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The Icon and the Idealist

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
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Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he mix is the message Sourcebooks was not the first trade publisher to package audio CDs, photos, and text into a mixed-media package the publisher of an instructional guitar manual takes that honor but it certainly has been the most successful.

Sourcebooks’ first mixed-media book, We Interrupt This Broadcast by Joe Garner, sold an astonishing 600,000 copies, catapulting it onto the bestseller lists in 1998. A second mix-media book documenting famous events in sports, And the Crowd Goes Wild, also by Joe Garner, has sold over 500,000 copies since it was published last year.

Sourcebooks president Dominique Raccah says her company wasn’t caught off guard by the success of We Interrupt This Broadcast (they had invested in a substantial first printing), but they were surprised by the way it zoomed up the bestseller charts. “I think bestsellers always are a surprise,” she says. “I would not be cocky enough to admit, or to even really think, that I knew what would stir the public consciousness to gain that type of success.” Not surprisingly, Raccah thinks mixed-media books are the wave of the future: “I think it needs to be. I think kids have a very limited attention span not just kids, but readers in general and they require a little more help to get into texts these days. I think audio is a great supplemental way to expose people to the experience [of reading a book].” Two new mixed-media books are due out this year from Sourcebooks: And the Fans Roared, author Joe Garner’s third in this series, and The Second City by Sheldon Patinkin.

Garner’s book is a follow-up to And the Crowd Goes Wild and focuses on sports events that were overlooked in the first book. Included are text, photos, and sound bites of Mike Tyson’s prize fight disqualification for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear, Viking Jim Marshall’s “wrong way” run against the San Francisco 49ers, and basketball’s Larry Bird stealing the ball in the last seconds of a legendary playoff game against the Detroit Pistons.

The Second City marks a departure from other books in the series, for it is about that most elusive of all art forms comedy. Most people will probably recognize the name of the comedy troupe, but those who do not will certainly know the wacky comedy of Second City alumni such as John Belushi, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Gildna Radner, Martin Short, Chris Farley, and others.

To compile this book, author Patinkin went back over 40 years of taped performances and rehearsals to select the best moments. As a director, teacher, and advisor to the comedy troupe since its inception in the 1950s, Parinkin certainly knew his way around the material. The book’s photographs and text compliment audio CDs of the actual comedy in a way that puts the reader in the center of the action. The audio, with the familiar voices of Belushi, Murray, Myers, and company, is hilarious.

“This book is wild,” admits Raccah. “It is probably the wildest book I’ve ever done. It has a real feel to it, a real history . . . it is going to surprise a lot of readers. The audio is really funny and it gives the book a feel that I have never seen in a performing arts book.” Reviews or the lack of them are the only thing that concerns the Sourcebooks executive. “We have lots of problems getting these books reviewed. [Reviewers] don’t know what to do with mixed media books. We had very few reviews for the first book. The booksellers are hand selling it, God bless them.” So, how do you follow a book as funny as The Second City? With some of the best poetry ever written in American, read by some of the country’s top poets Sourcebooks’ next mixed-media book, due out in fall 2001, will be edited by an advisory panel that includes a current and past poet laureate of the United States. “We’ve been working on this book for three years,” says Raccah, who then adds with a laugh, “It’s like producing a movie.” James L. Dickerson is the former publisher of Nine-O-One Network magazine and the author of numerous books, including the recently published Dixie Chicks: Down-Home and Backstage.

he mix is the message Sourcebooks was not the first trade publisher to package audio CDs, photos, and text into a mixed-media package the publisher of an instructional guitar manual takes that honor but it certainly has been the most successful.

Sourcebooks'…
Travel

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean audio) is a cheery first-person recounting of how two Vermonters, Melinda and Robert Blanchard, take up permanent residence on their favorite vacation spot, the island of Anguilla. The Blanchards, who had lost control of their previous food business when it went from cottage industry to corporation, decide to shake off the snow and the sour grapes by selling their New England home and becoming restaurateurs to the wealthy island tourists.

As a storyteller, Melinda (Mel for short) Blanchard has acquired her own sort of island rhythm, alternating between diary-detailed retellings of the day-by-day travails of building a restaurant long distance via Miami’s Home Depot (i.e., back in the "real world") and frequent mentions of the personal time-outs, beautiful sunsets, pick-up friendships that become business partnerships, and temporary passions for sailing that she and Robert fall into. (Although both are listed as authors, Mel writes in first person.) She also has a pleasant post-Heartburn habit of tossing in the odd recipe, and an obvious fondness for the people and passion for the flora of the region. She easily evokes that peculiar sense of administrative limbo produced in the islands by the paradoxical confluence of good-humored indifference to urgency (hence, the references to living on "island time") and the enormously time-consuming bureaucracy that requires all paperwork in triplicate. The long build-up to the restaurant’s opening night, which becomes a comedic near-disaster of too many customers and not enough dumplings and lobsters, has the ring of rueful truth cushioned by the comfort of ensuing success. It can be a little off-putting, or perhaps guilt-inducing, to read the references to extensive wine lists and expensive imported ingredients in a society where lean-tos are still fairly common, though the fact that Anguilla is a resort economy is a given for the whole setup. In fact, it gives a dramatic roundness to the story, because when Hurricane Luis ravishes the island, the resort, and the restaurant, it not only gives Mel a reason to pick up the pruning shears and get back to work, it also reminds us of the essential force of real island life: nature.

Still, this shapeliness loses some of its appeal when you notice the acknowledgments page. "The sequence of events in this book took place over a span of ten years and two restaurants. We have taken the liberty of condensing the time frame into one year so as to capture the spirit of life in Anguilla." That’s some kind of island time.

Nevertheless, it’s an ingratiating read and an easy one; and while I’m not sure I’ll ever make Miguel’s Banana Cabanas (a smoothie of Coco Lopez, Bailey’s Irish Cream, bananas and white rum), or the cornbread with pineapple, creamed corn, and Monterey Jack, I might try the coconut-sesame jasmine rice for the grilled tuna. And I will hope to see that sunset over Anguilla.

Choosing a Chardonnay – On opening night, according to Mel, Bob Blanchard, who was moving from table to table, talking to guests and going over the wine list, "had difficulty cutting short a debate over the virtues of Napa versus Bordeaux, and could have talked for hours about why American vintners insist on making Chardonnay so oaky." I agree with his oak index, which I also find much too high as a rule; but on behalf of the millions of Americans who obviously enjoy an assertive oak element (and who may not know that "Napa" and "California" are not synonymous), I would point out that under the grandchildren of Ernest and Julio, the Gallo of Sonoma label has made significant advances in quality varietals (in the $12-$15 range) and, more notably, into single-vineyard varietals (in the mid-$20s) and even superpremium estate wines. It’s the Goldilocks story, with the Gallo of Sonoma Chardonnay as the "baby" and the Estate Chardonnay as Big Bear.

The lower-end Gallo of Sonoma Chardonnay wines, both the Russian River and the Sonoma County blend, are surprisingly big buys for the price, with almost as much perfume and tropical fruit as Miguel’s blender killers, and a lot fewer calories. The ’97 Estate Chardonnay is even more tropical and showy, and at $45, up against stiff competition.

But all in all, it’s the Mama Bears, the single vineyard chards, that seem just right for this book, either the $20 Stefani Vineyard from the Dry Creek Valley or the $22 Laguna Ranch Vineyard from the Russian River Valley (the tasted vintages were both ’97s).

Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for the Washington Post.

 

A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean audio) is a cheery first-person recounting of how two Vermonters, Melinda and Robert Blanchard, take up permanent residence on their favorite vacation spot, the island of Anguilla. The Blanchards, who had lost control…

NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Lifestyles: January 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ The V&A Sourcebook of Pattern and Ornament

I like to imagine the process of assembling the exquisite compendium that is The V&A Sourcebook of Pattern and Ornament. What a dizzying and delightful task! London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is home to one of the world’s largest collections of decorative and designed objects in the world, and in this tome, one can peruse thousands upon thousands of images adapted from the museum’s holdings. Spanning pottery, textiles, paintings, wallpaper, sculpture and pretty much any other patterned thing you can imagine, the contents are arranged into four categories—plants; animals; earth and the universe; and abstract patterns—with most pages featuring a grid of three or more images and a succinct set of captions identifying the source objects and their makers. As you page through swiftly or slowly, the effect is kaleidoscopic. It’s a veritable feast of patterns for the eyes and mind, full of color, intricate details and beautiful repetition. You’ll wish for two copies: one to keep and savor; one to cut up for collage art. Frankly, I’m besotted.

Sketch by Sketch

I recently purchased my first iPad and began exploring Procreate, a digital tool that, when paired with the Apple Pencil, opens one up to a new realm of two-dimensional artmaking. I’m finding a daily drawing practice to be a profoundly joyful and meditative pursuit. Sheila Darcey, founder of the SketchPoetic community on Instagram (@sketchpoetic), knows all about the therapeutic potential of low-stakes sketching, and in Sketch by Sketch, she encourages readers to try 21 exercises designed to help them dig deep internally and work through difficult emotions. Darcey doesn’t care how well you draw, and her exercises are not meant to build artistic skill. If you create something that makes you smile, all the better, but self-discovery, not technical mastery, is the goal. “This is not art,” she writes. “It is a visual learner’s version of freewriting.” Testimonials throughout from SketchPoetic acolytes demonstrate how the process has worked for others.

Snails & Monkey Tails

Speaking of details . . . it’s an interesting time for punctuation, isn’t it? Texting has completely upended the rules, such that a period now suggests a hostile vibe to some (my teenager confirms this), and even the meaning of certain emoticons seems to be shifting with the generations. But these symbols persist in print matter, and they are lovingly and fetchingly celebrated in Snails & Monkey Tails, graphic designer Michael Arndt’s spiffy salute to the “tiny designs that run interference among the letterforms.” If you don’t know what a grawlix is, you sure as $@%!* will if you read this book. Afterward, you may never call @ an “at” symbol again. Rather, try “little duck” as they do in Finland, or “cinnamon bun” like the Swedes. From silcrows to pilcrows to guillemets and the dinkus, Arndt’s book will up your word-nerd quotient, and it will do so with impeccable style.

Design takes center stage in this month’s lifestyles column, from intricate filigrees found in museums to the elegant curve of a silcrow.
Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

She was known for Technicolor aquatic musicals, in which she emerged from lavishly adorned swimming pools on underwater hydraulic lifts nary a drop of running mascara, her hairdo marvelously intact. Over the years Esther Williams’s watery movies have become kitsch classics. But as her entertaining autobiography reveals, there was more to the career and the personal life than water. At a time when women were not known for athletic ability, Williams was the U.S. 100-meter freestyle champ hoping for a chance at the Olympics when she was recruited by showman Billy Rose to appear in his Aquacade at the San Francisco Pan-Pacific Exposition of 1939. Later, when wartime ended her Olympic hopes, she worked as a stock girl and sometime model. But she was also wooed by MGM, which wanted to launch a series of swimming pictures that would rival 20th Century-Fox’s ice-skating odes to Sonja Henie.

In titles like Neptune’s Daughter and Dangerous When Wet, Williams displayed athleticism, beauty, and accessibility. Along with behind-the-scenes tales (Gene Kelly was a creep to work with; Van Johnson a sweetheart), she dishes about the studio’s unforgettable stars Lana Turner, Marlene Dietrich, and Bette Davis. She also recounts her own dalliances, which included romances with actors Victor Mature and Jeff Chandler. She recounts that Chandler, known for his rugged Westerns, surprised her with the revelation that he was a secret cross-dresser. Along with flouncy chiffon dresses, he owned lots of polka-dotted attire. Therefore Williams left him with a fashion tip: Jeff, you’re too big for polka dots. Pat H. Broeske is a biographer of Howard Hughes and Elvis Presley.

She was known for Technicolor aquatic musicals, in which she emerged from lavishly adorned swimming pools on underwater hydraulic lifts nary a drop of running mascara, her hairdo marvelously intact. Over the years Esther Williams's watery movies have become kitsch classics. But as her entertaining…

NonfictionSelf-HelpScience

Increase your EQ

Feature by Julie Hale

Focusing on emotional intelligence and self-awareness, these titles offer insight for managing emotions, handling stress and boosting communication skills. Here’s to a transformative new year!

Readers looking to cultivate a more peaceful mindset will find helpful strategies in Julie Smith’s Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Smith is a clinical psychologist, educator and writer who has been featured on CNN and the BBC. After gaining a robust social media following with her content about mental health, Smith decided to write a book so that she could delve deeper into some of the issues she often addresses with her patients in therapy.

In her warm, welcoming book, Smith focuses on weighty topics that we all contend with, such as stress, grief, fear and self-doubt, and provides suggestions for how to work through these feelings. She also encourages readers to find out what motivates them so they can use it to implement important life changes. Throughout, she takes a proactive approach, offering methods for dissolving anxiety, using stress for positive ends and managing low moods. She includes writing prompts and easy-to-do exercises to help readers explore how they respond to criticism, how they can confront anxious thoughts and more.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? is briskly written and seasoned with compassionate insights. “When we understand a little about how our minds work and we have some guideposts on how to deal with our emotions in a healthy way,” Smith writes, “we can not only build resilience, but we can thrive and, over time, find a sense of growth.” Readers who are eager to achieve emotional balance and make a fresh start in 2022 will find the direction they need in Smith’s empowering book.

Popular science writer Catherine Price offers more ideas about how to start this year off on the right foot.

In Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking, Leonard Mlodinow considers the seemingly diametrical relationship between emotion and logic and shows that these two facets of human nature are not as opposed as we might imagine. A theoretical physicist and mathematician, Mlodinow has previously co-written two books with Stephen Hawking. So what can a physicist tell us about emotional intelligence? Taking a science-supported approach, Mlodinow examines the nature and usefulness of our everyday feelings. He demonstrates that, when it comes to important processes such as goal-setting and decision-making, our emotions play as key a role as our ability to think critically.

“We know that emotion is as important as reason in guiding our thoughts and decisions, though it operates in a different manner,” Mlodinow writes. Over the course of the book, he explores the way emotions work by looking at how they arise in the brain and inform our thought processes. He also investigates the history and development of human feelings, including how they’ve been regarded by different cultures in the past. Mlodinow shares a wealth of practical advice and guidance on how to monitor, and even embrace, emotions in ways that can lead to self-improvement. The book includes questionnaires that allow readers to determine their own emotional profiles, as well.

Synthesizing hard research, lively personal anecdotes and input from psychologists and neuroscientists, Mlodinow tackles complex topics in a reader-friendly fashion to create a narrative that’s wonderfully accessible. Understanding our emotions is a critical step in the journey toward personal growth, and Mlodinow’s remarkable book will put readers on the right track.

If you’ve resolved to get in touch with your feelings in 2022, then we have the books for you.
Family & RelationshipsAging

Review

Review by bookpagedev

As a person growing old more rapidly than he cares to contemplate, I can tell you that no one in his youth or even early middle age thinks he will ever get old. It is a beneficial trick life plays on us, because if we comprehended then what awaits us, we would abandon everything out of shock. Once we get there, or close to there, however, it doesn’t matter; it is all right; the intervening years have cushioned the shock.

Even the sight of friends and relatives in their old age does not convince us. To help us understand this realm that we think we will never inhabit, Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist and author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, has written Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders (Simon ∧ Schuster Audio, $18, 0671044753).

Another Country is an exceptionally helpful and instructive book, written in a matching workmanlike style. Stories of people confronting old age, either their own or others’, form its heart, though one that at times tends to bleed. The stories come from interviews and therapy sessions that Pipher, who is 50 and lives in Nebraska, held with mostly rural Midwesterners, both black and white, in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, and in all stages and conditions of life poor, healthy, sick, wealthy.

I wanted to learn about our community-based country that has almost vanished, and also to understand the country of old age, Pipher writes. Because, she says a few pages later, as a nation, we are not organized in a way that makes aging easy. Indeed we are not. The twin topics of Pipher’s book are the segregation of the young from the old and the consequent difficulties this segregation makes for the elderly and those who care for them.

The young, of course, have always done things differently from the old, but Pipher suggests, and I think rightly, that perhaps never before have the two generations been so far removed in body, mind, and spirit, as they are in America today, to the immeasurable detriment of both.

The author and the people she talks to have many examples of the generational differences, but to me the most telling remark is made early on in the book.

Our parents’ generation was pre-irony, Pipher writes. Irony implies a distance between one’s words and one’s world, a cool remove that is a late-century phenomenon . . . [Freud] gave my generation the notion that underneath one idea is another, that behind our surface behavior is a different motive . . . But many people older than a certain age grew up believing that the surface is all there is. This may make it sound as if the young are clever and the elderly gullible, but her implication seems to be rather that irony has introduced a slickness inimical to plain and forthright dealing. People born early in the century, she writes, are the last Americans to grow up in a world in which all behavior mattered. Her great concern is that we get together ( communities keep people healthy; without community there is no morality ), and in her suggestions for achieving this, the advantage falls to the practices of our elders (a word she prefers to elderly ). In nothing is this more true than in the matter of physical closeness.

The book discusses many other significant subjects: the importance of the grandparent/grandchild relationship; the profound differences between the young-old (in their sixties and seventies) and the old-old (eighties and nineties); the assertion that rest homes are the concrete embodiment of failed social and cultural policies toward the old. As for the elders themselves, I could have composed a column of their comments alone and produced a review of this book at least as good as the dithyramb above. But for a parting shot I’ll limit myself to this, from Bette Davis, because it captures both the central difficulty of the aged the waning of powers and the qualities, like resiliency and fortitude, they summon to deal with it: Old age, La Belle Davis said, isn’t for sissies. Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger@bookpage.com.

As a person growing old more rapidly than he cares to contemplate, I can tell you that no one in his youth or even early middle age thinks he will ever get old. It is a beneficial trick life plays on us, because if we…

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