An engaging, multidimensional quiz on Yuletide trivia.
Readers will find that there are still new things to learn about Christmas lore and customs in this winsome collection of factoids.
Following up on 2013’s Santa Claus’s Christmas Trivia Challenge, Ozanne (Tom Turkey’s Thanksgiving Trivia Challenge, 2014, etc.) proffers more than 250 new multiple-choice and true-false questions. An opening section on Santa-ology poses whimsical queries both simple (“What animals does Santa use to pull his sleigh?”) and imponderable (“If a home does not have a chimney, or the chimney is too small, what does Santa do?”). But the bulk of the book surveys the diversity and history of Christmas beliefs and practices in the real world. Readers will field questions on the life of the real St. Nicholas, the church legends surrounding him, and the folkloric sidekicks—friendly, mischievous, and monstrous—who accompany him on his rounds in different countries. They’ll also face queries about whether plum pudding actually contains any plums and which benighted land makes eels the main course of its Christmas Eve feast; the origins of Christmas ornaments in medieval plays about Adam, Eve, and the apple in the Garden of Eden; the astronomical provenance of the Star of Bethlehem; and the origins of many customs—such as hanging stockings—in the sentimental imaginations of 19th-century American writers. Ozanne delves so deep into quaint, curious, and occasionally pedantic trivia (“True or False? The Fifth verse of ‘Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne’ refers to the Second Coming?”) that everyone will be stumped by something. The answer section is an education in itself, with many erudite but accessible entries that flesh out the questions’ conundrums. The book could serve as the basis for a fun Christmas Eve game for parents and kids of all ages—from kindergarteners (“Santa has a list of who has been naughty and who has been ____?”) to grad students (“True or False? The industrial revolution helped create the retail side of Christmas?”).
An engaging, multidimensional quiz on Yuletide trivia.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499343540
Page Count: 92
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.
An account of once-popular New York restaurants that had a rich social and cultural history.
“Since, by choice or historical necessity, exile and travel were defining aspects of Jewish life, somewhere a Jew was always eating out,” observes cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Katchor (Illustration/Parsons, the New School; Hand-Drying in America, 2013, etc.) in his exhaustively researched, entertaining, and profusely illustrated history of Jewish dining preferences and practices. The Garden of Eden, he notes wryly, was “the first private eating place open to the public,” serving as a model for all the restaurants that came after: cafes, cafeterias, buffets, milk halls, lunch counters, diners, delicatessens, and, especially, dairy restaurants, a favorite destination among New York Jews, which Katchor remembers from his wanderings around the city as a young adult. Dairy restaurants, because they served no meat, attracted diners who observed kosher laws; many boasted a long menu that included items such as mushroom cutlet, blintzes, broiled fish, vegetarian liver, and fried eggplant steak. Attracted by the homey appearance and “forlorn” atmosphere of these restaurants, Katchor set out to uncover their history, engaging in years of “aimless reading in the libraries of New York and on the pages of the internet,” where he found menus, memoirs, telephone directories, newspaper ads, fiction, and food histories that fill the pages of his book with colorful anecdotes, trivia, and food lore. Although dairy restaurants were popular with Jewish immigrants, their advent in the U.S. predated immigrants’ demand for Eastern European meatless dishes. The milk hall, often located in parks, resorts, or spas, gained popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. Franz Kafka, for example, treated himself to a glass of sour milk from a milk pavilion after a day in a Prague park. Jews were not alone in embracing vegetarianism. In Europe and America, shunning meat was inspired by several causes, including utopian socialism, which sought to distance itself from “the beef-eating aristocracy”; ethical preferences; and health concerns. A meatless diet relieved digestive problems, many sufferers found.
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4219-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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