3 comments about 20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times; The Start : 1904-1930.

1. Shirer's moving account of his formative years in Chicago, Cedar Rapids, and as a young reporter in Paris ranks as solid autobiographical writing. I like how this renowned journalist parallels history with a revealing narrative of his youthful yearnings, setbacks, and rebellious insights. Future historians will read this volume to feel the rhythms of everyday life from 1904-1930. Career, personality, and luck exposed young Shirer to many notables, and his portraits of acquaintances like Hemmingway, Sinclair Lewis, Isadora Duncan, and Eamon De Velera add spice to the narrative. Some academic historians jealously dismiss Shirer's best-selling books, but I find his eyewitness accounts illuminating and his prose superior. The first of three volumes, this memoir is more personally revealing than The Nightmare Years, Shirer's superb account of Nazi Germany and A Native's Return, his homecoming finale. Writes Shirer in the introduction, "...it is an interesting fate being an American in the Twentieth Century. I am glad it was mine."



2. William Shirer, best known for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, here presents a fascinating account of the first 25 years of his life. Young childhood in Chicago, growing up in rural Iowa, then being lucky enough to land a newspaper job on a trip to Europe (days before having to head back to Prohibition-time rural America), and then spending his young adulthood in the glorious cities of Europe in the Golden Years, before the shadows of Fascism and Nazism began to dim the lights...(but that leads to the second book of his autobiographical trilogy).
   
   I find this man's accounts of life in the U.S. Midwest, of meeting celebrities and writers and leaders of the thriving, to-be-short-lived Europe of the Twenties (and falling in love as well..don't we all), to be gripping and entertaining. I envy Mr. Shirer's life, too. My favorite autobiography of any I have read, bar none.



3. In this remarkable memoir, journalist-historian William L. Shirer (1904-1993) describes his childhood in Chicago and Cedar Rapids, plus his career as a young reporter in Paris and Europe from 1925-1930. Readers see this young man mature as the horse-and-buggy gave way to automobiles and airplanes. We also learn from his humane yet skeptical view of society. Shirer met an incredible number of the day's notables, and here skillfully describes Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ghandi, Jack Dempsey, Isadora Duncan, Gerturde Stein, Ernest Hemmingway, Grant Wood, etc. The author also captures the sights, sounds, and flavor of his beloved Paris; this book made a nice travel companion on a recent trip. I enjoyed reading of his young bachelorhood in the heady Paris of the late 1920's, tempered by shadows of Depression, Nazism, and war on the horizon. Future historians and students should read these pages to feel the rythyms of the early 20th Century.
   
   Shirer's immense talent and easy-reading prose led to three exceptional memoirs (this one, NIGHTMARE YEARS-1984, RETURN OF THE NATIVE-1989), plus his outstanding bestsellers on Nazi Germany, BERLIN DIARY-1941, RISE AND FALL OF THIRD REICH-1960, plus NIGHTMARE YEARS.

5 comments about It Takes a Village Idiot : Complicating the Simple Life.

1. DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT . I PICKED THIS BOOK UP AT A SWAP AND IT WAS THE BEST MONEY I NEVER SPENT . THIS BOOK IS SO TONGUE-IN-CHEEK AND AT TIMES LAUGH OUT LOUD IT DESERVES 5 STARS . I WON'T SPOIL IT BY GOING ON & ON AS SOME REVIEWERS. HOWEVER, JUST KNOW, IT'S KIND OF A " FISH OUT OF WATER " REAL LIFE STORY OF CITY DWELLERS MOVE TO THE COUNTRY ! STORIES WHICH ARE ALWAYS FUNNY . SO IF YOU CAN'T BUY IT, THEN AT LEAST GO TO YOUR LIBRARY AND TRY TO GET IT . SO WORTH YOUR WHILE . NOT AS TWISTED AND LAUGH OUT LOUD AS THE DAVID SEDARIS BOOK OF " ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY " , BUT, THIS BOOK IS FUNNY WITHOUT BEING OFFENSIVE . VERY ENTERTAINING. IT WILL FIND A PERMANENT PLACE ON MY SHELVES TO LOAN TO FRIENDS .



2. OK, so, you know before you open the book that city dweller finds peace and happiness in the heartland after many poignant and sweet things happen to him to sway him. So he starts out being the unwilling partner in this move outside of NYC, and gradually he comes to love it in the countryside.
   
   But throughout the book, I felt like every time he was gradually starting to sway toward the country life, he'd then turn around and say something to the effect of how he's only doing this for his wife and that if he had his druthers, he'd live in their Manhattan apt instead. And it wasn't in a sweet sort of way, as though he were battling his own feelings. It was more like the chapters were not in chronological order. That was my beef #1.
   
   Beef #2 was the story about the author's completely gruesome and totally gratuitous, hateful torture of a woodchuck that was a pest in their garden. This, after he went on and on about how he and his wife went to pains to use only cruelty-free traps in their garden. It was just so gross and nasty and it made me feel so sad and dark.
   
   Otherwise, I would say it was a good, very quick read. There were funny parts and it was decent (if a bit snarky) writing. And I love any book that has chucking it all as its main theme.



3. Like some of the other reviewers said this was a quick read. Not just because it is light. It is also a likeable book. It has a cute ending in that he winds up liking Delaware County very much.



4. Jim Mullen has written an hysterically funny, insightful book that is a must read for those wavering between living in the City or living in the country. Mullin is a rare writer who can get humor out of real life -- side-splitting humor at that. This is a great book for anyone interested in big laughs and great insights.
   
   Frank Scoblete: author of Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! and Golden Touch Blackjack Revolution!



5. I was enjoying It Takes a Village Idiot up until page 183 when suddenly, outta no where, Jim & Sue turn into cruel vicious killers.
   
   "Patrolling the perimeter (of their garden) one day" Sue spotted a woodchuck down by the barn and yelled for me to come help. I grabbed the first thing I could find--my five-iron-and ran down there.
   We had him cornered and I started clubbing it. It was like something out of Goodfellas. Each smack made a sickening thump, but the thing wouldn't stop twitching. I didn't want it to suffer (yeah right. can you believe that?), but I couldn't seem to finish it off.
   Finally I came down with a mighty stroke right on its head. Woodchuck blood splattered all over me, my shirt, my pants, my face. But it stopped moving."
   
   I don't know about you but that makes me ill. How cold blooded can you be? To physically beat something to death. Woodchucks = Marmots = Groundhogs
   All they had to do was lower that fence they put up around the garden (to keep deer out), a foot or two below ground. Where's their brains. That's what I did. It was plain common sense. When you see something digging under your fence--lower it!
   Heck! with the money they had they could of poured a two foot concrete wall below their fencing. I used rocks and junked bricks.
   
   Then on page 206 there's this
   "On the way to the store, we passed a fly-covered deer carcass on the shoulder of the road. Sue looks at it unsympathetically and says, One down, three hundred thousand to go." " Ouuwee where'd she get all this hate from? What an ugly person she turned out to be.
   
   Then they turned into arrogant rich country snobs, belittling everyone who does not live/think as they now do. What an about face. In the beginning Jim and Sue Mullen seemed like OK people but in the end you see that they really aren't.

No comments about An Accidental Journalist: The Adventures of Edmund Stevens, 19341945.

No comments about Over the Bar: A Personal Relationship With the GAA.

1 comments about Percy Keese Fitzhugh Boy Scout Author.

1. Percy Keese Fitzhugh was an established writer and journalist in the early 20th century, but it is for his 60-odd books starring the Boy Scouts of Troop 1, Bridgeboro, NJ that he is remembered today. If he is remembered, which is a shame. For his stories starring Tom Slade, Roy Blakeley, Westy Martin and the unsinkable Pee-Wee Harris compare favorably with the better-known series of boys' books and are as fun to read today as ever.
   
   Mr. Rhoads came across Fitzhugh's work accidently and enjoyed them. Not finding a biography of the author, he wrote one himself. In addition to biographic data, he shows how Fitzhugh and the early Boy Scouts of America shaped each other.
   
   "Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Boy Scout Author" is a book any fan of Scouting fiction will find interesting.

2 comments about Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter.

1. Egon-Erwin Kisch was the forefather of literary journalism. Brillant writing from Berlin to Mexico. The German equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize is named after him.



2. Egon-Erwin Kisch was the forefather of literary journalism. Brillant writing from Berlin to Mexico. The German equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize is named after him.

1 comments about The Element of Lavishness: Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1938-1978.

1. Sylvia Townsend Warner counted herself very lucky to have William Maxwell as her New Yorker editor and readers of this volume of their correspondence would agree Warner wrote 153 stories between 1936 and 1977 and found a devoted and discering fan in Maxwell. Many of the letters deal with both Warner's and Maxwell's writing. On occasion Maxwell has to gracefully reject one of Warner's stories (usually with the reassurance that the story is wonderful "but not for The New Yorker"). But what the reader comes to appreciate are the writers' accounts of momentous occasions and everyday life. Maxwell gives us wonderful accounts of an Adlai Stevenson rally and the Vietnam Moratorium. His account of the NYC blackout (in a letter dated November 17, 1965)is one of the best things I've ever read and worth the price of the book. It's such a seamless piece of writing, with each detail depending on what came before, that to quote bits of it would be to trivialize it.
   Maxwell, who lived with his wife and two daughters in NYC, is also good with domestic detail and affecting and funny observations. He relates a conversation in which his small daughter laments that he is bald."'Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?'" 'Yes," she says, teaching me a lesson."
   And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: ". . .And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."
   Townsend who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had her first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting him on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.
   He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."
   The volume is filled with fine writing and the reader wants very much to know these two people personally.

1 comments about Conversations with Willie Morris (Literary Conversations Series).

1. As part of the legendary "Literary Conversations Series" this one falls a few notches below the standard set by the volumes on Steinbeck, Anais Nin, abd Ishmael Reed, to say nothing of the magnificent Gore Vidal book that Mississippi brought out a year or so. Now there's a man who knows how to give a good interview. Not that this is the fault of the editor, Jack Bales, who seems to care sincerely about Willie Morris and to have dug up some genuinely rare, if uninvolving, items from the trunk. Most of the interviews appeared in pretty osbcure places; however if you're actually FROM Mississippi the venues may be far better known, household words in fact.
   
   I wound up liking Willie Morris more than after I read the recent biography by his friend, Larry King, not the talk show host. That biography was written to bury Willie, not to praise him. These interviews give you Willie in a more reflective form and occasionally let you glimpse the magic of what it must have been like to know the impish Southern sprite. If Ariel or Puck had been born in Yazoo City Mississippi, he might gave grown up sounding Shakespearean, like Willie Morris. "Writing is memory," he says, "the burden of memory. It's a big burden. You exorcise the demons." I had never heard it phrased exactly like that.
   
   Some of the interviewers are a little frosty towards Willie, although around the middle of the book they start kissing his ass in a big way. Wayne Pond, in one of the never before published interviews, will be roundly embarrassed to find some of his infusions repeated verbatim: "I don't mind telling you that your new book brought tears to me eyes, and I thought to myself, 'My goodness, you all are evoking this incredible sense of innocence and wonder.'" (139) Studs Terkel, ordinarily a great interviewer, seems bored here. Did you know that Elizabeth Hardwick's review of NEW YORK DAYS (1993) was the longest review ever published in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW? You'll find this, and a thousand other facts, in this volume, which is the largest and best compendium of Willie Morris trivia I know of.

No comments about The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game.

5 comments about Burning Down My Masters' House: A Personal Descent Into Madness That Shook the New York Times.

1. To say it is poorly written would be too much of a compliment. You don't have to get even halfway through before you can figure out exactly what happened here. Some publishing house obviously offered him a large advance to write a book, and he threw together whatever he could think of off the top of his head, very little of which is probably true, threw in some "woe is me" for cohesion, and tossed it onto the editor's desk. Whether or not anyone even tried to edit this thing, I don't know, but if they did, they should be fired. This is slop, worse than those celebrities who try to "write" books. To think of all the talented people out there who receive small advances and modest printings, while this thing has done better than it ever should have can make you sick to your stomach.



2. 
   For the record, I HATE the New York Times!
   
   But for this clown to play the race card,
   
   Jayson Blair is a turd,
   
   and a severe discredit to his race.
   
   by that I mean, of course, the human race.
   
   He will burn in hell forever.



3. Holy Moley!! Blair is the narrator of the audio version of his book. He speaks in such a passionless, monotone voice that you run the risk of falling asleep while listening to it in your car. James Earl Jones he's not.



4. The "victim" approach is not acceptable when you're a discovered liar. This book is nothing more than an attempt to blame the entire Blair disaster on something or someone other than himself. His actions are because he is black, pressured, a drug user, depressed, etc. Reality should set in now, he did what he did because he is a sociopathic liar. If you want to read a book that gives you insight into nothing, this is a good choice.



5. Where is the no star option? Blair is a pathological liar--even his book title is a preposterous lie; it has the audacity to imply that Blair is some kind of a crazy rebel who is fighting power/symbolic slavery by breaking out of a slave role and destroying his masters abode. This is plain sewage. He is a fool, an arrogant nutcase and so full of himself that he cannot see past his own privilege, abuse of power and narcissism. He is an insult to every journalist who actually takes her or his job seriously. Instead of blaming drugs, depression and suicide attempts, (he is not the only writer on the planet who has some kind of psychiatric struggle - did Poe, Tolstoy or Churchill lie their way through life?) he should look into his soul and see that the emptiness and broken moral compass within is his own job to fix.