December 2010
26 posts
Book Review: Photography - WSJ.com →
Herman Leonard, who died this summer, photographed jazz musicians as the aristocrats of American nightlife. “Jazz” (Bloomsbury, 304 pages, $65) collects more than 100 of his glamorous black-and-white portraits, many from the 1950s—the heyday of Counts, Dukes, Earls and other jazz royalty. Whether sitting in at a recording session with a barefoot Sarah Vaughan or at a crummy...
Good books for the aspiring journalist
Reporting at Wit’s End by St. Clair McKelway and The Silent Season of a Hero by Gay Talese are two killer collections of magazine writing we published this year. Both authors are legends, both books are in paperback, please take a look! They’d make great gifts for anyone, but especially a journalism student.
Good books for dog lovers
Solomon’s Oak by Jo-Ann Mapson is a funny and touching novel about family set in central California and A Small Furry Prayer by Steven Kotler is about the author’s experience with Chihuahua rescue in New Mexico. Both would be excellent gifts for the dog lover in your life! Jo-Ann has four dogs herself and they play an important supporting role in her novel, while Steven’s novel...
Favorite food books of 2010 | Grist →
@AnnaLappe picks What’s on Your Plate…and Greg Massa on Massa Organics picks Methland!
Off On a Tangent: My Favorite Crime Novels of... →
offonatangent:
You Were Wrong, Matthew Sharpe (the writing! How he messes with literary and genre conventions! More people need to read this book)
Liz Seccuro (@crashintomebook) in Huffington Post... →
It is important to note that today, as I sit a mere 10 minutes from Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) is introducing the SaVE Act in the Senate, a bill crafted in direct response to this horrific death. Let us not lose focus on what Yeardley’s murder means, the facts of the case, and that it resonates beyond UVA and to every corner of America’s college and university...
Mao's Great Leap to Famine - NYTimes.com →
Frank Dikötter’s op-ed in the International Herald Tribune: In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.
Letter from China: Q. & A.: Frank Dikötter on... →
There is no museum, no monument, no remembrance day to honor the tens of millions of victims of Mao’s holocaust.
New books rethink Mao and the Maoists, review :... →
…including Frank Dikötter’s “Mao’s Great Famine” : “[A] tour of the follies, inefficiencies, and deceptions of Mao’s commandeered economy…[a] vivid catalogue of horrors…Focussing relentlessly on Mao’s character and motivations, Dikötter confirms the man’s reputation as sadistic, cowardly, callous, and vindictive….[a] bold portrait.”
Dead Presidents: REVIEW: Young Mr. Obama by Edward... →
deadpresidents:
Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President By Edward McClelland Hardcover. 288 pp. October 2010. Bloomsbury Press.
We all know Barack Obama’s story pretty well, and I know it very well. In fact, I spent the better part of almost two years telling his story every…
Podcast: Tom Rosenstiel on Journalism in the New... →
Rosenstiel and I discuss new ethical dilemmas facing online journalists. He also explains the counterintuitive theory that by catering to your online audience’s immediate interest, you can actually, over time, destroy your audience.
Duchess of Devonshire’s Memoir: Review -... →
Chloë Schama on the Duchess of Devonshire’s dispatches from another world…In her new memoir and a collection of letters, the last Mitford sister talks about chickens, her famous siblings, and having tea with Hitler.
Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of...
Wikileaks, and to some extent the TSA story, are two recent examples of how journalism has changed in ways that the consumer now must be his or her own editor. In Wikileaks, a non news advocacy organization, perhaps even a criminal one, is breaking news, and even the New York Times has defended its publication of the secret cables on the basis that they would be made public anyway. So the...
Short Book Reviews From Ruth Franklin | The New... →
Seymour Chwast’s graphic-novel adaptation of Dante’s poem took a little time to win me over. Part of the jolt—in addition to seeing Dante himself rendered in the style of a film noir detective, wearing a trench coat and hat and chewing on a pipe, accompanied by a portly Virgil in bowtie, spats, and walking stick—is the diminution of the original’s language. Chwast retells the poem in a...