Stothard is certainly a unique stylist, but the structure and mystifying detail of British politics and personalities may be...
Elegiac memoir of the Tories’ heady heyday in the 1980s among the court of Margaret Thatcher.
When Stothard (Alexandria: The Last Nights of Cleopatra, 2013, etc.), the former editor of the Times Literary Supplement and a devoted classicist, first met Thatcher in 1985, he was still a junior editor at the Times. She was just into her second term as prime minister and was busy cultivating a sycophantic court of powerful men, whom Stothard would soon get to know intimately—specifically, the four “Senecans” of the title who would eventually form a Latin-reading group meeting weekly at a pub in London. Framed somewhat stiltedly as a series of interviews with a young historian, “Miss R,” who was doing a “project” on Thatcher’s era in power, conducted between June and August 2014 as Stothard, then TLS editor, was emptying his office on Thomas More Square in preparation for the company’s move, this memoir celebrates the four now-deceased men—political adviser David Hart, journalist Frank Johnson, playwright and speechwriter Ronald Millar, and playwright Woodrow Wyatt—as versions of Seneca, a Latin writer who became a kind of political speechwriter for the powerful Roman emperor Nero. Seneca, the Stoic whose work partly comprised the group’s Latin lessons at the pub, wrote about everything from exchanging favors to “how to survive in dangerous times, how to live a good life in even the worst of times.” In these interviews, as Stothard and Miss R gaze down on the old newspaper building (in the process of being razed) that had been the site of violent confrontations between the government and the unions during the 1980s, the author contemplates the passing of his brilliant, disputatious friends and mourns an entire era as well as his own youth and newspaper career.
Stothard is certainly a unique stylist, but the structure and mystifying detail of British politics and personalities may be a tough sell for many American readers.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1342-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A timely, vividly realized reminder to slow down and harness the restorative wonders of serenity.
An exploration of the importance of clarity through calmness in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Austin-based speaker and strategist Holiday (Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, 2018, etc.) believes in downshifting one’s life and activities in order to fully grasp the wonder of stillness. He bolsters this theory with a wide array of perspectives—some based on ancient wisdom (one of the author’s specialties), others more modern—all with the intent to direct readers toward the essential importance of stillness and its “attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence.” Readers will be encouraged by Holiday’s insistence that his methods are within anyone’s grasp. He acknowledges that this rare and coveted calm is already inside each of us, but it’s been worn down by the hustle of busy lives and distractions. Recognizing that this goal requires immense personal discipline, the author draws on the representational histories of John F. Kennedy, Buddha, Tiger Woods, Fred Rogers, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other creative thinkers and scholarly, scientific texts. These examples demonstrate how others have evolved past the noise of modern life and into the solitude of productive thought and cleansing tranquility. Holiday splits his accessible, empowering, and sporadically meandering narrative into a three-part “timeless trinity of mind, body, soul—the head, the heart, the human body.” He juxtaposes Stoic philosopher Seneca’s internal reflection and wisdom against Donald Trump’s egocentric existence, with much of his time spent “in his bathrobe, ranting about the news.” Holiday stresses that while contemporary life is filled with a dizzying variety of “competing priorities and beliefs,” the frenzy can be quelled and serenity maintained through a deliberative calming of the mind and body. The author shows how “stillness is what aims the arrow,” fostering focus, internal harmony, and the kind of holistic self-examination necessary for optimal contentment and mind-body centeredness. Throughout the narrative, he promotes that concept mindfully and convincingly.
A timely, vividly realized reminder to slow down and harness the restorative wonders of serenity.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53858-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish journey.
An engaging, casual history of librarians and libraries and a famous one that burned down.
In her latest, New Yorker staff writer Orlean (Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, 2011, etc.) seeks to “tell about a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine.” It’s the story of the Los Angeles Public Library, poet Charles Bukowski’s “wondrous place,” and what happened to it on April 29, 1986: It burned down. The fire raged “for more than seven hours and reached temperatures of 2000 degrees…more than one million books were burned or damaged.” Though nobody was killed, 22 people were injured, and it took more than 3 million gallons of water to put it out. One of the firefighters on the scene said, “We thought we were looking at the bowels of hell….It was surreal.” Besides telling the story of the historic library and its destruction, the author recounts the intense arson investigation and provides an in-depth biography of the troubled young man who was arrested for starting it, actor Harry Peak. Orlean reminds us that library fires have been around since the Library of Alexandria; during World War II, “the Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books.” She continues, “destroying a culture’s books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never happened.” The author also examines the library’s important role in the city since 1872 and the construction of the historic Goodhue Building in 1926. Orlean visited the current library and talked to many of the librarians, learning about their jobs and responsibilities, how libraries were a “solace in the Depression,” and the ongoing problems librarians face dealing with the homeless. The author speculates about Peak’s guilt but remains “confounded.” Maybe it was just an accident after all.
Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish journey.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4018-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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