THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING 2011

Name: THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING 2011
Author: American Society of Magazine Editors
ISBN: 978-0-231-15940-1

by American Society of Magazine Editors ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 6, 2011

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More reliably solid, educational reading material awarded by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

Covering a variety of topics and interests, reporting merit was just one of the subjects judged for literary noteworthiness. Michael Hastings skewered hardheaded four-star Army general Stanley McChrystal with such eagle-eyed scrutiny in “The Runaway General” (Rolling Stone) that it actually prompted the official’s resignation. In another standout, “Covert Operations” (New Yorker), Jane Mayer offers scathing analysis of Charles and David Koch, a duo of wealthy, manipulative libertarians powering what Mayer describes as an unscrupulous political machine. The profile pieces offer lighter fare. Top honors goes to New York Times reporter Mark Liebovich’s profile of Mike Allen, one of America’s most influentially well-connected (and sleep-deprived) political news reporters. Jonathan Van Meter respectfully nods to his longtime comedienne comrade in “Joan Rivers Always Knew She Was Funny” (New York), as does Jonah Weiner in “Kanye West Has a Goblet” (Slate), a slickly written perusal of the grandiose rapper. There’s witty dispatches in Paige Williams’ Bikram yoga class discussion “My Bra’s Too Tight and It’s Never Too Late” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and an outstanding three-part piece from distinguished British author Christopher Hitchens on his battle with esophageal cancer in “Topic of Cancer and Unanswerable Prayers and Miss Manners and the Big C” (Vanity Fair). Elsewhere, Joel Brouwer’s thoughtful verse “Lines from the Reports of the Investigative Committees” (Poetry) succinctly illustrates the enormity of the BP oil spill in the same way Barbara Kingsolver’s eloquent short essay “Water Is Life” (National Geographic) beautifully underscores the vital benefits of Earth’s most precious natural resource. From serious to sublime, there’s a bounty of periodical perfection here.

Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-231-15940-1

Page Count: 520

Publisher: Columbia Univ.

Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING 2008
edited by American Society of Magazine Editors

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING 2007
edited by American Society of Magazine Editors

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEST AMERICAN MAGAZINE WRITING 2005
edited by American Society of Magazine Editors

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MY PEOPLE
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE MOUNTAINTOP
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.