No comments about Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll.

5 comments about The Years with Ross (Perennial Classics).

1. The book I ordered came timely and in the condition as described. I would order from this seller again.



2. I grew up with James Thurber on the shelf, his cartoons peopled my imagination from my earliest years and as reading skill grew, his stories (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Life and Hard Times, etc.) comprised some of my first grown-up literature. Much later I discovered The New Yorker magazine, the acme of commercial journalism and cartoon art in which this author had once played such a central role. By the time I bumped into the magazine it was well into middle age, James Thurber was gone -- he died in 1961 -- and blindness had ended his drawing career ten years earlier. Prodded by a friend who is a great fan of this author, I have looked him up again in recent years and rediscovered the fresh wit and off-kilter humor of one of our best "casual" writers. (As he would label himself.) THE YEARS WITH ROSS is a biography of Harold W. Ross, the eccentric fanatic who founded and edited The New Yorker for twenty-six years (1925-51). Here is the story of how one dogged genius drew together the best editorial talent of an era and lured many of the best writers of the century to fashion his dream. Ross was capable of utter precision and befuddled oversight. His payment schedule for writers was not only the most niggardly in the magazine business, it was an arcane system of word count, add-ons, deductions, bonuses and penalties which left authors baffled. Meanwhile, Ross' personal secretary siphoned off seventy-one thousand dollars in the late 1930s without his notice. He could agonize for weeks over placement of a comma, dueling with an exalted staff which included the authority himself, E.B. White. Though I found this gem as a second-hand paperback which fell to pieces as I turned each page, I see that it and dozens of Thurber titles are in the local library system, and happily commend it to other New Yorker fans. For a taste of the best of casual writing, check out The Thurber Carnival and other collections from this prince of whimsy. (See also my review of Thurber's ALARMS AND DIVERSIONS, Harper & Brothers, 1957)



3. From 1927 to 1951, James Thurber, the humorist and cartoonist, worked under Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker. Both men became internationally famous in those years. The New Yorker was a magazine for the sophisticated.
   
   How Ross created this aura is elusive. Thurber tells us about Ross's devotion to the magazine-he was married "for keeps" to his magazine-and about his hairsplitting attention to detail. These good points seem to be heavily outweighed by his bad points. He quit school early. He wasn't much of a reader: his favorite magazine was True Detective and most of the American writers who are now studied (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner) rarely or never appeared in his magazine. He didn't pay much attention to politics. He was a prude. And, as Thurber shows us, he was a poor administrator. He does not seem to be anything out of the ordinary. In fact, Ross often seems like a movie version of a harried editor with the gruff personality and tendency to "bark" orders, but with the heart of gold behind the exterior. He was the unsophisticated editor for the sophisticated.
   
   The secret of his success was the way he could inspire devotion, as exhibited by Thurber writing this book in the first place. The two men's live were bound together for over 20 years. We learn how Thurber met E.B. White five minutes before a meeting with Ross; how White helped Thurber publish his cartoons despite Ross's skepticism; how Ross helped keep Thurber going despite his growing blindness. And, despite the fact that Thurber often makes Ross look foolish, it's a loving portrait. Ross shown at his worst is still endearing.
   
   Because of this, it's probably not the best way to find the whole story about the magazine. In a way, it's just as much about Thurber as it is about Ross. That's not so bad, though.
   
   Thurber tells us a lot about the production of magazine and the writers and cartoonists who appeared there. As mentioned before, Ross didn't publish the big names of the time and because of that, most of the New Yorker contributors of his day are now forgotten. Anecdotes about them and a chapter about Ross's system of payment are the low points of the book.
   
   High points include a chapter about Ross and H.L. Mencken, Wolcott Gibb's guidelines for New Yorker style, and the chapter about Ross's friendship/feud with Alexander Woollcott. The story of Thurber's development as a cartoonist is interesting as well.
   
   The Years With Ross is similar to Mencken's memoir,
   Newspaper Days, in that it also is about the production of a periodical and about the lives of literary figures who aren't remembered today. However, where Mencken's style ranged from slightly acidic to vitriolic, Thurber's is gentle, even when he is poking fun. Here he describes Katherine White's visit to Alexander Woollcott: "He met her at the door clad as usual in pajama bottoms and dressing gown, and every now and then during his monologue that day his great bare belly would coyly appear and disappear, like a romping sea lion. "
   
   Thurber has a nice style and is an amusing writer. He is the sort of writer who more often provokes a chuckle in the back of a reader's throat than he does convulsive laughter.
   
   This isn't an indispensable American classic, but certain people will like it. Thurber's light humor can still amuse. And people who still believe in the magazine will want to read this book. Ross said that the New Yorker wanted "superior prose, funny drawings, and sound journalism, without propaganda." Recently a book review in the Nation complained that a journalist's collection of articles taken from the New Yorker was handicapped by the "the flat-footed New Yorker style." It was different in Ross's day.



4. Thurber got into trouble with his friend and co-New Yorker stalwart E.B. White for writing this portrait of their boss and benefactor. Between them the three wrote most of "The New Yorker" in its crucial first decades. These chapters, first written as a series of articles for "The Atlantic", are a model of the rich, primary source biography. Thurber pulls no punches. His Ross is not "a monument" as he puts it, but a man, worth looking at in all his strange glory. I would rate this book alongside Herndon's Life of Lincoln as one of the best accounts of a man by his contemporary, without the veneer of legend and without an undercurrent of envy. Thurber shared an office with Ross for who knows how many years, learned a lot about writing from him (some examples of his razor fine editing are here to learn from), and did a great deal of his best writing in the man's employ. One of Thurber's best books, and that makes it one of the best books there is. You could do worse than read this book before trying to write a life of anyone who's still living. You could do worse than reading this book before trying to write even one article about the life of somebody alive and real.



5. James Thurber was in his 60s when he wrote THE YEARS WITH ROSS. Harold Ross was the first editor of The New Yorker. He was a homely man, awkward in manner and speech. Ross couldn't write, but he was a fine editor. He lacked a good education and was sadly unaware of most social graces so he was often uncouth, but he created one of the USA's outstanding magazines. The New Yorker is a stalwart of literary sophistication.

   Thurber's study is not only an intriguing look at a real character of an editor but the story of how a magnificent magazine grew under the guidance of one of the truly talented editors of all time.

5 comments about War Reporting for Cowards.

1. I thoroughly enjoyed War Reporting for Cowards. I laughed repeatedly. Ayres is a very amusing writer.
   
   I recommend it highly.



2. This book has a lot of substance, but is too heavy on confessions of personal foolishness. It has gripping eyewitness accounts of the 9/11 attacks, the Anthrax bio-terror scare, and the US invasion of Iraq. But most of the book is a self-depreciating account of the author's life to date. The war reporting part only starts with chapter 12, and the invasion starts on page 206.
   
   Throughout the book, Ayres remains basically non-critical of everything but himself. Concerning the Iraq War, about as close as he gets to giving personal opinions is the following:
   
   "How was I supposed to feel at this point? Glad that Saddam was going to get his comeuppance and excited by the professional challenge ahead? Or should I have felt moral outrage at the imperial violence about to be visited on Iraq, and pround of my role in exposing the horror of twenty-first-century warfare?
   To be honest, I didn't feel any of those things.
   All I felt was an overwhelming concern about my personal safety. And, of course, a tug of guilt over my own selfishness.
   To my right, a man was smiling at me. I recognized him as a reporter for National Public Radio. 'Hey," he stage-whispered. "Ever get the feeling we're cheerleaders on the team bus?" He continued smiling.
   I nodded and continued sipping the dregs of my cappuccino."
   
   But then, maybe embedded war reporting doesn't get much better than this anyway.



3. This book is in a light-hearted English tradition of which the most distinguished representative is George MacDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman: the Englishman who willingly admits his terror on the battle-field.
   
   Chris is too hard on himself, for he more or (mostly) less chose to be in Iraq in order to not let a friend down, and he (more or mostly less unwillingly) was in "at the death", the most advanced embedded Times reporter. He spares us Billy Russell posturing as was seen in the Crimea: he spares us Churchill's flatulence. For this alone he deserves a Pulitzer.
   
   However, his management at the Times was most irresponsible in even asking him to take the job. Their decisionmaking resembles the way in which Bush and Blair lightheartedly ignored Blix to waltz into the current quagmire, because if there had been grown-ups in charge at the Times instead of vicious children, made so by the corporate brutalization of journalism in the UK, no manager would have considered Chris a candidate for war reporter.
   
   They considered his experience on September 11 and in the October 2001 anthrax attack a qualification along with his youth, and they completely failed to READ and UNDERSTAND his texts of the time, which indicated that he was not at all interested in being the next Ernie Pyle.
   
   They passed over older and more qualified men because of the vicious, and corporate inspired, ageism of the media today, and in so doing they placed a man, who hadn't really chosen to risk his life, in the line of fire. Chris escaped, narrowly, Daniel Pearl's chosen fate and in my opinion should sue the Times along with his Mum and Dad for mental stress alone.
   
   Ayres bugged out because he could, because to him a headline in the Times, which he did get, wasn't worth getting killed. But this means he was never qualified as a war correspondent. That's what a real career is: putting it on the line.
   
   Unlike Flashman, who was qualified to be a military man albeit fictional because of a brutal streak revealed in the first Flashman book (in which Flashman behaves abominably and is a truer representative thereby of a brutal Empire), Ayres had no brutal streak, and this is a Good Thing: Wilfred Owen knew that war "teaches" nothing.
   
   Men return to war claiming to have "learned" great lessons. It has to be stated once and for all that learning takes place at universities, not on battlefields.
   
   But like Flashman at Flashman's best, Ayres wanted to stroll along Pall Mall, assuming that's still a fashionable district. Well could he sing, along with WWI soldiers, "I don't want to join the Army, I don't want to go to war: I just wants to live in London, on the earnings of an [...]".
   
   There is nothing wrong with this instinct: as Hegel knew, the Slave, who sees in "the sweetness of life" something worth preserving, is the motor of history: if we were all Reginald Dyer, Flashy at his worst, or suicidal war correspondents like Russell, Churchill or the Dutchman who Ayres meets, we wouldn't be here: our lives would be nasty, brutal and short.
   
   Unfortunately, Ayres appears to have bought into the illusion, popular at the beginning of the war, that the Americans and British were doing the miserable folk of Iraq any good. Hindsight tells us that the invasion made an awful situation worse, and Ayres has failed, upon return from the war, to be anything more than a junior edition of P. J. O'Rourke, that is the man who announces that come what may, his personal comforts are the most important thing on earth and who is willing to light his cheroot on the burning remains.
   
   Another man would have figured out how to fix the United States Marines coffee in the abundant spare time which Ayres seems to have had, but as Ayres cheerfully confesses, he was brought up in an era when even more than my generation (which was bad enough) kids in the West were handed their lives on a silver platter in most cases, and who expect retail service from people with the bad taste not to be A level.
   
   As it happens, the Marines have to fix Ayres coffee, even as they will when they return to Civvy street.
   
   This is the blind spot, the aporia, in almost every article in the journals of *bien-pensance*: each A-level may be viewed as supported, in much the same way as the Edwardian gentleman, by a chain of service. The Edwardian gentleman had a personal relationship with a butler and a chef: today, alienation obscures the relationship but does not destroy it.
   
   I fear for Mr. Ayres, because many wars and experiences of war seem from the record to compromise an immune system, metaphorically. If the first experience (whether the first Gulf War, or the first Opium war in Hong Kong) is restrained or comic opera, or if as in Ayres' experience there is a (sensible) bug out parallel to Bush's father's (sensible) 1991 exit, a sort of mass-psychological phenomenon occurs in which there is an auto-immune itch to have another go, and this time do it serious.
   
   Ayres crossed a line in American and British society between the sort of people who file stories and the sort of people who serve them at Pret a Manger while worrying about their husbands in the Irish Guards in Basra. And it has long been axiomatic on the clean and well lighted side of the line that it encloses a laager which can't be expanded to include everyone: some must pass their A-levels and some must fail, and a bit later brave shot and shell in heathen lands.
   
   Ayres meditates on the strangely primitive look of the artillery used by the Marines despite the large computers used to target. What he sees is that the highest technology, dedicated to a brutal end, is just a war club, but he seems to have buried this insight in the SAME closet "real" veterans bury their insights, a closet in which demons howl.
   
   The British Empire entailed a war continuously somewhere in the world during most of its existence, yet it was supremely, sublimely, and world-historically unnecessary: the loss of America didn't teach Britain the lesson that a free trading partner was in the long run, even in the short run as early as 1820, a better deal as investment capital flowed freely to the Yanks, replacing a two-way trickle that had flowed, like the molasses in which it dealt, through the grasping hands of a few rich men in the East India Company, a mercantilist folly that was to create the Indian Mutiny's preconditions.
   
   But, even Saint Bloody George Bloody Orwell thought that absent their Empire, absent market failures tinted red both on the map and in the wells of Amritsar where Indians sought refuge from disciplined and deliberate Lee-Enfield fire in Sir Reggie Dyer's 1919 massacre, Britons would have to work very hard and live on herring and potatoes.
   
   The Americans likewise charged into Iraq for a grand market failure, the pricing of oil in dollars, because the thought of walking to work like a loser was as unacceptable as Orwell's subconscious racial memory of a Scandinavian Britain, when Angles and Sassenach were working very hard and living on herring and potatoes in Frisia.
   
   But Empire abroad creates Empire at home, including steadily increasing Fundamentalism and its complementary yobbery in London, so that Ayres isn't able to not notice the feral kids who steal his phone.
   
   Must we suffer it all again? This illusion of an unreflective journo that he's failed and the real compromising of his moral immune system, which when multiplied through countless male psyches becomes Suez, over and over again? Do we need a resurgent Russia to stop this so-called Great Game in Asia, in which Bedooins must be flattened as collateral damage while we eat at Pret a Manger?



4. I loved the premise of this book, when it was first described to me: a pampered Fauntleroy-turned-journalist leaves his cushy business reporting post on a lark, for an assignment as an embed with an American Marine unit in the early stages of the Iraqi War. For the most part, the story didn't disappoint. The juxtaposition of Chris Ayres, an admitted hypochondriac, and the gritty scenes of the early stages of combat provided more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. Noteworthy was the tent he bought at a sporting goods store, later discovered as fluorescent yellow with a bulls-eye on top; packing so much gear, including hand cream and moisturizer (his girlfriend asked, "Have the marines ever met a metrosexual?"), that the wheels on his accompanying luggage rack (!) failed in the Iraqi sand; and struggling at tasks like digging a latrine or making remote phone calls while drowning in sweat and rendered nearly blind by weighty desert gear.
   
   One reason War Reporting worked so well is that Ayres so often found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time- great for journalism, horrible for a paranoiac with anxiety issues. He arrived in New York from London just before September 11th; the floor of his office building was targeted with mailed Anthrax spores; and he climbed the professional ladder just in time to be particularly conspicuous for a war assignment. Self-deprecating throughout the book, Ayres admits that his cowardice contributed to his volunteering for Iraq, in that agreeing to the job represented the path of least vocational resistance, and that he felt compelled by a fear of someone else stealing his combat opportunity and succeeding.
   
   All told, Ayres was only in combat for a few days, and spent far more time in training and living high on the hog at a plush hotel in Kuwait. Plus, the very hypochondriac qualities at the fore in repeated scenes in the doctor's office also had a way of making the Iraqi scenes seem overdramatic. Ayres only saw about one or two days' worth of fighting, and then he bolted for the safety of home, leaving behind the Marines whom he half-respected, and half-pitied in a smarmy, borderline-condescending way. There wasn't a ton of editorializing in War Reporting, but enough to make you want to remind Ayres that the military was doing him a favor by letting him tag along (and potentially endanger their safety), and not the other way around.



5. My husband suggested that I read this book because I am not a huge non-fiction reader and I didn't know a lot about what was going on over in Iraq. This book talks about war and 9/11 in terms that everyday people who don't have a huge interest in war can understand. I watch the news, but it is always so sad and depressing that I often would rather watch my daughter's TV shows. Chris explains what is going on over in Iraq, the kinds of weapons we have, the tanks, etc. It is very informative. The humor and feelings that Chris has endear him to you immediately. I really enjoyed reading this book, and would suggest it to anyone who is interested in learning more about the war, from a surprisingly neutral position.

5 comments about February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn.

1. Dianne Hunter's Review
   This absorbing social history of a year-long experiment in group living, written in 2005, details the creative life organized by George Davis and W.H. Auden at 7 Middagh St., Brooklyn, NY. The house (torn down in 1945 to make way room for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) was called February House because several of its residents had birthdays in that month. This house provided living, working, and partying space for, among others, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Paul and Jane Bowles, Richard Wright, Oliver Smith, and Gypsy Rose Lee, who composed THE G-STRING MURDERS with help from George Davis. Members and friends of the household welcomed Europeans who were fleeing Fascism. Auden wrote several of his most successful works and once considered murdering Chester Kallman in this house. Tippins's well-researched and well-written book provides an account of a louche social scene, musical, visual, and literary compositions, and the NY publishing world in the period that ended 7 December, 1941.



2. For me this was an amazing discovery. I read a review of it in a literary magazine in the waiting room of my optician and when I got home I immediately ordered it from Amazon.
   What caught my eye in the review were the names of the inhabitants of the February House - Auden, Britten,McCullers... in that amazing year. I knew of their work individually but to read of them living under the same roof was a revelation.What a cauldron of creativity! All against the background of the war in Europe and the period leading up to Pearl Harbour.As I read the book I felt as though I were there. I hope that someone will make a documentary about it or better still a dramatised reconstruction. The two Truman Capote films have blazed the trail.



3. A friend just recommended this book to me and it's fabulous!!! I live in an artist bldg and it's nothing compared to the energy of Middagh Street. The book is a great read and the research is most impressive. I cannot wait to read the one she's writing about the Chelsea Hotel!



4. Thomas Wolf once famously said "only the dead know Brooklyn." There might be some truth in that, but some of us know Brooklyn, N.Y.,U.S.A., pretty well,and are still very much alive. Quite a few people are aware of Brooklyn's brownstone belt, that swath of historic houses stretching from the East River to Prospect Park and beyond. Many of these people would declare Brooklyn Heights the ultimate Brooklyn brownstone neighborhood. It's beautiful, and gets scenic views of Manhattan. It's got history galore--an important Revolutionary War battle was fought here;and it's been, and still is,home to a lot of well-known important people.
   
   One little-known fact is that a number of celebrated people shared a house on Middagh Street, in 1940-41, right in the middle of the Second World War. That house, which came to be known as February House-- a number of its residents had February birthdays-- has long since been torn down to make room for the Promenade that provides storied views of Manhattan. But among occupants of February House were poet W.H.Auden, writer Carson McCullers, writers Jane and Paul Bowles,composer Benjamin Britten, and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.
   
   Writer Sherill Tippens has produced an interesting, pleasantly gossipy book about the house's residents and their accomplishments. Jane Bowles began "Two Serious Ladies," her only completed novel here. The young lesbian Carson McCullers had just tasted, at the age of 23, great success with her novel "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." She began two other great successes, "The Member of the Wedding," and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," between drinking bouts, right here on Middagh Street.
   
   Auden and Britten, both homosexual, but not involved with each other, were being raked over the coals at the time by the British press for choosing to sit out World War II in the U.S. But they were working: they collaborated on the opera "Paul Bunyan,"not critically well-received. Auden who continued to live in the Heights, on his own, to pursue his lifelong, unrequited love for the young American Chester Kallman, was working hard in the interstices of his personal soap opera: He produced "The Double Man" in February House. Britten produced "Peter Grimes;"considered one of the great masterpieces of 20th century opera. Meanwhile, he pursued his own personal soap opera: many critics believe this opera echoes developments with his partner, tenor Peter Pears, at the time.
   
   The most unexpected resident of February House would have to be Gypsy Rose Lee, burlesque artiste. She was talked into joining the fun by George Davis, homosexual himself, fiction editor of "Harpers Bazaar" magazine, whose idea February House was, and who worked hard to keep it alive. Davis had published some of his own writing, but he was best known for the talented writers he kept on discovering.
   
   In Gypsy Lee's case, she brought some money, a lot of common sense,and a cook to Middagh Street. The house's residents needed all the above. Her reward for her support: George Davis, great editor, midwifed her book, "The G-String Murders," a publishing sensation for many years.
   
   George Davis continued to live at 7 Middaagh Street after its time as an artistic commune had passed. After Kurt Weill's death, Davis married his widow, Lotte Lenya, and devoted his life to introducing America to Weill's great works,such as "Three Penny Opera,"from which we get "Mack the Knife."
   
   There are some informative photographs, extensive notes and acknowledgements in February House. Tippins evidently did a lot of primary research, but she managed to organize the voluminous results in a very readable style. February House well rewards the reader.



5. Sherill Tippins has done an amazing job of finding the significant narrative threads in the chaotic convergence of creative lives that occurred in the months before Pearl Harbor when Harper's Bazaar editor George Davis and British expatriate poet W.H. Auden rented a brownstone on 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights and actively recruited other creative artists to live with them. Among the co-renters were Carson McCullers who had recently published her highly acclaimed first novel, "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter," soon-to-be famous British composer Benjamin Britten and his parnter, singer Peter Pears, unpublished novelists Paul and Jane Bowles, Broadway set designer Oliver Smith, writer Richard Wright and his wife, and burlesque sensation Gypsy Rose Lee, who it turns out was the most reliable in the rent-paying department and joined the little "creative commune" on the condition that she could bring her own cook and maid. Her fiscal reliability and drive along with Auden's willingness to take on the unpleasant role of house disciplinarian (collecting rent and other "dues" and establishing and enforcing many house rules) are probably sufficient explanation for why this menage managed to last the two or three years it did.
   
   Tippins wisely focuses her attention on the leading figures (without neglecting to name the many others who partied but did not reside at 7 Middagh--Salvador and Gala Dali, Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine, Erika Mann and her brothers Klaus and Golo, to name a few). One passer-through, Anais Nin, christened the dwelling "February House" because so many of the residents had February birthdays. Tippins has a good knowledge of the works of these creative people and is able to see how one of the artists intentionally or inadvertantly influenced a subsequent work of one of his or her co-residents. For example, McCullers was struggling with the novel that would later become "The Member of the Wedding" when she was able to appropriate an experience from Chester Kallman's childhood to explain her heroine's profound sense of alienation and abandonment (Kallman was Auden's lover).
   
   Tippins other great achievement here was her ability to slice through history and palpably recreate the political atmosphere in pre-war New York and to do so in a way that reflects on both British and US perspectives. She takes a good hard look at the criticism expatriates like Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Britten, and Pears faced from the British press and fellow artists who chose to remain in Great Britian during the war. She is similarly insightful in her analysis of the role the Mann family had in trying to get an apathetic America to respond to the European crisis. A lesser writer might not have bothered with these issues and chosen to report only the salacious and saleable anecdotes about the goings-on of the February House residents.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone even passingly interested in one of the artists who lived at 7 Middagh Street (you're sure to learn something new), to anyone who ever wondered how great works of art come about, or to anyone interested in knowing how history and art intersect. I'm sure I'm going to use Tippins's Selecte Bibliography as a basis for future Amazon.com purchases.

5 comments about Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times.

1. Helen Thomas is one of the few reporters who doesn't ignore the big elephant in the middle of the dining party -- you know -- Israel! It's okay for them to assassinate Kennedy, attack the U.S.S. Liberty, get us involved in other people's wars while financing and charging the American tax payer high interest loans for the wars it starts, spy on us, defame everyone who isn't juwish, make it illegal to question history, murder babies in abortion, swindle the American tax payer, murder Palestinians in Palestine and murder peace keepers in International waters. If you don't apologize for drawing attention to their mountains of sins, you're career will be destroyed. Luckily Helen is in the latter part of her career so she can tell them where to go. Instead of Germany and Poland, I recommend either the ocean or the moon.



2. Empty rhetoric helps to empty your mind and bowels while you're in the bathroom. I cannot overstress how helpful this book in this respect. But, it would be even more convenient if it would be printed on a roll of bath tissues so you can use them right away. Price , in this case, should be lowered though.



3. Helen Thomas is beautiful in every way. Her writing ability is incredible, her life in the front row at the White House was brilliant. Her honesty, brilliance and passion is to be valued and respected by everybody. An amazing read, you won't share this book even with your best friend, just in case you never get it back. It's a book that you can read over and over again and still learn more. Thanks Helen, hopefully people are inspired to follow their dreams as you have done. Thanks Amazon, I couldn't get it here in Australia, you came through for me again.



4. I respect Helen Thomas for her fearlessness, tenacity, and the fact that she broke so much ground as a woman in the WH Press Corp. However, as other reviewers have noted, this book didn't have the bite of her questions at a press conference.
   
   I'm glad I read this book - parts were very interesting. Her insights into individual Presidents and First Ladies, the way they viewed the press, and the insidious transition from communications to spin and handling. She also takes the press to task for buying into this.
   
   The book is kinda wonky, and if you aren't a press junky, it wouldn't mean much. I didn't know there was so much to know about Air Force One - and even after reading it, was numb.
   
   Reading this book made me think that I had Helen Thomas at a loooong Saturday afternoon brunch, and she had begun holding forth. Fascinating premise. But after a while, you'd want a break - take a walk, see if they brought out more shrimp, maybe check the Blackberry. After a while (or maybe 30 pages), it would be irresistable to go back and see what she was saying now. You'd be rivited for a while, then your eyes would start to glaze over, and it's time to see if they have FINALLY brought out more shrimp. After everyone has had three glasses of wine, you're in a mellower mood to listen, and she's in a crazier mood to talk, so it all works out just fine.



5. I never noticed Thomas much until I saw her bit on Steven Colbert's famous slap in Bush's face at the White House Pres Corps dinner. I started reading more about her and listened to her on many different shows. I respect her a great deal, so was very interested in this book.
   
   Much of it is about her. Too much really. There is also way too much name dropping as well as anecdotes about her and her cronnies that were frankly rather boring. She aslo is rather contradictory. She prides herself on her journalistic integrity but doesn't understand why someone like Lady Bird would have been furious over her leaks about her daughters. She makes a big deal of her front row seat and on the many compliments and accolades that the various presidents bestowed on her. Such things got in the way of what really was an excellent look at the administrations that she worked with.
   
   However, it was in her chapters on Marha Mitchell, and the first ladies, that really make this book a gem. The former esp - we were always told by the administration that she was insane. She wasn't - she was speaking the truth about watergate, and no one wanted to listen. And for the most part does a good job outlining each administration's successes and faults.
   
   However, She was also far from being unbiased. Kennedy was the only democratic president who she had good things to say about. To hear her talk, Clinton's lies were much worse than Watergate or Contragate. She pretty much gave Nixon and Reagan a free pass, but spent pages ranting about Clinton. I don't expect someone working so long to not have opinions but for heavens sake try to put things into perspective.
   
   Since this book was written just at the end of Clinton's term, and since I know that her opinion of Bush Jr is less than stellar, I'd be interested in reading her more current book which talks about his administration. I wonder if she now sees Clinton with perhaps less myopic eyes?

4 comments about The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour.

1. This is not a "how to do" book but an insight into the world of golf as seen through the eyes, or shall I say words, of George Plimpton. It's a great read, and as of this writing, I'm almost half way through.
   I am enjoying this book, and as a new golfer, I am pleased to realize my errors are not mine alone.
   
   If you like and hate golf this is the book for you. Read it.



2. Back way back when there were East Coast types that placed a high premium on what the English would call the glory of amateurism. So slip on that lime sports jacket and checked pink pants combo your grandpa used to wear, pour yourself a cocktail and meander out by the pool for some light evening conversation. Full of classic anecdotes like the one where two golfers are driving cross country and the one riding shotgun has a driver in his hand. Sometimes when they stop at a crossroads he likes to get out and take a few swings. Well out he gets one time and the driver doesn't notice, just takes off for about hundred clicks before he turns back.......



3. As old as it is, this is still an excellent get-well gift for men who lived and died with the Palmer et.al. era. One does not even have to be an avid golfer to enjoy the book. Only a casual knowledge of the game is needed. I feel this was the best of Plimpton's books.



4. Plimpton doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is: a priveleged amateur of questionable skill who is afforded the opportunity to play in several west coast pro-ams with various professionals. He relates many anecdotes, both first and second hand, several of which are hilarious insights into a tour which hadn't, at this juncture, reached the sophistication which characterizes its status today. Plimton's typical self-effacing style makes this an enjoyable read.

3 comments about Saved By the Sea: A Love Story with Fish.

1. I really enjoyed this autobiography of a truly fascinating man. From covering the front line of numerous wars to the front line of the battle to protect the oceans that have always provided a sense of serenity in otherwise often harsh and unforgiving circumstances. This was one of the best books I've read in a long time as you can tell the author is truly writing from his heart.



2. Beautiful autobiography of one of the most interesting lives and best writers of these times. The author's ability to clearly express the changes in the ocean, while telling us his own connection to the sea, makes this book one of the most informative, interesting and exciting environmental books out there.
   
   David Helvarg uses his great talent for writing to inform the reader about the power and importance of the ocean in each of our lives. The data and analysis leaves the reader with a wealth of knowledge. Be prepared to learn, while laughing, smiling and tearing up!



3. I love David Helvarg's books, and this latest one is great too. This book is full of stories I will always remember. It is well-written, entertaining, touching and informative.

5 comments about Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing (Mehta, Ved, Continents of Exile.).

1. Ved Mehta's eighth volume in his autobiographical series "Continents of Exile" is about his time at The New Yorker magazine during the William Shawn period. It's often described as a biography of Shawn, which may account for much of the criticism that the book has attracted. But it is not primarily about Shawn, and this must be remembered: the book is first and foremost concerned with the world of Ved Mehta and how William Shawn fit into it.
   
   It begins with Mehta's first meeting with Shawn in the old New Yorker offices on West Forty-third Street and passes through Shawn's editorship of Mehta's first submissions to his time as a staff writer to the fatal day in 1987 when Shawn was fired. Mehta's prose is engaging and his view of chameleon-like Shawn no more right or wrong than anyone else's.
   
   I recommend this book for both the subject matter and the writing. It was an unexpected treat.



2. I'm surprised three of the prior four reviewers found this title deserving of just four stars. I found this book to be an illuminating work, exposing the intriguing convergence of factors that made The New Yorker great in its formative years. It wasn't Mr. Shawn alone, but the culture he created. He created it by example, and his example drove the magazine's writers to a level of excellence rarely seen since.
   
   The author's success in capturing the tone Shawn set is powerful testimony to Ved Metha's skill as a writer. But beyond that, his book brings into focus a management style sorely lacking in today's enterprises, be they magazines, professional offices, retail stores -- whatever. That style is one which prizes pleasing the customer over profits, because it recognizes that happy customers are the KEY to long-term profitability.
   
   Should we be surprised that our publications have become cursory instruments which place a greater emphasis on flashy advertising than on editorial substance when the vast majority of "publishers" have climbed the accounting side of their particular corporation's ladder, rather than the editorial side?
   
   Editors of Mr. Shawn's caliber no longer exist because what used to be their primary job -- ensuring the accuracy and quality of editorial content -- no longer exists. Gone are the fact checkers and the grammarians, not to mention intelligent writers, able to produce 5,000 incisive words on the economy as easily as 7,000 on border disputes in the Middle East. And those writers are gone because their publications' ownerships lack the business sense necessary to build a following (or the attention span to appreciate any article which does not end on the same page upon which it begins).
   
   And as sure as these bean-counting bottom liners have no business being publishers, any editor who hasn't read this book shouldn't be editing anything.



3. I urge everyone to collect these wonderful books. Ved Mehta writes with care, and from an unusual point of view. I have enjoyed this book in particular. His attention to detail is nothing less than amazing. He is a well-educated man, very scholarly, and it does come through in his books. As good as Churchill, Camus, and Ignatieff, if not better.



4. Intriguing and informative look at a title (and by extension, an industry) in transition. Clearly illustrates both the reasons for and effects of corporate acquisition of magazines. Mehta's tone of hero worship for Shawn is occasionally grating. In fairness, this may be earned, as the Mr. Shawn in this book has many qualities you'd expect from a quiet hero. Fascinating stuff.



5. Ved Mehta is my favorite writer. I've bought nearly all his books, even old ones out of print that I've found through Amazon. Ved Mehta's endearing personality and superb writing style make an irresistable combination. Having said that, I must also say that Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker is the Mehta book I like least. It is the latest volume in Ved Mehta's autobiography, but it reveals too little about Mr. Mehta and redundantly much about Mr. Shawn. It tells more about the New Yorker than I really care to know, although I have been a New Yorker fan for years. Perhaps this book simply lacks the editorial guidance Mr. Shawn gave to Mehta's previous books. On the other hand, an unexpected gift I found in Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker is an explanation of the background behind other Mehta books written while Mehta was on the New Yorker staff. I do recommend that all Mehta and New Yorker fans read this book, but don't set your expectations too high.

5 comments about Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life.

1. but I had forgotten what a true fighter she was. I wish we had her voice now. The woman was fearless. What I didn't realize (or know) is her life story behind the columns. What a terrific read. Both on Molly and the state of Texas; the rise of big oil and the politics that have gotten us to where we are today. Thank you thank you thank you.



2. Molly Ivins was always one of my heroes, for her fearless, outspoken opinions and clever ways of phrasing things. We really miss her! It was interesting to read some background info on her life.



3. Someone gave this book to my husband who is a big Molly Ivins fan. Good grief! How anyone could slog through this book is beyond me. Molly Ivins certainly deserves better than this dull treatment!



4. I haven't finished it yet, but ran through another 70 or so pages last week while doing jury duty. But this book has so informed me about someone who was literally an icon in progressive thinking. If you can imagine Matt Drudge carrying anyone's column outside of the majority who are slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, then you have to know that Molly had the kind of authority -- earned baby earned -- and grit that few had. Her childhood in Houston, well off with a hard driving unforgiving father and a mother who simply did what dad told her to, to the early loss of the love of her life the book details her meteoric rise in the world of mainstrain (read Republican) newspapers in the Southwest and Midwest. Molly Ivins could say things like no one else could. She covered the Texas Legislature (the lege as she called it) when there were mostly D's and a handful of R's ... and believe me she was as scathing and on point about the D's as she ever was about the R's. When she saw folly, racism, bigotry, financial scams, idolatry whatever --she called it as she saw it. And she was always right on point! This is a wonderful book -- buy it, read it, sleep on it, and keep it in your library forever. It's that good. Written with her assistant and Bill Minutaglio, an author in his own right.



5. It stops frustratingly short of really letting us feel as if we had gotten to know the "real" Molly Ivins.
   
   But the biggest problem with this book is something that would be hard to avoid, which is that Ivins didn't write it herself. She was such a good writer, her voice so well-developed and indelible that some of us can and do still quote a favorite line or two.
   
   The authors here, though they keep your interest, just aren't as good. You feel like someone being mean to a dog for saying this, because these writers' hearts are clearly in the right place, but I think they've let down their craft.
   
   They say early on that they deliberately decided not to quote large pieces of Ivins' work readily available elsewhere; I can understand that. But it meant I prized those sections where she did pop out all the more, and hope for a full-fledged collection of her letters and other papers.

5 comments about Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

1. I have been reading Mr. Buchwald's books since the early 60's. This was one of his best works. He was a master of satire even satirizing his own demise. The world is a sadder place because there won't be another book by him.



2. I never quite "got" Art Buchwald. His humor seemed to always miss the mark for me. Here again, as Buchwald was under hospice care, writing what he thought would be his last random reminiscences - his observations seem too stray, too puzzlingly juxtaposed.
   
   For example, he writes how his attendants and visitors at the residential hospice were spoiling him, waiting on him, delivering greetings and felicitations and presents galore. He said all this doting attention began to turn him into Marlon Brando as that actor whined "I couldda been a contender." Well, I'd never considered that Brando particularly came across as a whiner in that scene from "On the Waterfront."
   
   Or again, Buchwald and his fellow hospice residents started to play their own version of the game, "Who I'd Like to Meet in Heaven." They played "Who I Wouldn't Want to Meet in Heaven." After Buchwald considers his list of dislikes, he wonders what he would do if he does run into these characters up there. He decides he might refuse to give them tickets to any upcoming rock concert. What? This whole train of thought comes off as another non sequitur.
   
   When Buchwald started to speculate on what heaven would actually be like, I hoped finally for some nuggets of wisdom. Buchwald concluded that in Heaven, there would be no taxes - because "paying taxes is hell." That was a let-down. But perhaps that was the point - that there are no profundities that can be delivered about the nature of Heaven, or about the lessons to be learned from terminal illness. But I often felt as if I had to impute points to his humor rather than actually finding them there, ready-made.
   
   At any rate, I stumbled through parts of this book - through remarks that seemed to be slippages along a fault-line. Another passage and there again was another crevice between the two parting sides of his thought - a gap become just a little too wide to leap. So although Buchwald wrote very simple sentences throughout this brief book - I still seemed to end up spending a disproportionately long time reading it.
   
   Nevertheless an ever-affable, sympathetic human being emerges from these pages. His impishly grinning face on the cover draws you in and holds you. He says he loved to flirt outrageously with all the women who visited him in hospice. And he seems to be flirting with the reader. And you can hardly resist. You go hand-in-hand with him through the fractured phases of his youth - through orphanage and foster care - then later through bouts of depression. You emerge with him into the warm glow of celebrity status, with kudos being issued by everyone from French Ambassadors to Kennedy family members to Hollywood stars.
   
   Buchwald does quote some of the truly incisive one-liners he's issued along the way, such as: "Don't commit suicide, because you might change your mind in two weeks." Then there's the sarcastic jolt he'd deliver to college graduating classes: "We've given you a perfect world. Don't screw it up." Or his advice about exercise - he gave up on it because he figured the time he spent exercising exceeded any increase he'd realize in life span.
   
   You will also get a sense from this book of what residential hospice care at its best can be like. For Buchwald, it ended up being an opportunity to hold a salon seven days a week. The best and the brightest all came to say what they thought would be their last farewells to him. In the process, everyone had a jolly good time.
   
   And then there's the boost of the happy ending to this book. Well, it was a temporary happy ending - but that temporariness is all any of us can hope for.



3. I had seen Art Buchwald a few times on TV and never thought he was nearly as witty or funny as people said. So I thought I'd try one of his books--and this was it. My mistake. Wrong choice. This book isn't funny at all. It's about dying, a cobbled together piece that just didn't touch me at all.
   
   All sorts of celebrities (whatever that word means) visit Buchwald in the hospice where he has gone to die of kidney disease and whatever. But we hear little of the conversations. Rather, the writer tells us how pleased he was to be so recognized. Then we have tributes of sorts from several people at the end of the book.
   
   When I finished this I had a rather empty feeling. It didn't seem that I had been anywhere very interesting, or enlightening, or amusing. Maybe I need to read one of Buchwald's books that was written when he was healthy.



4. 
   Over the past four decades our ideas about the human dying process have developed, formed by at least four major thinkers: Cicely Saunders, originator of the hospice movement, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (Death and Dying), Irving Byock (The Four Things that Matter Most), and Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven). Art Buchwald's "Too Soon To Say Goodbye" belongs next to these four in the death section of your library, sharing with them a focus on examining the death process without judgment and with open-minded curiosity.
   
   Buchwald's medical problems started with a stroke in 2000, which led to chronic renal failure and the amputation of one leg. He learned in January 2006 that his condition had been worsened by the development of acute renal failure and was now life-threatening. His options were thrice weekly dialysis or death, estimated to occur within two weeks. Buchwald was subjected to twelve dialysis treatments and then opted out, choosing a hospice in Washington, DC as his home until he died. He dictated this book as a diary of his experiences and feelings in the hospice, fully accepting his approaching death and intensely curious as to what it would be like. He was keen on sharing all of his experiences with those actually present in his life, as well as with us, his readers. During the eleven months between his death sentence and his actual demise January 17, 2007), he enjoyed meeting friends and celebrities in the common room of his hospice and recording TV interviews and messages to be played to audiences and family after his death. He also went shopping for cremation urns, wrote a commentary on the high price of funerals, lined up speakers for his Memorial Service, received cheesecakes by the dozen from well-meaning friends, rallied for a summer vacation at his home on Martha's Vineyard, and reflected on his life. While Buchwald briefly mentions the trauma of having a remote father and an absentee institutionalized bipolar mother, he does not dwell on his insecure years in foster care and his recurrent depressions. His attention is on a confident understanding of the reason he was put on earth: to make people laugh. The Pulitzer Prize winning humorist is at peace within himself due to his understanding of his raison d'etre and this is a gift which many, including Eddie (The Five People You Meet in Heaven) do not receive until after death, if ever. Buchwald enters his final year of life already well into Kubler-Ross's acceptance stage. We have no glimpse of denial or bargaining. He is true to himself, making us laugh until the end. He is unafraid.
   This book will be of interest to all who work with the human mind and spirit, but particularly to those who identify with Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and who consult on the dying. It is also appropriate for the elderly or those approaching death, serving as a source of optimism and an invitation to discussion of a subject that may be otherwise difficult.
   
   Dr. Bazemore is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts.



5. This is a funny and fun book to read! Facing the wrath of the Catholic Church Martin Luther (1483-1546) declared: "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." That is powerful stuff, but because of the long time distance, one does not fully appreciate the gracefulness with which some people welcome difficult challenges. This book tells that same story. Here is a man in a hospice writing a book that covers 19 different subjects, almost all dealing with other people. There are no regrets and little fear of death. The breadth and insightfulness of this books compares favorably to Francis Bacon's Essays, only this one is easy to read.
   
   I was fortunate to hear Mr. Buchwald talk about his conditions with Diane Rehm on her NPR show. The book just capped it all. The people this man knew; how well he knew them; how much he accomplished! Artie, as his friends called him, even personally invited his best friends to speak at the celebration of the end of his life. The invitation on pages 147-148 will make anyone cry.
   
   This book is really good - I mean GREAT!
   
   
   Amavilah, Author
   Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
   ISBN: 1600210465