Journalists Books - Page 24

A.L.T.: A Memoir

Andre Leon Talley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of the most striking figures in international style offers a unique and unforgettable memoir of the two women who shaped his dreams, tastes, and character.

“My grandmother and Mrs. Vreeland had similar ways of appreciating luxury,” writes André Leon Talley, “because they both believed in the importance of its most essential underpinning: polish.” In A.L.T., Vogue’s editor at large explains how a six-foot-seven African-American man from North Carolina became the influential fashion figure he is today, learning life’s most enduring lessons from two remarkable women: his maternal grandmother, Bennie Frances Davis, a woman who worked back-breakingly hard as a maid, yet taught him to embrace the world with a warm heart and an open mind; and Diana Vreeland, the inimitable editor in chief of Vogue and director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, who became his peerless professional mentor. In a rich, eloquent voice that resonates with both small-town wisdom and haut monde sophistication, Talley tells of the grandmother who encouraged his dreams and ambitions while instilling in him an abiding sense of dignity and style, and of the legendary fashion doyenne who took him under her wing as he rose to fame in the wild New York of the 1970s. Threaded throughout are stories of the man himself, who has survived thirty years in the “chiffon trenches” with eminent grace and style.

Clear, elegant, and often magical, A.L.T. shines like a rare jewel as it illuminates three extraordinary lives.

Riding in Cars With Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good

Beverly Donofrio

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 58 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

This is more of a critique than a review... 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Let me first say that I think the author has a compelling story and potential as a writer, but she does not do her own story justice. Since Ms Donofrio has an MFA in creative writing from a top school, I expected a more polished book, instead I found myself wishing that she had slowed down and written a few more drafts and added a round or two of copyediting before releasing this book.

Aside from the many technical missteps, what bothered me the most was the author's apparent lack of insight about her own actions and motivation, which is an important part of autobiography. She portrays herself as an anti-authoritarian pleasure-seeker with no deep or complex feelings for anyone, including herself. We never get to see her learn from her mistakes or grow emotionally.

Apparently trying to place some blame for her many troubles, the author takes a couple vague and random potshots at her family (especially her brother and father) but is unconvincing because her characterizations of her family are too shallow (father - cop; brother - cop; mother - housewife; sisters - who knows?) Taking some time to show more of the interaction between the family members would have helped to reveal the deep family dynamics and add weight to her story.

I was particularly bothered by her depiction of her relationship with her son, which in the first several years bordered on neglectful, and later seemed overly codependent. She says at one point that this is because she was so young when she gave birth (although 18 is not that young) and that they were "children" together. It doesn't seem as though she had any perspective on her role as a mother.

Instead, what I read was the chaotic story of an angry, rebellious teenager and promiscuous, irresponsible young mother who gets a chance to attend two prestigious universities, but continues to have self-destructive tendencies and no understanding of herself. At the end of this litany of troubles, she congratulates herself on the fact that she obtained two college degrees and managed to get her son off to college. End of story.

At least, that's all her book tells us. Did she ever find peace within herself? Does she understand who she is and why her life turned out the way it did? Does she have hopes and plans for the future? I would like to have known more and I'm sure there IS more to her story. The author was unafraid of revealing her youthful excesses and calamities; but it takes more than raw bravado to tell the more revealing story that unfolds in the heart. Who knows, maybe a few years down the road, Ms Donofrio, having honed her writing skills and learned to understand herself better, will come out with a sequel that will be more developed and insightful, and thus more satisfying to read.

Editorial Review:

Denied college, Bev Donofrio lost interest in everything but riding around town in cars, drinking and smoking, and rebelling against authority. She got married and divorced and finally ended up in an elite New England university, books in one arm, child in the other. A book about the compromise between being your own person and fitting into society. Author readings.

William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives

John B. Judis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Buckley at 80 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Great book; very objective, almost a love feast of fascinating Buckley quotes, but also very critical. I recommend Mr. Judis' biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. as a great way to understand the course of American conservatism in the last century, going strong into this one.

Exceptionally Good 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It's been ages since I read this book, but WFB's death yesterday has got me browsing through books by or about Buckley, and I was reminded how much I liked Judis's book. It's a pleasure (and seemingly so unusual nowadays) to get to read someone writing respectfully about someone with whom he strongly disagrees, whether it's the leftist Judis writing about Buckley, or Buckley himself writing moving obituaries of those on the left.

From the perspective of a WFB fan who finds hagiographies tiresome, this book was a real treat, and I recommend it highly.

might be worth your while 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I just really like Buckley and have ever since I saw him on one of those 60-minute type programs back in the early '90s. This book provides some interesting information about him from interviews with friends and family, etc. In general, it is quite poorly written and a little boring, relying entirely on the subject's inherently interesting life rather than on the author's skill. Buckley fans will enjoy. Biography fans will yawn.

Katie: The Real Story

Edward Klein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

New York Times Bestseller

A no-holds-barred account of the rise—and dramatic stumble—of a media icon.

In this probing portrait of a struggling news queen, bestselling author Edward Klein rips away the mask that has hidden the many faces of Katie Couric: the strong, independent woman and the needy wife and lover; the grieving widow famed for her kindness to others and the fiercely competitive diva; the consummate television interviewer and the stumbling network anchor.
Drawing from scores of interviews with people who have never spoken openly about Couric before, Katie: The Real Story absorbingly chronicles Katie’s rise to the top—from her early days at CNN to her nightly spot on CBS. You’ll read about:

Katie and her husband, Jay Monahan: “Jay had come to believe that the only thing that stood between Katie and divorce was her fear of negative publicity.”

Katie’s diva behavior at CBS: “A technical problem left Katie standing without a script. . . . As soon as the red light on the top of the camera went off, she screamed. One of the executives said, ‘Just a minute, Katie; the reason you make $15 million a year is to carry off these little glitches like a pro.’”

Katie and her parents: “She constantly sought [their] approval, but . . . [they] were better at telling her what she had done wrong than what she had done right.”

Katie and Matt Lauer: “Matt had privately told several executives at NBC that he would quit his job if they signed up Katie for another four years.”

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement—commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the “Evil Empire.”

In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children’s shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party’s English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy.

is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing’s underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elián González’s return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.

Confessions of a Recovering Slut: And Other Love Stories

Hollis Gillespie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The next "screamingly hilarious"(Miami Herald) installment in the wild ride that is the life of Hollis Gillespie.

Confessions of a Recovering Slut is the hilarious and often heartrending sequel to Bleachy–Haired Honky Bitch, which concludes with Hollis Gillespie, the daughter of a missile scientist and an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman, at last finding a home of her own. Unfortunately that home just happens to be in one of Atlanta's most dangerous crack neighborhoods–but the place is bound to improve, right?

Wrong. In Confessions, Gillespie is plagued by missing human torsos, murdered policeman, and a drug dealer who keeps setting fire to her neighbor's house–and all this after Hollis discovers that she is inexplicably (except, maybe, for all that acrobatic sex) pregnant. While the neighborhood might have been fine when she was a child–free urban pioneer, it's a nightmare for a mother with nothing but cake pans to bulletproof the baby's room. Gillespie must depend on her three best friends, Daniel, Grant, and Lary, to help her–although Lary makes it no secret that he hopes the paint fumes she inhaled early in her pregnancy will cause the baby to be born inside out–"that way it'll be easier to sell for parts."

Will Gillespie ever feel safe? No matter, she's still Hollis at heart–and, as Lary points out, if not safe, at least "safe from ever being normal."

George Orwell: A Life

Bernard Crick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Why Crick Writes 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Having been encouraged from about the age of twelve to read the essays of George Orwell I read Bernard Crick's recent meditation on him with a sense of gratitude. I haven't read any other work on Orwell which so perfectly conveys his inexhaustibility.
Crick's real achievement here is a mastery of Orwell's tone. Orwell's essays keep a reader up until dawn and this book did the same to this reader.
I can't say I agree with everything in the book, and have to say that sometimes I didn't grasp Crick's arguments. The chief pleasure of this book is its style; learned from one of the greatest defenders of expressed thought.

To make Political Writing into an Art- 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Bernard Crick opens this work by defining the approach to Biography which he has adopted in it. He says it is closer to the French approach than to the traditional British one. It focuses on the public face of the writer and his path in the world, rather than on the inner element. It makes much use of the documented works. Essentially it gives the sense that the Work of the person is paradoxically somewhat larger than their life.
The essence of Orwell's writing as he himself defined it was in making political writing into an Art. And there is no question that in his best essays, such as 'Such, Such Were the Joys' and ' Shooting an Elephant'he achieves this. He also achieves it in the two great political novels, 'Animal Farm' and '1984' he is most known for.
Crick shows how Orwell very early on chose to be a writer, a famous writer and dedicated himself fully to the task. Orwell 'went native' to experience and know the life of the poor , and this led to his first important work, "Down and Out in Paris and London". Orwell's commitment to social justice not only led him to regret the five years he served in the colonial administration in Burma, it also led him to the Civil War in Spain. Orwell repeatedly tried to enlist in the Second War but had to content himself with being in the Home Guard. Idealist Orwell was able to distinguish between the far from perfect Britain he would defend and the evil totalitarian Nazis. He too was able to be the model person of integrity on the Left who recognized that Stalinist Russia was also a totalitarian society. This work does tell the story of Orwell's personal relations and the somewhat secondary place they had in his life. His first loyalty was to his writing and work. Orwell today is considered one of the master , perhaps the master political writer of the century perhaps first of all because he did not allow Ideology even his own to keep himself from reporting the truth as he saw it.
This first major biography gives a full sense of the shape of Orwell's career and work.

Riding Outside the Lines: International Incidents and Other Misadventures With the Metal Cowboy

Joe Kurmaskie

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Like a modern-day Don Quixote, Joe Kurmaskie—bike adventurer, writer, and twelve-year-old boy trapped in a man’s body—wanders the world on two wheels, often with hilarious results, in Riding Outside the Lines.
A jaunt through such far-flung locations as Ireland, Australia, Mexico, South America, and beyond, here is a collection of tales woven together with one central theme: the world is a much smaller place when you view it from the seat of a bicycle.

Whether he’s weekending in the buff after accidentally stumbling into a nudist colony wedding, knocking back red wine in tin cans with a gun-toting ex–bounty hunter, combing the countryside in a quest to find the all-girl bagpipe squad he met in his dreams, or playing a rousing game of ice golf on the frozen tundra, Joe Kurmaskie writes of his gonzo global trek in a spirit infused with insight, good humor, and optimism. Riding Outside the Lines encourages travel buffs and armchair explorers alike to get on your bike and see the beauty of our planet and the colorful souls who populate it.

Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe

Andrew Meldrum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Moved me deeply 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

As a Zimbabwean living abroad I sceptically picked up a copy of this book. I would read with dread Andrew Meldrums daily news reports on the dire and continually worsening situation in Zimbabwe on a Zimbabwean news website. I was very pleasantly surprised by the depth of feeling he developed for the country and his positive outlook in this book. I was moved by all his personal experiences and interactions with people there and the dangers he faced on a daily basis just doing his job. Someone needed to speak up and let the international community know about the teriible things that went happened in Zimbabwe from Gukurahundi to the farm invasions and I admire him for his bravery and perseverance. He chronicled our history from an eyewitness point of view and brought it all alive again. It allowed me to relive the 80's and 90's again. I cringe whenever I hear news of Zimbabwe on the television but this book made me feel proud to be Zimbabwean and I have recommended to my non-Zimbabwean friends as a way of understanding what happened to Zimbabwe. Excellent book!

Editorial Review:

Where We Have Hope is the gripping memoir of a young American journalist. In 1980, Andrew Meldrum arrived in a Zimbabwe flush with new independence, and he fell in love with the country and its optimism. But over the twenty years he lived there, Meldrum watched as President Robert Mugabe consolidated power and the government evolved into despotism. In May 2003, Meldrum, the last foreign journalist still working in the dangerous and chaotic nation, was illegally forced to leave his adopted home. His unflinching work describes the terror and intimidation Mugabe’s government exercised on both the press and citizens, and the resiliency of Zimbabweans determined to overturn Mugabe and demand the free society they were promised.

Wife in the North

Judith O'Reilly

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

From S. Krishna's Books 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As I was perusing other reviews of Wife in the North, I came across more than a few that said the author should stop complaining and make the best of her situation. I think that these readers didn't understand the point of the book (at least, the point as it was apparent to me). We'd all love to be that person that, when adversity strikes us, we smile and roll up our sleeves without a word of complaint escaping our lips. We don't want to be the person who becomes more and more miserable as life slowly falls apart. But let's face it. That is real life.

And that's what this book is - real life. It is fun and love, but also unhappiness. O'Reilly is literally grieving for her former life; as she begins to let it go, her outlook on life in Northumberland brightens. But the process takes some time, which only seems natural.

I also enjoyed my ability to relate to Wife in the North. No, my husband has never dragged me to live in the countryside and left me there with our three children (and by the way, is it really that hard for O'Reilly's husband to remember to put gas in the car? Geez!) but I can understand her hurt when she is alone and has no friends to call. I felt her pain when children at school were bullying her son (though I don't have children). The fact is that this book lays it all bare; the author's emotions are at the surface of the book, waiting for the reader to partake in them. That emotion invests the reader in the story and propels it forward. It is intimate and fresh, but also very funny.

I enjoyed reading this book in multiple, short sittings. The diary format makes it a great read to keep in your purse or car, reading it on the many occasions you are waiting for something (but don't read it while driving, that's just a bad idea in general!). I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys chick lit, women's fiction or memoirs.

Editorial Review:

When Judith O’Reilly, a successful journalist and mother of three, agreed to leave London for a remote northern outpost, she made a deal with her husband that the move was a test-run to weigh the benefits of country living. In the rugged landscape of Northumberland County, O’Reilly swapped her high heels for rubber boots and life-long friends for cows, sheep, and strange neighbors.

In this tremendously funny and acutely observed memoir, O’Reilly must navigate the challenges and rewards of motherhood, marriage, and family as she searches for her own true north in an alien landscape. Her intrepid foray into the unknown is at once a hilarious, fish-out-of-water story and a poignant reflection on the modern woman’s dilemma of striking the right balance between career and family.