^ rootpath(https://www.markbernstein.org/) Oh, this was fun! Mary Norris was the longtime comma queen of The New Yorker, the person responsible for ensuring that you and I agree and that people from Manchester can be Mancusians if they (and the writer) like. The English language is full of odd nooks and crannies, and Norris explores them with wit and humor. After the Second World War, American foundations worked with the CIA to rebuild the intellectual world of Western Europe. Code explores the intersections between big ideas and big money; structuralism, in particular, received crucial boosts from American grants, and returned the favor by favoring a technocratic, rather than strictly social, solution to France’s postwar crisis. Geoghegan tends to posit that all robber barons were alike and that the foundations that lived after them are mere extensions of their interests, and so we learn little about the foundations and even less about the CIA programs they supported. The impact in France was crucial, and this volume documents that impact with precision and finesse.
A fine debut novel by the author of True Biz. Ana Jurić of Zagreb was ten when she discovered she was Croatian, or rather that the cigarettes her uncle sent he down the street to buy for him are Croatian cigarettes, and that this provokes ridicule from the Serbian shopkeeper. That was the beginning of Ana’s war. Ten years later, she sneaks away from her Columbia University roommates to testify about her years as a child soldier. Sara Novic does a terrific job of showing the line between these two girls.
]]>Anne Louise Avery wrote:
Quinquagesima Sunday, 1934. It was a gentle, warm afternoon of pale blue skies with wool-torn clouds & a lovely breeze from the West. In the drawing room, Pine Marten was sketching a vase of catkins, Babcia and Wolf were writing letters, and Old Fox was reading his book. It was a proof copy by a friend of his from London, a Bradford man whom they all liked very much. It was a story of a journey through modern England, from Southampton to Newcastle, a book of great humanity and compassion.
Old Fox is not wrong. That book was this book. English Journey describes J. B. Priestly’s trek from Southampton to Durham and back to London in 1932. He has no time for Merry Olde England, but he has a knack for striking up conversation with interesting people, and finds that he has sympathy for nearly all of them. He likes castles and cathedrals as well as the next fellow, but heartily dislikes dirty, disused industrial sites.
And the right course of conduct, I reflected, was not, unless you happen to be a professional custodian, to go and brood and dream over these almost heart-breaking pieces of natural or architectural loveliness, doing it all at the expense of a lot of poor devils toiling in the muck, but to have an occasional peep at them, thus to steel your determination that sooner or later the rest of English life, even where the muck is now, shall have as good a quality as those things.]]>
The 21-year-old British narrator falls in love with a wealthy American entrepreneur. Shortly after their wedding, Marcus tells her that he’s dying. “And that’s not all....” A superb launch point for a very fine, realistic thriller. (Reviews: NY Times ❧ Washington Post)
]]>A fine summary of the first year of the war in Ukraine, written by a Ukrainian reporter. History’s second draft. This war is the most consequential event of our time.
]]>A superb introduction to the history of the notebook, from its medieval origins in Italy to its widespread modern use for art, literature, and learning, this volume invites comparison to Thomas Mallon’s wonderful study of diaries, A Book Of One’s Own. Allen is particularly strong on the close connection between notebooks and accounting, and the importance of accounting to the development of Europe: paper and ink turned out to be a superb defense against financial fraud because paper, unlike parchment, absorbs ink. Allen misses the laboratory notebook, unfortunately, but Jillian Hess covers that ground superbly in How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information. Though his dismissal of electronic tools is, I think, unjust, Allen’s volume is delightfully casual but taut and almost always insightful.
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