2 comments about I Must Say: Edwin Newman on English, the News, and Other Matters.

1. Hopefully, Mr Newman will read this review. That is, filled with hope, Mr Newman will read and not be disappointed.

   In this work Mr Newman comments on the lack of communication we see daily and the destruction of our language. He comments mostly by example, yet often offers the proper form.

   I had a few problems with the first chapters but was totally entertained for the duration of the book.




2. This is a collection of Mr. Newman's columns, written between 1984 and 1987. In addition to his observations on subjects ranging from smokeless tobacco and celebrity endorsements to British soccer fans and Sylvester Stallone, Newman includes more of his funny-yet-serious complaints about the current sloppiness of the American/English language. Today, in 2002, the problem is even worse. Witness the influx of "like" as in "I was going to go, like, to her house, like, before I went to the, like, beach."

   Let's hope in his next edition he'll include those gems bequeathed to us by TV jocks: "let's spend a moment of time with" and, heaven help us, the all-invasive "up close and personal," which no less than the Federal Government has adopted. To paraphrase the Good Book, the sins of TV announcers will be visited upon the third and fourth generations."

2 comments about The American Journey of Eric Sevareid.

1. The author's political beliefs frame this narrative. Does a good job of telling Sevareid's life, but Sevareid himself did a much better job in "Not So Wild a Dream." This book talks about Sevareid's womanizing and so on, but really does little to explain his misery. It does recount his rise and fall and is worthwhile because it does include some good quotes from Sevareid's analytical pieces (he detested that they be considered commentaries) on "The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite." Unfortunately, this book just seems to set up a wall between the author and its subject that is difficult to explain. You get a much better understanding of the man in "Not So Wild a Dream," and the book "Murrow's Boys."



2. This straightforward biography of journalist Eric Sevareid (1912-1992) is worth reading. Author Raymond Schroth details Sevareid's upbringing in rural North Dakota and Minneapolis, his hiring by Ed Murrow, his long career with CBS, and his less than perfect retirement. Readers also learn about Sevareid's adventurous youth, troubled marriages, and bouts with melancholy and emotional insecurity. The book makes a nice companion to Sevareid's superb 1946 autobiography NOT SO WILD A DREAM, but also covers the man's later years. Sevareid moved millions with his sternly eloquent wisdom as he analyzed events for CBS radio and (later) television. The nation lost an important voice when CBS forced him out at age 65 - under a mandatory retirement policy they've since dropped. Sadly, he never wrote much in retirement, nor become a regular contributor to National Public Radio as have aged ex-CBS stalwarts Daniel Schorr, Richard B. Hotellet, and the late Bob Trout.

   The author is a Jesuit instructor of journalism and former boyhood fan of Sevareid's broadcasts. Like THE MURROW BOYS, this is a nice, readable companion to Sevareid's superb autobiography.

5 comments about The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks.

1. The author and her persistence to observe activities on the island leads the the demise of the entire shark research project. great.



2. "The Devil's Teeth" is about more than just sharks. Let's get that out there first and foremost. It should be rather obvious, actually: the book's title refers not only to the animals (though Casey would NEVER refer to them as "devils," and neither should you), but to the islands they inhabit: the Farallones, a mysterious, rugged set of islands off San Francisco, which have, throughout the centuries, repelled any attempt at civilization.
   
   Of course, the sharks are the main draw, and there are plenty of them--as well as info on their habits, some of this knowledge previously unknown, gleemed from the research that Susan Casey observed during her somewhat-legal "internship" with scientists Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson. Though some of the details given are mundane and annoying (do we really need to know that one scientist's arm muscles were perfectly formed?), much of the information is, if not relevatory, then at least pretty darn interesting. The entire book is filled with fun, rivetting info about great whites, seabirds, local history, and even a few funny--and somewhat disturbing--annecdotes about the ghost that supposedly haunts the island.
   
   The book's only real setback: it feels unfinished. Granted, that is life, and this is a true story...but still, it's a bit of a letdown. Of course, can take this another way: this story absolutely had to be told, whether it was finished or not (and, I suppose, it HAS come to an end, and a rather unhappy one at that). It is important that the general public become aware that great white sharks are not devilish killing machines (it would have been nice if she'd gone with another title, one not intended to sell millions of copies). Great whites inhabit a realm of nature that man is only now attempting to understand; the info in this book goes a long way to informing the general public of recent developments that can hopefully clear the shark of many unjust charges. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the book also provides a rivetting read for anyone interested in the natural world.



3. Journalist Susan Casey visits the Farallon Islands shark project. The Farallones are rugged islands off of the Golden Gate, often visited by Great White Sharks. Casey visited the place, presumabley wrote an article for OUTSIDE magazine where she was editor, and then tried to go back to the islands for more... More research? Time with the shark guys? Time with the sharks? Words to fill out a book-length manuscript?
   
   At any rate, she manages to insert herself into the story, helping to kill the project, get shark research people fired, lose a sixty-foot ship at sea, and in the second half of the book destroy any reputation as a writer she might have.
   
   It always amazes me when liberals try to pose as "outlaws", as Casey does. It always turns out to be a childish pose, "Laws for thee, but not for me." Laws to keep the Farallones owners, the American taxpayers, from visiting the island? Good laws, stick'em with a "six-figure fine"! Laws to keep her from visiting? Bad laws, try and sneak in with the shark research guys cooperation! Keep idiot swimmers and divers from swimming in the Farallones? Good law! Keep idiot shark research boy from surfing the Farallones? Bad law!



4. Awesome book! Loved every page and found a new interest in sharks. I would recommend to anyone who gets a thrill from adventure and is curious about these amazing mysterious creatures. You will learn a lot of fun information.



5. Couldn't put it down. One of the most fascinating and well written books I have ever read. If you have any interest in sharks at all you will be blown away by how interesting and evocative this book is.

1 comments about Means Of Escape: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Life and Death in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Vietnam.

1. I'm going to post the Publisher Comments and also the Kirkus Reviews here because it will better tell you what this book is about and because there are no other reviews and I'm a lousy reviewer. I've read A Rumor of War (loved), Horn of Africa (loved), Delcorso's Gallery (didn't care for), The Voyage (Loved), Acts of Faith (loved) and of course Means of Escape (Loved)
   Mr. Caputo's been through some mighty harrowing experiences in his life as a war correspondent and soldier. I love his writing and his views.
   
   
   Publisher Comments:
   Philip Caputo has been a witness to the most important struggles of our time, from the hot green hell of Vietnam to the dusty mountains of Afghanistan and the bloodstained streets of Beirut. In Means of Eascape, Caputo intersperses imaginative retellings of events he witnessed with true accounts of how he became a writer, and what happened when he was sent to some of the most dangerous places in the world. He begins with his childhood and budding career in Chicago. Soon after, he was deep in the Sinai Peninsula searching for the last authentic Bedouin, and reporting from the front lines of the Yom Kippur War. In an eerie parallel to journalist Daniel Pearl's tragic murder, Caputo was held hostage for a week by Islamic extremists while reporting in Beirut. Caputo's palpable descriptions of the captors and fellow cellmates in this razor-thin existence are as compelling as any escape stroy before or since. As he emerged from captivity, Peter Jennings congratulated him on his eventual escape, and on the Pulizer Prize he'd won while imprisoned. While continuing his work as a reporter in Beirut, he was singled out by a sniper, and received a bullet in his ankle and a chunk of wall in his head. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, he joined the Mujahideen for a clandestine mission and was nearly captured by Soviet forces. Few authors have put themselves so squarely in the center of the 20th century's great conflicts, and even fewer can describe what they saw as well as Philip Caputo does in this important memoir. (6 x 9, 416 pages)Philip Caputo is the author of the New York Times best-seller A Rumor of War and three novels: Indian Country, DelCorso's Gallery, and Horn of Africa. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 as part of an investigative team for the Chicago Tribune, and his coverage of his experience as a captive of Palestinian guerrillas won him the Overseas Press Club's George Polk Citation.
   
   Kirkus Reviews
   An intensely personal, albeit consistently affecting and frequently riveting memoir of years of living dangerously. Caputo (A Rumor of War, Indian Country, etc.) has witnessed much of the worst violence that marked the latter half of the 20th century. A combat veteran of Vietnam, he went on to cover trouble spots throughout the Third World as a roving correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. Describing himself as drawn to history (if not to the sound of the guns), the globe-trotting author has reported on insurgency in Eritrea, civil strife in Lebanon, Israel's October War, the fall of Saigon, and a host of lesser belligerencies. Looking for a "good war" several years after having quit the journalism trade, Caputo accepted an assignment from Esquire that took him deep behind Soviet lines in Afghanistan. Venturesome to the point of rashness, he has paid the price of boldness on many occasions. Though he made it through Vietnam without a physical scratch, for example, the author was imprisoned by Palestinian guerrillas in Beirut and later sustained severe wounds (at the hands of Christian militia) in the same city, leaving him with a still-painful limp. Peacefully settled in one place now, he's content to let a workroom window overlooking a salt marsh on the Long Island Sound serve as his new means of escape. Caputo nonetheless looks back on his days as a rolling stone with some relish and few apparent regrets. Indeed, he retains a rueful sense of barracks humor neatly summarized in an ultrarude anecdote whose moral is: "the final indignity is that there is no final indignity." An episodic, impressionistic, and dead-honest narrative that affords memorable as well as consequentialinsights into a chaotic era's noteworthy conflicts.

1 comments about Mark Twain, A Literary Life.

1. Mark Twain: A Literary Life builds upon earlier writings, exploring the relationships between Twain's life and his literary output. Biographical and literary background probes blend in an excellent survey which draws important links between the events in Twain's life and his literary productivity.

1 comments about Making Love to Typewriters.

1. Theodore Taylor died in late 2006, so his Making Love to Typewriters, in which he shares his life's writing and employment experiences and his deep, deep connection to the craft, is especially meaningful and poignant. Taylor was born to write and he does it extremely well. Reading of his love for writing and his experience feels to this reader as if Taylor is sitting in that upholstered chair across the room from me, speaking from his heart about using the Statesville Public Library as a child, driving to the Outer Banks in the old Chevy truck with his dad, covering major stories as a newspaper journalist, sailing on a geodetic survey ship in the Bikini Atolls - and the ideas for novels and books that evolved from those and other experiences. What wonderful reading! The reader lives Taylor's experiences so clearly, in all their excitement and color. More than worth the purchase price! An experience to last a llifetime.

3 comments about In and Out of Vogue.

1. Grace Mirabella not only lets you in on her life and her rise throught the fashion world, but she also takes us you on a wonderful ride and adventure. She truly made VOGUE a wonderful magazine and when she was 'let go' she didn't pout instead she started her own successful magazine, MIRABELLA. Thank you Grace for writing your memoir and sharing your life with us all.



2. Mirabella's scathing account of her time at Vogue reads like a bleeding heart story of how she was wronged. What her one-sided account leaves out intentionally is what an amazing fashion editor Diana Vreeland was; at Harper's Bazaar, fashion editor at Vogue and finally, editor-in-chief at Vogue. Vreeland is the quintessential fashion editor which is why she's studied in fashion schools, has had exhibits of her work at the Met, countless books written on her. Mirabella tries to claim she made fashion more democratic, but Vreeland was the true originator; her use of ethnic models, the photographers she chose to work with( Avedon, Bailey), the content of the magazine took it from being a society-rag, to a more modern take of the world of fashion and style. Mirabella turns her acid tongue not just on Vreeland but on the wonderful photographer Helmut Lang, Avedon, fashion editor Polly Mellen and of course, Anna Wintour. Mirabella doesn't take credit for her own downfall; she was an editor at fashion magazine-they show fashion in all its outrageous, banal or causal air-what ever way the winds of fashion fall, the magazine has to reflect that. Her decade was the seventies. She reflected what was happening in fashion and the world at the time; she showcased American designers like Halston, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, Geoffrey Beene. She favored the tall, blued-eyed blondes Patti Hansen, Roseanne Vela, Lauren Hutton, Karen Graham with their "tiny noses and big white teeth...exotic, `interesting'-looking girls weren't for me. The word of the day was pretty." She admits her book. But the eighties was the complete opposite of the seventies, but she chose to stay firmly planted in the past instead of showing the fashions of the eighties; she despised Christian Lacroix's clothes choosing to ignore one of the hottest designers at the time while other fashion outlets(Bazaar, Women's Wear Daily, Elle, etc) where showing his popular designs. Is it no wonder than that Alex Liberman had to overrule her? Her ego is so over the top, she felt she was "saving" women from fashions she didn't care for. The irony of the situation is she was fired for the exact same reason Vreeland was: being out of touch with fashion.
   Her book is an interesting read in a person so detached from reality and how they ruined their own career. What of Mirabella's own magazine, the magazine for real women? It folded like a stack of cards. It goes to show you what women really want.



3. Regardless of how you feel about fashion or Vogue, it is an interesting character study of a woman of that time, bucking the expectations of her family, her chosen industry, and of society in general as she married very late in life and never had children.
   
   I admire Mirabella for refusing to allow cigarette ads in Mirabella and for being so independant. No, she didn't try to please anyone but herself, but what an amazing feat that was considering that Oprah has built her dynasty on teaching women how to do just that.
   
   Not the greatest book in the world, but worth reading for the viewpoint. I would also recommend reading Katharine Graham's autobiography. That will roll your socks up and down.
   
   Disclaimer: I worked for Mirabella magazine's Chicago office for the last nine months before it was sold to the publisher's of Elle magazine and was then hired by said company to work for another recent acquistion, Premiere. I met her "Grace" once and only to shake her hand and stand aside. She was pleasant, though.

1 comments about Inside Television's First War: A Saigon Journal.

1. This is a fantasic story of survival, love and a nation changed by war. Steinman takes the reader inside the war, and, even more; inside a culture. With an intimate look at the Vietnamese people, the author touches on emotions and aspects of life in the war-torn country that have been overlooked by so many other works written about this hard time in world history. This is not so much a story about the war, as it is about the people and how the war and the coverage of that war changed everything; for Vietnam and the world. I highly recommend this book.

5 comments about Celestine Sibley: A Granddaughter's Reminiscence.

1. Sibley Fleming has captured the true essence of a relationship between a grandmother and a granddaughter. I found myself relating to Sibley, even though my own grandmother wasn't "famous" --- I am getting copies for my surviving grandmother, mother and aunt. We can all share in the bond of family by reading this book. Thank you, Sibley Fleming.



2. Is there a writer's gene? If so, Sibley has inherited it from her talented grandmother. It is so refreshing to see young people value and honor the lessons of their elders. Sibley is a fine writer in her own right and I look forward to hearing more from her.



3. This is a very well written tribute to the author's grandmother and one I was anxious to read. She is on her way to being a very fine writer and one for 'tine (as she calls Celestine Sibley) to be very proud of. She gives the reader the sense of becoming close to the subject. In fact one gets the feeling of being welcome to go to lunch with the two of them!



4. Fleming is a chip of the old block. I look forward to hearing more from this charming granddaughter!



5. Fleming is a chip of the old block. I look forward to hearing more from this charming granddaughter!

No comments about Ernest Hemingway's a Moveable Feast: The Making of Myth.