A caffeinated but civilized survey that should be just the cup of tea for the serious academic Anglophile.
A dense but delicate study of modern British writers and artists of change within their conservative but empathetic culture.
Stansky (History/Stanford; On or About December 1910, 1996, etc.) has culled scores of his essays and reviews to assemble this book. A leading American scholar of modern British history, he is intrigued by revolutionary writers, artists, and politicos who are tolerated, even grudgingly admired, by a society otherwise glacially slow to evolve. Unlike most academic historians, Stansky confesses to being "particularly fascinated by my subjects' younger days, when their personality was being fashioned." The young British aristocrats who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War are thus of special interest to him, and he respects the more personal approach in Martin Gilbert's massive study of Winston Churchill. Apart from George Orwell and William Morris, the latter of whom he treats as a major force in art, politics, and literature, Stansky concentrates on the writers of the Bloomsbury Group, creative people who are accepted as domestic yet suspected as radicals. Politically, the chapters are balanced between leftists like W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Stephen Spender and right-wingers such as Evelyn Waugh, Oswald Mosley, and Unity Mitford. One chapter examines the democratic kingdom's essential community of inside outsiders—British Jews. Only in the last chapter does Stansky take up the Fab Four, citing critics comparing them to Chopin, and placing "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in a long British tradition of anti-traditional work. He notes that Ringo Starr, "the most popular and least intellectual of the Beatles," wears the sergeant’s stripes. Although he passes over "loony" things in Monty Python, it’s nice to know that academe has at least recognized the Beatles.
A caffeinated but civilized survey that should be just the cup of tea for the serious academic Anglophile.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-930664-19-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Univ. of Washington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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