A competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory.
Prolific biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli, 2014, etc.) delves into a remote corner of Cold War history.
Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) was a man of parts: an intellectual, a devotee of careful planning, a socialist at a time in Italy during which the capitalist economy was controlled by “a tiny elite group of allies who held key minority positions in each others’ companies.” His evolution was not without its checkered elements; he went along with Mussolini’s fascist government for a time, as an expedient, while other family members took an active role in the resistance and helped smuggle Jews out of the country. Yet a socialist he was, with a vision of a postwar nation that did not quite square with that of the American government—in particular, CIA director Allen Dulles, who favored “a double agent ready for action, not an ambitious, left-leaning industrialist who wanted to impose upon American policy his plan for a new Italy, ad nauseam.” Olivetti soon went on to take his firm, renowned for its typewriters, into the realm of electronics, developing a mainframe computer, “the first fully transistorized one in the world," that threatened the near monopoly IBM enjoyed on such machines. (Later, Olivetti developed a portable calculator so closely emulated by HP that the Italian company launched and won a copyright suit.) Word came that Olivetti wasn’t reluctant to sell the technology to Russia and China, among other potential customers, and not long after, Olivetti was dead, the victim of a heart attack when presumed in the prime of health. A year and a half later, his chief technologist and designer died in a suspicious car crash. Did American intelligence do these dirty deeds? It’s not outside the realm of possibility; after all, Secrest writes, the Russians likely assassinated two American scientists involved in missile guidance systems. That much of the author’s argument proceeds by inference and suggestion doesn’t diminish its plausibility.
A competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-49365-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
A breezy, anecdotal insider's memoir of network television, from a top producer (``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'') who also chaired NBC for five years in the early 1980s. Aided by former NBC executive Rukeyser, Tinker spins stories from 40 years in a colloquial, irreverent voice; he admits most of his important decisions were made haphazardly. In 1949, after failing to find a job in publishing, he joined NBC Radio, developing quiz shows, then crossing over to the network's fledgling TV section. After leaving for a stint in advertising, he returned to NBC's California division in time to further his relationship with Mary Tyler Moore of ``The Dick Van Dyke Show,'' who became his second wife. Eventually, Tinker decided to form a production company—MTM—when his wife was offered her own show. Tinker affectionately recalls the talents and trials involved in building unorthodox shows like ``Hill Street Blues,'' where network anxieties had to be assuaged, and ``Lou Grant,'' which lost sponsors in response to star Ed Asner's vocal leftist politics. Tinker's years at NBC were rewarding, but he laments the network's takeover by General Electric, with ``it's just another business'' approach. Tinker imparts some lessons learned along the way. Programmers should follow their instincts and recognize that new series, especially innovative ones, need time to find an audience. Flagship news programs represent the network at its best, so the current belt-tightening bodes ill for quality. Tinker takes pride in having booted shock-jock Howard Stern from NBC radio. But the high standards and public service approach he calls for will rely more on networks' noblesse oblige than on policy proposals. He also predicts, contrary to the view of many media observers, that some networks will continue to thrive in the expanding universe of cable. A late-summer beach read for TV folk and curious couch potatoes. (8 pages b&w photos—not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-75940-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
In this memoir Torgovnick (English/Duke Univ.) proves herself to be a rare breed: a cultural critic who writes lucidly and perceptively not only about her chosen texts, but about herself. The first half of the book consists of autobiographical essays on crossing boundaries of class, religion, education, and place, as an Italian-American woman. Torgovnick grew up in Bensonhurst, a working-class, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Ocean Parkway, which divides Bensonhurst from Sheepshead Bay (the middle-class, Jewish neighborhood into which she eventually married), symbolized upward mobility and the possibilities of life beyond the confines of her insular world. These essays describe her experiences as an academically successful girl in a community where intellectual expectations for girls were low; later, as a professor in a Waspy college town, she also felt herself an outsider. The book's latter half consists of essays of cultural criticism, on Italian-American icons such as The Godfather, as well as other American literary institutions—Dr. Dolittle, critic Lionel Trilling, and the canon. Torgovnick writes her critical pieces in the same intimate, personal voice she uses in the memoirs. Throughout, she is willing to revise and add complexity to her own narratives. In an epilogue on her father's death, for instance, she reflects that, although she felt that she was rebelling against him in ``crossing Ocean Parkway''—marrying Jewish, going to college, and moving out of the neighborhood—he may have been more of an ally than she had thought. He protested when she skipped grades in school, yet he also gave her books, took her into the city, and was a model of gender rebellion—pulling down the shades so the neighbors couldn't see him doing housework. Torgovnick's scholarly background and life experience inform her readings of both American culture and her own past; she has found an essayist's voice that is very much her own.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-226-80829-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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