New York Times Book Review June 25, 1995
Oxford University Press:
A SONG IN THE DARK: THE BIRTH OF THE MUSICAL FILM
by Richard Barrios
(The lively, intelligent and well-researched survey tells the
tumultuous and often delightfully absurd saga of the film industry's
frantic, disasterlaced efforts in the late 1920's and early 1930's
to fabricate a new, lucrative product - the movie muscial - as part
of its effort to come to grips with the new technology of sound).
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: PRESENTATION AND CONCEPTUAL DRAWINGS
(Luna Imaging)
(There are more than 20,000 drawings in the archives of the Frank
Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West in Arizona. Thanks to
Luna Imaging and Oxford University Press - and the Magic of
CD-ROM's - we now have easy access to much of this Wrightian hoard.
The digital images of almost 5,000 architectural drawings selected
by the archives staff have been transferred to four compact disks.
The work of a lifetime - a very long lifetime - on two ounces of
plastic.)
Harper Collins Publishers:
A MAN'S WORLD: HOW REAL IS MALE PRIVILEGE - AND HOW HIGH IS ITS PRICE?
by Ellis Cose
(Mr. Cose does not think men - including the famous white man - are
angry. He thinks they are confused, perhaps even depressed. They are
confused about sex roles at home and sexual harassment at work;
about the etiquette of dating and the etiquette of breadwinning; about
when to be sensitive and when to be macho. Perhaps more to the point,
there is less evident need for a men's movement, because it is
unclear what men need to move. It is a solipsism to speak, as we
do, of "women's issues," as though women were a monolithic
community, instead of a group of individuals within which those
issues are hotly contested; and it is just as bad to speak of "men's
issues," for men are, if anything, even more divided.)
W. W. Norton & Company:
GEORGE ELIOT, VOICE OF A CENTRUY: A BIOGRAPHY by Frederick R. Karl
(Frederick R. Karl reminds us that the great F. R. Leavis, of
Downing College, Cambridge, a university once noted for its puritanism,
issued a directive in "The Great Tradition," his influential study
of the English novel, that the novels of George Eliot were the most
distinguished of the Victorian age.)
SECRET PATHS: WOMEN IN THE NEW MIDLIFE by Terri Apter
(For today's woman, a scholar's view of the opportunities of
middle age. Ms. Apter's thesis is that women experience a renewed
sense of themselves in thier 40's and 50's and so the second half
of life is an opportunity for growth and fulfillment rather than
despair.)
THE DEATH OF HITLER: THE FULL STORY WITH NEW EVIDENCE FROM SECRET
RUSSIAN ARCHIVES by Ada Petrova and Peter Watson
(Few political leaders have enjoyed such fascinating post-mortem
careers.)
Simon & Schuster:
CERTAIN TRUMPETS: THE CALL OF LEADERS by Garry Wills
(The author explores the quality of leadership, defining as successful
those who share a common goal with their followers. He presents
profiles of 16 such people, ranging from King David to Martha
Graham, along with personal sketches of their opposing types, like
Solomon and Madonna.
The Free Press:
THE NEXT AMERICAN NATION: THE NEW NATIONALISM AND THE FOURTH
AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Michael Lind
(Mr. Lind, presently a senior editor at the New Republic, describes
our society as one where the wealthy elites have been enabled, by a
deft use of the tax system, the international market and the
relationship between trusts and education, to arrange matters so
that they live in a different country from their ostensible fellow
citizens. Lind advocates a bracing dose of class consciousness
among the hard-working saps who, as the saying goes, "play by the
rules" and are laid off or impoverished for their pains.)
Foxrock/Four Walls Eight Windows:
ELEUTHERIA: A PLAY IN THREE ACTS by Samuel Beckett
(The abandoned manuscript of Beckett's first play has finally found
its way into print after a highly dramatic legal and literary battle,
with protective executors and eager publishers all insisting they
were acting in the author's interest.)
Random House:
MAPPLETHORPE: A BIOGRAPHY by Patricia Morrisroe
(Morrisroe, a magazine journalist, focuses on the photographer's
progressively degenerate life style. Her book is long on gossipy
detail - nearly a quarter of it is devoted to a ghoulishly clinical
rundown of Mapplethorpe's final days - but short on real engagement
with his work.)
NEW PASSAGES: MAPPING YOUR LIFE ACROSS TIME by Gail Sheehy
(The author uses Census Bureau data to draw demographic portraits of
generations across time. Ms. Sheehy offers an optimistic analysis
of adult development in pessimistic times. For those who are
unmotivated and confused, worried about losing thier jobs or afraid
of aging and death, she brings good news about growing older and
reassurances that even doubts and despair can be a normal passage to
a reinvigorated life.)
Houghton Mifflin Company:
WALKER EVANS: A BIOGRAPHY by Belinda Rathbone
(Perhaps it is not surprising that no biography of Walker Evans, whom
many consider the greatest American photographer ever, has been
written until now. Evans, whose seemingly artless photographs of
sharecroppers in the 1930's have come to exemplify the human
effects of the Depression, remains an elusive figure. In part this is
due to his own temperament: in 1938, when his work was the subject
of the first one-person photography show at the Museum of Modern
Art, he refused to pose for a publicity picture.)
Steerforth Press:
COMMIES, CROOKS, GYPSIES, SPOOKS & POETS: THIRTEEN BOOKS OF PRAGUE
IN THE YEAR OF THE GREAT LICE EPIDEMIC by Jan Novak
(The author revisits the city he left abruptly in 1969 and finds a
post-Communists phantasmagoria. The book's title is interesting.
However, the gypsies, especially their music, are far more a
Hungarian than Czech phenomenon.)
Viking:
HAVE A NICE DAY; FROM THE BALKAN WAR TO THE AAMERICAN DREAM
by Dubravka Ugresic
(The book is based on a collection of weekly columns written for a
Dutch newspaper in 1991-92. The author is at her best when the focus
of her thoughts is on her country. Sadly, instead of
capitalizing on her strength, she devotes most of her efforts to
critiquing America's popular culture.)
New Horizon Press:
I SHARED THE DREAM: THE PRIDE, PASSION AND POLITICS OF THE FIRST BLACK
WOMEN SENATOR FROM KENTUCKY by Georgia Davis Powers
(A woman's political memoir is dominated by her affair with Martin
Luther King Jr.)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux:
TOO SOON TO TELL by Calvin Trillin
(In this is a collection of nearly 100 syndicated columns. Calvin
Trillin holds forth on everything from the animal kingdom to the
possibility of being labeled a member of the cultural elite.)
Alfred A Knopf:
THE COMPANY OF WOLVES by Peter Steinhard
(This comprehensive and up-to-date book on North American
wolves, that most enigmatic of all endangered species, comes
at a good moment. The wolf, until recently extinct in the wild
everywhere in the lower 48 states, is now in the news.)
That is all for this issue. Tune in next week. Best Wishes, Frank J.
Chorba, Washburn University and editor of the JOURNAL OF RADIO STUDIES.