The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts On Reclaiming the American Dream
Publisher Weekly Review: Ilinois's Democratic senator illuminates the constraints of mainstream politics all too well in this sonorous manifesto. Obama (Dreams from My Father) castigates divisive partisanship (especially the Republican brand) and calls for a centrist politics based on broad American values. His own cautious liberalism is a model: he's skeptical of big government and […]
Last Rights : Rescuing the End of Life From the Medical System
Library Journal Review: Most people find it difficult to face their own mortality and that of their loved ones. This book compassionately and skillfully addresses this difficult, emotional issue. Kiernan, a journalist with the Burlington Free Press (VT), discusses the disconnect between how people want to spend their last days and how they actually end […]
Kate : the Woman Who Was Hepburn
Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. Mann, a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood (Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines), says at the onset it doesn't make sense to try to pin down Katharine Hepburn with modern labels of sexual identity. Mann's careful research on the longstanding rumors about Hepburn's lesbianism suggests that the notoriously […]
You, On a Diet : the Owner's Manual For Waist Management
Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. Back for another highly entertaining round of Biology 101, the team behind YOU: The Owner's Manual applies its signature wit and wisdom to food metabolism and nutrition. According to Roizen and Oz, waist measurement, not weight, is the most important factor in mortality related to obesity, and understanding the relationship […]
Joy of Cooking
Publishers Weekly They say mother knows best, but in the case of this classic cooking volume, first published 75 years ago, the adage might be more accurately "mother-and grandmother-know best." For while some previous editions of Joy have embraced passing fads and shunned the earlier versions' old-school charm, this time, the editors (led by Irma's […]
The Notebooks of Robert Frost
Publishers Weekly A new book containing unpublished work by America's most famous poet is a literary event. While he was not much of a diarist, Frost avidly kept notebooks throughout his life. He recorded his daily musings in what Frost scholar Faggen calls " `ordinaries,' unassuming dime-store spiral pads and school theme books." This roughly […]
Insecure At Last : Losing It In Our Security-obsessed World
Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. I am worried about this word, this notion?security," writes the renowned author of The Vagina Monologues at the beginning of this extraordinarily compelling, if somewhat scattered, memoir; "Why has all of this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure?" Ensler recounts her attempts to make sense of […]
Saving Graces : Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers
"She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice presidential candidate John Edwards. Elizabeth Edwards shares her experiences in Saving Graces, a memoir of Edwards's trials, tragedies, and triumphs, and of how various communities celebrated her joys and lent her stready strength and quiet hope in darker […]
Truck : a Love Story
Publisher Weekly Review: A part-time emergency medical technician, Perry delivers the latest account of his somewhat idiosyncratic life and times in a small Wisconsin town ("I am happy to live in a place where I can chuck a washing machine out my back door and no one judges my behavior unusual"). Here, he focuses on […]
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid : a Memoir
Library Journal Review: I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s, writes Bryson (A Walk in the Woods), and his wryly amusing stories of his childhood in Des Moines almost convince the reader this is true. Bryson recounts the world of his […]