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Defining Style

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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A trio of tempting titles for the holidays

Review by bookpagedev

Let’s face it: nothing spoils the holiday season quite like shopping can. Getting the goods requires a tactical plan that would make MacArthur proud. Luckily, the intrepid editors of BookPage have run reconnaissance for readers, scouting out the hottest titles for the holidays. Armed with these great gift ideas the best in music, photography and dance you can cut those shopping skirmishes short and keep your inner Scrooge at bay.

Was ever a man more comely to look upon than Mikhail Baryshnikov? This specimen of physical perfection first entranced the world in 1974 with his thrilling defection from the Soviet Union while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Canada. Impish, tousled and utterly endearing, he quickly became the darling of the dance world, working with the West’s top choreographers and companies. Baryshnikov in Black and White (Bloomsbury, $60, 321 pages, ISBN 1582341869), a stunning collection of 175 performance and rehearsal photographs, follows the course of the star’s career outside the Soviet block, spanning nearly three decades and showcasing the dancer’s many abilities and moods from mischievous boy, to seductive satyr, to tortured madman.

Cataloguing Misha’s greatest moments on the stage and in the theatre, the book features photos from ballet classics like The Nutcracker, as well as shots of modern works by Martha Graham, Paul Taylor and Mark Morris. The dancer’s pure lines and remarkable versatility are dramatically documented here, as are his partnerships with primas like Natalia Makarova. The hooded eyes, the mighty thighs, the aura of melancholy all are unmistakably Misha. With an introduction by ballet critic Joan Acocella, this volume is a wonderful tribute to the greatest male dancer of our time.

Satisfaction for Stones fans Raunchy, rowdy and simmering with sexuality, The Rolling Stones stumbled onto the London pop scene in 1962, beginning a tumultuous 40-year career marked early on by the inimitable swagger of Mick Jagger, the cheekiness of Keith Richards, the dignified reserve of Charlie Watts and for a time the beatific beauty of Brian Jones. Also along for one of the wildest rides in rock n’ roll history was Stones bassist Bill Wyman, a bluesman turned author and documentarian, whose terrific new book Rolling with the Stones (DK, $50, 496 pages, ISBN 0798489678) combines more than 2,000 photographs with classic visuals and band artifacts, as well as behind-the-scenes stories about Mick and the boys. This mod, mad volume traces the arc of the group’s career, capturing the trippy ’60s and excessive ’70s, dishing on chick sidekicks Marianne Faithfull and Bianca Jagger, and providing background info on classic blues-inflected albums like Sticky Fingers. Wyman also includes band bios, covering temporary Stone Mick Taylor along with Ron Wood, as well as input from the band about their musical influences, public and private lives, and the longevity of their legend. The ultimate Stones scrapbook, this vivid volume is the perfect gift for fans of the band Bill Graham once called “the biggest draw in the history of mankind.” Wounds of war It was a war from which we’ve never recovered, fought in an era when pop culture collided with politics. Vietnam was nearly the unmaking of our nation, and now a stirring new volume collects classic images of the conflict snapped by Larry Burrows, one of the century’s greatest photojournalists. With 150 color and black-and-white photographs, Larry Burrows Vietnam delivers the drama of combat with remarkable sensitivity and detail. The intrepid Englishman who strapped himself to the open door of a plane in order to shoot some of the pictures featured in the book covered the conflict from 1962 until his death in 1971, when the helicopter he flew in was shot down near the Vietnam-Laos border. Published in Life magazine (for which Burrows went to work at the age of 16), each of the volume’s 11 pictorial essays distills the nightmare reality of battle: wounded children, trussed prisoners, Asian women wracked by grief, soldiers stealing sleep amidst the litter of American luxuries chocolate and matches, cigarettes and soap, the bright wrappers emphatic on green grass. With an introduction by David Halberstam, Larry Burrows Vietnam is a profoundly moving visual reminiscence of war.

Let's face it: nothing spoils the holiday season quite like shopping can. Getting the goods requires a tactical plan that would make MacArthur proud. Luckily, the intrepid editors of BookPage have run reconnaissance for readers, scouting out the hottest titles for the holidays. Armed with…
NonfictionEssays

The perils of war reporting

Review by bookpagedev

On September 9, 2001, two suicidal Arabs posing as journalists murdered Ahmed Shah Massoud, the brilliant strategist of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Two days later, Al Qaeda operatives flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center. In The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan, a collection of pieces written for The New Yorker magazine, reporter Jon Lee Anderson develops a strong case that the two events were related with Massoud’s death quashing the best chance of tracking and capturing Osama bin Laden.

Afghan intelligence officials surmise that the link between Massoud’s slaying and the attack on the World Trade Center was this: Al Qaeda anticipated that Massoud’s death would destroy the Northern Alliance. Thus, if America struck back, it would have no Afghan allies on the ground. Anderson writes that Massoud, as a veteran of two decades of fighting in Afghanistan, knew most of the places where bin Laden might hide. In the early stages of U.S. retaliation, televised news featured on-the-spot reports by national and local anchors. These visiting stars typically attended military briefings, peered through the windows and returned home a few days later as “experts.” Then there were the seasoned war reporters who sneaked into places where few sane people dared to go. That’s what Anderson did in order to capture better than television could the nuances of a land ruled by gun-hugging tribal chiefs, ruthless warlords and gangs of renegade Taliban fighters.

Anderson shares his exclusive moments with people high and low officials, warlords, prisoners, bandits, peasants and details the perplexing politics, deep-rooted blood feuds and shifting allegiances that characterize Afghanistan. A special treat is the collection of private messages Anderson sent to The New Yorker. The messages reflect the perils of war reporting and the savvy required to get a story to the editors. This compelling book supports the widely held notion that no job in journalism is harder than the foreign correspondent’s. To understand September 11, we have to understand Afghanistan and that’s what Anderson bravely helps us do. Alan Prince, a former news editor, lectures at the University of Miami.

On September 9, 2001, two suicidal Arabs posing as journalists murdered Ahmed Shah Massoud, the brilliant strategist of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Two days later, Al Qaeda operatives flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center. In The Lion's Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan,…
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Highlights from Hawaiian history

Review by bookpagedev

Sarah Vowell’s subversive wit and heady take on history are well known from her previous best-sellers such as The Wordy Shipmates and Assassination Vacation, as well as her work on Public Radio International’s “This American Life.” Her latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes, delivers a romp through Hawaiian history beginning in 1819. The New England missionaries who arrived that year were some of the first “unfamiliar fishes” to come ashore bringing visions of change for the islands—welcome or not. “Hawaiians,” she tells us, “have a word for all the pasty-faced explorers, Bible thumpers, whalers, tycoons, con men, soldiers and vacationers” who disrespect their culture: haole.

Vowell writes with characteristic straightforwardness in describing one such haole, Walter Murray Gibson, who came to the islands in the 1860s with various schemes designed to spread Mormonism and immortalize himself. At 21, as a recently widowed father of three, he wrote, “I wanted to fly on the wings of the wind toward the rising sun.” Vowell translates: “Which is a poetic way of saying he ditched his kids with his dead wife’s relatives and lit out on a life of adventure.”

There are many colorful characters throughout the book—King Kamehameha the Great, Henry Obookiah, Princess Nahi’ena—but one of the most fascinating is Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian queen, who traveled to America to appeal directly to Congress not to annex her country. Though fighting to stay queen of a sovereign nation, she visited George Washington’s tomb, writing in her memoirs admiringly about “that great man who assisted at the birth of the nation which has grown to be so great.”

Liliuokalani was the last graduate of Hawaii’s royal school, a place designed to Americanize the royal children. Another school established for the children of missionaries became a world-class institution that counts our current president as an alumnus. “I wonder,” Vowell muses, “what Liliuokalani might have thought witnessing President Obama’s inauguration when the marching band from Punahou School, his alma mater (and that of her enemies), would serenade the new president by playing a song she had written, ‘Aloha ’Oe.’ ”

With observations like these, Unfamiliar Fishes will help readers appreciate our beautiful 50th state like never before.

 

Sarah Vowell’s subversive wit and heady take on history are well known from her previous best-sellers such as The Wordy Shipmates and Assassination Vacation, as well as her work on Public Radio International’s “This American Life.” Her latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes, delivers a romp through…

Sports

Sports scribes

Review by Ron Kaplan

For baseball fans who admire fine writing as much as a home-run swing, two new collections will be at the top of the spring roster. Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: My Lifelong Passion for Baseball (Norton, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0393057550) by the late Stephen Jay Gould is a wonderful collection of essays and book reviews the author contributed to The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. Reminiscing about old players and new theories, about the use of statistics and the blue melancholy of being a Red Sox fan, the author writes about the game with warmth and authority. As baseball scribe for The New Yorker, Roger Angell has been writing about the game for more than 40 years. Game Time: A Baseball Companion spans four decades and collects the best of his work. He has seen the game morph from a "plantation mentality," in which the owners called all the shots, to today's sport where, it could be said, the inmates are running the asylum. With his ability to take the reader below the surface, Angell gains access to old idols like Tom Seaver, as well as today's stars, including Pedro Martinez and Barry Bonds. In his hands, these players are more than just numbers in a box score; they're men with depth and soul. Angell's thoughtful prose will warm baseball fans even on the coldest days of the off-season.

 

For baseball fans who admire fine writing as much as a home-run swing, two new collections will be at the top of the spring roster. Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: My Lifelong Passion for Baseball (Norton, $24.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0393057550) by the late…

History

You’ve come a long way, baby

Review by bookpagedev

<B>You’ve come a long way, baby</B> Single women of America take note life is good. Parents and friends may nag you about getting hitched, but no one questions your right to go to college and have an interesting job, a house, a car even a live-in boyfriend. Most women under 50 take for granted the idea that they can be smart, sexy, successful and respectable without men in their lives. But journalist Betsy Israel’s insightful new book, <B>Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century</B>, takes a revealing look at just how far the single woman has come.

Drawing on private journals, newspaper articles and personal interviews, Israel pieces together a fascinating history of single women in America, from 19th-century spinsters to today’s <I>Sex and the City </I>icons. She takes readers into the factories of 1870s New York, where some single working girls took up part-time prostitution to supplement their $2-a-week salary. And she conveys the dismay of 1940s-era women who worked in factories and white-collar professions during World War II only to be sent back home after the war or viewed as job stealers if they stayed on.

Israel packs more than a century’s worth of information into a detailed and entertaining overview of the bachelor girl’s evolution. She also presents snapshots of women’s lives against a backdrop of society’s changing attitudes as depicted in the media. While single women have more opportunities than ever before, the pressure to marry and follow traditional paths is still prevalent.

By and large, however, today’s society accepts that a single woman can live life on her own terms. For those girls and the country’s women in general, Israel’s <B>Bachelor Girl</B> serves as a reminder, as well as a yardstick: You may have come a long way, but don’t forget the countless hardy souls who made it possible. <I>Rebecca Denton is an editor and writer in Nashville.</I>

<B>You've come a long way, baby</B> Single women of America take note life is good. Parents and friends may nag you about getting hitched, but no one questions your right to go to college and have an interesting job, a house, a car even a…

NonfictionFictionMemoir

A heartwarming toast to all things Irish

Review by Trisha Ping

Tired of kissing people who claim to be Irish? Not interested in wearing green or adopting a brogue for the holiday weekend? For those of you wanting to get past the cliches and stereotypes that always seem to surface around St. Patrick's Day, we've found a few books by Irish authors that should do the trick. So get in the authentic spirit of the holiday with one of these timely releases celebrating the vibrant culture, people and history of the Emerald Isle.

Admirers of Nuala O'Faolain and Frank McCourt will be happy to hear there are some new Irish memoirs appearing this month. Midlife Irish by Frank Gannon is one of the best. Gannon is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and GQ, and his story of getting in touch with his Irish heritage is both humorous and touching. "Growing up, I knew I was Irish in much the same way I knew I had asthma. I knew I had it but I didn't know anything about it," he explains. One morning, as he approaches middle age, Gannon decides to travel to Ireland with his wife to uncover the mysterious pasts of his Irish-born parents. On the way, he discusses Ireland's past, present and future in a unique and always readable voice. Whatever your ethnic or geographical origins, you'll be wondering about the untold stories lurking in your family's past after reading this book.

If it's the pot o' gold you're after, this next memoir might help you find it. In It's a Long Way From Penny Apples, millionaire Bill Cullen details his rags-to-riches journey from his early days of selling penny apples in the streets of Dublin to becoming the owner of the Glencullen Motor Group. Food was scarce, the family of 15 lived in one dank room and two of Cullen's siblings died of pneumonia, but the darker side of the author's past is glossed over in favor of amazing-but-true anecdotes. For example, he was so interested in learning that he followed his older sisters to school at age 2 and ended up graduating at 13. At age 11, he purchased hundreds of Kewpie dolls from a street vendor, dressed them as Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland with the help of his sister Vera and sold them for a profit. Bill Cullen definitely worked his way to the top, and you'll be rooting for him all the way.

Brendan O'Carroll's latest installment of the Agnes Browne series is sure to bring a smile to your Irish eyes. The Young Wan is set before the other novels in the series (The Mammy, The Chisellers and The Granny) and sheds light on Agnes' life as a child and young woman in 1940s Dublin. It's the eve of her wedding to Redser Browne, and Agnes wants more than anything to wear her mother's wedding gown. However, according to Catholic law, only virgins can marry in white. And Agnes is pregnant. She distracts herself from her worries by reminiscing about her childhood with best friend Marion Delaney. O'Carroll is a comedian, and his perfect sense of timing makes this novel as much fun as the others in the series.

For an unusual take on the traditional fairy tale, pick up Meeting the Other Crowd. Author Eddie Lenihan is an accomplished Irish folklorist. This time, he has collected tales from the elders of Southern Ireland that deal with fairies and the strong influence the creatures have had on Irish culture. Each tale is written down as it was spoken and is followed by Lenihan's commentary. He's a believer in what he calls "The Good People," and many of the stories focus on the dangers of interfering with them. In 1999, Lenihan launched a successful campaign to save a certain whitethorn bush commonly believed to have otherworldly associations from being paved over, warning workers that the fairies would have their revenge if it were destroyed. This is a book that will make you think twice the next time someone asks you if you believe in the wee folk.

Tired of kissing people who claim to be Irish? Not interested in wearing green or adopting a brogue for the holiday weekend? For those of you wanting to get past the cliches and stereotypes that always seem to surface around St. Patrick's Day, we've found…

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