In Dietrich & Riefenstahl, Karin Wieland compares the lives of two famous German movie personalities. On the surface, Marlin Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl seem very similar. Born a year apart, both harbored big dreams. Both defied their parents, studied dance and worked as actors. Both took lovers and refused to live their lives the way others demanded. But when Hitler ascended to power, the two women reacted very differently. Dietrich became an American citizen and entertained Allied troops during the war, and Riefenstahl supported Hitler, […]
The Dodds in Berlin
I am trying so hard to hit my cannonball before I leave town on Saturday, since I know I’ll finish several books on my trip but won’t have internet access to post my reviews. Unfortunately, Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts took me a full week to finish due to its dense subject material and rather dry writing. “Like most people, I acquired my initial sense of the era from books and photographs that left me with the impression that the world of then had no […]
Hearst, Pulitzer, and a headless corpse
For the first half of this brief narrative non-fiction book, the prose crackles and the action builds and the reader wonders how he or she has never heard about any of this before. Collins takes the reader from the discovery of a matching trunk and torso in separate parts of New York City on a sweltering summer day in 1897 through the haphazard police investigation and the competing detective work from New York’s bloodthirsty newspapers. Even readers familiar with the antics of newspaper magnates Josef […]
At least politicians take credit for their insults these days. The founding fathers used pseudonyms to attack each other in print.
I’ve been listening to WNYC’s On the Media podcast religiously since 2007. News, especially political news, stresses me out, but something about OtM makes it bearable. They take an overhead view of issues and talk about the ways different types of media succeed or fail in a snarky, intellectual way. The hosts, Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, are great. If I had to answer one of those questions about hosting dinner parties and inviting anyone dead or alive, Brooke would 100% be on my invite […]
Catching Literal Flak
The Wrong Stuff is the memoirs of Truman Smith, B-17 pilot and co-pilot during WWII. He very, very honestly recounts his various misadventures during the war in an odd, rambling, sort of conversational tone full of profanity, all-caps typing, and a good sense of humor about the whole experience. Read the rest at Pop Culture Penalty Box.
The book that would never end.
This book covers the adventures of the extended Fraser-McKenzie clan through the years 1772-1776, and oh God, you feel every one of them. I picked up this book in late August 2015. I just finished it last week. For those of you as bad at math as I am, that is NINE MONTHS. I coulda grown a whole baby in the time it took me to read this book. If I was a cat, maybe dozens of babies. A rabbit . . . at least a […]
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