior curator Claire Wilcox.

Ultra-sophisticated photographs by Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, the Seeberger brothers, John French and others highlight pieces by Dior, Balenciaga, Chanel, Balmain and Jacques Fath. Eight chapter-length essays cover the development of the French couture system, the industry before and during the Second World War, fabrics, the imagery of couture, the inner workings of fashion houses and more. Sidebars discuss the photographers, designers, the New Look itself, and such clever marketing ploys as traveling collections of exquisitely outfitted fashion dolls.

AMERICAN ORIGINALS
To mark his 40th anniversary in fashion, the eponymous Ralph Lauren, also available in a really expensive $400-edition, tracks the designer's career from his days as a tie salesman to his emergence as lifestyle merchant. This is no small feat, as shown in an illustrated timeline studded with Lauren's accomplishments first with a shop in Bloomingdale's, first American designer with a freestanding store and later with a store outside the U.S., first to launch a full home collection, first official outfitter of Wimbledon. Lauren has always managed to infuse his clothing and home fashions with the kind of backstory that inspired him, one of Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Mickey Mantle, FDR, and JFK. This oversized volume is full of beautiful photographs (even Lauren's family photographs are magazine-quality) from fashion shoots, progressing from the earliest Polo shirts to the latest Purple Label suits. A visual index at book's end lists the photographers (Bruce Weber, Patrick Demarchelier, Carter Berg, etc.) and the names that go with the famous faces (Linda Evangelista, Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, Penelope Cruz, Tyson Beckford, Jane Gill, Valentina Zelyaeva).

There's couture and then there's what people really wear, as documented in New York Look Book: A Gallery of Street Fashion, a collection of the monthly columns by New York magazine fashion writer Amy Larocca and photographer Jake Chessum. These are literally person-on-the-street interviews and shoots, of a perfectly coordinated Jerry Hall-esque mother of four, design firm partners in outfits worthy of Andre 3000 (navy RL blazer, striped scarf, houndstooth trousers), a stylish tot in a vintage pram, and, at the other end of life, a natty retiree in taupe suede shoes. A few celebrities show up as well Oleg Cassini; Helen Mirren in long, charcoal pleated skirt and pale pink cardigan, red glasses hanging around her neck; John Waters in turquoise Levi's; and Cynthia Rowley. There is a delightful contrast between youthful experimentation and the self-assuredness of the older subjects.

THE WELL-DRESSED HOME
British interior designer Kelly Hoppen's loft home is in a converted girls' school; that aesthetic of cozy spaces within wide-open expanses fills her latest book, Kelly Hoppen Home: From Concept to Reality. Teaming again with writer Helen Chislett and photographer Vincent Knapp, Hoppen offers a practical guide to designing one's abode, regardless of preferred style. Using her home as well as those of clients for case studies, she explains each space with floor plans, photographs and detailed room boards featuring fabric swatches and images of the room's elements. A beautiful presentation of Hoppen's signature style neutral palettes with light and dark contrasts, peppered with a splash of color or show-stopping piece Kelly Hoppen Home is also a useful project manual for expressing one's own vision.

If you were in London at just the right time this fall, you were able to see both Queen Elizabeth's wedding gown at Buckingham Palace and the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum's latest fashion exhibition. The queen's gown was designed by British couturier…

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