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Connie

With candor and humor, Connie Chung shares the highs and lows of her trailblazing career as a journalist in her invigorating memoir, Connie.
With candor and humor, Connie Chung shares the highs and lows of her trailblazing career as a journalist in her invigorating memoir, Connie.
NonfictionMemoirLGBTQ+

Frighten the Horses

Oliver Radclyffe’s Frighten the Horses is a powerful standout among the burgeoning subgenre of gender transition memoirs.
Oliver Radclyffe’s Frighten the Horses is a powerful standout among the burgeoning subgenre of gender transition memoirs.
NonfictionMemoir

Health and Safety

Emily Witt’s sharp, deeply personal memoir, Health and Safety, invites us to relive a tumultuous era in American history through the eyes of a keen observer.
Emily Witt’s sharp, deeply personal memoir, Health and Safety, invites us to relive a tumultuous era in American history through the eyes of a keen observer.
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Thomas L. Friedman

Interview by Alden Mudge

During the dog days of last summer, as the national press corps went baying after the elusive Gary Condit, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece called "A Memo from Osama." Entertaining, ironic and caustic in the same instant, the "memo" warned of the consequences of a U.S. failure to respond to "the threat that already exists." The name of that threat, unfamiliar to most Americans at the time, would become a household word in a few short months.

After the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, this and several other pre-9/11 columns included in Friedman’s new book, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After Sept. 11, seem shockingly clear-sighted and prescient. They offer glimpses into the future that seem to surprise even Friedman himself. "Man," he says, sounding bemused, "there are lines in those columns that are prophetic. In terms of what happened, I was paying attention."

Since Sept. 11, as regular readers of his twice-weekly column know, Friedman has, if anything, been paying even closer attention. "I’ve been on a really unique journey," he says. "I’ve been to Pakistan twice, to Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel."

Probably no one else—journalist or diplomat—has pursued the complex threads of this story as relentlessly as Friedman. In fact, when we speak by phone, Friedman has just returned from Tehran, Iran, where he was exploring one of the recurring themes of this collection—the need to wage and support a war of ideas in the Arab Muslim world.

"I really try to get the point across that when we start calling people the ‘Axis of Evil,’ we miss the complexity of these societies and the number of potential partners we have inside these societies who share our world view," he says."We have to make sure we’re inviting these people into our future. Ideas matter. We can kill bin Laden, but somebody’s got to kill bin Ladenism. Somebody’s got to kill the ideas that not only nurture him, but create an environment in which so many people tacitly support him. We can help, but ultimately the Arab Muslim world has to do that itself."

As a result of such views—as well as his years of experience in the Middle East, first as a reporter for UPI and then for The New York Times—Friedman "gets a huge amount of email from the Arab Muslim world." Parts of those messages he reprints in the third section of Longitudes and Attitudes. That section is comprised of a series of diaries he kept between September 2001 and June 2002. The diaries make for fascinating reading because they contain anecdotes and analysis Friedman was unable to include in his regular columns, offering a behind-the-scenes look at issues Friedman is writing about and personalities he meets.

One of the surprises in these diaries is how many of Friedman’s contacts and correspondents are Muslim women. Another is the pointed description of a little power play by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that very nearly leaves Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Friedman stranded at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Still another is an eye-opening portrait of the new Russia.

But most interesting of all—in the diaries and in the collected post-Sept. 11 columns that form the bulk of this book—is Friedman’s probing examination of Saudi Arabia. Probably the most important question motivating Friedman’s unique journey during the last nine months has been why 15 young Saudis were involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"The Arab Muslim world is going through a hard time," he says, "and I have a lot of sympathy for them. They’re struggling with, and in some cases failing at, modernization. That’s because of three deficits that have been building up there for more than 50 years. I’m quoting here from a U.N. study that’s just come out that says it’s a deficit of freedom, it’s a deficit of education and it’s a deficit of women’s empowerment. Thanks to these three deficits they’ve dug themselves a really deep hole."

The dark side of all this, Friedman writes in his diaries, is that it leads to what he calls the "Circle of bin Ladenism, which is made up of three components: antidemocratic leaders, who empower antimodernist Moslem religious educators to gain legitimacy, who then produce a generation of young people who have not been educated in ways that enable them to flourish in the modern world."

Opinions like this—and equally direct criticism of actions by President Bush, Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat—have earned Friedman some powerful detractors. About this, Friedman is philosophical: "Being a columnist is not a friend growth industry. If you’re going to do this job, you have to pull the trigger on people, sometimes on people you like. If you’re not ready to do that, readers can smell it at a hundred paces. . . . A column is like currency, and you can really debase your own currency. I guard zealously the integrity and quality of the column every bit as much as the secretary of treasury does the integrity and quality of the U.S. dollar."

So while his critics may have grown more vociferous, Friedman’s popularity has also grown and changed since Sept. 11. "Before 9/11 the CEO read me; now his secretary reads me, too," he says. "Twice I’ve had bicycle delivery boys stop me on the street in Washington and comment on something they’ve read in my column. . . . This is not in any way exclusive to me. After 9/11, Americans understand that foreign policy is now a real life-or-death matter. It’s about the world their kids are going to grow up in, and as a result, they want to know what’s going on."

And, according to Friedman, what’s going on remains pretty dark. In his first column after Sept. 11, 2001, Friedman called the attacks the beginning of World War III. Although personally an "innate optimist who is constantly looking for solutions," Friedman stands by his initial assessment.

"Some big events, over time, end up being smaller than they first seem," he says. "My view is that 9/11 will turn out to have been bigger than it first seemed and it seemed—pretty big to begin with. It is a huge event in terms of the degree to which it will change our habits, our politics, international relations and the long-term internal discussion in the Arab Muslim world. As I say in the diaries, on 9/11 a wall of civilization was breached that we could not imagine would ever be breached. And the long-term implications of that are just enormous."

Alden Mudge writes from Oakland, California.

During the dog days of last summer, as the national press corps went baying after the elusive Gary Condit, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece called "A Memo from Osama." Entertaining, ironic and caustic in the same instant, the "memo" warned of the consequences of a U.S. failure to respond […]
History

H.W. Brands

Interview by Edward Morris

Gold had been found at various places in California before James Marshall made his now-fabled discovery in January 1848 near the sawmill he was building for businessman John Sutter. But coming as it did in the same year that America took California from Mexico, Marshall's far richer find was pivotal in changing the course of national history. Fueled by the ambitions and needs of hordes of fortune-seekers, the territory would, within the next two years, be admitted into the Union as a "free" state, thereby heating up the political pot that ultimately exploded into the Civil War.

In The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream, historian H.W. Brands examines these whirlwind developments through accounts left by those who took part in them. After setting the scene of the discovery and explaining how word of it spread around the world, Brands follows the individual progress of a handful of pilgrims as they travel overland or by ship to this 19th century El Dorado. He then demonstrates how the bustling region proceeded to cast its shadow over the rest of the country.

Chronicling an entire epoch was a new experience for Brands, a Pulitzer Prize nominee who teaches American history at Texas A&M University. "I had recently done a couple of biographies," he says, "and when you do a biography, especially the way I do it as a life and times you get a long but rather narrow slice of history. For example, I did a biography of Benjamin Franklin [The First American]. His life spanned almost the entire 18th century, with the result that, in tracing his life, I could trace the course of American history over nearly a century. But because I focused on one person, I tended to get a rather narrow view of that history. What I wanted was a different approach. In choosing the California gold rush, what I did was turn that window of history on its side, so that instead of being long and narrow, it was very wide but rather short. Instead of looking at 84 years the term of Franklin's life through one person, I looked at eight or 10 years through the eyes of the dozen or so people I focused on. This is the way of getting at an event as opposed to getting at a life."

Brands, whose other biography is T.R., a life of Theodore Roosevelt, says he spent about five years researching and writing The Age of Gold. "My interest in the gold rush began when I was in college," he explains. "I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and went to college in California. I had occasion then to travel around in the gold country of the Sierra Mountains. I was intrigued by it, and I've always had this notion to come back to that area and that subject."

Among the figures Brands accompanies on their arduous treks to the gold fields are Jessie Fremont, daughter of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton and wife of California settler John Fremont, and Sarah Royce, who would become the mother of philosopher Josiah Royce.

Brands' descriptions of the parched landscape and daily privations that nearly took Mrs. Royce's life are especially vivid. "Before I was a historian," Brands says, "I spent a while as a traveling salesman. My territory was from the West Coast to Denver. So I drove along all the Humboldt River and over Immigrant Pass, east of Salt Lake City, across the Great Salt Desert and along large stretches of the Oregon and California Trails. Of course, you don't see it exactly as it looked in 1849, although I will say this, there are big sections of that part of the West where, if you just turn your back to the interstate or whatever paved road you're on, it looks a lot like it did 150 years ago." Because the gold attracted such an array of talents, energies and egos, it fostered a can-do attitude and an impatience with the status quo that, Brands argues, remains a part of the California character to this day. In his estimation, the gold rush was not a manifestation of greed. "Greed is what you call it if you think it's not deserved or it's excessive," he contends. "People who went to California didn't consider themselves greedy. They saw that this was an opportunity to improve their lives. Most of the people didn't think they were going to make $10 million. They would have been quite happy to make $500 or $1,000 enough so they could buy a farm, for example, rather than rent a farm, so that they would have enough money to marry their childhood sweetheart, so that they could start the business they wanted to start. For most of them, it was this opportunity to make a shortcut toward their vision of happiness."

Brands admits that his study of history has shaped his own political outlook: "I think it gives me greater tolerance for the fact that we always seem to muddle through, one way or another. There have been dozens of moments in American history where it looked as though we were in a crisis that the country might not survive and that some big decision had to be made and if it wasn't made right, then the entire American republican experiment would come tumbling down. Despite all of those grim warnings, the Republic still carries on. . . . There are these things [like the September 11 terrorist attacks] that pop up, and at the moment they seem to be the most important things one could imagine. It's easy to think and sometimes it's attractive to think that we live at this turning point in history, because it confers a certain kind of importance on us."

Brands' manuscript for his new book was already in the hands of his publisher when the stories broke about the alleged plagiarisms by fellow historians Stephen E. Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Even in light of this news, he says his publisher did not ask him to re-check his own work. "It's had a lot of reverberations in the historical community," he notes. "It comes down to a question of whether these were matters of simple oversight, or sloppiness or intent to deceive, and professional historians have taken different views. It's hard to say where the truth lies, but I think we all try to do the best job we can." Next up for Brands will be a book on the Texas Revolution of the 1830s.

 

Gold had been found at various places in California before James Marshall made his now-fabled discovery in January 1848 near the sawmill he was building for businessman John Sutter. But coming as it did in the same year that America took California from Mexico, Marshall's far richer find was pivotal in changing the course of […]
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Tackling a weighty problem

Review by bookpagedev

Beginning with this book’s subtitle “How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World” you get the idea that the author, journalist Greg Critser, isn’t going to pull any punches. And he doesn’t. Readers looking for an easy solution to the nation’s weight problem or their own won’t find it here. As Critser explains it, a convergence of circumstances, none particularly ominous in itself, brought us to where we are today. A relaxation of trade barriers in the 1970s, combined with simultaneous advances in food-processing technologies, gave us cheap sweeteners and cooking fats. These enabled fast-food and snack-food purveyors to increase portion sizes without substantially increasing their costs, an irresistible incentive for us to overeat. Also during this period, tax-cutting movements reduced school budgets. This factor led to the dropping or cutting back of physical education classes and the introduction of high-fat fast foods into the schools. At the same time, more women were joining the work force, which meant that they had less time to prepare food at home and monitor the family diet. Even as our individual and collective weight problems grew, Critser says, opportunists made money and reputations by convincing us that there were swift and painless ways to handle the consequences of our gluttony. Some diet theories held that we could eat more and still lose pounds. Special interest groups protested that too much attention to weight would drive young girls to anorexia and cause overweight people to form poor self-images. But there is more here than history and harangue. Having explained why Americans have become fat, Critser then details what this costs in terms of such diseases as diabetes and cancer. He also explores the roles that culture and class play in this national epidemic. Although breezily written, Fat Land is a profoundly disturbing book. The forces that drive Americans to overeat are so strong and entrenched that when we reach Critser’s final chapter, “What Can Be Done,” it seems like a straw in the wind.

Beginning with this book’s subtitle “How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World” you get the idea that the author, journalist Greg Critser, isn’t going to pull any punches. And he doesn’t. Readers looking for an easy solution to the nation’s weight problem or their own won’t find it here. As Critser explains it, […]
Memoir

Pat Conroy

Interview by Jay MacDonald

To the winners go the sports biographies; to the losers go the deathly quiet locker rooms, the self-flagellation, the proverbial kiss from your sister. As a result, we know a whole lot more about the thrill of victory than the agony of defeat.

Pat Conroy didn't set out to rectify that inequity by writing My Losing Season, a painfully detailed memoir of his senior year on the 1966-67 Citadel Bulldogs basketball squad that soldiered through an ignominious 8-17 season. Call it a requiem for all the runners-up who, like Conroy, turned defeat on the playing field into victory in other aspects of their lives.

As a fast, street-hardened 5-foot-10 point guard, Conroy was a fiery competitor who always believed he could play above his physical limitations and frequently did. Like his teammates, Conroy didn't lose well. Unlike the others, however, he found a way to learn something from each defeat that would make him a better ballplayer.

His steely resolve in the face of such a spirit-crushing season ultimately gave him the self-confidence to become one of America's best-loved writers. If losing builds character, Pat Conroy is your poster boy for also-rans.

"What was for these guys the worst year of their lives was in many ways the best year of my life," Conroy says by phone during a seaside vacation in Maine. "It was certainly the year I found myself, found out who I was and what I was going to do. And found belief in myself, which I don't think I ever had before that year."

Conroy was at a personal low point in 1996 when a former teammate stopped by his Dayton, Ohio, book signing for his most recent novel, Beach Music. On the cusp of the big 5-0, the author was in the middle of a messy divorce and seriously contemplating suicide ("I have a history of cracking up at least once during the writing of each of my last five books," he admits).

Somehow, reminiscing about glory days, even of such an inglorious season, seemed to lift his spirits. "The one thing I knew about basketball, despite how hard that year was, is that nothing has ever brought me joy like playing basketball," he says.

Conroy spent the next year dropping in on his former teammates, picking their memories to reconstruct a season most had worked hard to forget. Playing under a tyrannical old-school coach had spoiled the game for many of them; few had even bothered to stay in touch after graduation. "I ruined their lives reliving this. They were in agony talking about this year!" he says, letting loose his distinctive Irish chuckle.

For Conroy, however, even a dysfunctional team had been a welcome respite from the desensitizing plebe system at The Citadel and a horrific upbringing under his abusive father, the tough-as-nails Marine fighter pilot who inspired The Great Santini (1976).

As unpleasant as the forced march through Palookaville had been for his teammates, it paled in comparison to their apprehension at actually appearing in one of Conroy's books. After all, here was the guy who had rather spectacularly alienated his family with The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides (1986), and lobbed a literary grenade at his alma mater with The Lords of Discipline (1980).

"None of them have read a word of [My Losing Season]," he admits. "It tickled me, they were so terrified of it. (Mimics locker room chat) 'Look what he did to his f—-ing school!' 'School? Look what he did to his old man!' Their wives are scared to death."

They needn't be. All of the Bulldogs come off as stouthearted and true, if considerably browbeaten by circumstance.

One memory from that long-ago campaign left Conroy speechless:

"I remember the East Carolina game as being the first game Mom and Dad ever saw me play college basketball. It was a big deal for me. And all I remember was how it ended up, with Dad putting me against the wall saying, 'You're s—-, son. Your team is s—-, your coach is s—-, you couldn't hold my jock on your best day.' It was a horrible scene, and I was 21 then, I wasn't a kid anymore.

"To go back to that game and find out I scored 25 points stunned me; I had assumed I'd scored two or three. It shocked me. I scored more points than anybody on either team. And when I wrote that, when I saw the box score, I said, I had a father who couldn't be proud of a son who scored 25 points in a college basketball game. What could I have done to earn the respect of that son of a bitch? It simply amazed me."

Equally amazing, Conroy reconciled with his father before the real Great Santini died in 1998.

"Yeah, we did. I was surprised. I hated him so badly when I was a child and when I was in college that I thought I would never speak to him again after college. It shocked people when we became friends," he recalls.

Conroy's life has taken a happier turn in recent years. At 56, he's married to fellow writer Cassandra King, whose first novel, The Sunday Wife, was published by Hyperion in September. They live on Fripp Island near Beaufort, South Carolina, the setting for most of his novels and the one place on earth Conroy considers home. He's hard at work on his next novel, set in Charleston and the mountains of North Carolina.

Though he wouldn't want to relive it, Conroy says the trials of his youth helped him withstand the barbs of critics.

"I always tell myself, would I rather get a bad review in The New York Times or report to my First Sergeant's room after evening mess? The answer is always the same. I think that being beat up as much as I was during my childhood is a great preparation for being a writer. To be a writer in America is a contact sport. You've got to be tough."

Jay Lee MacDonald is a writer based in Naples, Florida.

To the winners go the sports biographies; to the losers go the deathly quiet locker rooms, the self-flagellation, the proverbial kiss from your sister. As a result, we know a whole lot more about the thrill of victory than the agony of defeat. Pat Conroy didn't set out to rectify that inequity by writing My […]
History

The British Empire reconsidered

Review by bookpagedev

In her consistently enlightening new book, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850, award-winning historian Linda Colley examines the limitations and vulnerabilities of the British Empire during its most wide-ranging period. In 1820, one out of every five human beings on earth was under English rule a formidable fact to consider. Yet Colley proposes that because of its small size, and its dependence on maritime power and the land and resources of other people, “Britain’s empire was always overstretched, often superficial, and likely to be limited in duration.” In Colley’s view, unless we understand the phenomenon of the captivity of British subjects by enemies of that imperial power, we cannot properly appreciate or assess Britain’s overseas experience. By focusing on captivity narratives from the early 17th century to the Victorian era, Colley demonstrates the weaknesses of British power during that period. Focusing on narratives from the Mediterranean (primarily North Africa), North America and India, with a short section on Afghanistan, she offers the stories of men and women of diverse ethnic backgrounds as a means of increasing our understanding of the captivity experience. Her book offers an illuminating re-examination of the colonial experience, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Almost without exception, Colley demonstrates, individuals became captives because they were not part of the aristocracy, and the government was powerless or indifferent when it came to offering help. It’s interesting to note that when paying ransom to obtain a captive’s release was an option, the government did not play a primary role, but churches in England often did. Colley’s discussions of each of the narratives is engrossing. We see how individuals learned to adapt to changing circumstances, often with the objective of personal survival. Although the narratives often mix insightful reportage with religious, political and historical prejudice, they remain valuable testaments to the relationship between the oppressor and oppressed, despite their shortcomings as historical truth. This is an insightful and stimulating book that presents history with a fresh perspective. Roger Bishop is a frequent contributor to BookPage.

In her consistently enlightening new book, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850, award-winning historian Linda Colley examines the limitations and vulnerabilities of the British Empire during its most wide-ranging period. In 1820, one out of every five human beings on earth was under English rule a formidable fact to consider. Yet Colley proposes that […]
Medicine

A guided tour of the child

Review by bookpagedev

In contrast to most writing on science and medicine targeted at the general public, Darshak Sanghavi’s A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body is an example of expert storytelling a true page-turner. A pediatrician and medical researcher, Sanghavi has worked chiefly at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, but also in rural Appalachia, Japan, Kenya, Peru and in Navaho country for the Indian Health Service. His profession has provided him with a wealth of illuminating stories that he weaves together seamlessly in his first book.

His wife’s positive pregnancy test, confirming that he was to become a father, influenced Sanghavi’s decision to write A Map of the Child. The narrative is structured as a guide to the organ systems of the pediatric body lungs, heart and brain, for example. It explains how they develop, explores the things that can go wrong with them and shows how those things can be made right. Although the child is the major focus, Sanghavi takes a broader view, writing “with the hope that understanding medicine and disease can itself be healing.” That understanding can improve the odds of having a healthy newborn, as well as comfort a family dealing with a child’s illness.

Sanghavi celebrates the medical advances that have saved the lives of countless children. Among the many examples he describes are surfactants, super-slippery substances that now rescue most of the more than 20,000 babies born each year with immature lungs. But he’s also aware of the limitations still to be overcome: bone marrow transplants can work miracles, although only when the match to the recipient is near-perfect. One of the book’s most moving narratives relates the death of a teenager whose transplant didn’t work.

Sanghavi’s broad perspective encompasses a range of topics, from anatomy and physiology to such controversial subjects as circumcision, vaccination for chicken pox and alternative medicine. Compelling, thoughtful and informative, A Map of the Child deserves a wide audience. Albert L. Huebner, a physicist, writes on science for numerous publications.

In contrast to most writing on science and medicine targeted at the general public, Darshak Sanghavi’s A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body is an example of expert storytelling a true page-turner. A pediatrician and medical researcher, Sanghavi has worked chiefly at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, but also in rural Appalachia, Japan, […]

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