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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“I can not live without books,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote. Avid readers Sara Nelson, Nancy Pearl and Michael Dirda happily share the celebrated statesman’s sentiment. From tales of childhood to thoughts on Tolstoy and Twain, a trio of new books by these literature lovers reflects the perks and quirks of their page-turning obsession. Recreation for some, therapy for others, books can enrapture, enrage, envelop and amaze as these talented authors demonstrate. “Books get to me personally,” says New York Observer publishing columnist and self-proclaimed readaholic Sara Nelson. “When things go right, I read. When things go wrong, I read more.” In her new book, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading (Putnam, $22.95, 224 pages, ISBN 0399150838), Nelson takes the reader along for a year’s worth of literature and life, offering funny, wise commentary on the ways in which the two intersect. Nelson, who had originally intended to select 52 books for 52 weeks of reading, says her plan fell apart almost immediately. “In reading, as in life, even if you know what you’re doing, you really kind of don’t,” she says. In week one, she set out to read Ted Heller’s Funnymen, a book about stand-up comics, while staying in a Vermont home once owned by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But Heller’s gags didn’t play well in the snowy, somber setting, says Nelson. From that point forward, she says, books seemed to choose her as much as she chose them. So Many Books, So Little Time is jam-packed with memorable moments, including the unlikely writing lessons gleaned from culinary bad boy and Kitchen Confidential author Anthony Bourdain. Perhaps most memorable of all are Nelson’s musings on a reader’s right to stop reading a book he or she doesn’t like: “It’s the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion,” says the author. “The moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.'” For the record: Nelson now allows herself to toss disappointing tomes at page 20 or 200.

For many, reading is escapism. For writer and Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, books were nothing short of salvation. Raised in a lower-middle class neighborhood in Detroit, Pearl says her family defined dysfunction long before the label came to be. “All I knew then was that I was deeply and fatally unhappy,” says Pearl, author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason (Sasquatch, $16.95, 304 pages, ISBN 1570613818). During childhood and early adolescence, Pearl sought refuge at the Parkman Branch Library, where friendly librarians introduced her to books resonating with realities far brighter than her own. “It is not too much an exaggeration if it’s one at all to say that reading saved my life,” she says. Providing recommendations and revelations for more than 100 categories of books, from “Road Novels” and “Russian Heavies” to “Fabulous First Lines” and “Food for Thought,” Pearl’s approach is direct. The author of several professional books for librarians, including Now Read This, she highlights some of her favorite scribes in the category “Too Good to Miss,” offering an eclectic assortment of authors, including Robert Heinlein and Jonathan Lethem. With its short, snappy chapters, Book Lust is a must for any serious reader’s bedside table, a literary nightcap sure to prompt sweet dreams. “All that kid wants to do is stick his nose in a book,” lamented steelworker Eugene Dirda about his son Michael, a shy, bespectacled boy who preferred the pages of Thoreau to dating or sports. From humble beginnings in the Ohio rust belt town of Lorain to a top post at one of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers, Dirda’s world has always percolated with words. Both witty and wistful, An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland pays homage to a bookish youth spent in small-town America. Woven throughout the text are references to books and authors who inspired, intrigued and rankled Dirda, who is now Senior Editor for The Washington Post Book World.

Dirda gives a grateful nod to the educators and friends who influenced him in his early adult years. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist also makes peace with the man he considered impossible to please: “I forgave my father everything: He could be overbearing and worse, but his soul-deadening labor gave me the time to read and to know that my life would be privileged compared to his.” Books, it seems, can also offer redemption. Allison Block writes from La Jolla, California.

"I can not live without books," Thomas Jefferson once wrote. Avid readers Sara Nelson, Nancy Pearl and Michael Dirda happily share the celebrated statesman's sentiment. From tales of childhood to thoughts on Tolstoy and Twain, a trio of new books by these literature lovers reflects…
Review by

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the umpteenth time, and he was already wet again. Was this normal? Was changing him so often doing more harm than good? We laughed at ourselves. All our preparations the brightly painted nursery, the baby books we had absorbed, the bottles, blankets and toys we had accumulated all our preparations had not quite prepared us for the bundle of need and energy before us. We soon realized that parenting was a never-ending series of judgment calls, and that from diapers to diplomas we’d be struggling with decisions about what was best for our child.

Fortunately, new parents, and long-time parents faced with new problems, need not feel completely alone in finding the best path to follow. Many sources of advice are available, including a huge array of parenting books that address the social context in which kids and parents find themselves today. BookPage has sorted through this season’s crop of parenting books and selected a few of the best.

A child psychologist and parent himself, James Garbarino delves beyond simple parenting predicaments and writes about the perplexing and even frightening dilemmas parents are confronted with in his new book, Parents Under Siege: Why You are the Solution, Not the Problem, in Your Child’s Life. Written with child advocate Claire Bedard, this book offers a sober, realistic look at the challenges of raising children in the modern world. The authors assert that the world of American parenting changed forever after the events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, when two students went on a shooting rampage that killed 12 of their fellow schoolmates and a teacher and then killed themselves. Garbarino recognizes that cookie-cutter strategies don’t work, but offers 10 tools to help parents become more acutely aware, more mindful, and more effective in dealing with growing children and adolescents. These tools include a periscope for Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Each Child’s Individual Temperament and a glue stick for Holding Together a Child’s World in Difficult Times. And what is a child’s world? Michael Thompson, Ph. D., and Catherine O’Neill Grace do a good job of depicting that venerable, vulnerable place in Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. One of the most fascinating chapters is titled In the Jungle: The Power of the Group in the Lives of Children, which reveals the social hierarchies and underlying forces exerting pressure on children (and adults as well) in group situations. Without knowledge of these social forces, Thompson argues, we make the mistake of thinking that tragic events are driven solely by bad kids’ or gangs.’ He points out that human beings hunger for group identity and closeness, and that there are gangs of good kids in our schools too, driven to band together by the same needs and invisible yet powerful forces. Thompson is an ardent advocate of smaller schools and uses the last two chapters to outline what schools and parents can do to help ensure safe, nurturing environments where each child is acknowledged and affirmed on a daily basis. Interestingly, Thompson uses almost the same words to describe the values he would promote in teaching children good citizenship and good friendship empathy, responsibility, sharing, self-sacrifice, self-disclosure and faithfulness that Michele Bora, Ed. D., employs in her book, Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing. Her plan for raising good kids from ages 3 to 15 includes fostering the following list of values, each discussed in its own chapter: empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness. The slogan getting back to basics might well be dusted off and used to mean teaching the basic fundamentals of human decency instead of the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic! This theme is expanded on in Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age by Dan Kindlon, Ph. D. Kindlon praises baby boomers for being emotionally close to their children and for raising kids who confide in their parents more than earlier generations, but he also finds them too indulgent. We give our kids too much, he says, and we demand too little of them. Like the authors above, Kindlon believes that raising honest, charitable, compassionate, and emotionally intelligent children should be a top priority. He advocates setting reasonable limits with clear consequences for overstepping them and advises parents to choose three basic rules that they are unflinchingly consistent in enforcing. But he maintains that the foundation for stricter parenting must be built on love, time and caring, and points to research that finds families who eat dinner together and openly communicate ideas and concerns produce healthier children both physically and mentally.

Of course, even if you follow all these guidelines, like many parents, you may find that your emotionally intelligent, tolerant, respectful 15-year-old will walk out the door one day to go to soccer practice and return home having changed into some bizarre character with a wild look in his eye, strange hair and stranger clothes. If so, you’ll need to read Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, by Michael Bradley, Ed. D. Based on brain research which shows that teens do experience a temporary imbalance that causes some of their irrational behavior, this book will help you get through that maelstrom called adolescence. Still, there is no one book that can teach someone how to parent. Each child is different and brings individual challenges and joys to the task (and a few gray hairs to the head). But these books provide information, support and guidance that can help you build confidence in your parenting skills. The authors remind us of choices we can make and steps we can take to raise good, caring children (who will probably read parenting books so save them and pass them on!) and who will also become good, caring parents one day in their own right.

Linda Stankard is the mother of two she has the gray hairs to prove it and she is still honing her parenting skills after 22 years.

 

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the…

Review by

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the umpteenth time, and he was already wet again. Was this normal? Was changing him so often doing more harm than good? We laughed at ourselves. All our preparations the brightly painted nursery, the baby books we had absorbed, the bottles, blankets and toys we had accumulated all our preparations had not quite prepared us for the bundle of need and energy before us. We soon realized that parenting was a never-ending series of judgment calls, and that from diapers to diplomas we’d be struggling with decisions about what was best for our child.

Fortunately, new parents, and long-time parents faced with new problems, need not feel completely alone in finding the best path to follow. Many sources of advice are available, including a huge array of parenting books that address the social context in which kids and parents find themselves today. BookPage has sorted through this season’s crop of parenting books and selected a few of the best.

A child psychologist and parent himself, James Garbarino delves beyond simple parenting predicaments and writes about the perplexing and even frightening dilemmas parents are confronted with in his new book, Parents Under Siege: Why You are the Solution, Not the Problem, in Your Child’s Life. Written with child advocate Claire Bedard, this book offers a sober, realistic look at the challenges of raising children in the modern world. The authors assert that the world of American parenting changed forever after the events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, when two students went on a shooting rampage that killed 12 of their fellow schoolmates and a teacher and then killed themselves. Garbarino recognizes that cookie-cutter strategies don’t work, but offers 10 tools to help parents become more acutely aware, more mindful, and more effective in dealing with growing children and adolescents. These tools include a periscope for Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Each Child’s Individual Temperament and a glue stick for Holding Together a Child’s World in Difficult Times. And what is a child’s world? Michael Thompson, Ph. D., and Catherine O’Neill Grace do a good job of depicting that venerable, vulnerable place in Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. One of the most fascinating chapters is titled In the Jungle: The Power of the Group in the Lives of Children, which reveals the social hierarchies and underlying forces exerting pressure on children (and adults as well) in group situations. Without knowledge of these social forces, Thompson argues, we make the mistake of thinking that tragic events are driven solely by bad kids’ or gangs.’ He points out that human beings hunger for group identity and closeness, and that there are gangs of good kids in our schools too, driven to band together by the same needs and invisible yet powerful forces. Thompson is an ardent advocate of smaller schools and uses the last two chapters to outline what schools and parents can do to help ensure safe, nurturing environments where each child is acknowledged and affirmed on a daily basis. Interestingly, Thompson uses almost the same words to describe the values he would promote in teaching children good citizenship and good friendship empathy, responsibility, sharing, self-sacrifice, self-disclosure and faithfulness that Michele Bora, Ed. D., employs in her book, Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing. Her plan for raising good kids from ages 3 to 15 includes fostering the following list of values, each discussed in its own chapter: empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness. The slogan getting back to basics might well be dusted off and used to mean teaching the basic fundamentals of human decency instead of the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic! This theme is expanded on in Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age by Dan Kindlon, Ph. D. Kindlon praises baby boomers for being emotionally close to their children and for raising kids who confide in their parents more than earlier generations, but he also finds them too indulgent. We give our kids too much, he says, and we demand too little of them. Like the authors above, Kindlon believes that raising honest, charitable, compassionate, and emotionally intelligent children should be a top priority. He advocates setting reasonable limits with clear consequences for overstepping them and advises parents to choose three basic rules that they are unflinchingly consistent in enforcing. But he maintains that the foundation for stricter parenting must be built on love, time and caring, and points to research that finds families who eat dinner together and openly communicate ideas and concerns produce healthier children both physically and mentally.

Of course, even if you follow all these guidelines, like many parents, you may find that your emotionally intelligent, tolerant, respectful 15-year-old will walk out the door one day to go to soccer practice and return home having changed into some bizarre character with a wild look in his eye, strange hair and stranger clothes. If so, you’ll need to read Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, by Michael Bradley, Ed. D. Based on brain research which shows that teens do experience a temporary imbalance that causes some of their irrational behavior, this book will help you get through that maelstrom called adolescence. Still, there is no one book that can teach someone how to parent. Each child is different and brings individual challenges and joys to the task (and a few gray hairs to the head). But these books provide information, support and guidance that can help you build confidence in your parenting skills. The authors remind us of choices we can make and steps we can take to raise good, caring children (who will probably read parenting books so save them and pass them on!) and who will also become good, caring parents one day in their own right.

Linda Stankard is the mother of two she has the gray hairs to prove it and she is still honing her parenting skills after 22 years.

 

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the…

Review by

Medgar Evers, Sovereignty Commission, Byron De La Beckwith, Ole Miss all conjure up images of Mississippi and its pivotal role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Two new books one by a black man and another by a white woman offer fascinating glimpses into the social structure of Mississippi at a time when it was at the center of historic change.

W. Ralph Eubanks, publishing director at the Library of Congress, discovered in 1998 that his parents’ names had been on a watch list developed by the infamous Sovereignty Commission, established by the Mississippi legislature in the 1950s as a means to preserve segregation. Intrigued, Eubanks began to explore how his parents were placed on the list. His search eventually led him to retrace his Mississippi childhood, a process described in the compelling new book, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past. A combination of memoir and political history, Eubanks’ book is by turns a charming remembrance of a rural boyhood and a chilling reminder of racism’s legacy.

Eubanks’ personal narrative about growing up in the segregated South turns conventional perception on its head. He actually had, to a large degree, an idyllic childhood on a farm outside Mount Olive, Mississippi. His sheltered world was shattered only when his class became the first to integrate the local school.

The search for the truth about his parents (placed on the watch list only because they were educated black people) leads Eubanks to his own reconciliation with the world he left behind a quarter of century before. Eventually, he answers his children’s questions about Mississippi by taking a family trip to the state and reconnecting them to the rural roots that are an integral part of his character.

While Eubanks was reading Faulkner, Peggy Morgan was living a Faulkner novel. Writer Carolyn Haines chronicles this Mississippi woman’s life in My Mother’s Witness: The Peggy Morgan Story (River City, $27.95, 368 pages, ISBN 1579660428). Like Ever Is a Long Time, this is a book about the search for truth and the courage to confront it. Poor, white and uneducated, Morgan grew up in a large family dominated by an abusive, alcoholic father. In the social strata of the old South, only blacks were lower than Morgan’s family. Haines, a former journalist who has written numerous novels, portrays Morgan’s struggles to overcome the abuse that followed her from childhood into her own marriage with Lloyd Morgan, which eventually ended in abandonment and disaster.

Morgan and her mother each held a secret related to the civil rights struggle. According to Morgan, her mother died carrying the knowledge of who killed Emmett Till, a young black man from Chicago who was lynched in 1955 after allegedly whistling at a white woman. Morgan herself had information about the murder of Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader who was shot to death in his own driveway. It took more than 30 years for her to summon the courage to testify against Byron De La Beckwith, who was finally convicted of Evers’ murder in 1994.

Haines’ crisp, readable account is an inspiring look at one woman’s effort to conquer the pain and hatred that marked her youth. Read together, these two books provide a rich context for understanding the segregated South and the power that race held in creating its structure. J. Campbell Green is a Nashville businessman.

Medgar Evers, Sovereignty Commission, Byron De La Beckwith, Ole Miss all conjure up images of Mississippi and its pivotal role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Two new books one by a black man and another by a white woman offer fascinating glimpses…
Review by

War reporters are a breed apart. Armed with guts and a notebook, they seek out the action, eagerly ignoring bullets and bombs for a story. Picture Ernie Pyle in World War II, slogging through the frontlines of Europe. Imagine the ruggedly handsome Robert Capa photographing the violence of French Indochina. These are the men we think of as, if not fearless, at least undaunted. Chris Ayres of The London Times wants it to be known that he is not one of those men. In fact, he unabashedly admits, he is one of those who find themselves running in the opposite direction of the action, in short, a coward.

War Reporting for Cowards follows the extremely reluctant British journalist from a cushy assignment covering balmy Hollywood to the muddy frontlines of Iraq. Leaving his air-conditioned apartment in L.A., Ayres travels across the world to sleep crammed in a Humvee with three U.S. Marines. Their job, aside from keeping their grudgingly accepted embed alive, is to race along the near edge of enemy lines, looking for base sites for long-range artillery. Front lines don’t come much fronter. Ayres’ book is exciting, revealing and very, very, funny. Ayres knows his own limitations and never tries to paint his adventure as anything other than it is: a harrowing yet empowering journey for a young man learning he has more about him than he thinks. Ayres makes no attempts to protest or proselytize, and the book is all the better for it. He simply tells his experiences, and tells them delightfully well.

And while the book is humorous, Ayres doesn’t dodge reality. His experiences at Ground Zero on 9/11 are suitably horrifying and unashamedly gripping. Even the comic absurdity of Ayres’s presence on the battlefield (a fleshy young man in a bright blue Kevlar vest a natural target, his military handlers gleefully point out) does not lessen the severe reality of the war. War, like life, is full of contradictions. Gung-ho marines can come to appreciate nervous journalists, and a self-professed coward can find within himself his own measure of courage.

 

War reporters are a breed apart. Armed with guts and a notebook, they seek out the action, eagerly ignoring bullets and bombs for a story. Picture Ernie Pyle in World War II, slogging through the frontlines of Europe. Imagine the ruggedly handsome Robert Capa…

Review by

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the umpteenth time, and he was already wet again. Was this normal? Was changing him so often doing more harm than good? We laughed at ourselves. All our preparations the brightly painted nursery, the baby books we had absorbed, the bottles, blankets and toys we had accumulated all our preparations had not quite prepared us for the bundle of need and energy before us. We soon realized that parenting was a never-ending series of judgment calls, and that from diapers to diplomas we’d be struggling with decisions about what was best for our child.

Fortunately, new parents, and long-time parents faced with new problems, need not feel completely alone in finding the best path to follow. Many sources of advice are available, including a huge array of parenting books that address the social context in which kids and parents find themselves today. BookPage has sorted through this season’s crop of parenting books and selected a few of the best.

A child psychologist and parent himself, James Garbarino delves beyond simple parenting predicaments and writes about the perplexing and even frightening dilemmas parents are confronted with in his new book, Parents Under Siege: Why You are the Solution, Not the Problem, in Your Child’s Life. Written with child advocate Claire Bedard, this book offers a sober, realistic look at the challenges of raising children in the modern world. The authors assert that the world of American parenting changed forever after the events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, when two students went on a shooting rampage that killed 12 of their fellow schoolmates and a teacher and then killed themselves. Garbarino recognizes that cookie-cutter strategies don’t work, but offers 10 tools to help parents become more acutely aware, more mindful, and more effective in dealing with growing children and adolescents. These tools include a periscope for Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Each Child’s Individual Temperament and a glue stick for Holding Together a Child’s World in Difficult Times. And what is a child’s world? Michael Thompson, Ph. D., and Catherine O’Neill Grace do a good job of depicting that venerable, vulnerable place in Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. One of the most fascinating chapters is titled In the Jungle: The Power of the Group in the Lives of Children, which reveals the social hierarchies and underlying forces exerting pressure on children (and adults as well) in group situations. Without knowledge of these social forces, Thompson argues, we make the mistake of thinking that tragic events are driven solely by Ôbad kids’ or Ôgangs.’ He points out that human beings hunger for group identity and closeness, and that there are gangs of good kids in our schools too, driven to band together by the same needs and invisible yet powerful forces. Thompson is an ardent advocate of smaller schools and uses the last two chapters to outline what schools and parents can do to help ensure safe, nurturing environments where each child is acknowledged and affirmed on a daily basis. Interestingly, Thompson uses almost the same words to describe the values he would promote in teaching children good citizenship and good friendship empathy, responsibility, sharing, self-sacrifice, self-disclosure and faithfulness that Michele Bora, Ed. D., employs in her book, Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing. Her plan for raising good kids from ages 3 to 15 includes fostering the following list of values, each discussed in its own chapter: empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness. The slogan getting back to basics might well be dusted off and used to mean teaching the basic fundamentals of human decency instead of the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic! This theme is expanded on in Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age by Dan Kindlon, Ph. D. Kindlon praises baby boomers for being emotionally close to their children and for raising kids who confide in their parents more than earlier generations, but he also finds them too indulgent. We give our kids too much, he says, and we demand too little of them. Like the authors above, Kindlon believes that raising honest, charitable, compassionate, and emotionally intelligent children should be a top priority. He advocates setting reasonable limits with clear consequences for overstepping them and advises parents to choose three basic rules that they are unflinchingly consistent in enforcing. But he maintains that the foundation for stricter parenting must be built on love, time and caring, and points to research that finds families who eat dinner together and openly communicate ideas and concerns produce healthier children both physically and mentally.

Of course, even if you follow all these guidelines, like many parents, you may find that your emotionally intelligent, tolerant, respectful 15-year-old will walk out the door one day to go to soccer practice and return home having changed into some bizarre character with a wild look in his eye, strange hair and stranger clothes. If so, you’ll need to read Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, by Michael Bradley, Ed. D. Based on brain research which shows that teens do experience a temporary imbalance that causes some of their irrational behavior, this book will help you get through that maelstrom called adolescence. Still, there is no one book that can teach someone how to parent. Each child is different and brings individual challenges and joys to the task (and a few gray hairs to the head). But these books provide information, support and guidance that can help you build confidence in your parenting skills. The authors remind us of choices we can make and steps we can take to raise good, caring children (who will probably read parenting books so save them and pass them on!) and who will also become good, caring parents one day in their own right.

Linda Stankard is the mother of two she has the gray hairs to prove it and she is still honing her parenting skills after 22 years.

I remember laying my first-born child down on our bed when we brought him home from the hospital. My husband and I stood looking down at this unpredictable, demanding little life force in awe and wonder. We had just changed his diaper for the…

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