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WHAT TO GIVE, WHAT TO GET 2001: Begin Your Holiday Shopping With Us BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
BODY TOXIC: An Environmental Memoir by Susanne Antonetta Counterpoint ISBN: 1582431167 Read an Excerpt The poisons come from within and they come from without. Susanne Antonetta's BODY TOXIC: An Environmental Memoir is a disturbing and haltingly readable book about some true-life horrors that most of us would prefer not to think about on a regular basis. Growing up in a polluted New Jersey beach town, Antonetta has suffered the emotional as well as physical ramifications of poor waste management and weak federal regulation against such things. The book has a strange shape to it. Antonetta, with her poet's sensibility, bounces around between her grandparents' immigrant tales to her self-medication and drug problems as a wild teen in the '70s to her attempts to overcome the infertility in her later life that most likely is a result of the summer days she spent swimming in a Jersey Shore town that was situated next to a Ciba-Geigy plant. The Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant released more radiation into its neighboring section of New Jersey than Three Mile Island did upon its breakdown. The larger pattern of health problems stemming from this situation affected Antonetta's family in many ways --- the hazardous waste that made its way into their drinking, bathing and recreational swimming waters makes the laundry list of medical ailments they fell victim to too long even to abridge here. Sometimes it is difficult to catch the flow of stories from one to another as they might fit into the bigger picture, but the bigger picture is really just about the tragedy that comes from without when the environment on which you depend for your survival is wrecked by those who don't care about consequences. You don't have to live in New Jersey yourself (although I do, and so the book made me more than appropriately wary about my family's health and safety in the Garden State) to wonder how your friends and relatives may have been affected by similar goings-on wherever they live. Antonetta sounds her siren by holding up the multiple tragedies and problems of her own life as examples of how the lack of environmental safety has affected her existence. She is still alive and that, perhaps, is the miracle of this memoir: it is hard to believe that, with all she did to herself and all that was done to her and her family without their knowledge, she has managed to survive, with a healthy combination of irony, fact-finding, and a mere nip of humor. It's not a funny book, BODY TOXIC, but there are moments where the elemental unforgiving of the horrors almost makes you laugh for joy that Antonetta's book is not your own story. This is a strange and disconcerting book, as much for its theme as for its presentation. The style of the book, the jumping back and forth, will make readers feel as if they are in the presence of a friend who is in the manic stage of manic depression and has the energy to keep talking, even if the stories don't jive together. This makes BODY TOXIC hard to take at first, but eventually you settle into Antonetta's hopping --- by the end of the book, it all adds up into one tragic horror that you won't soon forget. If you think our environmental problems in this country are getting better, read this. --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano Back to top.
MANHATTAN MEMOIR by Mary Cantwell Penguin USA (Paper) ISBN: 0140291903 Cantwell's three unflinchingly honest and breathlessly intense memoirs about life in New York are gathered into this one volume --- a must read for fans of the genre and fans of New York City. Back to top.
THE INVENTION OF CLOUDS: How An Amateur Meteorologist Forged The Language Of The Skies by Richard Hamblyn Farrar Straus & Giroux ISBN: 0374177155 "Cirrus," "cumulus," and "stratus" are now common words for lovers of The Weather Channel. Learn the fascinating story of quiet Quaker student Luke Howard and how he changed how we look at the sky in one fateful lecture in 1802. Back to top.
BLACK BOTTOM STOMP: Eight Masters of Ragtime and Early Jazz by David A. Jasen and Gene Jones Routledge ISBN: 0415936411 Jazz aficionados are among the most dedicated --- and elitist --- fans of any musical genre. The most hard-core will think nothing of spending hours comparing Coltrane solos before and after he kicked junk or dissecting the individual notes in a lengthy Ellington suite. But despite that scholarly bent, many will also mistakenly dismiss ragtime music as a simplistic, formulaic and unworthy precursor of jazz --- just as one might treat an older and embarrassing uncle at a family reunion. Music journalists and ragtime experts Jasen and Jones hope to give some credit where it is due in this collection of biographical sketches of eight masters of ragtime and early jazz that also discuss the evolution and impact of their individual musical contributions. From the famous and the revered to the more obscure, each man provides a crucial link in early jazz history. The goal of BLACK BOTTOM STOMP is to argue for a much richer legacy of ragtime than just "The Entertainer" (Joplin's familiar rag that became the theme for the movie The Sting as well as thousands of ice cream trucks around the country). The authors quickly set out to present a different historical setting for ragtime. While jazz fans are used to simply buying a record of their favorite performer on demand, the bulk of ragtime players (named for the "ragged," fast and syncopated rhythms made on the piano) made their names more with sales of sheet music for amateur players or the "rolls" they made for player pianos. They would also think nothing perverse in providing the parlor entertainment at a rough whorehouse one weekend and a ritzy society ball the next. Many even held both bitter rivalries and great friendships with each other as their careers and fortunes went up and down. Still, each man's story comes through clear in their chapters: Willie "The Lion" Smith's flashy, challenging attitude that struck fear in other players during cutting contests; Eubie Blake's utter dismissal of ragtime for almost 40 years, only to embrace its revival up until his death at 100; Fats Waller's need for food, booze, and immediate cash, leading him to attempt to sell a song and all rights for a mere $2.50; and Scott Joplin, despite his initial bright burst of fame, dying penniless. Louis Armstrong, the only non-pianist included, is viewed as both a bridge between ragtime and jazz as well as arguably its greatest practitioner. But the most interesting sketch is that on the difficult, egocentric, but undeniably brilliant Jelly Roll Morton who --- despite his guffaw-inducing claims of having "invented" jazz in 1902 (at the age of 12!) had a life and career of Shakespearean twists in terms of both triumph and misfortune. Not surprisingly, the book's title comes from one of his most famous compositions, and his picture --- rather than the better-known Waller or Armstrong --- graces the cover. If BLACK BOTTOM STOMP has a weakness, it's in its brevity and in Jasen and Jones's straightforward, almost encyclopedic-style of writing. And while the sketches offer little unfamiliar information to ragtime and jazz fans and scholars, it does provide basic summations to promote further study for the beginner. This is also a book that literally screams for a companion CD of music. Reading about James P. Johnson's piano style --- no matter how skillfully or technically correct it is written --- cannot substitute for hearing the master of the stride style play himself. There are still many dedicated ragtime fans around the world. They stage festivals, encourage new players and study, and continuously search for lost or mythical recordings and sheet music. But if musical styles can be seen as a pyramid, and jazz one of its strongest and largest stones, then ragtime is at least one of the foundation blocks on the bottom --- regardless of what some hepcats and university professors might have you believe. --- Reviewed by Bob Ruggiero Back to top.
PENGUIN INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY: From 1900 To The Present edited by Edward Vernoff and Rima Shore Viking Press ISBN: 0670894702 An incomparably useful and eminently browsable classic, this tome consists of 6,000 entries on notables, both living and dead, in the fields of politics, literature, the arts, business, sports, the sciences, and popular culture. Back to top.
52 McGS: The Best Obituaries From The Legendary New York Times Writer Robert McG. Thomas Jr. edited by Chris Calhoun Scribner ISBN: 0743215621 Legendary New York Times Writer Robert McG. Thomas Jr. Witty, quirky and devilishly well-written, these eulogies for the famous, infamous and curious (like Francine Katzenbogen, a lottery millionaire who used her winnings to help cats) prove that life is what you make of it. Back to top.
UPHILL WITH ARCHIE: A Son's Journey by William H. MacLeish Simon & Schuster ISBN: 0684824957 "God's will in the world if we could learn it, test it on our lips, would taste of praise. Why else should the world be beautiful? Why should the leaves look as they do, the light, the water? Rinsing our mouths with the praise of a good man..." Archibald MacLeish wrote these words in a poem entitled "A Good Man in a Bad Time," but they certainly apply when speaking of his son's poignant memoir of life growing up under the watchful eye of his famous poet and statesman father. Archibald MacLeish's life reads like myth. After distinguishing himself at Yale in both sports and academics, he went on to graduate first in his class from Harvard Law School. After a quick ascension at one of Boston's leading law firms, Archie stunned his colleagues by announcing his resignation on the day they offered him a partnership. His interest in poetry had gotten the best of him, and he was off to hone his skills in the exciting atmosphere of Paris's Left Bank. During his time in Paris, Archie became friends with such figures as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos. His poetry garnered some notice, and as his literary star began to rise, Archie and his wife Ada conceived their second child, William. With a growing family and a poet's wages, Archie decided he had basked long enough in the glory of Paris and headed back to the United States, where the chances of a better living were much greater. While still in college, Archie was admired from afar by fellow Skull and Bones member Henry Luce, several years Archie's junior. In 1929, just back from his years in Paris, Archie got a call from Luce --- whom he had yet to meet --- offering him a post at Luce's new magazine Fortune. Hesitant but in need of a job, Archie relented and went on to write a series of articles detailing America during the Depression. Archie continued to publish poetry. His book-length epic poem, CONQUISTADOR, earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. All this acclaim captured the attention of a man who would change Archie's life forever. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Archie to accept the appointment of Librarian of Congress. Archie distinguished himself during his tenure while simultaneously serving as the director of the War Department's Office of Facts and Figures. He went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of State and chaired the first UNESCO conference in Paris. Archie MacLeish retired from political life in 1949 but began a teaching career as Harvard's Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory that lasted until 1962. He garnered a second Pulitzer and the National Book Award for his COLLECTED POEMS in 1952, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1958 and was awarded an Academy Award in 1965 for co-authoring the screenplay of "The Eleanor Roosevelt Story." All this is wonderfully chronicled by William MacLeish. Yet what sets UPHILL WITH ARCHIE apart from the typical literary memoir is the brutal honesty with which William deals with his father's success. Archie's was a fame to be envied, and William describes coming to grips with Archie's success while lovingly painting a portrait of the often idyllic life he had growing up on Uphill Farm, the family's country estate. He also writes of his struggle to become a writer himself, following in his father's enormous footsteps: "I owed him his fame. For half a century I borrowed it, using it as collateral to advance my own station. I came to think of it as a sun under which I could sit and get a nice tan. Unless I watch myself, I still do." The warmth of Archibald MacLeish's poetry radiates from the page, but William MacLeish need not worry about basking in the sun of his father's fame. Through various nonfiction books and journalistic endeavors, he has fashioned a body of work that stands on its own. With UPHILL WITH ARCHIE, he leads us to a vantage point from which we can view the varied landscape that exists between father and son. Seeing that arc from the first bonds of love, the emergence of individualism, the inevitable envy, disgruntled acceptance, and finally, a very comfortable and satisfying love for his father, one cannot help but harken back to Archie's poem, "A Good Man in a Bad Time": "I love this man. I rinse my mouth with his praise in a bad time. The taste in the cup is of mint, of spring water." --- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner © Copyright 2001, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved. Back to top.