A book that offers affecting early memories but too often gets bogged down in explaining later history.
Amram (Finding Me—and Them, 2017, etc.) delivers a memoir on his childhood in the thick of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
This work is at once a political history of the anti-war left in Minnesota—spearheaded by the rise of U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy—and a nostalgic look back at Amram’s childhood in a politically active household. On the historical side, Amram provides readers with background on the United States’ increasing involvement in the Vietnam War and the political machinations that led to military escalation. He also delineates the formation and development of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, which eventually became part of the left wing of the national Democratic Party. These two stories dovetail in the lead-up to the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, in which the DFL attempted to help propel McCarthy to the presidential nomination and put an anti-war resolution on the party’s plank. Following Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s nomination and the Democrats’ eventual loss, the author chronicles the nation’s continued anti-war activism, up to the 1972 presidential election. Amram grew up as the adopted son of two Minnesota political organizers, Barbara and Fred Amram, who were heavily involved in the movements he describes; he offers readers his reminiscences of their work and how it influenced his political awakening. The book also covers his recovery from an accident that left him comatose for six weeks and his extensive physical rehabilitation. Amram’s prose shifts between cleareyed history and poetic memoir, but he doesn’t quite find a balance between the two. The history sections, though compelling, can become repetitive, restating facts and events and overusing lists of voting results. However, the book is most successful when Amram focuses on the ineffable qualities of his early years: “We worshiped the echoes of our summers, trying to stretch the evenings out until school began again.” In these moments, he highlights singular moments of his childhood, from neighborhood games that he invented as a child to idyllic summers that he spent at the family’s cabin.
A book that offers affecting early memories but too often gets bogged down in explaining later history.Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-939548-71-9
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Wisdom Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Everything you always wanted to know about the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying corpses—and so much more. Brier (Ancient Egyptian Magic, 1980) sets the tone early: ``For 15 years,'' he states matter-of-factly, ``I had been working toward the goal of mummifying a human.'' Imagine his surprise and disappointment when the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University (where he is chairman of the philosophy department) declined the honor of being the site of this project, which among other things would have entailed keeping an unembalmed corpse on the campus for 70 days. The text treats the reader to a scattershot review of the wide variety of information Brier learned about mummies while doing research for the mummification. These range from clinical descriptions of the process (derived from Herodotus and other ancient writers as well as from archaeological evidence) through an account of the development of mummification in ancient Egypt to a fascinating look at medical information scientists have derived from mummies (for instance, that ancient Egyptians suffered from often fatal tooth decay and arterial diseases). Brier discusses French scientists' close, but disappointingly unfruitful, study of Ramses the Great's mummy, briefly takes note of the Egyptian religious and cultural practice of mummifying animals, and inventories famous royal mummies. He concludes rather far afield with a discussion of ``The Mummy in Fiction and Film.'' Mercifully, the book closes before he embarks on the macabre task of actually mummifying a medical cadaver in the ancient manner, which is scheduled to take place this summer. A great gift idea for the hard-core Egyptologist in your life. General readers with strong stomachs may also enjoy Brier's eccentric ramble through the ancient world. (125 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-10272-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Thirteen years (195264) of letters from James Beard, with just enough interspersed replies from West Coast culinary colleague Helen Evans Brown to reveal that more of her voice would have improved this volume. Harcourt Brace editor Ferrone offers excerpts from 300 of approximately 450 extant letters. The documents have been edited silently, and the man who emerges is convivial but shallow and in some ways insecure. These pages are dominated by what Beard cooks and eats and with whom he is eating. (Not surprisingly, the need to diet is a recurring theme.) While readers may cull a few ideas (in addition to those in recipes at the end of the volume), ultimately they receive a picture of a limited person: Who else could lunch with Alice B. Toklas and record only what they ate? Who could dine with wine expert Alexis Lichine and name the foods only, not the wines? Occasionally, others in the culinary field come under Beard's critical eye, with Dione Lucas, a ``great technician who doesn't know about food,'' earning particular attention. In 1952, Beard writes, ``I am always poor nowadays,'' and this becomes a familiar refrain, despite a full (and lucrative) schedule of writing books and articles, giving classes and demonstrations, appearing on radio and television, and acting as a corporate consultant. Brown, for her part, resists suggestions to move east and join his schemes for a cooking school or supply store, and her rare comments add some needed spice. (It's interesting to note that Beard had actually proposed publishing their joint correspondence, then discarded Brown's letters.) It is Brown who chastises Beard for publishing individually some material they accumulated for a joint cookbook and reminds him not to insult women cooks: ``They buy most of your books.'' More a parade of menu items than a life, this one is bland reading for all but the most serious students of the Master. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55970-264-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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