by William Longgood ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 29, 1991
As Cape Cod naturalist Longgood (The Queen Must Dies, 1984, etc.) says, this informed and charming record of a year's observation of and reflection upon his garden is ``not a book on gardening. It is about gardening.'' Longgood may downplay his know-how, but it is evident on every page: from the need for a garden chair to the advantages of raised beds (as used by the Pilgrims); from thoughts on the quality of manure to the growth rate of pole beans; from the uses of seaweed to discussing seed companies that avoid extreme commercialization, Longgood almost inadvertently offers gardening guidance throughout. He is less concerned, however, with the technical cultivation of pease ``than with their exquisite beauty when the ripe pod is split open.'' He juxtaposes the pesticidal ``agribiz'' growers, who do untold damage with chemicals, with his friend Dorothy, who builds a palatial chicken coop for the scarce manure and winds up caring for her chickens well past their egg-bearing years. While he observes and works his 60-foot- by-90-foot garden, Longgood tunes in to nature's ``voices,'' attempting to discover man's place in the natural order. Occasionally, he'll lie on his back between the rows of plants, looking up at the garden, a perspective that leads to an alternative view of bugs and slugs and other garden visitors. In particular, his consideration of the Colorado potato beetle brings forth a history of the potato that illustrates the interdependence of ``pests'' and gardens and, in his world, shows that spiders, bees, moths, and slugs are as integral to the garden as-the gardener. ``A garden,'' he writes, ``is a...combined chapel, workplace and supermarket.'' Longgood's winsome musings are delivered with an excellent eye-and ear-for detail.
Pub Date: April 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-02950-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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