1 comments about Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports.

1. Irwin Silber's biography of Lester Rodney is an excellent book about sports, particularly baseball. And though I'm hardly a baseball fan, the style and subject are snappy and engaging. More importantly, Press Box Red explains the activist campaign mounted to desegregate baseball and the far-reaching affects of breaking the color line in "America's pastime". Rodney's anecdotal story-telling and vignettes of great ballplayers--Black and white--reads more like a sports column than a history book. This is also a wonderful insight into a little explored dynamic of Communist Party, though a bit more background on the Party could have been provided for the reader unfamiliar.

No comments about Some Day I May Find Honest Work: A Newspaper Humorist's Life.

1 comments about Publisher.

1. Tom Maschler's life story: how he became editorial director of moribund publisher Jonathan Cape in his twenties after an apprenticeship with legendary Penguin publisher Allen Lane, transformed their fortunes by innovative and creative publishing of literary fiction and intellectually groudbreaking non fiction, founded one of the worlds most well known literary prizes, the Booker Prize, and published a vast number of the great and good writers of the last few decades, is so remarkable that it is impossible to mess up. That said, Maschler makes a pretty good fist of it. His writing style is plain and un-self aware to the point of autism, he name drops famous writers like a glossy magazine columnist and clearly fancies himself as a raconteur, a bon viveur, though clearly he has upset many more people than he realizes. Many stories end along the lines of: and he/she never spoke to me again. I can't help thinking I am owed an explanation.
   
   Mashcler's monstrous ego aside (at one typical comically un-self aware moment he writes of the pride he felt when a secretary said she could feel his presence in the Cape building even when she hadn't seen him arrive), his contribution to publishing is undiminished. He worked tirelessly to promote serious and intelligent books, and had a remarkable talent for spreading a buzz about his titles like bushfire through the publishing world. Publishers and booksellers knew that with Maschler behind a title you were guaranteed a: quality and b: (more important in publishing) sales. All this for comparatively little financial reward himself. Towards the end he writes of the buy out of Jonathan Cape by Random House when it could no longer survive as an independent company. Buy that stage, Maschler and his managing director were paying themselves only £40,000 a year, far less than many of his authors were earning as a result of Maschler's tireless support.
   
   Maschler will go down as one of the post war greats of the British publishing world (though equally is important is Liz Calder (now of Harry Potter house Bloomsbury), also vital to the Cape story and chronically undermentioned by Maschler. He mainly takes gleeful spite in boasting of authors he poached from Liz at her expense. Perhaps it is the case that good publishers make good writers, but great ones can't string a sentence together (for that is why they publish, rather than write). The entrepreneurial flair of the Maschler's of this world don't often go hand in hand with reflective, literary skills. Maschler's life story will be magnificently told one day, but by an authorized biographer, rather than the man himself.

5 comments about We Are Our Mothers' Daughters.

1. This book made me proud to be a woman! I learned a ton about women athletes, scientists, politicians, etc that I never knew. I also learned that even though I'm not a professional athlete, scientist or politician....we share many of the same experiences as women, wives and mothers. It's a great book and well worth the read. I recommend it for all women (and their spouses/significant others).



2. Interesting history of women in different fields, and, importantly, shows why they don't have the same interests as men in all the same numbers.
   
   Avows that neither gender has the desire to be the other, nor wants the other to be the same as them. Something that many of today's so-call social thinkers seem confused about. Many such thinkers seem not to want either gender to be the way they are, or not to want anyone to be an individual with their own values and choices.
   
   Roberts demonstrates that it is the women who hold a free society together -- who make it a society, who tend to keep associations with old friends and family, while men tend to neglect these. While men and women share more than they differ psychologically, their differences are important. At their best they form a partnership, gaining more from life -- each with different, but overlaping roles.
   
   (I've never had much use for Cokie Roberts as a political commentator, and as shown by the politicians she admires in this book, and as you would expect from government supported radio, NPR personnel are pretty much knee-jerk left wingers, favoring expanded government regulation and management of citizen's lives on all fronts. Fortunately, this is unimportant in this book.)



3. Beautiful work by Ms. Roberts. A treasure for all women to read and enjoy. The essays are poignant and well documented. This is a book that should live on through history and handed from one woman to another.
   recommending also: Founding Mothers,Secret Life Of Bees,Three Junes,Lonely Hunter,Nightmares Echo



4. This is a gentle book of celebration. Cokie Roberts is an attractive lady from a large family of achievers. She shares part of her life story with the reader and writes valuable information in the form of essays, about amazing women past and present; many of whom we have not been aware of.

   I thoroughly enjoyed this easy to read book. I recommend it as encouragement to all women especially those hiding their talents.
   Mostly though, it is a reassuring book in that we women are reminded to appreciate each other, ever learning, ever discovering new ways to contribute, even if our best efforts go unnoticed for a time; willing to step back or go forward as the need arises, and always share the credits.

   With all due respect to the author, I find the title to be unworthy of this fine book. I am my daughter's mother; some women have no daughters, some daughters have no mother to encourage them - anyway perhaps I haven't gotten the point. Do read this book, enjoy it, and give it your own title!




5. I remember my mom telling me once that when she asked my grandfather for the money to take the college entrance exam he told her she should go to secretary school like all the other women. There was a time that women weren't allowed to seek their own destiny, be it successful stay at home moms or successful career women. I think my generation of women has forgotten about that and grown too comfortable with delegating our social and political responsibilities. I borrowed a copy of this book from a woman who is my mentor and bought a copy for my mom. But every woman my age and younger should read this so that they remember what came before us, and quite frankly as a career woman who still gets limited by my gender in the workplace, it is important to realize how far we've come and how far we still need to go. I didn't realize how good we have it, having lived on my own, bought my own cars and houses (the book talks about women not being extended lines of credit or losing lines of credit if their husbands died or divorced them --- as late as the 80s). The book has perhaps the best overall message that no matter what path you choose as a woman, what career or life choice, you have that choice now because of the women who came before us... our collective mothers. And it is our calling as daughters to make our mothers proud by not forgetting how valuable that choice is.

No comments about Wordsmith -- Writing a Way Home.

No comments about Speaking of Success.

1 comments about Have a Seat, Please.

1. The first half of this book consists of a multitude of "human interest" stories regarding condemned Texans walking the "last mile."

   The second half of the book, though, is a soapbox for overbearing anti-death penalty rhetoric.

   If you think you can tolerate the second half of the book, the first half of the book is worth it.

No comments about Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship Letters, 1921-1960.

2 comments about Beside the Rio Hondo.

1. If Henry David Thoreau had been a thoroughly self-reliant, hot-blooded woman with a taste for the Southwest instead of a chilly Yankee who went home to his mother's dinner table every night, he might have produced a book very much like this. Phaedra Greenwood's Walden is her beloved Rio Hondo in the mountains of New Mexico near Taos. Her hut is an old adobe built by descendants of the Spanish settlers who colonized Northern New Mexico starting in the 16th century.
   
   The book traces a year in Greenwood's life after she returns to the mountains following the breakup of her marriage. With no man, no income to speak of, and not yet enough homesteading skills to provide much security, Greenwood attaches herself to the land like a smudge of moss on a mountainside, and hangs on with a tenacity that is nothing short of heroic. Her whole life is a cliffhanger. It makes for a wild adventure story.
   
   But it is also a love story. Like Thoreau, Greenwood engages nature with a passion so embracing and intimate, the distance between the human and what she's observing sometimes disappears entirely. After tanning a deer hide, she writes, "I draped it over the trunk to dry; it stiffened to the rectangular shape and lay there all winter to remind me that I, too, am here to feed and nurture the land, to be consumed by it, invaded and conquered from within." The book is a work of high sensuality without having a single sex scene in it.
   
   Stylistically, Greenwood is in the minimalist tradition of the best nature writers. She just tells her story, with heart, humor, and simple but ravishing imagery. The writing never gets in the way of our getting to know her and the world she loves. She treats the reader as her friend, not her audience.
   
   "I can bear pain and loss," Greenwood writes. "What I can't bear is being imprisoned." Beside the Rio Hondo is the story of a journey toward freedom, a travelogue that takes you miles and miles without ever leaving the property. This poignant, unflinchingly honest, beautiful, and thoroughly absorbing book reminds us that if it's freedom you want, the only road that goes there is love.



2. Beside The Rio Hondo is a taut, beautifully realized work. The insightful foreword by Alexander Blackburn is a rarity. It is essential reading because it sets the tone, the sense of place and introduces the unique voice of Phaedra Greenwood.
   
   Beside The Rio Hondo is a powerful book. To try to put it in simple terms, it is the story of a woman who decided to accept her destiny, cast off the conventions of numbing social graces, to become a writer. But that is where the simplicity ends. This book is at once a biography, a historical review, a folklore guide, an environmental study and a profoundly touching text on how to survive without surrendering one's beliefs and sense of self-worth.
   
   The locus of Beside The Rio Hondo is Northern New Mexico, primarily in Arroyo Hondo, northwest of Taos. Within its magical pages, people, families and the entire community come to life. There are struggles over something so basic as water. As Ms. Greenwood writes, "Sin agua, no hay vida. Without water, there is no life."
   
   This book is rich with details about living in a rough-hewn landscape in the mountains, along side a river with cold winters, wild animals, and the comings and goings of friends and family. The darkest cloud for Phaedra Greenwood is something most people don't think about: SURVIVAL. Throughout the book she uses wit, intelligence and muscle to survive with little and at times no money.
   
   This is a uniquely honest book. Beside The Rio Hondo is written so well, with great style and insight, I often felt I was there with Ms. Greenwood as would swing over the river, go hunting with bow and arrow, splitting wood or dressing up to make an occasion trip to town.
   
   It is well worth a first read, and a second and third read, as well. It is a book you will want to keep with you for its history and its humanity.

No comments about Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School.