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Surprise Encounters with Artists and Scientists, Whales and Other Living Things

Awards & Accolades

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Poet and philanthropy chairman McVay describes, in prose and verse, his eventful life and his meetings with remarkable men, women, and animals. 
 
McVay, a Princeton alum, went from Cold War–era service in 1950s Berlin, where he met his wife, Hella, to a detour into natural science; he stayed after a lecture by animal-communication expert John C. Lilly and asked so many insightful questions that Lilly hired him as an assistant. Thus was McVay exposed to the minds and ways of marine mammals—predominantly dolphins and whales, whose underwater language Lilly spent his career studying. As the eventual head of both the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, McVay mingled with some of the great minds of the 20th century; he describes interactions with, among others, Isaac Asimov, Charles Lindbergh (whom he characterizes as being misinformed about whales), Prince Philip of England, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, primatologist Dian Fossey (and Sigourney Weaver, who portrayed Fossey in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist), as well as luminaries of the World Wildlife Fund and the Chautauqua Institution (of which he became president). At one point in this book of reminiscences, the author quotes a character in Lily King’s novel Euphoria, who says that “
We’re always, in everything we do in this world, limited by subjectivity,” and he sees it as “a cautionary thought for anyone trying to put together ‘an anecdotal biography.’ ” McVay follows that method here, recounting his eventful life mainly in short, pithy tales of meetings with remarkable people—and animals. He also sprinkles examples of his verse throughout this book, usually attached to a matching anecdote. Overall, this wide-ranging book compensates in passion and spirit what it may lack in cohesion. Conservation causes and eco-initiatives are strongly on the author’s broad mind, for example, as is the relative lack of recognition for modern female poets. He has little time or regard for climate change deniers or the Koch brothers, but he notes when someone makes a choice that benefits the planet.
 
A whale of a memoir in more ways than one.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-941948-01-9

Page Count: 556

Publisher: Wild River Consulting & Publishing, LLC

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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