A noteworthy collection from an indispensable writer and thinker.
Shrewd perspectives on a tumultuous decade.
In intellectually rigorous essays lightened with “domestic metaphors” and “maternal asides,” historian Lepore brings her vibrant curiosity and wide-ranging erudition to a host of topics, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barbie and Bratz dolls, bicycles, VW buses, and Moby-Dick. While most essays appeared over the past 10 years in the New Yorker, where Lepore is a staff writer, two have never been published: “The Everyman Library,” which pays homage to her father and grandfather; and “The Return of the Pervert,” from 2018, in which Lepore critiques the narrowness of the #MeToo movement. Many essays reverberate far beyond the events that inspired them. For example, “Battleground America,” from 2012, begins with a school shooting in Ohio and expands to consider the history of the Second Amendment, the murder of Trayvon Martin, the National Rifle Association’s rise and vociferous interpretation of the meaning of an armed militia, and the organization’s moneyed lobbying of politicians, which has repeatedly thwarted gun safety legislation. “When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left,” writes the author. Sprightly essays on technology are informed by firsthand reporting and deep research: Lepore chronicles her visit to the Internet Archive in San Francisco while putting the trend for disruption (“everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted”) in historical context and tamping down the fear of a robot invasion. “Panic is not evidence of danger,” she calmly notes; “it’s evidence of panic.” The moving title essay is an elegy to a dear friend whose life, and untimely death from leukemia, led to Lepore’s becoming a writer. “All historians are coroners,” she remarks, explaining her deft dissection of past lives, but not all bring to their writing Lepore’s grace, precision, and deep humanity.
A noteworthy collection from an indispensable writer and thinker.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781631496127
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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