Review-a-Day for Mon, May 12: Unaccustomed Earth
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, a review from New York Review of Books by Sarah Kerr.

Daily Dose for Mon, May 12: Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw
Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw by Ana Maria Spagna
Reviewed by Katie from Portland, Oregon.

Review-a-Day for Sun, May 11: The Lolita Effect: Why the Media Sexualize Young Girls and What You Can Do about It
The Lolita Effect: Why the Media Sexualize Young Girls and What You Can Do about It by Ph.d. Durham M. Gigi, a review from Ms. Magazine by Brenda R. Weber.

Daily Dose for Sun, May 11: Chester
Chester by Ayano Imai
Reviewed by Kathleen from Buffalo, NY.

Review-a-Day for Sat, May 10: Physics for Entertainment
Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman, a review from Powells.com by Doug Brown.

Daily Dose for Sat, May 10: Maps and Legends
Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
Reviewed by Chris from Evergreen, Colorado.

Review-a-Day for Fri, May 9: The Outlander
The Outlander by Gil Adamson, a review from Washington Post Book World by Ron Charles.

Daily Dose for Fri, May 9: Ecotopia
Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
Reviewed by Fiona from Portland, Oregon.

Review-a-Day for Thu, May 8: Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea
Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea by Richard Kluger, a review from The New Republic Online by Alan Taylor.

PowellsBooks.news May 8 2008
We don't care if Barbara Walters is our interview subject — we are not going to cry! No matter how many tearful confessions she might wring from Dave while he's trying to control the interview, we shan't shed a tear. True, original essays from Marisa Silver (The God of War) and Simon Winchester (The Man Who Loved China) are deeply touching. And we're practically moved to tears of joy by the INK Q&As from Elizabeth George (Careless in Red), Victor Wooten (The Music Lesson), and Taras Grescoe (Bottomfeeder) — practically, but not quite. I have to confess, guest blogger Mary Roach (Bonk) prompted some tears of laughter, but those don't count. You won't get us, Barbara! Not even... oh, damn. [Sob!]

Daily Dose for Thu, May 8: Fool on the Hill (A Tess Camillo Mystery)
Fool on the Hill (A Tess Camillo Mystery) by Morgan Hunt
Reviewed by Beren from Portland, Oregon.

Interview with Barbara Walters
The first woman to co-anchor a network news program. Arguably the most influential interviewer of the 20th century. An American icon. Barbara Walters addresses it all in her incredible new memoir, but in fact it's her family story — the human story, pocked with inevitable failures and regrets — that forms the backbone of Audition. In conversation with Powell's, Walters talked about Baba Wawa, the art of not interrupting, life choices as evidenced by two Hepburns, W's muddy barn, NBC in the 1800s, and a remarkable life, both on- and off-camera.

Review-a-Day for Wed, May 7: The Region of Lost Names
The Region of Lost Names by Fred Arroyo, a review from National Book Critics Circle by Rigoberto Gonzålez .

Daily Dose for Wed, May 7: Waiting for the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
Reviewed by Prashanth from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Author Q and A with Taras Grescoe
An eye-opening look at aquaculture that does for seafood what Fast Food Nation did for beef. From North American Red Lobsters to fish farms and research centers in China, Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder takes readers on an illuminating tour through the 55-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry.

No place to be sick

A year in the belly of a sick beast

A PLETHORA of current television programmes attests to a widespread fascination with those who work in hospitals and those they heal, or try to. Julie Salamon's year in the life of Maimonides Medical Centre in Brooklyn has a cast less beautiful than that of ?Grey's Anatomy?, less witty than that of ?Scrubs? and less foul-mouthed than that of ?No Angels?. But with its careful documentation of financial crises, feuds, personality clashes and, most of all, life-and-death drama, it feeds the same appetite for pathos, intrigue, tragedy and redemption.

A surprising amount of what Ms Salamon has to tell of her year of untrammelled access to staff and patients has little to do with healing the sick. She attends lectures on the role of spirituality in medical care. She learns about the hospital's new ?Code of Mutual Respect??an attempt to get consultants to stop swearing and throwing things at nurses and junior doctors. And, again and again, she witnesses the effects of ?diversity on steroids?, as she terms the bewildering variety of people treated by a hospital founded to serve Orthodox Jews and now dealing with patients from a huge variety of ethnic and religious groups, while still struggling mightily to satisfy its main intended beneficiaries. Some staff tell her they are sick of multiculturalism and ethnic competences (?all just crap?). Others, less jaded, offer kooky observations: Chinese women come into the labour wards just before midnight (as restaurants close), Pakistanis in the small hours (as taxi-drivers come off shift) and Hasidic Jews at 10pm (no one knows why). ...

Blood and guts

Tracking the disappearing mammals, one species at a time

THE hunting, in turn, of the right whale, the blue, the sperm, the minke and the humpback form the backbone of this entertaining and interesting book by Andrew Darby, an environmental reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald. With each species he builds up the reader's fascination further, before delivering a (mostly unhappy) account of its fate. ...

The fuel of power

A fascinating biography argues that Americans supported Richard Nixon because of his anger and resentment, not despite it

IS THERE really room for another book on Richard Nixon? In the past two years alone there has been a doorstop of a biography by Conrad Black, a blow-by-blow account of Nixon's visit to China by Margaret MacMillan and a joint portrait of Nixon and Henry Kissinger by Robert Dallek. And those are only the notable ones. ...

Redemption by bequest

The man behind the scholarships

IN 1871, at the age of 18, an apparently unambitious son of a Hertfordshire vicar left his brother's farm in Natal, South Africa, for the diamond fields of Kimberley. Barely 16 years later, Cecil Rhodes had become a towering figure in finance and mining, a transformation achieved through skill and courage, and, in no small measure, bribery and ruthlessness. ...

A mystery uncorked

The unlikely but gripping tale of a wine pirate

DECEMBER 5th 1985 will for ever have a place in wine lore. On that day Christie's auctioned a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, thought to have once been part of Thomas Jefferson's cellar, and part of a cache of bottles said to have been recently unearthed from a Paris house. The sale price for lot 337, $156,000, was five times the previous record for a normal-sized bottle of wine.

The buyer, Malcolm Forbes, was at first incensed that his son, Kip, bidding on his behalf, had paid so much. But the sale caused such a stir that the publicity-seeking billionaire concluded that it was a price worth paying for a piece of history, and proudly put the dirt-encrusted vessel on display. ...

The man who changed his mind

Philip Guston was one of the rare artists who turned from abstractionism back to figurative painting. A new show illustrates why this was important

DESPITE the many twists taken by modern art in the 20th century, its advancement always seemed linear and irrefutable. Progress meant moving away from figurative works and towards abstraction.

Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky pointed the way forward, distilling form into a more ?honest? art, free of the gauche literalism of an object. By the 1950s the embrace of abstraction was nearly universal: it became a symbol of post-war freedom, the opposite of the treacly folk art favoured by the Nazis. The energy and vitality of those sexy, hard-living abstract expressionists, with their virile paintings of soaked and splashed colour, promised to seal the deal of art's future. But then Philip Guston decided not to play along. ...

Memory and forgetting

Love, loss and the drama of dreams

?EVEN the dearest that I love the best/Are strange?nay, stranger than the rest.? This couplet by John Clare, a 19th-century English poet, runs through the agitated mind of Erik Davidsen, the lonely, introspective narrator of ?The Sorrows of an American?, just before he takes a pill and enters a fitful sleep. It also captures the essence of Siri Hustvedt's latest novel, which is about the secrets that can survive even the closest relationships, and the mysteries that can make it impossible ever truly to know someone.

Days after his father dies, Erik, a divorced middle-aged psychoanalyst, is sorting through the deceased's study in Minnesota with his close sister, Inga. Amid personal effects that include their father's memoir, they discover a mysterious letter that seems to implicate him in a death?a murder, perhaps?when he was much younger. The letter forces Erik and Inga to consider just how little they may have known their melancholic Norwegian parent. ?Secrets can define people,? observes Inga, a philosopher, who is also grappling with the death of her husband, a critically acclaimed novelist. Letters he wrote to a former lover have resurfaced, raising questions about their marriage. A gossip journalist is hounding her for details. ?What's truly odd,? she tells her brother, ?is that I've suddenly discovered that I lived another life. Isn't that strange?? ...

Look behind you

A comedian seeks Osama bin Laden

ON THE pretext of looking for the world's most wanted man, Morgan Spurlock, television producer, documentary-film maker and director in 2004 of the irreverent ?Super Size Me? about living on an all-McDonald's diet, sets off around the Middle East and Central Asia asking experts and ordinary people questions about everything from the ?war on terror? to professional wrestling.

A surprising amount of information is conveyed in the process. Mr Spurlock learns about the roots of al-Qaeda in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians' scepticism regarding their Islamist champions and the poverty of perpetually war-torn Afghanistan. But the information he gathers for ?Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?? is less important than the fun his interview subjects have as they joust with this likable American. If in Afghanistan you ask where Osama bin Laden is to be found, the answer invariably is ?Pakistan?; in Pakistan, it's the reverse. And the joke is infectious: American soldiers travelling in a Humvee in Afghanistan show how locals invariably answer the question by pointing in unison over their shoulders. ...

True stories

Hope and inspiration fuel the most popular biographies and autobiographies

WHEN Greg Mortenson, a six-foot-four night-nurse and mountaineer from Montana, first visited Pakistan in 1993 to climb K2, the world's second-highest peak, he failed in his mountain quest but ended up doing more to win hearts and minds in the region than any amount of official American propaganda.

Mr Mortenson began by planning a five-room school which, using local craftsmen and materials, he reckoned would cost $12,000 to build. Then he set about writing letters?to senators, to millionaires, to Oprah Winfrey and to a fellow footballer who, like him, had attended the University of South Dakota. In all he wrote 580 letters, and received a single cheque in the post (from the student footballer) for $100. But he never gave up. ...

Sex and sensibility

Suffering in Africa and wisdom in the oldest profession

MORE than 2m people die from AIDS every year and as many get infected with HIV. Despite grand programmes to roll out anti-retroviral drugs that keep the infected alive, and billions spent by foreign donors and the governments of the worst-affected countries, AIDS is likely to cause one in six deaths in Africa by 2015.

Why is this so, when most people know how it is spread? AIDS has not been around long, but the science is thoroughly understood, as are the most effective public-health interventions. Get people to cut down on risky sex and stop drug injectors sharing infected needles and you will achieve wonders. In rich countries the prospect of the general population succumbing to AIDS is now almost nil. Even in much of the poor world it has been contained. Thailand nipped the epidemic in the bud when brothel owners were threatened with closure if prostitutes failed to use condoms with clients. In China and India, where activists long feared an explosion, prevalence rates have been kept low. ...

End of an era

Revisiting the fall of Smyrna

WHEN Smyrna?modern Izmir?fell to the Turkish army in 1922, and much of it was destroyed by fire, the city's role as a bastion of Greek and Christian culture, going back nearly 2,000 years, came to an abrupt end. Before that, the port had been home to a diverse and cosmopolitan population; by the standards of the region, it was a beacon of tolerance and prosperity.

In addition to the Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Turks, there were also Americans and Britons and what Giles Milton calls the ?Levantines?, rich families of European descent, who spoke half a dozen languages and occupied vast villas. Their dynasties dominated the trade and industry of the region. Some (like the Whittalls) retained British nationality over generations of Ottoman life, and it is their English-language diaries, letters and documents that provide Mr Milton with his best material. Although this slant is unrepresentatively British and privileged?lots of parties and picnics?it allows the author to be fair towards the Greeks and the Turks, who still blame one another entirely for the disaster. ...

An invitation to the dance

A happy life luckily peopled

NOT everyone will approve of Ferdinand Mount's beautifully written, poignant and, at times, extremely funny memoir. Some will be irritated by the author's indefatigable name-dropping, others by his over-insistent self-deprecation. Both will be missing the point.

Mr Mount (although a baronet, he eschews the use of his title) describes himself at different points in his life as idle, supercilious, incompetent and emotionally retarded. Any advancement is the consequence of luck or patronage rather than effort or talent on his part. Yet he won a scholarship to Eton, achieved success in journalism both as a political columnist and editor of the Times Literary Supplement, headed Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street policy unit and is the author of several well-received novels. ...

Power points

The slogans of political Islam remain highly resonant, whether as a programme for peaceful governance or an inspiration to wage war. Two new books explain why

WHEN the British and French empires were at their height, imperial service often provided an outlet for the talents of precociously clever ethnographers, social anthropologists and scholars of religion. On the face of things, Noah Feldman is a similar figure, rendering important services to the American imperium, both as a rising star in the intellectual establishment and in more practical ways?he helped to draft Iraq's new constitution.

A young professor at Harvard Law School with a doctorate in Islamic political thought, Mr Feldman is brimming with the sort of expertise that America's new proconsuls in the Middle East and Afghanistan badly need. Above all, he is qualified to opine on how America should react to the dilemma posed by the huge popular support, in Muslim lands, for explicitly Islamic forms of administration. ...

Big bite

Twentieth-century America from a snack's perspective

THIS entertaining and informative book, which traces the burger's evolution from working man's snack during the Depression to symbol of American corporatism, is nothing less than a brief history of America in the 20th century. ...

Belonging in Israel

What does it mean to be an outsider in the Holy Land? A new generation of Israeli documentary-makers examines a thorny question

IT IS no surprise that in Israel, a country constructed around the notion of belonging, many film-makers should choose to focus on what it is like not to belong. A selection of new documentaries screened this month at the Israeli Cinema Showcase in London and at Tel Aviv's annual documentary-film festival, DocAviv, showed that stories about being an outsider in Israel are an interesting way to explore the country's subtleties and contradictions.

The ultimate outsiders are, of course, the Palestinians. Until the second intifada Palestinians could still move relatively freely and many had jobs in Israel. Most are now excluded. As a result, those who do get in are more vulnerable. ...

Billion-dollar babies

An inside look at the global ruling class

WHO rules the world? The most familiar answers to this question are so poisoned by paranoia that it is tempting to dismiss the question itself. If the Jews are so powerful, then why have they had such a dreadful time of things? If the men and women of Davos are so mighty, then why do they keep messing everything up? ...

Waves of pleasure

A very Australian coming-of-age story

RICHLY Australian, ?Breath? is a classic coming-of-age novel, which is not to pigeonhole the work as small or pat. Thomas Wolfe and James Joyce among many other literary greats have employed the form. Readers who are, like the narrator, adolescent might well enjoy Tim Winton's surf-and-turf tale. But this is also a book for grown-ups. ...

The unremembered

Unreliable narrators clash at an Irish mental hospital

THE self-enclosed world of the dramatic monologue is one of the greatest fictional devices. Think of Hamlet. Think of Macbeth. Or of Robert Browning's murderously brilliant poem, ?My Last Duchess?. Its forcefulness is evident in novels too?in Molly Bloom's conclusion to James Joyce's ?Ulysses?, for example, and now in the latest novel by Sebastian Barry, another Irish writer, which largely consists of intertwined lives whose narrators and narrations seem partially in collision with each other. One is the tale of an elderly female patient incarcerated in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital; the other is that of her (male) psychiatrist of long standing. ...

Correction: Babylon

In our report on the Babylon exhibition in Paris (?Ere Babylon was dust?, April 12th) we mistakenly attributed the building of the Tower of Babel to the Jews exiled to Babylon in 586BC. This is incorrect. The tower was built between 3500BC and 2400BC by the people ?of one language and of one speech? (Genesis 11:1-9) who inhabited the land of Shinar, in the kindom of Nimrod. Sorry.

...

Narnia Adapted for the Screen in 'Prince Caspian'
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is the latest film adaptation of C.S. Lewis' fantasy series. Director Andrew Adamson talks with host Andrea Seabrook about the challenges of translating the beloved Narnia series onto the screen.

Saving Endangered Species One Mouthful at a Time
Conservation scientist Gary Nabhan says the best way to recover some of America's at-risk species is to eat them. He documents lost and threatened foods in his new book, Renewing America's Food Traditions.

The Woman Behind 'The Great Man'
Kate Christensen won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel, The Great Man, a story about three charismatic older women left behind when a larger-than-life artist dies. Christensen is only the fifth woman to receive the award.

Simone de Beauvoir Centenary Celebrated
Simone de Beauvoir is one of the towering figures of 20th century France. While she has perhaps slipped into the shadows of American memory, her pioneering work, The Second Sex, is still regarded as one of the cornerstones of modern feminist thinking.

'Twilight' Author Pens Other-Worldly Romance
Stephenie Meyer, author of the best-selling young adult series Twilight, has written her first adult book. The Host is a science fiction romance about two woman — one an alien from outer space — who inhabit the same body and are in love with the same man.

Our New Book Club Pick: Neil Gaiman's 'Anansi Boys'
This month, the Bryant Park Project Book club will be reading a novel by cult hero Neil Gaiman. Anansi Boys is the very tall tale of a hapless bookkeeper named Charlie Nancy, whose dreary life in London is turned upside when his father dies.

Queen's Brian May Rocks an Astrophysics Rhapsody
As a member of the glam rock band Queen, May wrote "We Will Rock You" and played that guitar solo on "We Are the Champions." But the curly haired musician also dreamed of a career in astrophysics. Three decades later, he's gotten his doctorate and written a book about the history of the universe.

Ricardo Sanchez: 'Wiser' in Hindsight on Iraq, Politics
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004; it was on his watch that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal took place. Subsequently, Sanchez has vocally criticized the conduct of the Iraq war — especially the Bush administration's "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan." His new book is Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story.

Exhuming a Real-Life British Murder Mystery
In her new book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of A Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale revisits the gruesome 150-year-old murder that helped catapult British mystery fiction into being. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan offers a review.

Tillman's Mother Honors Him with Questions
Pat Tillman, the former NFL player who signed up for the Army Rangers after 9-11, died under friendly fire in Afghanistan. In Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, his mother, Mary Tillman, continues to demand the truth.

Barbara Walters' Lifelong 'Audition'
The veteran television journalist reflects on her glamorous — but unhappy — childhood, and her storied career interviewing notable celebrities, presidents and even murderers.

Strained Connections in 'Unaccustomed Earth'
Jhumpa Lahiri offers a new collection of stories exploring the rich terrain of Bengali-American life. The book is the third from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

Father-Son 'Film Club' Keeps Teen on Track
When David Gilmour's 16-year-old son was failing out of school, Gilmour offered him a deal: Jesse could drop out, but only if he watched three movies a week with his dad. David and Jesse Gilmour tell their story of unconventional home-schooling in a new memoir, Film Club.

'BPP' Book Club Talks to Aryn Kyle
The Bryant Park Project book club just finished reading The God of Animals. Now the novel's author, Aryn Kyle, talks about how she came write the story and what she's doing next.

Ayn Rand Studies on Campus, Courtesy of BB&T
Since 2005, banking giant BB&T has given several million dollars to different colleges and universities in an effort to promote the study of Ayn Rand's books and economic philosophy. But should a corporation have a role in establishing curricula?

Bring Us Apart
Rick Perlstein’s sprawling, rollicking book argues that Richard Nixon is the explanation for everything — or at least for the rise of the right and the decline of almost everything else.

Difficult Truths
Honor Moore presents her father’s life and work, including his secrets.

All the Difference
A biographical novel reconstructs Robert Frost’s life.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
After learning of a possibly fatal mutation lurking in her genes, Masha Gessen went in search of answers medical and moral.

Man in a Black Turban
Patrick Cockburn’s life of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The New New World
In this examination of power, Fareed Zakaria focuses not so much on the decline of America, but on the rise of China and India.

Styron’s Choices
Essays by William Styron illuminate his fiction’s themes.

On Poetry: Vendler’s Yeats
Helen Vendler’s study of W. B. Yeats demonstrates the flaws that come from trying to ensure the Right Poets are read the Right Way.

Three Soldiers
In a novel set in World War II, a sergeant commits murder in front of his unit.

Rough Justice
Louise Edrich’s new novel examines the lasting repercussions of a small-town lynching.

Music: Memoirs of a Girl From the East Country (O.K., Queens)
In her memoir, Bob Dylan’s former girlfriend looks back at their time in Greenwich Village in the 1960s with affection.

Film: Mike Tyson Film Takes a Swing at His Old Image
Mike Tyson, his days as heavyweight champion long behind him, finds himself on an unlikely path forward as a new documentary about his life makes its premiere at Cannes.

The Medium: Lexicographical Longing
The quintessential fusty book may never see paper and ink again.

A Night Out With | Katie Lee Joel: Downtown-Uptown Girl
Katie Lee Joel, the wife of the musician Billy Joel, celebrates her first cookbook, “The Comfort Table.”

Obituaries: Nuala O’Faolain, 68, Irish Memoirist, Is Dead
Often seen as a feminine (and feminist) counterpart to Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes,” Ms. O’Faolain’s “Are You Somebody?,” (1996) created a sensation.

Elaine Dundy, Author of ‘The Dud Avocado,’ Is Dead at 86
Ms. Dundy was the author of “The Dud Avocado,” which was published in 1958 and whose heroine, a free-spirited American girl, was a forerunner to Isadora Wing and Carrie Bradshaw.

R. R. Knudson, a Writer Whose Subject Was Sports, Dies at 75
Ms. Knudson wrote more than 40 books, including the “Zan” novels, which were published in the years after the passage of Title IX and starred a young female athlete.

Essay: 1958: The War of the Intellectuals
Fifty years ago, American critics worried about the collapsing distinction among highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow.

Archive: Book Review Podcast
This week: Fareed Zakaria, author of “The Post-American World”; the children’s book author Walter Dean Myers; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Sunday Serial | The Funny Pages: Mrs. Corbett’s Request
Chapter 2: Mrs. Corbett’s green envelope sat on our sideboard while my wife and I ate sushi for dinner. In it were the details about her son Roger, whose accidental death left unanswered questions.

Learn How Kids Can Be Published Authors Too
Kenton Verhoeff is a 12-year old homeschooled boy who has written and published his own book. He offers advice to other young aspiring authors here.

The Rise of Self Publishing
Not long ago, self published books were considered just a few steps above pamphlets run off on a Xerox machine. How did this big change come about?

How To Find A Fashion Magazine Internship
If you are looking to get into fashion magazines as a career, an internship is one of the only ways to break into the business, especially if you want to work for a top level fashion magazine like Allure, Elle or the highly regarded Vogue.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Bill Stoller offers his advice on tapping into the holiday publicity bonanza.

10 Ways to Monetize your Author Blog
If you’re an author who realizes the importance of having a blog to develop a relationship with your existing readers and to find new readers but also needs to write in ways that produce more direct and immediate revenue instead of just tiny blips in the royalty check, then perhaps you need to find a way to make your blog make money for you while it builds your readership.

Terrorist Recognition Handbook

Second Person

Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6

The New School of Information Security

Programming Collective Intelligence

Linux System Programming

Configuring Juniper NetScreen & SSG Firewalls

Wicked Cool PHP

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux

Windows Forensic Analysis

Head First JavaScript

Regular Expression Pocket Reference

Matter

Advanced Rails

The Children of Hurin

Updated Information on Eward McKeown

[Fwd: [Emcitweb] Emerald City #130]

Emerald City Newsletter #128

The 20 novels most inspiring to men

Halfcut Publications Spring Newsletter

Solaris author Stanislaw Lem dies

Emerald City Newsletter

Open Source for the Enterprise--new from O'Reilly

Self Published Fantasy Children's Novel: Farperoo, by Mark Lamb

Free e-Books from APress and Computer Manuals

Where do we go from here? ¡ R.W. Johnson on Zimbabwe
The sequence of events that produced the current deadlock in Zimbabwe began on 11 March last year when Morgan Tsvangirai and a number of other members of the Movement for Democratic Change were arrested, tortured and beaten. Robert Mugabe had banned all MDC meetings and rallies in the hope of suppressing the MDC completely before this year's elections.

Free-Marketeering ¡ Stephen Holmes on Naomi Klein
The anti-globalisation movement suffered a dizzying setback on 9/11. Symbolic gatecrashing into the well-guarded meeting places of the super-rich suddenly seemed a much more sinister activity than before. Busting up branches of Starbucks and other Seattle-style antics became anathema in an atmosphere of injured and vindictive patriotism. But Naomi Klein, the combative theorist and publicist of anti-globalisation, was not about to accept such guilt by association.

Art Is a Cupboard! ¡ Tony Wood on Daniil Kharms
An old woman leans out of her window and, 'because of her excessive curiosity', leans too far: she falls to the ground and shatters to pieces. A second old woman leans out of her window to see what has happened to the first - and also leans too far, tumbling to the same fate. More women follow suit (a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth), a chain that ends only because the narrator of this story, 'sick of watching them', breaks off to go to the market.

End-of-the-World Trade ¡ Donald MacKenzie on the credit crisis
Last November, I spent several days in the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, in banks' headquarters in the City and in the pale wood and glass of a hedge fund's St James's office trying to understand the credit crisis that had erupted over the previous four months. I became intrigued by an oddity that I came to think of as the end-of-the-world trade. The trade is the purchase of insurance against what would in effect be the failure of the modern capitalist system.

Short Cuts ¡ Daniel Soar: Terror Suspects

At the Movies ¡ Michael Wood sees 'Stop-Loss'

The Divisions of Cyprus ¡ Perry Anderson
Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels. The furthest east of all the EU's new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them. Cyprus is, in truth, an anomaly in the new Europe.

Frocks and Shocks ¡ Hilary Mantel on Jane Boleyn
You may fear, from the title of this book, that they've found yet another 'Boleyn girl'. The subject of this biography has already been fearlessly minced into fiction by the energetic Philippa Gregory. But there is no sign so far that another inert and vacuous feature film will be clogging up the multiplexes. In reworkings of the Tudor soap opera, Jane Boleyn is more often known as Jane Rochford, wife of George Boleyn, sister-in-law to Anne the queen. There are some lives we read backwards, from bloody exit to obscure entrance, and Jane's is one of them.

The Special Motion of a Hand ¡ T.J. Clark: Courbet and Poussin at the Met
Once or twice in a lifetime, if you are lucky, the whole madness of painting seems to pass in front of your eyes. It felt that way to me in New York this spring, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where two great exhibitions - one exploring Nicolas Poussin's role in the invention of the genre we call 'landscape', the other an endless, stupendous retrospective of Gustave Courbet - are happening a few corridors apart.

Nothing in a Really Big Way ¡ James Wood on Adam Mars-Jones
Like Welch's work, Pilcrow gets nowhere very elegantly. Adam Mars-Jones has been celebrated for the slenderness of his work, increasingly for its non-existence, as if his career were an exercise in negative theology. Pilcrow is not only very long; it measures its length in such tiny units that at times you feel that a version of Zeno's paradox will stop you from ever reaching its end.

At the Hayward ¡ Peter Campbell: Alexander Rodchenko

Short Cuts ¡ Thomas Jones: The Italian Elections

Letters
The letters page from London Review of Books Volume 30 issue 9

Table of contents
Table of contents from London Review of Books Volume 30 issue 9

Lager and sweeties
Helen Brown reviews Revenant by Tristan Hughes

Alexandre Dumas from beyond the grave
Jonathan Bate reviews The Last Cavalier by Alexandre Dumas

fun and fundamentalism in Cairo
Beth Jones reviews The End of Sleep by Rowan Somerville

Return of the medieval pathologist
Susanna Yager reviews crime fiction

Spy thriller set in post-war Berlin
Alastair Sooke reviews Pavel & I by Dan Vyleta

A love letter to the sea
Melissa Katsoulis reviews Breath by Tim Winton

Paperback choice
White King And Red Queen; Medusa; A Late Dinner; Shane Warne; Dancing With Eva; Rant.

Literary Life
Mark Sanderson at large in a world of books

The curious history of Death
Wendy Moore reviews The Dying Game by Melanie King

Doris Lessing's rewriting of her parents' past
Caroline Moore reviews Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

How Bernardo Provenzano saved the Mafia
Harriet Paterson reviews Boss of Bosses by Clare Longrigg

Isaac Rosenberg, the outsider's outsider
Nigel Jones reviews Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

A scheming sexpot dismembered in a dump
Jake Kerridge reviews foreign crime fiction

Lager and sweeties
Helen Brown reviews Revenant by Tristan Hughes

Cocooned by cocoons
Victoria Lane reviews The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams

He in a bomber, she in a dirigible
Lionel Shriver reviews The Reserve by Russell Banks

The labyrinths of Innertown
Niall Griffiths reviews Glister by John Burnside

Metafictional gamesomeness
Sam Leith reviews An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

Pick of the paperbacks
The Peacock Throne; Einstein; Dancing in the Streets; The Family that Couldn't Sleep; Between Each Breath; Little Constructions; The Blair Years

Who Said What
Our regular review of the reviews

Endpaper: Proust and a postal order
Coming soon to your local library, says Alex Clark: the police and a post office

Being childish for 300 years
Lucy Moore reviews Growing Up In England by Anthony Fletcher

A memoir of depression
Keith Ridgway reviews The Devil Within by Stephanie Merritt

The wrong end of history in Eastern Europe
Robert Colvile reviews A Country in the Moon by Michael Moran; Strange Telescopes by Daniel Kalder; and I Was a Potato Oligarch by John Mole

Travelling Empire-class
Nicolette Jones reviews A Corkscrew is Most Useful by Nicholas Murray

May you live in Fortean times
Damian Thompson reviews Charles Fort: the Man who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer

Arthur C Clarke awards: a universe away from the Booker
Want to meet learned and passionate readers? Go to the Arthur C Clarke awards for sci-fi, says Andrew McKie.

Essential reading for dog owners
Justin Marozzi reviews Dog Years: A Memoir by Mark Doty

Is your dog God, or just human?
Mary Wakefield reviews Dog Years: a Memoir by Mark Doty and The Dog Allusion by Martin Rowson

Michelangelo's revolutionary ceiling
Serena Davies reviews Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

A voracious spendthrift with a shot-away chin
Claudia FitzHerbert reviews The Bolter by Frances Osborne

How Idina Sackville put the Happy in the Valley
Selina Hastings reviews The Bolter by Frances Osborne

Deep insight on a narrow canvas
Jane Shilling reviews The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore

'If only I could give up my mind'
Kasia Boddy reviews The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore

Isaac Rosenberg, the outsider's outsider
Nigel Jones reviews Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

You may not think as much as you think you thinke
Tom Payne reviews The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey around Your Head, my Raymond Tallis.

The difficult life of Isaac Rosenberg
Laura Thompson reviews Isaac Rosenberg: the Making of a Great War Poet by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Neil Oliver: where have all the real men gone?
TV historian Neil Oliver wants to resurrect the 'manly man' by telling tales of old-fashioned heroism, says Roya Nikkhah.

Neil Oliver: Scott of the Antarctic
An extract from historian Neil Oliver's new book telling the story of Scott of the Antarctic and his final expedition to the South Pole.

Michael Frayn, theatre fan
Charles Spencer reviews Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre (1970-2008) by Michael Frayn

All the agony and the ecstasy
Judith Flanders reviews Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

The bloody sacking of Smyrna
Jeremy Seal reviews Paradise Lost by Giles Milton

A feast of horror
Anne Billson reviews A New Heritage of Horror by David Pirie

What goes on inside your head
Kenan Malik reviews The Kingdom of Infinite Space by Raymond Tallis

A terrified stranger
Susanna Yager reviews crime fiction

A Spaniard's Irish adventure
Brendan Simms reviews A Year in the Province by Christopher Marsh

Abraham Lincoln's wife
Holly Kyte reviews Mrs Lincoln by Janis Cooke Newman

Literary Life
Mark Sanderson at large in a world of books

Paperback choice
Young Stalin; The Shock Doctrine; Delizia!; William Wilberforce; Between Each Breath; Farewell Britannia

Who Said What
Our regular review of the reviews

Wing-Davey nabs NYU post
Legit News: Appointed chair of Tisch School acting program -- Brit legit multihyphenate Mark Wing-Davey has been appointed chair of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate acting program, replacing longtime chair Zelda Fischandler, who will remain on staff as the program’s artistic director.

Fox greenlights 'Fringe'
TV News: Whedon's 'Dollhouse' comes in midseason -- Fox isn't expected to mess with its fall schedule -- but that didn't stop it from kicking off a flurry of pickup activity over the weekend.

ABC bets on 'Mars'
TV News: Network also picks up Kutcher's 'Opportunity' -- ABC's betting there's "Life on Mars." The quirky sci-fi thriller, based on the hit BBC series of the same name, is expected to be one of the few new series to make it on the Alphabet's fall sked.

'Strange' soundtrack on iTunes
Legit News: Cast recording exclusive to Apple -- "Passing Strange" will be the first Broadway tuner to release its original cast recording exclusively on iTunes, more than a month before the CD arrives in stores.

A latenight invite to Fallon
Upfronts/TV Schedules: NBC announces projects, pickups at upfronts -- NBC will kick off upfront week Monday by unveiling a latenight host, announcing a few projects and sharing details on previously announced pickups.

'Witchblade' sharpened for bigscreen
Comic Book Biz: Trio team on live-action feature of comic -- Platinum Studios, Top Cow Prods. and Arclight Films will team on a live-action feature adaptation of "Witchblade," based on the Top Cow comicbook franchise.

Wyatt preps trio of features
Exclusives: Director to adapt 'Mara,' 'Darkness' -- "The Escapist" helmer Rupert Wyatt has set his next three directing vehicles.

Country time for Clark
Music News: Production unit pacts with ACM -- Dick Clark Prods. has sealed a deal that keeps it in business with the Academy of Country Music.

'Religulous' shifted to October
Los Angeles: Documentary release moved to fall -- Lionsgate's world religions doc "Religulous," helmed by Larry Charles ("Borat") and starring Bill Maher, has been moved from an early summer release to Oct. 3.

Walden, Harper team up
Business News: Duo to acquire, publish kid books -- Walden Media is becoming a publisher, partnering with HarperCollins Children's Books to launch Walden Pond Press.

Daly, Madison Road team on Web
Home Ent News: Duo partner on daily webcast -- Branded entertainment shingle Madison Road is partnering with NBC latenight gabber Carson Daly on a daily webcast devoted to user-generated videos.

McElhone, Perufoy star in 'Heaven'
Film News: Marleen Gorris will direct the $15 million film -- Natasha McElhone and James Purefoy will star in historical drama "Heaven & Earth" for Focus Films.

CBS considering new comedy block
Web Exclusive: Jay Mohr show generating buzz -- CBS is said to be thinking about going long on laughs next season.

Fox draws toon talent
TV News: Studio launches new animation departments -- Fox Broadcasting Co. and 20th Century Fox TV are stepping up their search for the next generation of animation hits with the launch of two departments dedicated to toon development and production.

A Previous Engagement
Film Reviews: If "A Previous Engagement" makes one think of the Harry Potter films, it's only because Juliet Stevenson is perhaps the only English actress of her stature who hasn't found a sinecure in the boy-wizard series. She casts her usual magic, however, in this frankly adult, determinedly lighthearted comedy of romantic errors.

The Great Alibi (Le Grand Alibi)
Film Reviews: Nobody's innocent in "The Great Alibi," a highly chatty, highly French whodunit from veteran writer and Jacques Rivette collaborator Pascal Bonitzer ("Small Cuts") that adapts Agatha Christie's 1946 novel "The Hollow" to chic present-day Gaul. With high-class corpses popping up faster than corks off champagne bottles, and strong ensemble thesping, this potboiler is pleasant enough, although the suspense often seems less about who killed whom than who will shut up first.

New Mexico bringss green to studio
Bashirah Muttalib: Albuquerque, Santa Fe ramp up film appeal -- New Mexico's two production zones -- Albuquerque and Santa Fe -- are ramping up their filming appeal.

Childhoods (Enfances)
Film Reviews: The child is father to the filmmaker in "Childhoods," an entertaining re-creation of incidents in the lives of several revered auteurs by a series of lesser-known French helmers. Inevitably, the six segs vary in quality, but the combination of homage, drama and parlor game will appeal to movie buffs. Other auds may feel left out of the loop as, without prior knowledge of the subject's work, some episodes could seem baffling. Pic, which has already played some Gallic festivals, goes out in France in mid-May. Offshore, more fest slots are assured.

'Iron' stays gold overseas
International News: 'Racer' crashes at the foreign box office -- "Iron Man" stayed golden at the international box office, dominating the weekend with $39 million at 7,500 playdates in its second frame while "Speed Racer" crashed out of the gate with a disappointing $12.8 million at 3,940.