A Century Turns – Bill Bennett (Thomas Nelson)

With the wrath of right-wing media commentators clogging the airwaves – often times shouting rash talking points or firing up constituencies that form the basis of ad hoc groups like the Tea Party, it is refreshing to hear the thoughts and words of a mature, level-headed conservative like Bill Bennett.

Unlike many of his over-exhuberant counterparts (Hannity, Coulter, Palin, Limbaugh, etc.) CNN commentator and former Education Secretary Bennett approaches his output from a reasoned, mature point of view, oft-times reminiscent of the more statesmen like voices of such conservative legends as Bill Buckley and others from the days of yore.

In ‘A Century Turns: New Hopes, New Fears,’ Bennett continues with a followup to his ‘Last Best Hope’ series (Volumes I & II) by recounting the history of domestic leadership and its effect on both the homefront and abroad from where he left of in 1998. As opposed to a partial and partisan approach to the political history of the late 20th century and through to the election of Barack Obama, Bennett is surprisingly even handed, doling out criticism to both the left and right, while maintaining a historian’s point of view about the events of the time. Covering everything from Waco to Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal, Iraq and Afghanistan to the campaigns of Bush, Dole, Kerry, Gore, McCain, et al., Bennett seems dead set on treating history as a record of what actually happened and relegates most of his personal opinions to the footnotes instead.

While nearly everything covered in ‘A Century Turns’ is well documented and readily available elsewhere, Bennett’s own perspective as an administration insider reveals a few new insights based on his access to meetings and phone calls that others may not have in their quiver. But in the end, it is Bennett’s remarkable even-handedness that explains why his texts are sometimes used as scholastic volumes in history classes across America. Nice to have a conservative author/commentator who bases his opinions on the facts and not merely on partisan rhetoric.

The Bridge – David Remnick (Knopf)

You would have to be living under a rock, as they say, not to have noticed New Yorker editor David Remnick making the rounds of the news-talk shows the last few weeks in support of his new book, ‘The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.’ Remnick has appeared on virtually every show and newspaper column and seemingly for good reason. For as much as there are more Obama books on the market than any first year president in recent memory, ‘The Bridge’ stands out as the one book, save Obama’s own ‘Dreams of My Father,’ that does a deep dive into the political past of the nation’s first African-American president and the decisions, factors and historical touchstones that led him to the top job.

In Remnick’s 656-page volume, the author painstakingly goes back and reassembles the now-president’s life in a way that is both personal and political. Remnick portrays the story of a rapid, albeit sometimes random, journey from student life in Hawaii, to his studies at Occidental and Harvard, through the famed community organizing era and ultimately to elected positions in the Illinois state legislature, the U.S. Senate and on to the presidency. At various points in the book, the author is not afraid to point out some of Obama’s lackluster moments (i.e. his sometimes idle days both at the Davis Miner law firm and later in the Illinois State Senate, his drubbing in his first congressional run, etc.) while continuing to focus on the search for identity that Obama may have lacked in the early years of his youth.

Unlike many of the books on the market, Remnick is not obsessed with the historic presidential part of the story (that is saved for the last quarter of the book) but rather looks closely at Obama’s student years, his time at Harvard including his race for and leadership of the Harvard Law Review, his Chicago community alliances (from Bill Ayers to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington) and much of his work in the Illinois State Senate before coming to Washington. Throughout the book, Remnick is front-of-mind conscious as to how race affected Obama’s journey with repeated references to everyone from MLK to John Lewis to Shirley Chisholm. Remnick’s focus on Obama’s race and the issues it elicits, sometimes seems to be in fact, the focal point of the book. (Even the title ‘The Bridge’ of course, has a double meaning, referring both to Obama as well as a reference to the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama that is often seen as the frontline of the battle for racial equality in March of 1965.)

Besides the voluminous interviews and depth of research involved, the strength of Remnick’s book relies on both it’s rather unvarnished view of the Obama history as well as it’s telling of the story from the point of view of many of those closest to the action. The main criticism that seems to be leveled at the book is it’s dryness; it’s ‘court-reporter’ style – a critique we would certainly not dispute. Of course, there will be many books to come on the first African-American president in U.S. history (Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter’s book ‘The Promise’ debuts next month) but to have this kind of extensive tome delivered so early in one’s presidency is either a gift or a sign of our times. Probably both.

Bonus: Here is a link to a great new Q&A with David Remnick from the Seattle Times. Enjoy.

Millions Of Book Club Readers, 140 Characters

There are plenty of online book clubs, but what about Twitter? Jeff Howe of Wired magazine is tweaking the One Book, One City phenomenon by trying to get millions of people to pick a novel and then discuss it on Twitter.

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Millions Of Book Club Readers, 140 Characters

Book Review: Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

Music critic Steve Almond recounts the obsession that transformed him and legions of like-minded believers. If you’re going to use a promise as your title, you’d better deliver. In his sixth book, “Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us (With Bitchin’ Soundtrack),” Steve Almond presents a memoir wrapped in a collection of observations about music and packaged as a source of salvation.

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Book Review: ‘Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life’

Word Catcher – Phil Cousineau (Viva Editions)

Whether you are looking to create an amazing term paper or article or just want to be the hit of your next dinner party, we recommend taking a look at ‘Word Catcher: An Odyssey Into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words.’ In this new release, author Phil Cousineau assembles the ‘delightful backstories’ of 250 words that he claims to have found to be very intriguing from the first time he heard them.

With selections like ‘gynotikolobomassophile’ (one who loves to nibble on a woman’s earlobes), to ‘melcryptovestimentphilia’ (the love of black underwear), to ‘catawampus’ (something that is awry or askew), there are certainly enough terms for you to create your own sui-generis linguistic identity. Not to be put off, Cousineau also provides us with derivations for a host of more familiar words like ‘damn,’ ‘muse,’ and ‘eclipse’ in the spirit of other similar dictionaries of word origins.

But it is his use of his unusual selections that sets Cousineau’s work apart and prevents it from being – in one of his words – floccinaucinilipilificatious (that which regards something as absolutely worthless or useless, such as this very word!). A fun new book from a cool boutique publisher, Viva Editions in Berkeley.

LA Times Festival of Books Returns to UCLA

This weekend marks the return of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at the UCLA campus in Westwood. The Festival began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

People of all ages from across Southern California and even other parts of the country. The festival is a free public event, and includes exciting author events, storytelling, cooking demonstrations and poetry readings. The Festival of Books also includes nearly 300 exhibitor booths representing booksellers, publishers, literacy and cultural organizations.

Read more about the festival here:

In Pursuit of Silence – George Prochnik (Doubleday)

Though rarely mentioned, the world is getting louder. Urban expansion, media explosion, piped in muzak and ubiquitous earbuds are all adding up to a society that has become immersed in noise pollution, and often unwittingly so. George Prochnik, a psychology-based writer (‘Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam and the Purpose of American Psychology’) has studied this in both its rudimentary and more advanced levels and published the results in his latest book, ‘In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise.’

Prochnik’s research covers a wide range of issues related to both sound and silence including everything from the acoustics and physics of sound, public noise policy, antinoise activism, the science of hearing, deafness and the biophysics of the ear itself. He also engages in a host of what is best termed ‘field research’ as he takes readers to environments ranging from the world of Noise-Cons and ‘boom cars’ to the obscure ‘pocket parks’ buried inside of Manhattan.

By exploring societal norms and environmental noise factors (for example, that bars and restaurants sell more consumable products – food and drink – when decibel levels are raised on their patrons), Prochnik is also able to elucidate the antidotes for avoiding the sound onslaught that sometimes seems to be an unavoidable inevitability of today’s complex world. By shedding light on techniques from state-of-the-art soundproofing to Zen meditation, Prochnik shows the reader a way out of the sonic noise spectrum, but he stresses, it is not without its cost.

In all, ‘In Pursuit of Silence’ is not a prosaic tome (as one might presume) as much as it is a neo-scientific study; not as clinical as a text on the subject, but still focused and specific. Whether you view that as a benefit or a criticism depends on what you are looking for. If a serious study of the current state of the noise-silence continuum in the modern urban world is what you seek, this may be a book for you. If not, you might find it a bit dry.

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power – James McGrath Morris (Harper)

Given last week’s awarding of the Pulitzer Prizes (congratulations New York Times and Washington Post), now seemed like a good time to look deeper into the life of the award’s namesake, Joseph Pulitzer.

We begin by pointing out that there has not been a complete biography published on the turn-of-the-century media scion in nearly forty years. That is, until the recent release of James McGrath Morris’ new book ‘Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power.’ (Harper). (A book, much like Walter Issakson’s ‘Einstein,’ that is at least partially the result of the discovery of a mass of new papers, in this case, discovered in the incestertial archives of Pulitzer’s late brother, Albert.)

In it, Morris (an award winning biographer and editor of the publication ‘The Biographer’s Craft’) covers the range of Pulitzer’s life from his arrival as a Jewish Hungarian immigrant to America in 1864, to his early days in St. Louis political circles to his 1878 purchase at auction of the St. Louis Evening Dispatch (which he later merged to form the region’s Post-Dispatch), his eventual move to and creation of a New York power-base with the New York World, to his ultimate untimely bout with blindness and an eventual lonely death.

Along the way, Morris details the vast influences on Pulitzer’s life, from the emergence of the industrial revolution, to his calls for political reform to his many run-ins with powerful political figures (even resulting in then President Teddy Roosevelt attempting to put Pulitzer in prison for his many anti-TR pontifications!) Eerily reminiscent of some of the media barons of today, Pulitzer was both an engaging activist and a sometimes pugnacious media lord (a precursor to the Murdochs and Turners of today’s media world) though his ultimate demise much more closely resembles the life of another tormented recluse, Howard Hughes.

Either way, young journalists or even the prize winners themselves, would be well served by Morris’ detailed account of a man who long ago forged the way for the Hearsts, Paleys, Luces and the other media moguls of the 20th century to do what they did in the name of journalist endeavor. And for all those who know little more than the name (much like, say, Alfred Nobel), ‘Pulitzer’ fills the gaps in an important piece of our domestic history.

Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times (Abrams)

The Rolling Stones aside, it’s hard to think of a rock band, and certainly not a hard-rock band, that exemplified the power, majesty and rock’n'roll excess that encompassed all that is Led Zeppelin. From their early days as ‘the new Yardbirds’ to their now current final show at London’s O2 arena, no band has ever combined both the sonic impact and global fame as the mighty Zeppelin juggernaut.

Author Jerry Prochnicky and photographer Ralph Hulett have great familiarity with the subject between years of research as well as their previous collaboration on ‘Whole Lotta Led: Our Flight with Led Zeppelin,’ and this photo-based volume captures the basic chronology of the band from beginning to end.

Having said that, the book is far from a completist work, nor does it represent a truly authoritative volume. To be a complete visual history of the band, one would expect at least screen shots from the early TV appearances of the band (as are ever-so-popular these days on YouTube) as well as a more professional selection of photos from various tours of America, Japan, and Europe and even the final U.S. performance at Philadelphia’s Live Aid concert. There are factual mistakes in this book as well – the famed Hyatt House is in Hollywood, not Pasadena, the Oakland Day-On-The-Green show was not the band’s final U.S. appearance, as just previously mentioned.

Overall the book makes a nice fan history of the band, and has a number of rare and never-before seen shots, but given the obvious stature of Led Zeppelin, it is ultimately disappointing that many major pictures were not included here (where is famed Zep photog Neal Preston’s work, for example?) Good for completists, but if you are expecting something resembling the entire Zeppelin photo history, this is not it.

Our National Parks: Our American Landscape, photographs by Ian Shive (Earth Aware)

One can easily believe that nothing would please photographer Ian Shive more than to hear those four words. Four words that will cement his place in history as one of the best park photographers of all time. And we here at Blog on Books are going to give them to him. Ready? (wait for it…)

“Not since Ansel Adams…”

It’s true. Not since Ansel Adams has one photographer published a work that truly captures the magnitude and majesty that are America’s National Parks. In ‘Our National Parks: Our American Landscape’ (published in association with the National Parks Conservation Association) Shive captures in all their glory, the rich and varied landscapes that make these hallowed lands America’s true national treasure.

The difference, of course, is that Adams (like William Henry Jackson before him) made history, climbing atop his rickety vehicle in the 1930’s using larger than life photographic equipment to bring his black and white images of the great outdoors to a nation of millions who may have never seen such monumental splendor. (In addition to using his work on the John Muir trail to help convince Congress to designate places like the California sequoias as National Parks to begin with.) But in his own way, with Canon in hand, Shive has captured images that despite (or because) of their dramatically infused colors, bring a sense of beauty and awe that is seldom experienced by even the best photographers in this 204 page tribute to our National Park system.

From what began as a series of assignments for National Parks magazine, Shive has compiled images that might otherwise be lost to the fleeting moments of time through his masterful use of light and tone. Photographs that capture the imbued majesty of not just rock formations or cloud patterns or post dusk lighting over the wide ranging plains of Wyoming or Utah, but the minute details of wildlife and fauna from Yellowstone to the Channel Islands off the California coast.

Having been to nearly every National Park in the Western U.S., I can vouch for the fact that many of the most striking images are artfully presented here; the wide swaths of the Canyonlands, the grandeur of Utah’s Delicate Arch, the sheer magnitude of places like Montana’s Glacier and Alaska’s Denali National Parks. And while not a complete compendium of the entire park system (nothing on the fantastic Volcano Parks of Hawaii nor much outside the west and south save Maine), this coffee table edition lends itself well to the fantastic landscapes (many of which are presented in two-page, double truck format) and features photos that will capture the imagination for years to come.

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