Book Description

Russell Baker is the 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner for Distinguished Commentary and a columnist for The New York Times. This book traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia.

When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise.

These were depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell. He did everything from delivering papers to hustling subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post. As is often the case, early hardships made the man. ... Read more

Reviews (22)

Growing Up
The book Growing Up by Russell Baker was an interesting account of life before and after the Depression and the trials and traumas of life in that time. This autobiography has something for everyone such as humor, sexuality, and real life accounts that could refer to the reader's own experiences. This is a book that should be read by many curious readers. This book contained mounds and mounds of humor. The writer had no mercy when picking people apart in this book. He would pick fun at his second father, Herb, because of Herb's lack of intellectual ability and just because he was not his real father: "In meal conversations I addressed myself only to my mother or Doris, always managing to omit him (Herb) from the circle. When he interrupted to say, 'Pass the potatoes,' I passed the bowl silently without looking at him while continuing to talk to my mother and Doris." The author of this book also enjoyed to stress on sexuality. The author had a struggle with his "love" life. It seems that the curse of virginity followed him throughout his life in the Navy: "I located a very private place south of Coral Gables. We passed it each day en route to the airfield. She seemed willing enough. We pulled off the highway into marshy ground overhung by great spreading limbs and vines. She switched off the headlights and we embraced in the blackness, hungry for sin. The mosquitoes arrived immediately... She was screaming that they were eating her legs. She pushed me away, threw on the headlight beams, and crying, 'They'll eat us alive!' backed out and roared top-speed back to Miami cursing mosquitoes." The author had a talent that could make the reader think of instances in his or her life. By using this talent in Mr. Bakers writing, the reader asks his or herself "Has that happened to me before?" Growing Up by Russell Baker is definitely worth reading. It has all that you want in a historic account about the 1920's to the 1950's and more. This definitely is a book that can draw you in and never let you go.

modest, charming
Russell Baker's charmingly written "Growing Up" takes us through the stages of his eventful life, from his early rural boyhood, through the hard times of the Depression when he lived with his widowed mother and a houseful of her relatives in New Jersey, to the World War II years and beyond. His tone throughout is modest and unassuming, and each stage is presented according to his maturity level as he grew up. His mother's high expectations set a high bar for Baker through his growing up years, and must have contributed to his successful eventual career at the New York Times.

"Growing Up" is carefully crafted by this experienced writer, yet reads as if he had effortlessly put together this a seamless memoir. The many characters come to vivid life with all their virtues and foibles, and Baker's narrative flows smoothly from beginning to end. A great read!

Heartwrenching and Beautiful!
One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short "composition" on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A. Reading it with her own schoolteacher's eye, my mother agreed that it was top drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me. Nothing mores was said. But a new idea had taken root in her mind. Halfway through dinner she interrupted the conversation.

"Buddy", she said, "maybe you could be a writer".-Russell Baker from Growing Up

It is as a tribute to his mother that Russell Baker, one of America's leading wordsmiths and humorists, wrote Growing Up, his 1982 account of doing just that during the depression. The memoir one him his second Pulitzer Prize (his first he won 4 years prior for his New York Times "Observer" Column). The book itself is very well-written (as is pretty much everything Baker's ever done) and has dashes of humor throughout it. Yet overall. the book ranks as a touching tribute to the mama who raised him, pushed him when he needed pushing and ultimately encouraged him to make something of himself.

"Lord how I hated those words", Baker writes at the conclusion of chapter 1 of Growing up, referring of course to "make something of yourself". Young Russell wasn't a bad boy per se. He was a decent young man who had the same habit that many people of 7-8 (end often higher in many cases) have: laziness. Of course, his mother Lucy Elizabeth did not approve of this at all. She was determined that her son was going to get on the path to success. Growing Up is the story of how she and several other influences in young Russell's life helped steer him that way.

The other influences include his younger sister Doris, his Uncle Harold, his Aunt Pat and his 12th grade high school English teacher Mr. Fleagle. All of them give him advice and affection for this is not the time to be loafing around. This is America in the 1930s, the height of the Great Depression.

Baker's writing vividly brings the era to life. He shows how people struggled to make enough money to subsist on and how this affected everyone, especially the people in his family. And it was especially hard on Baker's family, for his father died when he was 5 years old. This resulted in his mother and sister moving from Virginia to Belleville New Jersey (where young Russell experienced his first taste of journalism work as a magazine salesman at eight years old) and finally Baltimore. We are shown Baker going to John's Hopkins University to major in Journalism, accompnay him through service in the Navy and watch as he meets his first wife and gets started on the path towards success in the wordsmithing business.

We get many different tidbits of life in early-to-mid 20th century America. We watch as Russell's Aunt and Uncle quarrel over the hanging of a re-elect Herbert Hoover poster and see them compromise when the aunt goes out to get a Roosevelt poster. We see Uncle Harold introduce Russell to the writing of HL Mencken. We see Russell in a college writing course attempting to write like Hemingway.

Through it all, the one constant throughout the journey is Lucy Elizabeth. She's an ever presence throughout the book, always there to cheer Russell on, to pray for him when he needs it. Unfortunately, we also see old age take over her life and her mind and the final moments of the book as she succumbs to death and can't even remember her own son are positively heartbreaking. Don't miss this very special book! A worthy book worth owning! Another Amazon quick-pick I would like to recommend is THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez -- a wonderful, heartfelt small press novel that you'll certainly enjoy.

The best...
Russell Baker, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, deserves to be a national treasure on the basis of this book alone. It traces his youth in rural Virginia, from the death of his father when he was only five through his growing up years between the wars. The rest of the book is a paean to his mother, a strong-willed optimist who never accepted defeat as an alternative to success. Her unfailing faith in the talents of her young son were not misplaced. This is an iconic and magical piece of literature, a story of courage and love, of the bonds of family in spite of tension and disagreement.
Wonderful both as a story and as a piece of writing.

What's good about Russell Baker's "Growing Up"
This book - some 348 pages of easy reading - first published in 1982, has received about all the kudos a book can: Ann Landers loved it, the New York Times critic, likewise (though Baker's long time tenure with the New York Times as a Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent probably guaranteed that!), the 'Book of the Month' people blessed it with their vote, publishers continue to reissue it (at least 9 times), and book stores continue to stock it. This book's enduring popularity can't be some accident! The dust cover promises either humor or pathos on every page and I think that's close to accurate. So do yourself a favor! Read this book! It will lift your spirits and improve your disposition. Also, here's a note for some of the previous reviewers: Baker was born in 1925, so this book is not about growing up in the early 1900's, or in the 19th century, or about serving in WWI (Baker served in WWII). Also, Baker has published other books, including "The Good Times" (1992) and Looking Back" (2001). ... Read more

Reviews (2)

I saw Geraldo exposed and I loved it!!
Geraldo is off-putting to many Americans to put it mildly. But that is because, like many extremely intelligent people (I'd say geniuses, but that might be a little strong) he is misunderstood. He wants to help people and is strong-willed. He knows what he wants and is vocal about it. That scares some people, but is these people would read his autobiography, thye would see the real Geraldo. The one that puts family ahead of his career; the one that spent two months in the Mediteranian with his wife and children and almost died (a harrowing and inspiring chapter). This novel paints Geraldo in an entirely different light than his public persona. And when he "exposes" that light you can read how good a person he really is and what Geraldo is really about. Hope for the future!

You gotta love him!
Even those of us who decry the tabloid twist of network news have got to love the brash, brassy, bold and bullish auto-biography of this true pioneer of the news and talk TV era. "Geraldo" is quite "up front' about his flaws. His book is worth seeking out. ... Read more

Book Description

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again meets The Bonfire of the Vanities, as told by...a male Bridget Jones? And it all really happened. In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan--Alistair Cooke, Tina Brown, Anna Wintour--so why couldn't he?

But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn't get a date for love or money. Even the local AA group wanted nothing to do with him.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is Toby Young's hilarious and best-selling account of the five years he spent looking for love in all the wrong places and steadily working his way down the New York food chain, from glossy magazine editor to crash-test dummy for interactive sex toys. A seditious attack on the culture of celebrity from inside the belly of the beast, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is also a "nastily funny read." (USA Today) ... Read more

Reviews (70)

How to lose interest and return a book
When I first browsed through this book, I thought it should be an enjoyable expose on the more ridiculously aspects of the New York publishing\party scene - something rich in insight and satire. Toby seemed the stuff of the always struggling, but always failing, guy that I know that I can definitely relate to (at least the always failing part). I was thoroughly disappointed. As much as I wanted to like this book, I found it extremely repetitive and not particularly interesting. Toby, for as much as he bemoans the lack of a meritocracy in America, seems to complain mostly about success not being simply bestowed upon him. This ironic twist seems completely unintentional and grows tiresome very quickly. Whether he's talking about his social life or his professional life, it's the same theme. Having said that, there are some very amusing points to the book (the dating focus group is worth a novel in itself). Toby is at his best when he turns his talent outward and describes the world in which he lives, rather than himself. Unfortunately, there's not nearly enough of that to hold my interest. Worth a read if you have an extra gift-certificate to burn.

Bitter, sad, occasionally hilarious but never boring
It is very rare these days that I find a book engrossing enough to read in one sitting and which also makes me laugh out loud. Toby Young, who has an unerring ability to focus on his own shortcomings, does an excellent job of explaining exactly how not to get on in New York. His waggish personality, a healthy appetite for drink and a large stock of off-colour jokes -- all attributes which would serve you well as a journalist in London -- ensure he makes a total mess of pretty much everything he does in Manhattan, the mothership of all that is politically correct in the United States. Indeed, when Vanity Fair boss Graydon Carter fires Young, he tells our hapless hero that he has a brown thumb. "Everything you touch turns to ****," he explains with a laugh. Young is the squarest of pegs in a world where all the holes are round and to make matters worse, a friend of his who went to Los Angeles at the same time strikes immediate and lucrative success. Young is also very funny about his total lack of success with American women, largely because they quickly realise he is broke (and has quite a few complexes, as well as an impressively large collection of appalling pick-up lines). Two-thirds of the way through, the book suddenly becomes more serious as Young realises he has hit rock bottom and starts groping for a way out. To say much more would give too much away but it's well worth sticking through to the end.

Get it from the libary to bypass author's royalties!
I guess it's easier to like a memoir if you like the writer, but unfortunately, Toby Young appears to be 1) shallow as hell, and 2) harboring delusions of grandeur. Not an attractive combo. Remind me again why I would want to read about him?

a fun read
This is an enjoyable book, although I take issue with Young's obsession with the good old days of New York journalism. Miniver Cheevy, anyone? On the other hand, by most accounts the Vicious Circle was full of self-absorbed, backbiting alcoholics, so he would probably fit right in.
One funny thing is that he seems to think he has skewered Graydon Carter but Carter actually comes off looking good, like a relatively decent human being, given the context.

Truth is ugly
I hadn't read this book for a while, and I saw it laying on the floor, and I picked it up. I read the whole thing agian. It was brilliant. For anyone who has wroked in New York and worked in publishing, these stories have a ring of truth to them. Lizzie Grubman is a creep. Tina Brown is a creep. Most of these shady magazine characters have very little redeeming qualities. They have no soul. They will have to deal with their empty lives down the road. Toby Young is funny because he believed in the myth of America. Sure there are rags to riches stories all the time. More often there is not. Toby Young is a valid writer. This book should be read over most of the crap that is being published right now. ... Read more

Book Description

A remarkable and moving memoir of growing up poor in a tough place and covering the most brutal-though often inspiring-aspects of the civil rights revolution

Legendary civil rights reporter Karl Fleming was born in North Carolina's flattest, bleakest tobacco landscape. Raised in a Methodist orphanage during the Great Depression, he was isolated from much of the world around him until an early newspaper job introduced him to the era's brutal racial politics and a subsequent posting as Newsweek's lead civil rights reporter took him to the South's hotspots throughout the 1960s: James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississipi, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and more. On May 17, 1966, Fleming was beaten by black rioters on the streets of Los Angeles. Newsweek covered the incident in their next issue, and here's what they wrote:"That he was beaten by Negroes in the streets of Watts was a cruel irony. Fleming had covered the landmark battles of the Negro revolt from Albany, Ga., to Oxford, Miss., to Birmingham, Ala., and numberless way stations whose names are now all but forgotten..... No journalist was more closely tuned into the Movement; once when a Newsweek Washington correspondent asked the Justice Department to name some Dixie hot spots, the Justice man replied, 'Ask Fleming. That's what we do.'"

In Son of the Rough South, Fleming has delivered a stunning, revealing memoir of all the worlds he knew, black, white, violent, and cloistered-and a deeply moving read for anyone interested in any rough South. ... Read more

Amazon.com

When World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle left for the Pacific Theater in1945, he told friends and colleagues that he felt sure he would die there. Pyle was right;on April 18th, a Japanese machine gunner killed one of America's most belovedpersonalities, sending the entire nation into shock and mourning. In the years since Pyle'sdeath, his particular brand of journalism has been criticized: he's been accused ofignoring the stupidity of generals, of downplaying the horror of battle, and of presentingthe war in a better light than it actually deserved to be portrayed. James Tobin, author ofthe impressive biography Ernie Pyle's War, does not deny that his subjectoften smoothed the jagged facts of war, but he provides both the context--an era and awar in which correspondents were expected to be "team players" who helpedtheir side to win hearts and minds at home--and the personal conflict raised for Pyle bythe often irreconcilable demands of telling the truth and building morale.

In addition to detailing Pyle's mostly unhappy personal life, Tobin also includes samplesof his columns, proving once and for all that Pyle was more than just a hick who fell intoreporting; the man had real, substantial talent, evidencedby his ability to put wordstogether and his sensitivity to the subjects he wrote about. More than just a biography,Ernie Pyle's War is also a study of war, and the peculiar, twilight world ofsuffering and half-told truths to which men like Ernie Pyle were drawn. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Ernie Pyle's War: Thorough and Entertaining Read
"Ernie Pyle's War" by James Tobin was a thorough read. Tobin described Pyle down to the very last detail, uncovering almost every aspect of his life. After reading this book, the reader had a clear view into Pyle's mind and was able to recognize the feelings he possessed about his professional and private life. The way Tobin intertwined Pyle's messages home with biographical details along with interviews of acquaintances, made this story an easy read. "Ernie Pyle's War" earned five "stars."
Tobin's style of writing was one reason this book was so effective. He used partial quotes from Pyle to title his chapters, which brought an immediate sense of intimacy to the story. Tobin began the book with a chronological introduction to Pyle. This style of writing, although typical for biographies, was well suited for this story and not at all cliché. Readers were able to become acquainted with Pyle as a young man and then mature along with him as he grew into an established adult. By describing Pyle as a young man, readers were able to understand more clearly why he was the way he was as an adult.
Tobin used vivid descriptions to paint a picture of Pyle in the minds of the readers. This was an important aspect because Pyle's physical demeanor was one of the main problems and/or benefits in his life. As a child and young adult, his size hindered his relationships. But, as a war correspondent, the people saw Pyle as more of a hometown boy rather than a studious journalist. This added to his success as a war correspondent.
After transitioning into Pyle's career as a war correspondent, the story line became more tedious. Pyle was in and out of combat and the surface facts of his life were boring. Tobin, understanding the paleness of biographical data, used Pyle's messages home to spice up the story. Like most people, Pyle's life was not what it seemed to be. Besides leading a "glorified" life as a war correspondent, he had major problems at home. Tobin showed the audience this by weaving together Pyle's biographical information with the messages he sent home. This gave the reader a sense of what Pyle was actually feeling. Using these messages instead of his columns allowed reader's to see the "real" Pyle.
Tobin uncovered personal feelings about his professional and personal life, which gave the reader a feeling of empathy toward Pyle. Showing that he did not feel like an outstanding reporter, let readers see Pyle was human. Tobin successfully showed the man behind the pen by opening up Pyle's mind to the audience. He did this by using Pyle's own letters and messages home that contained intimate details of his life. Without the added touch of Pyle's actual writing, the story would have failed to be as successful.

America's Link to the Front Lines of World War II
James Tobin has written a stunning book in "Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II". Toban has succeeded in giving readers the rare opportunity to see the human frailties concealed within one of America's greatest and most valuable World War II correspondents.

James Tobin present a picture of the complex Ernie Pyle; a man that entered the World War II carrying only a broken Remington typewriter and a deep desire to describe the life and hardships of the horrific world of the infantrymen to the American public. The reader will learn of the contradictory Ernie Pyle. The Ernie Pyle who despised war, but who could not stay away from the physical and emotional anguish of battle. The Ernie Pyle who loved his wife, but who continually left her behind to travel to the front lines. Ernie Pyle, the seemingly frail and terrified journalist who demonstrated his bravery by traveling to the front lines to be with and write about "his boys". Ernie Pyle, a genius for writing about the common soldier, but who needed constant reminding that he was the best at what he did. His articles became legendary and the hope and news link for Americans with loved ones in the front lines.

James Tobin's "Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II " is a must read for World War II readers and all readers who wish to know about the human spirit and about a plain old fashion brave American.

Ernie Pyle's War: A Thorough Read
"Ernie Pyle's War" by James Tobin was a thorough read. Tobin described Pyle down to the very last detail, uncovering almost every aspect of his life. After reading this book, the reader had a clear view into Pyle's mind and was able to recognize the feelings he possessed about his professional and private life. The way Tobin intertwined Pyle's messages home with biographical details along with interviews of acquaintances, made this story an easy read. "Ernie Pyle's War" earned five "stars."
Tobin's style of writing was one reason this book was so effective. He used partial quotes from Pyle to title his chapters, which brought an immediate sense of intimacy to the story. Tobin began the book with a chronological introduction to Pyle. This style of writing, although typical for biographies, was well suited for this story and not at all cliché. Readers were able to become acquainted with Pyle as a young man and then mature along with him as he grew into an established adult. By describing Pyle as a young man, readers were able to understand more clearly why he was the way he was as an adult.
Tobin used vivid descriptions to paint a picture of Pyle in the minds of the readers. This was an important aspect because Pyle's physical demeanor was one of the main problems and/or benefits in his life. As a child and young adult, his size hindered his relationships. But, as a war correspondent, the people saw Pyle as more of a hometown boy rather than a studious journalist. This added to his success as a war correspondent.
After transitioning into Pyle's career as a war correspondent, the story line became more tedious. Pyle was in and out of combat and the surface facts of his life were boring. Tobin, understanding the paleness of biographical data, used Pyle's messages home to spice up the story. Like most people, Pyle's life was not what it seemed to be. Besides leading a "glorified" life as a war correspondent, he had major problems at home. Tobin showed the audience this by weaving together Pyle's biographical information with the messages he sent home. This gave the reader a sense of what Pyle was actually feeling. Using these messages instead of his columns allowed reader's to see the "real" Pyle.
Tobin uncovered personal feelings about his professional and personal life, which gave the reader a feeling of empathy toward Pyle. Showing that he did not feel like an outstanding reporter, let readers see Pyle was human. Tobin successfully showed the man behind the pen by opening up Pyle's mind to the audience. He did this by using Pyle's own letters and messages home that contained intimate details of his life. Without the added touch of Pyle's actual writing, the story would have failed to be as successful.

Ernie Pyle Lives Again In This Wonderful Biography
About the only complaint I can offer about this outstanding biography is that the title is slightly misleading. Ernie Pyle's years as a war correspondent are the subject of about three-quarters of the narrative, which is appropriate. It was the period in which he did his greatest work and achieved international fame. But this is more than just the story of those pivotal years; the first 25 percent of the text is an excellent overview of Pyle's childhood on an Indiana farm and his pre-war adventures in journalism, including a six-year stint in the thirties and forties as a kind of Charles Kuralt in print. Pyle and his wife roamed across the nation in their car, and he wrote about the people he encountered along the way--ordinary people, the sort who don't usually find themselves the subject of newspaper articles.

When the war came, Pyle knew he had to answer the call to go overseas. But thankfully, he realized that he didn't need to provide the same sort of coverage every other journalist was doing. He would let them handle the stories of the grand strategy, interviewing the generals and prime ministers. He would tell the story of his average Joe, now transformed into G.I. Joe.

James Tobin has a wonderful gift for storytelling and description. He introduces us to Pyle and the key players in his life so vividly we feel that we know them as flesh-and-blood individuals. He quotes from Pyle's works liberally enough that we get a true sense of the man's unique gifts, but not so much that the flow of the story bogs down.

This is an almost perfect biography of one of the true greats of 20th century journalism.--William C. Hall

The Consummate War Correspondent
The author, James Tobin, recounts Ernie Pyle's life from his childhood in Indiana to his 1945 death in the Pacific Theatre. The text notes "Sadness verging on bitterness always colored Ernie Pyle's memories of his early years," and relates that his adult personal life also was basically unhappy. In 1928 while working for the Washington Daily News, Pyle began writing an aviation column that ultimately was carried by all Scripps-Howard newspapers. Foreshadowing his WWII reporting style, Pyle' favorite subjects were the anonymous airmail pilots telling "tales of the pilot's feats of bravery and improvisation."

From 1935 to 1942 he roamed the western hemisphere where he wrote a column on his wanderings for the News and developed into a consummate craftsman of short prose and as Tobin noted "...in the process created "Ernie Pyle." Reflecting what would be his wartime style the author notes, "...he studied unknown people doing extraordinary things." The text relates Pyle's activities as a war correspondence in Tunsia where he shared the dangers and discomforts of the infantrymen at the front, and developed a bond with the American infantryman where his "writing transcended propaganda; it was richer, more heartfelt." At home Pyle's editors were delighted with the rapid growth of his popular column. After Tunisia, he followed the troops in the invasion of Sicily and later into Italy.

In Italy, he completed construction of his mythical hero, the long-suffering G.I. The text notes that the "inescapable force of Pyle's war writings is to establish an unwritten covenant between the soldier at the front and the civilian back home." Tobin also notes "Soldiers could see an image of themselves that they liked in his heroic depiction of the war...The G.I. myth worked for them too." However, as Pyle was becoming the "Number-One Correspondent" he became troubled because he had been "credited with having written the truth...He had told as much of what he saw as people could read without vomiting. It was the part that would make them vomit that bothered him..."

Pyle covered the Normandy landing in June 1944. In contrast to today's instant TV battlefront coverage, Pyle admitted to readers "Indeed it will be some time before we have a really clear picture of what has happened or what is happening at the moment." Pyle followed the infantry into France. The book notes, "The hedgerow country of Normandy was a killing field such as Ernie had never seen, and as the weeks passed, the constant presence of 'too much death' whittled down his will to persist." Once again the G.I.'s affection for him had risen after they saw Pyle force himself to share their dangers, which sometime made him, scream in his sleep. Those with today's anti-French attitude would agree with Pyle when he wrote that in Paris he felt as "though I were living in a whorehouse-not physically but spiritually."

Ernie Pyle returned to the United States in mid-September 1944. After a much needed rest, in January 1945 Pyle left for the Pacific Theatre. Here Pyle was in a different environment. He couldn't relate to the hot food and warm beds aboard Navy ships, the comfortable living conditions of airmen stationed on Pacific islands and the generally pleasant environment on Pacific islands. He wrote, "It was such a contrast to what I'd known for so long in Europe that I felt almost ashamed.... They're...safe and living like kings and don't know it." Even when relaxing with an aunt's grandson, a B-29 pilot who tried to relate the real combat conditions in the Pacific, Ernie just didn't understand the Pacific Theatre.

With the Army's 77th Division, "He went ashore" on a small island north of Okinawa "on the 17th of April 1945, talked with infantrymen during the afternoon and spent the night near the beach in a Japanese ammunition-storage bunker." The next morning he hitched a ride when at ten o'clock the jeep he was riding in came under Japanese machine gun fire. After jumping into a ditch with the jeep's other riders, Pyle raised his head and was killed instantly. Far from home, Ernie Pyle died among his beloved infantrymen.

In closing James Tobin writes "Ernie and his G.I.'s made America look good. The Common Man Triumphant, the warrior-with-a-heart-of-gold-this was the self-image America carried into the post-war era."

While the technology of war reporting has changed greatly since WWII, the author is correct when he observes, "As a practitioner of the craft of journalism, Pyle was perhaps without peer. After him, no war correspondent could pretend to have gotten the real story without having moved extensively among the front-line soldiers who actually fought."

The book ends with a nice touch, an Appendix that contains a potpourri of Pyle's articles. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (67)

middle-aged conventional man finds Nuala valuable
You either love this book or find it a tedious whine. Why would a conventional, middle-aged English teacher like myself find it worthwhile, even riveting? It helps that I have visited Ireland several times in recent years, and have gradually seen beyond the Irish Tourist Board conception of the emerald isle. And I have enjoyed Dublin, despite its scruffy character. I also have spent most of my professional life working with single women, and though none of them have faced life situations as tough as Nuala's, I still found connections with her life and their's. I also teach English, and I love her affection for poetry and books. But most of all, I love her truth-seeking, and despite some of the personal complaints on this list of reviews, this is a crafted book that never left me confused. We all have parents, and conflict between us seems to be just a part of living we can't altogether avoid. I thank Nuala for bravely writing her memoir. I read it straight through in two chunks of time over two days.

A fascinating view of Irish women of a certain age
I was quite moved by this book, by O'Faolain's honesty about her sexual development, failed relationships, and her struggle with the life of her parents and their effect on her and her siblings. It helped me understand present-day Ireland better, and also some of the religious strife - for example, the fact that as a college student she was "shocked" to discover other religions beyond catholicism that had similar tenets. It's hard for us to imagine being so sheltered from the rest of the world.

I admired her courage in examining why she is alone and how she feels about it. The postscript was particularly interesting. When I finished this book I started reading it over.

sad and so very true
I have once again made the mistake of reading the other customer reviews before writing my own review. Generally when I happen onto a one or two star review that really comes down on a book that I like, I will go to the "See All Reviews" page and order the reviews from "Lowest First". I will then read through review after review by readers who simply wanted this to be another book rather than the one it is.

I suppose that my repeated exercise of this masochistic procedure is part of my own Catholic background, which was far less complete, administered twenty years after O'Faolain's and in the New World rather than isolated, entrenched Ireland. Perhaps it helps to be Catholic when it comes to understanding Nuala O'Faolain's nearly continual struggle to lead a full and worldly life and not feel badly about it.

A lot of readers still seem to expect a 'Whig history' from a memoir with triumph leading to triumph, interspersed with set-pieces of 'struggle' to make it interesting. Are You Somebody? is something much braver, truer and scarier: an honest recollection.

O'Faolain very clearly describes the historically maintained cultural institutions that caused her to have certain beliefs and take certain actions that led her repeatedly into disaster. Forty years before her, Virginia Woolf had described the need for women to make lives that were expressions of their own desires rather than fulfillments of the needs of men. O'Faolain is acutely conscious, looking back in middle age, that she had not internalized Woolf's wisdom and that her dysfunctional relationships with men were a direct result.

She is also at pains to describe the slow awakening of her consciousness of her Irishness and she is quite frank about how her failure to think of herself as Irish, even though the BBC thought of her as an Irish woman, caused to make mediocre documentaries about contemporary events in Ireland.

In chapter after chapter O'Faolain shows us how hidebound patriarchy made it difficult for a woman to enjoy or trust worldly success, how the medieval nature of Irish Catholicism made for complete confusion about sex and female independence, and how a deep-seated disinterest in Irish culture among the educated classes of Dublin made one's identity peculiarly rootless. As if that weren't enough, there is much more in this book.

If you find this book pretentious and depressing, then I suggest that you stop going to Starbucks and paying $3 for a cup of coffee. Life has not always been the way it is now. A lot of things were harder for women, particularly Irish women, not so long ago. If you don't want to hear it, then you're part of the problem.

Not a winner
I read this book as part of a book group. I found it boring and pretenious. The author would have done a much better job if she spent more time on a specific event, rather than racing through general situations. She skipped around a lot so it was very difficult to remember who was whom, or to even care.

Resonates with all women who came of age in that era
One of 9 children in your typically urban Dublin Catholic household, Nuala O'Faolain made it out. A physically absent father and emotionally absent and defeated mother didn't prevent O'Faolain from somehow finding her path through the medium of books. It was actually her near disastrous mistakes with 'boys' that, oddly, fostered her escape. To save Nuala's immortal soul, she was sent to a convent - and then with a scholarship, on to Oxford and a career.
Career. Not a word usually found in the same sentence with 'woman' in Ireland in the 50s and 60s. The fact that O'Faolin chooses not to bear children, finding solace in books, literature, and writing, does not always settle well with her compatriots - and indeed, she herself admits that it wasn't always the best situation as she struggled with alcoholism and depression.
Ultimately, however, Are You Somebody emerges as a sociological expose of Irish women and the choices they are too often forced to make.
Not just 'another Irish memoir.' It's more than the sum of its parts and well worth a careful read. ... Read more

Book Description

Millions of people dream of chucking the city routine and leading the simple country life. Jim Mullen was not one of those people. Even a short weekend in the Hamptons was enough to give him the shakes. He just didn't understand the whole culture of weekend houses. "Why don't they take the money they're going to spend on a second house and buy a better first one? One they don't have to get away from every weekend."

He loved his perk-filled life as a Manhattan columnist: the parties, the openings, the movie screenings, the free junk that public relations people sent him in the mail. He could walk to hundreds of different restaurants from his Greenwich Village home, waste entire afternoons at the Film Forum, people-watch from his window on Christopher Street. Then, calamity.

His wife quit smoking. To keep her mind off cigarettes, she bought a weekend house in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Three hours in the opposite direction from the glitzy Hamptons, the tiny town of Walleye is a parallel universe where things are the exact opposite of New York City. Shopkeepers take checks without ID, strangers wave at you when you drive by, the bank teller knows your name, reservations at restaurants are unnecessary, and parking is free.

There is no weekend crush in Walleye. There is no frenzy for lemongrass or tomatillos at the farmer's market; there are no homes by Frank Gehry or Robert Venturi; no one owns a Land Rover or a BMW. There is no Williams-Sonoma, no Ben & Jerry's, no theme restaurant owned by a celebrity, no microbrewery, no Sharper Image. There isn't a tuna carpaccio with tapénade on a bed of hand-torn frisée within three hours of the place. His mostly dairy-farming neighbors never read The New York Times, don't know who Ralph Lauren is, have never heard of Moomba, and have difficulty pronouncing Joe Pesci, yet they manage to live full, productive, and happy lives. How is this possible? It starts to shake Mullen's faith in Manhattanism.

Though the one local radio station goes off at sunset and oregano is on the "exotic food" shelf at the supermarket, Mullen warms to the place. Slowly but surely, the man who once boasted "Life is just a cab away" no longer feels at home on the sidewalks of New York.

It Takes a Village Idiot is a deliciously entertaining, eye-opening look at how hard it is to live The Simple Life. A must read if you've ever used the words "flyover country" -- or even if you haven't. "Imagine A Year in Provence written by Dennis Miller," said one New York writer, "and you'll have some idea of the fun of It Takes a Village Idiot." ... Read more

Reviews (13)

A great satire of "both" New Yorks
As most people living in New York State will tell you, there are actually "two" New Yorks--the one everyone knows about (the city and its surrounding metro area) and that vast chunk of land east of the Hudson River known as Upstate New York. I grew up in the latter, and found Jim Mullen's memoir an extremely enjoyable satire of life in both rural Upstate New York and urban Manhattan. He pokes fun at both rural dwellers and closed-minded Manhattanites who are so sheltered they've never even been to Brooklyn. NYC and Upstate have always had a strange, if somewhat strained, relationship, and Mullen illustrates this perfectly through his humorous tale of the difficult transition between city life and country life.

And besides the humor, I was touched by the book's ode to simple country life. Underneath all the sarcasm lays a touching tribute to rural life, and a great appreciation for the farmers who work the land. I've always taken that sort of thing for granted, and now I have a renewed appreciation for my homeland. The book is both an entertaining and rewarding read.

Very enjoyable!
I picked this book up after having read a few stinkers, and I felt so grateful because it's truly enjoyable. Jim Mullen is very funny, his observations and comments are so comical, and he often had me laughing out loud. He also handles some more serious, or sad, issues with a touching sensitivity that doesn't stray from the wry humor, but makes his heartfelt point (without beating us over the head, thank you). Despite the premise, this story is an original. Love his wife. Love his neighbors. Hope he is working on a follow-up as we speak.

A must read - especially for Upstate New Yorkers.
Jim Mullen has written a truly wonderful book. Being a native of the Catskill Mountain area in which he writes, I felt he not only showed the humor of his experiences but did so in a way as not to downgrade those of us who have lived here our whole lives.

I love that he not only uses humor but also shows an appreciation for the beauty and quaintness of the area. I especially liked that it is written so anyone...no matter where they live can visualize the settings.

Thank you Mr. Mullen for an enjoyable read about the area in which I live.

Funny
This book just oozes sarcasm. No, wait, it GUSHES...Mullen is the writer of the "Hot Sheet" in Entertainment Weekly magazine. As you can imagine, this isn't exactly serious literature, but if you need a break from everything, this book is perfect. It's only about 200 easy-to-read pages, and there's a belly laugh awaiting you at about every third page (and several chuckles in between). Mullen, a die-hard Manhattanite, goes through a sea change in his life when his wife buys a farm in the Catskills "because she quit smoking and needed something to do with her hands."

Charming, insightful. Makes me wish I could afford....
...a country place so I can experience all this. A great book all-around. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Seeing the world one class at a time
Alice Steinach loves traveling, loves writing, and loves learning. So she wrote her own job description and spent a year taking different classes around the world from French cuisine to Scottish sheepdog handling. The result is "Educating Alice", a trip around our planet without jetlag. There are eight chapters, one for each class.

Cookin' at the Ritz: Every woman has dreamed of taking a course in cooking at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Alice Steinbach actually had the courage to do it. It's absolutely fascinating to be able to see inside the Ritz's kitchens without having to worry that Chef will raise his eyebrows if your mushrooms aren't sliced perfectly.

Dancing in Kyoto: The only way to find out why girls really become geishas is to take a dance lesson from one as Steinbach did. Apparently, the geishas aren't too happy about Arthur Golden's ""Memoirs of a Geisha." Here are the real facts of a geisha's life.

The Mystery of the Old Florentine Church: Steinbach took as her special project investigating the terrible floods in 1966 that turned the narrow streets of Florence into raging rivers. Steinbach found the human story behind the statistics.

Sense and Sensible Shoes: If you're a Jane Austin fan, this chapter is for you. Steinbach visited Chawton House, near Winchester, England - the manor once owned by Jane's brother - along with an all-star guest list of Austin experts.

Havana Dreams: There's so much politics talked about Cuba that it was a relief to see the island as ordinary Cubans experience it. I have a new respect for these endlessly cheerful people thanks to Educating Alice.

The Secret Gardens: This chapter is for gardeners. Steinbach went on a tour of famous gardens in Provence, France. To the French, gardening is an art form and Provence offers the perfect climate for enthusiastic gardeners.

The Unreliable Narrator: This chapter was a new take on a class for writers. Steinbach signed up for a course in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This is another class where you need to be a good sport. Steinbach is one.

Lassie Come Home: If you've ever struggled to teach your dog to sit on command, Steinbach has a challenge for you: Take a course learning to control the Border collies that Scottish shepherds use to herd sheep. They are the most amazing dogs.

Educating Alice
This book was an interesting travelogue of sorts, but does not compare to the beautiful writing of Alice's previous book, Without Reservations. Without Reservations was a journey not only to wonderful destinations which she experienced in depth, but it was also her personal journey of being a 50-something, divorced woman who was also learning how to slow time and experience everything around her. Educating Alice felt like several disconnected chapters that while interesting, were not really related to one another well enough to make me care about moving on to the next chapter. That disjointed feeling left me believing that Alice has maybe fallen back into a hectic schedule of running from place to place and thing to thing in her life. While Without Reservations was beautiful prose to be savoured, parts of Educating Alice read more like a travel column.

The three star rating says it all---it was OK, but not as great as its predecessor.

The Case of the Curious Woman
After having read and enjoyed Steinbach's previous book, Without Reservations, I was eager to see what she has been up to in the past few years and if she and Naohiro are still an item. In Without Reservations, Steinbach tells the story of how she took almost a year off from her job, bought an apartment in Paris and fell in love. It is a story of risk and reward. It really happened, but Steinbach tells it like a story.

In Educating Alice, Steinbach has quit her newspaper job for good. The royalties from Without Reservations must be rolling in, because now she can afford to take classes at the Ritz cooking school in Paris, geisha school in Kyoto, and a tour of lovely gardens in Avignon. Not much risk here. There is no apparent relationship among the classes, other than that Steinbach is interested in the subjects.

The only thread that runs through the entire book besides Steinbach herself, is Naohiro, her lover from Without Reservations. But the relationship is established and both Alice and Naohiro seem content to leave it as it is. So there is no conflict or drama. If I hadn't known Naohiro from the previous book, I'm not sure I would have been interested in their romance, which is conducted in Educating Alice mostly through letters.

I did enjoy reading about Steinbach's adventures at the Ritz, the first and best chapter of Educating Alice. Her view of the Upstairs, Downstairs nature of the grand hotel and her descriptions of her classmates and the chef are entertaining. Her discovery of the Oltrarno section of Florence is pleasant, and the adventures she has in Havana are the liveliest of the bunch.

Steinbach says of the Prague creative writing workshop she attends in one chapter, that "I thought the use of fiction techniques might improve my work as a nonfiction writer." While the individual chapters of Educating Alice are told as short stories, it would have been rewarding if the chapters had been parts of a larger story, as well. She didn't need the writing workshop at all. She showed in Without Reservations that she has already mastered that technique.

Everything but the why
If you have ever traveled in Europe or wanted to this is a great book.

If you ever wanted to really 'see and connect' with a new city and its people this is a great book.

If you have ever wanted to take a class just because it is interesting...this is a great book.

There were so many great nuggets of wisdom and information in this book that I actually took some notes on the agencies she uses to schedule her 'lessons'. I would love to travel like she has and take many of the classes she has. She is able to embrace the new experiences and feel safe while she explores the cities she visits. She clearly loves her 'self' and has great conversations with the little girl in her that travels with her. While I found some of her lessons not interesting to me, such as the dog training, I was very envious of many of her destinations and experiences.

I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 because I wanted one more thing from her...WHY? Why did she choose the lessons and places she did? I felt like the chapters were almost like short stories that were not connected to each other and by the end of the book I was a little bored. It would have helped me connect with her if I knew more of why she wanted to go to Prague for instance. She could have taken a writing course anywhere. What was it about Prague that drew her? Was it the teacher of the class? Had she heard something about the city? A gut feeling? Why?

A Delightful Exploration
To get the most out of travel, one should have a purpose, such as viewing a particular type of art, collecting foreign miniatures, etc. Alice Steinbach selected "studies"--and what a variety of subjects she chose to learn! Each chapter takes the reader with her into an area of a different country, and leaves one wanting to sharethat very place. From Paris, where she starts from her "fumbling" and somewhat embarrassing days as she began taking cooking lessons at the Ritz, to the last chapter when she tried to learn to train Border Collies to herd sheep in Scotland, the reader goes with Alice, In Japan she stumbles into stylized dancing class and learning Geisha lifstyle. In Cuba, we make new friends of friendly Cubans and discover a great Jazz band. We almost get lost in hidden gardens in France, and wish we were there. We study Jane Austen in England and get an intimate feel of the English countryside, and we help her unravel historic mysteries of an old church in Florence, one that she enters by mistake because she is lost. In Prague we share her own writing for a class, and watch the development of a WWII story as it unfolds with her own adventures. We're indignant at her classmates and their editorial criticisms--but love her outside adventures in Prague. This book is a must for anyone planning to go anywhere--Makes one want to BECOME an Alice! ... Read more

Book Description

"Warm and self-deprecating, surprisingly witty, honest to a fault about his political views...Mr. Buchanan has a secret weapon: Charm." --The New York Times ... Read more

Reviews (21)

Great Book about American history from 1940-1990
For many years the liberal left has tried to demonize people who disagree with them. Many people never bother to read the writings of conservatives such as Buchanan. However, upon reading Buchanan you will find that he is very well informed, extraordinarily intelligent and a great writer. His newspaper column can be found by going to the website drudgereport.com.
The book is written about growing up in Wash DC and going to a Catholic grade school and high school (famous school called Gonzaga) (Bennett also went there) and then on to Georgetown and Columbia. Buchanan was valedictorian in his high school class. The book is extremely well informed about USA history. Buchanan worked for the Nixon administration. If you care about the future of America, the quality of schools etc. Then you will love this book. It is a bit long, but worth the effort. The book also dicusses historical events such as WW2, Korean War, and Vietnam war.

Great book by a great American polemicist
Warm, witty and inspired, this is commentator/sometime political candidate Pat Buchanan's best book. While his politics are great, what sticks in my mind is his description of the human dimension of growing up conservative, Catholic, and pugnacious in 50s America. Buchanan is a master of the brief and compelling character sketch whether of beloved family members or controversial political figures like Richard Nixon.

If only this man had been president
Pat Buchanan has been labeled everything from dangerous to nazi. This book proves that he is just the opposite: a strongly principled man who wants what's best for his country.

Buchanan explains his conservative beliefs within the framework of growing up the son of a devout Catholic scrapper and the student of tough Jesuit priests. Although he spent much of his childhood raising hell, his upbringing was about morals and care of the soul. In Buchanan's time, care of the soul meant defending American freedom from the encroachment of Leninist communism. He didn't hate the Russians, but the system of government that was devouring half the world's freedom.

To the left-leaning critic who is undoubtedly screaming, "what about America devouring the other half": you're preaching to the choir. Buchanan has consistently asserted that we shouldn't be meddling in other countries' affairs. He recalls traveling to Japan and concluding that we were wrong to indiscriminately A-bomb the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He goes on to say that our president prodded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor so that he'd have an excuse to enter the war. That's hardly the voice of an imperialistic interventionist.

Nor is Buchanan a cut-throat capitalist. At the end of the book, he talks about an America of morals being infinitely more desireable than an America of laurel-resting decadence. He observes that democracy is by itself an empty vessel that can be filled with evil intentions just as easily as it can with good intentions. The moral fiber of our people, says Buchanan, is what ultimately defines us. Compare our grandparents' generation to ours; Buchanan's point is painfully obvious. To recapture our country, Buchanan insists we recapture education, freedom of religion (rather than tacitly mandated secularism or cowtowing agnosticism), and the Supreme Court. No arguments from me.

Some people have speculated that Buchanan is a closet white supremacist, an accusation which this book shoots down. Having grown up with two black maids, having recoiled at the treatment of a southern black man who couldn't enter a whites-only restaurant to mail a letter, and having a brother who speaks of dog-tagging an equal number of dead white and black Americans in Vietman, Buchanan clearly has no time for racial discrimination. He writes about welfare depriving black Americans of their dignity, and even suggests that an ammendment prohibiting racial discrimination be added to the US Constitution.

Other than the pleasure of glimpsing into the life of a man I greatly respect, I took from this book many lessons about where our new and supposedly more advanced society fails. By deemphasizing personal responsibility and blaming our problems on society, we're creating a generation of excuse-makers and softies. By acquiescing to anybody's ideas and summarily treating all ideas as equal, we replace values with anything-goes. When people don't have something to believe in, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything. There are many more nuggets in this book.

Insightful Autobiography
Buchanan is straightforward in telling why he thinks what he thinks in this intimate portrayal of his developmental years. In the 1950s Washington, D. C. was not the metropolis it is today. Buchanan grew up in the nation's capital during a time of innocence and traditional family values. He describes the cultural influences he had in that era and how strong Christian values established his worldview. The impact individuals had on him, such as his dad, are discussed as he talks about the influence being more by example than rhetoric. He mentions sensing change in the air in the nation's collective viewpoint while in graduate school at Columbia University. Buchanan is a gifted writer. Books like this affirm the essence of what has become cliche, i.e., that truth is often more interesting than fiction.
Buchanan connects his personality with something larger than self, however as he links his life with the nation. He discusses where the country has been and the direction in which it is headed. He contrasts that with the social consensus found during the days of his boyhood. One senses that he feels that as others have passed the torch from one generation to the next, he feels responsible for making sure generations following him inherit a nation for which to be thankful.

Dangerous book
I was thoroughly impressed with Mr. Buchanan's witty prose and charming dilect. He is obviously skilled in "spinning a good yarn" for his audience. The dangerous thing about this book is that it provides a platform for all who subscribe to the idea that patriotism and nationalism are one and the same. For instance, I love my country but I think nationalism leads to racism and oppression of other cultures. America is great because of the people that live here and the freedoms we enjoy. It is not great because we have imperialistic attituedes around the globe and enjoy our capitalistic greed. Those are not requirements of our country only offshoots of our ego's. Democracy is what we are founded on, not capitalism (in my opinion). Freedom must be enjoyed by all, not just the rich elite. Someday their will be an uprising of the lower class and people like Buchanan will be the instigators. People that have everything, yet demonize those who are trying to get their voice heard by any means necessary are only showing their ignorance. How did the anglo-whites get the power in this country, by taking it rudely and loudly. That is what minorities in this country need to do - speak loudly and make the country hear their voices. Just like whites have done for centuries. ... Read more

Book Description

Paris

Dear Alice,

Each morning I am awakened by the sound of a tinkling bell. A cheerful sound, it reminds me of the bells that shopkeepers attach to their doors at Christmastime. In this case, the bell marks the opening of the hotel door. From my room, which is just off the winding staircase, I can hear it clearly. It reminds me of the bell that calls to worship the novice embarking on a new life. In a way I too am a novice, leaving, temporarily, one life for another.

Love,
Alice


In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, in Without Reservations we take time off with Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach as she explores the world and rediscovers what it means to be a woman on her own.

"In many ways, I was an independent woman," writes Alice Steinbach, a single working mother, in this captivating book. "For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow, and had relationships that allowed for a lot of freedom on both sides." Slowly, however, she saw that she had become quite dependent in another way:"I had fallen into the habit . . . of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me." Who am I, she wanted to know, away from the things that define me--my family, children, job, friends? Steinbach searches for the answer to this provocative question in some of the most exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate in a Japanese man; Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village; Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. Beautifully illustrated with postcards Steinbach wrote home to herself to preserve her spontaneous impressions, this revealing and witty book will transport readers instantly into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery. ... Read more

Reviews (60)

good not great
I think my main problem with Without Reservations was that I was expecting something else. I looked forward to the author's detailed travelogues of Venice, Paris, and Oxford, to see these places through her alleged journalistic penchant for detail. When she describes that she has no experience in traveling abroad, I expected a tale about her foibles and discoveries about the different cultures where she planned to reside. What I found was that Steinbach DOES have reservations -- about her self-esteem, about her place in the world, of her sense of self, of how others define her and how she defines herself. I think the disappointment came from my hoping for a travelogue where the focus is on art, culture and external experiences. Still -- as the book progresses she relaxes more and more into her own skin and she learns how to let go, stop deliberating over every move and just go with whatever life has in store for her. Her physical travels begin to parallel her journey of self-awareness and confidence. The more far-out she perceives an event to be, the more she loosens up to have fun and find out about herself and who she is, from a love affair with a Japanese gentleman to developing unexpected and immediate friendships to dancing all night with her Oxford classmates. Maybe my incessant reading of travel books and cookie-cutter expectations put a damper on my total enjoyment of Steinbach's book. I found it interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a straight-forward detailed travel memoir.

A Delightful Read
Having heard about Steinbach's book on public radio, and being a divorced mother of a grown son, with my own love of travel, and some experience traveling on my own, I was anxious to find out how the author's experiences compared to my own. I got so much more than I had expected, and was sorry to have the book end. "Without Reservations" is non-fiction but reads like a novel in many ways. She is a fine story teller, and her descriptions of all that she observed in her travels, (from the distinctive and unpredictable rooms she rented in small European hotels, to the views of an amazing Italian countryside, as well as the wide array of interesting, yet unexpected short-term relationships she developed along the way) were vivid and very entertaining. I would have liked a little follow-up regarding her life since her travels which took place back in 1993, but this is a minor complaint. I highly recommend this book!

Inspirational Woman of Independence and Adventure
I purchased "Without Reservations" after returning home from a quick trip to Europe. You see I had left my heart there and I needed a quick fix while pining away at home waiting for yet another friend to venture out and dare get a passport.

Alice Steinbach writes with a capturing style about her adventures abroad (England, Paris, Italy etc..) all alone. For once a woman who believes in experience over fear! She is a mother, divorced, successful and still desiring a fulfilling life. I admire her spirit and enthusiasm for life. While capturing her inner fears she relies on her wit and knowledge to overcome what would leave most of us sitting at home cowering in a corner.

Ms. Steinbach meets interesting people along the way, a fashionable older woman in Paris, a Japanese man who shares her love of Monet, a young student eager to grow and many others. She inspires one to want to reach out and learn something from the others around us, not for gossip, but for true wealth of character. I believe after reading this book I will no longer seek the security of familar travel partners but instead search for a lesser known commodity, me, a suitcase, a destination and a dream! Sounds exciting to me!

Carpe Diem
Who doesn't dream of quitting her job and traveling the world? Alice Steinbach wangles a leave of absence from her job and goes to Europe -- the dream with training wheels. Even though she has the security of knowing her home and job are waiting for her and she goes to countries that are comfortably strange, it is still a big leap for her. She makes the most of it and tells a great story.

Steinbach seems to make friends everywhere she goes. She travels with the attitude of a college student backpacking through Europe, hooking up with temporary friends at each stop. She treats her affair with Naohiro like a summer romance, intense, but sure to be temporary. Sometimes you forget that she is a middle-aged woman with two grown sons and a responsible career back home.

And that is the point. She wants to see who she is when the responsibilities of adulthood are stripped away. Is the young woman who wasn't afraid to take chances still there somewhere? Who is Alice Steinbach when she is not defined as "mother" and "reporter"? In nine months of travels through Paris, Britain, and Italy, she gradually sheds her inhibitions and fears, and gets reacquainted with living for the day.

Without Reservations is an upbeat, sometimes bittersweet, narrative of what feels like a prelude to a bigger leap. I am looking forward to her next book, Educating Alice.

Beautifully layered tale of travel and life
I just finished this book and will miss spending time following Ms. Steinbach around on her travels,reading her musings on her life and the world around her. It is a book that will resonate with women who have empty nest. I completely identified with her; having 2 sons myself, 2 cats and terminal wanderlust. She writes so eloquently of how she feels when her children are grown and independant. It's her personal journey to find out how she fits into this new life-without-children. She christens it by taking time off to travel for 9 months alone to discover, who she is, was and who she will become. Even though most people will not be able to do as she did, it does not affect the enjoyment of the book. It is written in a very warm style and you will end the book wishing that in your travels, you will bump into her. ... Read more

Book Description

On the first anniversary of her death, a deliciously far-ranging conversation about the movies and more with the most influential film critic of our time-Pauline Kael. Who else but Pauline Kael would have said: "It's not fun writing about bad movies. I used to think it was bad for my skin." On September 3, 2001, the movies and those who love them lost one of their greatest friends-a friend who never tired of championing the best that the movies could offer and didn't shrink from taking to task any film, director, or actor she thought deserved a taste of her famously acerbic wit. Kael's insight, spirit, and straight-shooting won her singular respect in both movie and literary circles, as well as a passionate following for her New Yorker columns and her inimitably titled books such as I Lost It at the Movies and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Shortly before her death, Kael sat down with Francis Davis for a series of conversations about her life and work-and, of course, the movies. Among many, many things she talks here of her early days as a critic, her career at the New Yorker, the directors she knew (for better or worse), her disappointment with recent cinema, and her renewed interest in television. It's funny, it's controversial, it's right-on-the-mark-and time and again you realize that no could would have dared to say that, in just that way, except Pauline Kael. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Kael was great, but biased against European film
A few short comments about Pauline Kael's movie criticism.

Like most people who are serious about film, I, too, believe Pauline Kael was a brilliant and irrreplaceable critic -- but this does not mean that she didn't have her flaws.Kael was a superb critic in any number of ways.She was outstanding in her ability to write about screen acting, today one of the most neglected areas of film criticism. (Stanley Kauffmann writes better about acting than anybody else around; but then, he is the best serious film critic writing today.)Kael was superb at detecting new and important talent, at understanding the ways in which movies reflect and interact with cultural currents, at conveying her ardor and passion for directors and actors, at the potentiality of film for exploring human sexuality.She was also simply a hell of a good writer, and the depth of her knowledge of film, books, theatre, dance, etc., all played importantly in making her a great critic.

But Kael was not perfect.Some of her reviews simply run on long after she has made her point; and although I love the hyperbole of her writing, sometimes it seems hyperbole for hyperbole's sake.

Also, and I think this was her chief flaw as a critic, she displayed a bias against certain non-English-language directors and their work.In this regard, the brilliant Penelope Gilliatt was Kael's superior. Gilliatt was a brilliant film critic (part of the great team of Ken Tynan and Gilliatt at the Observer [London] before she moved to The New Yorker), a dazzlingly talented writer of screenplays, short stories, novels, television and radio plays, and profiles; she was also an opera librettist and writer of nonfiction (her books on movie comedy and on Tati and Renoir are invaluable), theatre criticism, book reviews, and essays. (Her IQ was higher than Einstein's!)

Gilliatt had a far deeper understanding of that elusive element in the arts -- style.Her criticism is vastly better than Kael's on films from Europe (she was notoriously better at writing about films from Eastern Europe), Asia (Ozu, for a supreme example), about science fiction (Gilliatt was the "only" major critic to stand up for 2001), about directiors experimenting with stylistic devices (Fassbinder, for another supreme example), and simply had a wider view regarding the possibilities of film as an art form.Gilliatt also was better at writing about the films of Godard (though, Kael, too championed his work of the 60s, Gilliatt's criticism today stands higher), Bresson, Bergman, Fellini, and many, many more foreign-language directors.

Of course, no critic is perfect.Even Agee had a severe flaw --he couldn't write worth a damn about acting, and often contradicted himself.So, Kael, in perspective, was a great, if deeply imperfect critic -- and god knows I miss her writing terribly.Denby and Lane, compared with Gilliatt and Kael, are but pale comparisons to The New Yorker's once great women thinkers -- Gilliatt (whose talents were panoramic) and Kael, who could make your pulse race with excitement.

Kael never lost her edge
Afterglow gives Pauline Kael fans a chance to hear her opinions on the big films that were released after she stopped reviewing them.You miss her great long prose in an interview like this, but you still get the insight in little capsules.

Most surprisingly is her love of the television show, Sex and the City.She makes a good point about how TV shows filmed in New York like Law and Order and Sex and the City have better actors and guest stars because they can easily get them from New York theatre.

There's a funny moment in the story where the author tries to convince Kael to watch the independent movie CROUPIER.He can't admit that he has already seen it, because Kael wouldn't hear of him watching it twice, she herself being famous for watching a movie just once.Kael does later admit that she has seen just a few movies twice but it's rare.

Like always, Kael's movie taste surprises you.She's always been good at pointing out the flaws of movies that you like, and sometimes forgiving of movies that you didn't get.Here she sums her thoughts up with a sentence or two.The book acts as a nice epilogue to an enjoyable career.

A Short, Fascinating Glimpse at the Queen of Film Critics
In September, 2001, film critic Pauline Kael passed away.She had written and spoken with sometimes brutal honesty on actors, directors, and all types of movies.Kael didn't really care who she offended or upset.It's not like she tried to offend or upset, she just called them as she saw them.She unflinchingly says of Stanley Kubrick's `Eyes Wide Shut,' "It was ludicrous from the word go."She calls Spielberg "uninteresting" and melodramatic.

But she also handed out glorious praise when it was due, especially when other critics were ignoring good films and performances.She states that "Paul Mazursky hasn't been given his due," and that actresses such as Debra Winger have been wrongfully overlooked.Kael mentions several wonderful films that have all but fallen into obscurity, all because most critics are afraid to take a stand and swim upstream against the tide of their colleagues.

If the book concerned film criticism only, it would be worth purchasing.But interviewer Francis Davis also asks Kael to address writing, her days at The New Yorker, television, and the reason why so many awful films are made these days.`Afterglow' is a fascinating look into the thoughts of Pauline Kael, but it's far, far too short at 126 pages.

An absorbingly written memory of wit, wisdom, and wonder
Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael by Francis Davis (Contributing Editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine) is an absorbingly written memory of the wit, wisdom, and wonder of a truly great actress, and the memorable chat she had with author Francis Davis shortly before her unfortunate death. Written in question-and-answer format, Afterglow preserves this remarkable woman's keen insights on movies, television, literature and much, much more in her own words.

She was one of the finest American writers...
This little book is well worth the read. Pauline Kael is not someone you feel lightly about - you either love her or hate her (there's a website called die-critics-die that gets my blood boiling...). I adore Kael; she is quite simply my favourite writer, and the wonder of her interviews (there's another book containing a whole pile) is that she wrote how she spoke, so a conversation with her is like discovering a new review. Sure enough you get to find out which recent movies she likes ("Three Kings"), but the book is intellectual and moving as well. Few writers ever fused analytic thought with passion the way Kael managed - reading her made you more fully human, made you expand.

This book, slight as it is, gives fresh insight into her writing methods, her tastes, and her wit. It's not as flowing as it might be; Davis's questions seem sometimes to be deliberately elaborate for the unknowing reader (like the explanation about Richard Stark). This is a problem because the fun of Kael is a sharp and fast mind, so a conversation should be a break-neck brain tease among other things. Still, Davis's introduction is wonderful, and he's a fine writer (one I'll look up now I know about him). If you're a Kael fan, read this soon. If you don't know who she is, she's the most important commentator on the popular arts there's been. And she's great, great fun. ... Read more