No comments about Ten Days that Shook the World.

3 comments about The Empress of Ireland: A Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship.

1. I love it. Until I opened the book the name of Brian Desmond Hurst would have rung only the dimmest of bells, but apparently he was a figure of renown in the British film world of the 1940s and 1950s, and had a hand in dozens of films, most of them unreleased this side of the Atlantic, and you get the picture he was no Carol Reed over there. (He did discover Roger Moore.) But he was the funniest raconteur you'll ever read about, and we are lucky that young Christopher Robbins was right there catching all the quips and the bonhomie, and that he wasn't too shocked by the older man's rapacious homosexuality to write it all down for posterity. I haven't laughed out loud reading a book all year, and this one had me doubled over, nearly in pain. On every page you'll find something to cherish, and something to remember.
   
   Some parts have the glory of utter bad taste. Teasing Michael Redgrave about his penchant for bondage (of a particularly painful sort), Desmond Hurst explains to Christopher, "There are a few in jokes about Sir Michael in our circle. 'Sir Michael Redgrave, I'll be bound!' and 'Sir Michael is unable to come to the phone now, he's all tied up.' Do you understand?" Christopher though straight-identified shares his patron's love of gossip and scandal. Besides naming names, Robbins also plays discreet and shrouds some of his best stories as blind items. He doesn't reveal the identity of the popular star with a drug problem that made him impossible to work with, but he gives you lots of clues. The name "Richard Dreyfuss" springs to mind.
   
   Beyond the fun and the frivolity, there's a lot of heart in the book. Hurst's memories went way back, to childhood in Belfast, the city where much of the Titanic was built. "Brian's father proudly took him to see the great ship launched. 'When the news came back of the ship's sinking, a tidal wave of grief struck Belfast. There was not a street in either North or South Belfast that didn't have a house in it with the blinds down, because there were some four hundred technicians from the town on that maiden voyage.'" And just a little while later, World War I was launched, and Brian was sent to Gallipoli, the most heartbreaking of all WWI battles. His clear-eyed and incredibly detailed memories form the best account I've ever read of that awful siege.
   
   Late in the book is a sort of defense of Hurst's films; Robbins makes a case for the best of the war films, but the truth is, he is an unlikely figure to be re-examined. THEIRS IS THE GLORY sounds like a truly odd movie: it's the story of the Battle of Arnhem (later immortalized as A BRIDGE TOO FAR) made shortly after World War II as a "docu-drama," in which every actor you see on the screen, and every technician you don't see behind the screen, had to have fought at Arnhem. Could it really be good? I guess it's possible. History has a way of finding the good inside the bad, and happily Christopher Robbins shares that propensity.



2. The Empress of Ireland is the kind of book you don't want to finish, you feel a stab of sorrow when you realize you've passed the halfway mark. This memoir of the author's relationship with the Irish film director Brian Desmond Hurst reads like a novel. You are fully engaged with the characters and have entered another world. It is hilariously funny, deeply moving and the kind of book you will either read again or skim to reread favorite passages. The best book I've read all year.



3. Brian Desmond Hurst was a soldier (a veteran of the Gallipoli campaign), a film director (his best remembered effort being the Alistair Sim version of "A Christmas Carol"), and, in the end, equal parts dreamer, grifter and raconteur.
   
   We meet up with Hurst well into his twilight years. Journalist Christopher Robbins is sent to meet the openly gay (and still quite frisky) Hurst, who is searching for a fresh young talent to pen a screenplay about the events leading up to the birth of Christ. A chance encounter of the luckiest sort. Together they travel to Morocco, Ireland and Malta. The friendship that develops, and is so lovingly documented in these pages, is obviously life changing for Robbins. Hurst understood well the business of living in the moment; and though he may have been a bit of a schemer, he opened up a new world of discovery, adventure and infinite possiblities for Robbins.
   
   The years pass, the script gets written and bandied about, but the film is never produced (neither is Hurst's promised autobiography). What remained were the author's copious notes detailing, not only their shared adventures, but many of Hurst's ribald and hilarious stories reported seemingly verbatim. The man was the Irish Scheherazade. Along the way we are introduced to a rogues' gallery of eccentric characters, some royal, some famous, some criminal, some perverted, but all colorful and brilliantly remembered. This volume is often laugh out loud funny. However, Hurst's memories of growing up poor in Ireland, of his family struggles, and the absolute horror of his war experiences, are told with a poignant and shattering clarity.
   
   This has proven to be one of those rare books for me. I never wanted it to end. There aren't enough superlatives in the dictionary to adequately discribe this uniquely rendered memoir. Once read, I defy anyone to forget Brian Desmond Hurst or "The Empress of Ireland."

2 comments about Fires of the Dragon.

1. This is the thoroughly documented story of the 1984 murder of Henry Liu at his Daly City, CA, home, by the Taiwan intelligence service. The book contains impressive documentation of KMT intelligence operations in the USA, especially in California. For those interested in San Francisco's Chinatown, the book has lots of information about the long struggle between the pro-KMT and pro-PRC partisans. The KMT had all the advantages, including basic criminal immuninity thanks to the cooperation of the FBI. They blew it though, when they overreached by murdering the journalist Henry Liu for his pro China views. The PRC, rightly, is ascendent now.



2. Kaplan's book skillfully balances biographical reconstruction with that of the historical and political currents that shaped the lives of the individuals he looks at. Among other things, this is as suspenseful a page turner as any of Eric Ambler's or John Le Carre's best works of fiction. It is also superbly paced and has very few of the redundancies that so often haunt books of this genre.
   
   Kaplan does a superb job at mingling the lives of the principal characters - Henry Liu, the Chiang family back in Taipei, and a wide-ranging cast which includes Taiwanese, Mainland and American spies, government officials, and the criminal underworld - with the laden events of the Nationalists' "loss" of China to the Communists in 1949 and their exile to neighboring Taiwan. The author's portrayal of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Ching-kuo, and of the repressive security apparatus they relied upon to sustain their power over the island, is thorough and altogether informative. The regime's aggressive intelligence activities overseas, which included influencing foreign governments (namely that in Washington), stealing weapons technology, spying on the Chinese diaspora and dissident groups, and - the backbone of the book - a direct role in the assassination of Henry Liu, a journalist who played all three countries' intelligence services to his advantage, are brought to light with a commendable attention to detail. Buttressing the events so deftly described by Kaplan are the shifting grounds of politics of the period, as Washington switches its recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to that of the People's Republic of China. There, too, Kaplan excels at providing just the right amount of information to understand the history of the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triumvirate. Above all, his book demonstrates how the interplay of history and politics can affect the lives of those who choose to be participating citizens, as Henry Liu certainly was.
   
   Even though the book wraps up around 1992, at which point both Chiang father and son had left the scene and been replaced by the reformist Lee Teng-hui, Kaplan's book still manages to retain its immediacy. More than fifty years after Mao's military victory on the Mainland, the Taiwan Strait issue remains unresolved. Not far behind that lingering diplomatic tension lurk old reflexes that, given the right circumstances, could undoubtedly give rise to reprehensible behavior of the kind that is so vividly exposed in this book. Taiwan's transformation, in so little time, from a state ruled by fear into an overwhelmingly vibrant democracy is nothing less than miraculous. Fires of the Dragon provides all the information one needs to fully realize why such a result indeed is the stuff of miracles.

4 comments about Do Me Twice: My Life After Islam.

1. Sonsyrea Tate was raised in a ten children, devout Muslim family. Sonsyrea's mother thought that it was a woman's duty to take care of her family and that having ten children was a blessing from Allah. As Sonsyrea aged, she began to question the wisdom of having children that you can barely afford to take care of. In their household, it was the oldest daughter's duty to help with the other children and as Sonsyrea grew older this caused problems between she and her mother. As the family struggled to survive, she thought that it was unwise for her mother to not step up to the plate and get a job to help with the expenses of living; this caused their personalities to clash. Sonsyrea was determined to go to college and have a career and not have a house full of children, as did her mother. Not only was Sonsyrea dealing with the problems between her mother and herself, but Sonsyrea's favorite uncle was dying and to make matters worse her father was arrested for dealing drugs, causing the family even more financial problems. Just as most religions teach that fornication is wrong so does Islam. Dealing with her sexuality became a major problem . In order to have guilt-free sex, Sonsyrea married at a young age. She un-wisely married a man in constant trouble with the law.
   
   I admire Sonsyrea because she did not let past mistakes ruin her life and went on to get the career that she wanted. The problem that I had with this offering was that it seemed to be written out of sequence. And she could have put in a little more excitement; this did not stop me from receiving the point of view that she was making. This book was an uncorrected proof so if she gets the chapters in better order it will be an enjoyable read.
   
   
   
   
   
   Reviewed by Margaret Ball
   
   
   
   APOOO BookClub



2. As a child, Sonsyrea Tate, affectionately known as "Ray-Ray," has no idea of the trials and tribulations awaiting her in adulthood - but she sure gets plenty of indicators: her father's devolution into a drug-dealing transient, her mother's overbearing animosity, her extended family members' overall dysfunction...the growing cloud of unhappiness in her life often leads her to imagine sunnier times and places not too far away (or so she hopes).
   
   On top of everything else, her beloved Uncle Hussein, a cherished role model and mentor, is slowly degenerating into a veritable shell of his former self. His body ravaged by the grueling onset of Multiple Sclerosis; the protection of his gentle, loving spirit long gone from Ray-Ray's life. Watching him suffer, she finds herself racked with questions and doubts about the benevolent, fair nature of God, and - seeing the righteous so afflicted - she begins to wonder what the point is of serving Him at all.
   
   As her life proceeds, she endures abortion, infidelity, a tumultuous marriage (even multiple instances of marital rape), and eventually the incarceration of her husband, Ron. With Ron gone, little Ray-Ray finally has the freedom of time and space to evaluate her life on her own terms and begin her transformation into the full-grown Sonsyrea. Enrolling in college, Sonsyrea then sets out on a new path, one that challenges her previous long-held beliefs and alters her vision of how her own future should take shape. The journey proves to be difficult, but one she remains determined to make for none other than the preservation of her own sanity and peace of mind.
   
   Do Me Twice is an excellent treatise on the power of self-discovery. Much like Siddartha, Dust Tracks On A Road, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull before it, Tate's story of emotional & intellectual awakening does a commendable job of confronting the misguided teachings that typically shape our youth with the learned truth and experience of our later years. Regardless of our personal religious or philosophical leanings, it cannot be argued that we are raised to follow particular doctrines designed to guide/control our behavior and bias our thinking processes. In her narrative, Tate tells of her admirable journey in combating those very doctrines time and again as they are espoused by family, friends, and even strangers committed to challenging her newfound independence. Refusing to return to the "sleepwalking state" of her past, she bravely defends her right to think for herself - and her life becomes that much more rewarding for it.
   
   Tate's emigration from the often confusing rigors of Islam may be a sensitive topic in the global political climate of our times, but the symbolism of her spiritual quest is an invaluable lesson for the ages. With a critical, yet open mind, by her personal example she successfully encourages the reader to be not afraid in coming to individual conclusions regarding all matters great and small. Highly recommended.



3. DO ME TWICE: My Life After Islam is not a generic book about the highs and lows of being a member of the Nation of Islam. From her days in Muslim School to her guilt-trip marriage and her exit from Islam, Sonsyrea Tate reveals a poignant personal history unlike any "coming of age" or "coming to religion" story ever told.
   
   Tate unveils the dark secrets that controlled her childhood, yet strangely liberate her as an adult. As she becomes comfortable with her own sensuality, she realizes just how much her sexual identity has defined many of the dramatic periods of her life and the life decisions she's made. Against the backdrop of colorful, dysfunctional family and the author's lyrical style peppered with raw realism, DO ME TWICE is a hands down keeper.
   
   Reviewed by Cxandra
   for The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers



4. I truly enjoyed reading Sonsyrea's memoir. What I loved most about this book is how she tells her story with candor and honesty. The transformation she makes from a young girl raised in Islam, questioning her very existence and everything she's been taught, to a young woman finding her own way in life is incredible. I would definitely recommend this book.

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.

3 comments about Nothing to Declare: A Memoir.

1. After seeing the film, 'American History X', I was hooked on finding out about what it's really like in a prison without the added drama of films. Taki gives an honest, undramatised description of his short time in prison for attempted drug smuggling. He explains the torment of being alone and not being able to walk around freely, 24 hours a day, as well the the disgusting conditions prisoners may put up with. It was certainly different to the the image that films like 'shawshank' gave. It showed the human side of prisoners as well as the goodness that the guards were capable of. It also gave interesting descriptions of the social code that inmates followed. For example the unspoken rule that a prisoner never uses the lavatory when the other prisoner is present, as this is 'home'. A recommended read to anyone interested in prison and the loyalty inmates share.



2. A great book, maybe a little slow at the end. If you like Taki, I highly reccomend this collection of his writings.



3. Not Reading Gaol.
   
   This is a wonderful book about Taki's period as a guest of Her Majesty. For those looking for prison memoirs, read "Nothing to Declare" and Jim Goad's "S**t Magnet" for contrasting tales told with amusement and panache. Throw in "manchild in the Promised Land" in you want another colourful voice.
   
   Reading Taki is like a good tennis game with an attractive partner, a warm summer afternoon in beautiful surroundings, and a perfect cocktail answer to the slur of Eurotrash. Taki is glamour without the glitz, wealth combined with anonymity, privilege and comfort without meterosexual softness, and manliness without burlesque or misogyny.
   
   An unapologetic elitist gentleman, ever giving communists and the spineless a fair punch in their clownish noses. Pure delight.

No comments about Life of Lorena Hickok E. R.'s Friend.

3 comments about Boston Boy: Growing up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions.

1. Nat Hentoff, who later became famous as a writer about jazz and civil liberties, describes his "coming of age" and discovery of jazz in the Boston of the 1940s. A very enjoyable read.



2. It's great to see a book like this. As another Boston boy, I had many similar experiences that have been hard and perhaps confusing to explain to someone who grew up in another time and place.
   My wife feels that she understands me better now after reading Boston Boy. We are giving copies to our sons.
   The book for me is nostalgic, poignant, and somewhat reassuring. Helps to understand that generation, that time, and that place. We made it in spite of the bastards.



3. Once, jazz was a real and pervasive presence in Boston and in the dim and scruffy clubs of the South End, this American Music-par-excellence thrilled thousands of afficionados, while yet rarely affording its dedicated and colorful creators a living.
   It was the Twenties and the Jazz Age; it was the Thirties and the age of the Big Bands; it was the wartime Forties, the age of The Savoy on Mass Ave and of Sidney Bechet; it was the baby-boom Fifties and the age of Storeyville in Kenmore Square...
   There were Big Bands and great ballrooms but there were, as well, many talented smaller bands, playing inspired improvised jazz and struggling to survive as they enthralled more limited audiences in more limited venues.
   Nat Hentoff eloquently reminisces about a time when the soulful sound of trumpet and clarinet, piano and bass - pained, glorious, yearning, introspective, challenging, alien even - could inadvertently reach out of the smoky, dark, cave-like clubs of Washington and Columbus Avenues, and so mesmerize a young boy that it could change his life.
   Nat Henhoff blends this tale of a city, its cultural glories and its social sins, with the story of the music, light and dark, somber and witty, pure and besmirched - the faithful mirror of the human soul.
   He leaves one desolate that - much too soon! - things changed, and he leaves one wondering why Boston let it happen; why the city - host to The Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, the Symphony as well as The Boston Pops - couldn't swiftly rally to support and, in time, to save a once-thriving Jazz community...
   Oh, economics and changing taste are the answer, of course, but one is left wishing that Boston had been able to sustain its local jazz scene and, failing that, wishing that it should presently choose, at the least and at last, to honor it with a South End Jazz Museum.
   Many of the greatest Jazz Musicians played there once and their presence or passage should not be forgotten.

1 comments about Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports.

1. Irwin Silber's biography of Lester Rodney is an excellent book about sports, particularly baseball. And though I'm hardly a baseball fan, the style and subject are snappy and engaging. More importantly, Press Box Red explains the activist campaign mounted to desegregate baseball and the far-reaching affects of breaking the color line in "America's pastime". Rodney's anecdotal story-telling and vignettes of great ballplayers--Black and white--reads more like a sports column than a history book. This is also a wonderful insight into a little explored dynamic of Communist Party, though a bit more background on the Party could have been provided for the reader unfamiliar.

1 comments about Love Across Color Lines.

1. A decade ago no one had heard of Ottilie Assing or had a clue that she played an important role not only in shaping European perceptions of the US in the crucial years up to and including the Civil War but in her role as collaborator and lover of Douglass for almost 30 years. Then, Terence Pickett, a scholar of German literature doing research in Poland, stumbled on a folder of letters that revealed an intimate acquaintance and passionate involvement between the German immigrant journalist and the American abolitionist. Pickett cautiously called it a friendship, but when William McFeeley used this information in his 1991 Douglass biography, he strongly suspected that the relationship went beyond friendship. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., choosing his words carefully, has meanwhile also concluded that for "much of Douglass's mature career, Assing was his principal intellectual consort." Maria Diedrich's "Love Across Color Lines" finally gives a detailed and thoroughly researched account of the life of this extraordinary woman, her background, commitment to radical causes, emigration in 1852, involvement in abolitionism, passionate attachment to Douglass, and her courageous but tragic end. It is an amazing story, deeply embedded in the stormy social and political conditions on both sides of the Atlantic. One consistent theme is that Assing's commitment to social revolution, having been frustrated by the botched events of 1848-49 in Germany, plays itself out in her support of radical abolitionism, which she consistently sees in terms of a second American Revolution. Another suggestive argument develops the continuity between Assing's partly Jewish background and her attitude toward slavery and race in the US. Though Assing often expressed typical 19th-century racial attitudes, her experience of belonging to a despised minority in Germany helped her to espouse the cause of black Americans, sometimes with more radical passion than Douglass himself. Most original and interesting, moreover, is Diedrich's carefully argued idea that Assing's imagination was infused with the romanticized representation of a black African prince and a white European woman in a novel by one of her close German friends, who based it on Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko." With all of Assing's emphasis on rational social analysis, much of her relationship with Douglass must be explained in terms of the kind of romantic orientalism that shaped her imagination. As Diedrich makes clear in her narrative, the essential problem of writing this biography was the one-sidedness of the evidence. Assing destroyed all letters (hundreds of them) from Douglass; he destroyed all but 27 from her to him, and he mentions her only in passing in his third autobiography. The story that emerges is largely based on Ottilie's letters to her sister and friends, on her published journalism, and on a handful of manuscripts. But the circumstantial evidence--that Douglass and Assing corresponded more or less weekly for more than 25 years, that during those years Assing spent several months every summer with the Douglasses, and that Douglass often visited and stayed with Assing in Hoboken (seeking refuge there when he was in imminent danger of arrest after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry)--strongly suggests that her passion was reciprocated and that theirs was an intense intellectual and a fully sexual relationship. Aside from these important and fascinating details (which include the highly probable fact that Assing actually ghost-wrote some of Douglass's journalism in "The New National Era"), one of the great strengths of this book is that it places these personal matters in the larger framework of social and political conditions: the abolitionist movement, women's emancipation, the Civil War, Washington politics, the crusades for the Civil Rights amendments in the 1870s, and much more. Diedrich offers us a profound and nuanced insight into how this complex interracial relationship between two committed social radicals could develop in an America rife with political turmoil as well as racial and sexual taboos. The fact that this compelling story has remained veiled for so long is yet another reminder that these taboos continue to exert their fearful power in our own time. Maria Diedrich deserves everyone's gratitude for lifting the veil so thoughtfully, tactfully, and definitively.

   Christoph Lohmann Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Indiana University