Best of 2008 Bookshelf
Michele’s 2008 Bookshelf
Huge congratulations are due to Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz, who brought together the two sides of my favorite island in winning the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction and autobiography in March. These are two books to devour! Edwidge’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, won for autobiography. Its account of her uncle’s tragic death, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security, is as heartbreaking as her account of her family’s ties is inspiring. Junot’s novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, also won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s humorous and painful story that mixes history, politics, and immigration with an evocation of the excruciating coming-of-age of a Dominican nerd.
While we’re in the Caribbean, Lucia Suarez (author of The Tears of Hispaniola) has co-edited The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World, in which she has two lovely essays. “Ruth Behar and Lucía M. Suárez, in gathering these inspiring, tenacious meditations on the circuitousness of exile, show that the terms ‘home’ and ‘diaspora’ are now synonymous. They also prove that Cuba is not only an island. It has become a metaphor for universalism!”–Ilan Stavans, author of The Hispanic Condition and Spanglish
Ned Sublette, Renaissance man, music producer and performer, Cuba expert, scholar, email guru, published The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. “This articulate and intensely researched history provides not only an impressive look at its subject but also should serve as a model for any future works on great American cities. Cultural studies and history do not get much better than this, a must read for anyone who wonders why this city must be saved.” —Booklist
TJ English made an appearance on The Daily Show talking about his new book Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution, which hit the New York Times Bestseller list this summer. Great true-crime mixed with history with a bizarre anecdote about JFK, an orgy, and a two-way mirror. Need I say more?
Craig Karmin’s very timely Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It’s Under Siege is worth reading if you’re trying to make sense of the current economic mess and what it might mean for the future of what’s in your wallet. “Karmin examines the dollar’s unprecedented role as the first truly global currency that is trusted and accepted around the world, a phenomenon based on little more than faith in the U.S. government and the idea of America.” –Publisher’s Weekly
Phillis Levin’s third volume of poetry, May Day, explores how tenderness and violence change our lives. Phillis is wonderful. I still keep a photocopy handy of a poem that she wrote about snow and gave to me at brunch on a snowy day.
Judith Matloff’s Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block tells of her misadventures buying and renovating a house on a Harlem block that a group of Dominican drug dealers had claimed as their own. Kirkus Reviews called it “A loving, stirring portrait of the American cultural mosaic.”
George Bush would have done well to read Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East – a cautionary tale showing how America and Great Britain made very similar mistakes to the ones that we’ve so diligently repeated. Congratulations to Karl and Shareen for Kingmakers being named a “Best Nonfiction of 2008” selection by The Washington Post.
Eric Alterman’s Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America sets out to debunk myths about liberalism. “Alterman spends a lot of time clearing away the falsehoods spread by both right-wing and mainstream media figures, but the core of the book is a vigorous defense of liberalism as a credo—a credo, Alterman argues persuasively, that most Americans actually subscribe to in its constituent parts. Acknowledging that liberalism is notoriously difficult to define, he nonetheless provides an extensive and nuanced analysis of its substance.” —ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Kavitha Rajagopalan’s first book, Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West, was published this fall, with a beautiful cover designed by her husband. It’s a moving portrait of three very different Muslim immigrant families in London, New York, and Berlin.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest published Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlands, a story of politics and identity made eminently readable by Stephanie’s sense of humor and eye for detail.
The paperback edition of Mira Kamdar’s Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World was published this year. Following the Mumbai attacks, the book;s insights are particularly relevant. “[O]ne thing is undeniable about Griest: This chica’s got guts. The systematic self-incrimination she repeatedly displays and the frenzied compulsions fueling her quest to figure out just how Mexican she truly is — if at all — are what make Griest’s work important. It speaks to the larger truths all biethnic individuals are fixated on but aren’t always as willing to expose with such intense honesty and nerve. So we continue watching with an interest best described as uneasy. We know what is at stake for this writer, for all hyphenated Americans confronting their heritages, each curious to see what happens when Griest chooses to fling herself in front of the next moving vehicle, hoping the epiphany it heralds will be enough.” — Los Angeles Times
A new paperback is also available for Silvana Paternostro’s My Colombian War: A Journey Through the Country I Left Behind. “In this intensely honest and revealing memoir, Silvana Paternostro takes us on her own Rip van Winkle voyage of return to her beloved, violent homeland. It is a compellingly bittersweet chronicle, with touches of great beauty, much like Colombia itself.”—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and The Fall of Baghdad
Louise Bernikow’s Dreaming in Libro, the sequel to Bark if You Love Me, about her rescued Boxer, Libro. Shadow and I met Louise and Libro in our neighborhood shortly after I adopted her. Nina knew Libro too.
Russ Baker’s first book is. Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America,. Here’s a jacket blurb, from the historian and former LBJ/Nixon staffer Roger Morris — author of “Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician” and “Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America”: “Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight—from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today’s headlines—this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.” You can pre-order it (with a 30% discount) on Amazon—http://tinyurl.com/5834st.
Former WPI Fellow Michael Cohen’s first book, Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America has assembled speeches that demonstrate the power of speechwriting and speechmaking to inspire and motivate the American people (for both high and low purposes) and are a repository of the ideas that have shaped our national discourse. For much of the 20th century, Americans have passionately debated two fundamental questions on the campaign trail – what is the role of government in the lives of the American people, and what is America’s proper role and responsibility in the world.
Parag Khanna’s The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. “Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers an study of the 21st century’s emerging “geopolitical marketplace” dominated by three “first world” superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China… The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life. By themselves those pages are worth the price of a book that from beginning to end inspires reflection.” –Publishers Weekly
Shauna Singh Baldwin’s English Lessons and Other Stories The new reader’s guide edition of Shauna Singh Baldwin’s literary debut features the fifteen stories from the original collection, an interview with the author, an original afterword, and her suggested reading list. When Shauna Singh Baldwin’s debut collection was first published in 1996, it took readers by storm. Reviewers discovered a new voice; listeners tuned in to the stories on CBC Radio. Since then, Baldwin has written two award-winning novels and, in 2007, a second story collection, We Are Not in Pakistan. Dramatizing the lives of Indian women from 1919 to the present, from India to North America, Shauna Singh Baldwin travels from the intimate sphere of family to the wasteland of office and university.
Charles Salzberg’s mystery, Swann’s Last Song. Henry Swann, a throwback to the private investigators of the 1940s and 1950s, investigates the murder of an attractive client’s husband –and soon discovers that the identity of the victim is as elusive as that of the killer.
William Powers’ moving 2006 book, Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle of Bolivia’s War on Globalization, is now back in print in a new edition. This is a really beautifully written memoir of Bill’s work in Bolivia with a sustainable forestry project, amidst social upheaval and a struggle over whose jungle it is.
Alida Brill’s memoir Dancing at the River’s Edge: A Patient and Her Doctor Negotiate Life with Chronic Illness. Check out Alida’s blog at www.dancingattheriversedge.com, or go to www.alidabrill.com and connect from there.
MUSIC
Five of Adam Levin’s works were chosen for a new, internationally based “various artists” CD, A Reflection, the fifth in a series devoted to progressive (or “fusion”) music. Adam’s own, latest jazz-classical-rock CD Blissful Behemoth has also received some “buzz” internationally. For more on Adam, please visit his website, http://www.differentdrummusic.com
Bill’s Waltz, a remarkable tribute to Elvin Jones, reunites bassist Gene Perla with Jones by integrating 1986 tracks with bass and drum recorded two decade later –including two pieces with another late great, Don Alias, on the drums. Check out a review and video clip here and then go buy the album here.
FILM
Director Brian Ging, executive producer Simon Camborne, and producer Dave Szamet take a thoughtful look at all sides of the immigration debate in their new documentary, Beyond Borders: the Debate over Human Migration. Check out the trailer for a glimpse of yours truly.
Father Christopher Hartley, whom I met some time ago through my dear friend Marie-Claude Toussaint, is portayed in The Price of Sugar, a documentary that was short-listed for an Oscar nomination. Paul Newman narrates.
Director, producer and cinematographer Mary Olive Smith’s award-winning documentary, A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The story of these women touches on several important issues including access to maternal healthcare, impact of poverty, and women and girls’ rights in traditional societies.
World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Silvana Paternostro was associate producer and appears briefly onscreen in CHE, director Steven Soderbergh’s new feature film starring Benicio del Toro as Che Guevara. The roadshow release –all 4 ½ hours of it—is showing Dec 12-19 at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan. The two-part version will be released in two parts in January. Also onscreen in the movie is former World Policy Institute director Stephen Schlesiger.
Finally, I’d like to brag on Teresa Cicala for winning an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Multi-camera Editing in a Drama Series, for her work on “One Live to Live.”
ART
Samuel Nigro, a “fellow” 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, unveiled The Strategic Placement of Stone, a two-ton block of granite, in Brooklyn Heights. See photos at http://www.samuelnigro.com/ but if you’re in NYC, make the trek to the north end of Cadman Plaza Park near the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, any time until May 2009.
