Fortunately for all concerned, Stephen Sondheim’s Look, I Made a Hat is not a treatise on the art of millinery. Instead, it is the sequel to Finishing the Hat, the pre-eminent American theater composer-lyricist’s compilation and consideration of his career, divided into two volumes and filled with nuggets of insight. Or, as he prefers to put it in his subtitle, “Collected … [Read more...]
Dying author faced the end by insisting on happiness
As medical director of Dean Ornish’s Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California, Lee Lipsenthal regularly helped patients overcome their fear of pain and death. But just short of his 52nd birthday in 2009, Lipsenthal was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and told he had at most only a few years to live. Enjoy Every Sandwich is the author’s upbeat account of how he … [Read more...]
‘That Used to Be Us’ an urgent call to recover American primacy
Three years ago, Thomas L. Friedman sounded alarm bells about global warming in his best-selling book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, but predicted that America would wake up before it was too late. Now Friedman and co-author Michael Mandelbaum in their new book, That Used To Be Us, say they are frustrated, but still optimistic, about a range of issues, including global warming, … [Read more...]
The 2011-12 season in books: PB Poetry Fest now a prestige draw
It’s amusing now to think that a mere generation ago South Florida was considered a cultural wasteland were people did not read. Today the region is blessed with several of the most influential – and fun! – book festivals in the nation, if not the world. Take the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, for example. The youngest of the region’s literary events, in only eight years it has … [Read more...]
Spare novella of Japanese-American brides haunts
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, U.S. authorities rounded up thousands of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast and shipped them to internment camps, fearing they might be traitors. In her compelling new novella, The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka captures in spare prose the paranoia of that period. She opens by describing the arduous voyage by ship … [Read more...]
Clever ‘Mr. Peanut’ part psychological study, part police procedural
Death by dieting isn’t necessarily a case of anorexia. In Adam Ross’s original yet perplexing debut novel, Mr. Peanut, a young wife is found murdered after she manages to lose more than 100 pounds. The murder weapon is a plate of peanuts, the number one suspect her heft-loving husband who swears he didn’t do it. Over the course of their 13-year marriage, Alice Pepin had tried … [Read more...]
Book review: Writer’s memoir of husband’s stroke meticulous, moving
One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing, by Diane Ackerman; Norton; 322 pp.; $26.95By Bill WilliamsWhen a blood clot lodges in the brain, patients may lose their ability to speak or write, a devastating setback for anyone, but particularly so for an author.Husband-and-wife authors Diane Ackerman and Paul West had … [Read more...]
Writer’s memoir of husband’s stroke meticulous, moving
When a blood clot lodges in the brain, patients may lose their ability to speak or write, a devastating setback for anyone, but particularly so for an author. Husband-and-wife authors Diane Ackerman and Paul West had devoted their lives to words until that awful day in 2003 when West suffered a stroke that left him devoid of language, an outcome known as aphasia. One Hundred … [Read more...]
Book review: Author’s quest to know lost dad revives tales of sadness
Almost a Family: A Memoir, by John Darnton; Knopf; 348 pp.; $27.95By Bill WilliamsJohn Darnton was 11 months old when his father, Barney Darnton, was killed during World War II while reporting on the war in the Pacific for The New York Times.Almost a Family is a meticulous reconstruction of the lives of the Darnton family – the author, his older … [Read more...]
Author’s quest to know lost dad revives tales of sadness
John Darnton was 11 months old when his father, Barney Darnton, was killed during World War II while reporting on the war in the Pacific for The New York Times. Almost a Family is a meticulous reconstruction of the lives of the Darnton family – the author, his older brother and their mom and dad. The book is, by turns, illuminating, gripping and sad. Growing up, the author … [Read more...]