A well-conceived and well-illustrated pleasure to read, combining narrative history and keepsake volume.
An overstuffed exploration of American history as related through material artifacts, from Meriwether Lewis’ compass to relics of the Space Age.
The “history of X in Y objects” trope, launched by Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects a few years ago, is already in danger of becoming a cliché. Indisputably, though, if you wanted to learn about American history through material holdings, the Smithsonian would be the place to start and end, just as the British Museum served as the trove of first and last resort for MacGregor. Smithsonian Undersecretary Kurin’s (Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men, and Hope, 2012, etc.) tales are abundant, so much so that it seems almost a shame to stop at a mere 101 items, fat though this book is. For instance, who knew that the original Stars and Stripes, the flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, was packed off to shelter in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia during World War II because Franklin Roosevelt “feared Germany might bomb the National Mall”? Beginning 500 million years ago, Kurin celebrates the Burgess Shale fossils, which gave Stephen Jay Gould material evidence for his evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium; then writes of the bald eagle, “adopted as a national symbol…for its connotations of indomitable force”; and then turns to Clovis points, the tools that early Indian hunters used to bring down mammoths, bison and perhaps even an eagle or two. Rocketing through hundreds of years by way of a Colt revolver, the lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land” and Sitting Bull’s sketchbook (again, who knew?), Kurin closes with some of the tools of our time, from Chuck Berry’s guitar to the first Apple computer and on to galaxies far beyond our own.
A well-conceived and well-illustrated pleasure to read, combining narrative history and keepsake volume.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59420-529-3
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.
Former Dirty Jobs star Rowe serves up a few dozen brief human-interest stories.
Building on his popular podcast, the author “tells some true stories you probably don’t know, about some famous people you probably do.” Some of those stories, he allows, have been subject to correction, just as on his TV show he was “corrected on windmills and oil derricks, coal mines and construction sites, frack tanks, pig farms, slime lines, and lumber mills.” Still, it’s clear that he takes pains to get things right even if he’s not above a few too-obvious groaners, writing about erections (of skyscrapers, that is, and, less elegantly, of pigs) here and Joan Rivers (“the Bonnie Parker of comedy”) there, working the likes of Bob Dylan, William Randolph Hearst, and John Wayne into the discourse. The most charming pieces play on Rowe’s own foibles. In one, he writes of having taken a soft job as a “caretaker”—in quotes—of a country estate with few clear lines of responsibility save, as he reveals, humoring the resident ghost. As the author notes on his website, being a TV host gave him great skills in “talking for long periods without saying anything of substance,” and some of his stories are more filler than compelling narrative. In others, though, he digs deeper, as when he writes of Jason Everman, a rock guitarist who walked away from two spectacularly successful bands (Nirvana and Soundgarden) in order to serve as a special forces operative: “If you thought that Pete Best blew his chance with the Beatles, consider this: the first band Jason bungled sold 30 million records in a single year.” Speaking of rock stars, Rowe does a good job with the oft-repeated matter of Charlie Manson’s brief career as a songwriter: “No one can say if having his song stolen by the Beach Boys pushed Charlie over the edge,” writes the author, but it can’t have helped.
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982130-85-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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