An exuberant celebration of an astounding couple.
A stirring story of a husband and wife and their passionate devotion to the land—and great food.
Journalist Schweber makes his book debut with a vigorous dual biography of Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, historian, and crusading conservationist Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955) and his wife, Avis (1904-1989), who was closely involved with his work and, after his death, devoted herself to the rising career of her friend Julia Child. Drawing on abundant archival sources, Schweber argues persuasively that because of the DeVotos’ efforts, millions of acres of public lands were saved from destruction and preserved as national treasures. Bernard started his career teaching English at Northwestern, where, in 1922, he met a captivating student: Helen Avis MacVicar. They married in 1923, after her first year. Soon disillusioned with academia, Bernard quit to become a writer. “To express himself and rise in stature, Bernard DeVoto wrote novels, essays, and criticism,” writes the author. “To make good money, John August wrote ‘tripe’ stories for the big slicks.” Although his novels were mediocre at best, his nonfiction—focused on the West—earned critical acclaim. Offered a monthly column in Harper’s, he turned his attention to the vulnerability of Western land. Growing up in Utah, Bernard saw land “late in the stages of having its vegetative skin grafted off. To boost lumber, beef, and wool production in World War I, logging and grazing regulations were lifted in national forests but then never reinstated in peacetime.” Bernard’s hard-hitting essays against the land grab by greedy ranchers and politicians ignited sparks. Schweber recounts the virulent political climate created by Nevada Sen. Pat McCarran, a strident anti-conservationist, abetted by Joseph McCarthy. Bernard was one of many caught in their crosshairs, and he was blacklisted by two magazines, investigated by the FBI, and feared imprisonment—yet never stopped lecturing and writing about conservation. After Bernard died, Avis worked as a scout for Knopf, to whom she brought Child’s cookbook, a high point in their long, close friendship.
An exuberant celebration of an astounding couple.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-43881-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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