by Charles Bowden ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 17, 1991
In these powerful epic tales of the Sonora Desert, Bowden (Red Line, 1989; Mescal, 1988, etc.) peoples the harsh land on both sides of the US-Mexican border with saints and sinners, but his enduring hero is the desert itself. The seven essays are a poignant blend of history, science, legend and lore, naturalism, investigative journalism, portrait painting, and independent thinking. Personal encounters with S&L magnate Charles ``Charlie'' Keating are juxtaposed with illegal survival-acts of the almost extinct Seri Indians of Mexico's southern Sonora. Equally effective are the character sketches of Alfonso the painter, Mexican drug-runners cultivating their orchards in Culiac†n, Miguel the hunter, young Arizona men with the golden touch, or the Yaqui Indians' comings and goings across an international border that divides the unity of the desert. Bowden has as little patience for the sterile plans of puritan environmentalists as for the excesses of the Keating mind-set. He celebrates the survival skills of the mountain lion against all odds, has eyes for complexity, recognizes dilemma, and tries hard to look beyond the fray. ``Time runs long here,'' he says. ``The killings, they come and go.'' The killings (of humans and animals) refer to the collateral damages not only of the drug trade, but of cruelty, greed, development, and poverty. Thought-provoking and moving.
Pub Date: June 17, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-02935-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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translated by Molly Molloy edited by Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy
by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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
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