by Michael Ignatieff (Get the Book)
Ignatieff offers a cautionary tale for public intellectuals who would be politicians. The Toronto native, currently a professor at the University of Toronto and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, served as head of Canada's Liberal Party until 2011, when he lost his own seat in the party's worst showing in its history. Ignatieff had left Harvard in 2005 to enter Canadian politics and swiftly rose through the ranks to become leader of his party, on the cusp of becoming the next Prime Minister, only to face a huge electoral defeat and million-dollar campaign debt. Wised up to the rough and tumble of political life, he reflects on what he did right and wrong, and shows why getting elected, and then enacting reforms, is hard work. "Red meat must be thrown to the hounds," he muses. This thin volume could have easily been a vanity book, but it's more than that. An erudite and civilized man, Ignatieff ends his tale with surprisingly upbeat advice to aspiring politicians. --Publishers Weekly
by Valerie Lawson (Get the Book)
Sydney Morning Herald writer Lawson's preface to her biography of P.L. Travers (1899-1996), the creator of Mary Poppins, reads like an introduction to a mystery. This is fitting, since Travers preferred to keep the facts of her personal life hidden; luckily, Lawson is superb at excavating the details. Travers, we learn, held a cherished belief that women experience three phases of life: maiden, mother, and crone, so Lawson divides the book into three corresponding sections. Drawing on archival sources and private papers, she covers Travers's relationship with the poet AE (George William Russell), her dealings with film producer Walt Disney, and her adoption of a son while a single woman. Many pages are devoted to Travers's lifelong spiritual journey, which involved meditation, Zen Buddhism, and several gurus, of which the controversial Gurdjieff became the most influential. At times when discussing Travers's spiritual search, Lawson applies an unfortunate layer of sarcasm. Thankfully, this tendency does not detract significantly from the arresting life revealed here. --Library Journal
by Lynn Darling (Get the Book)
In a radiant, brave memoir, Darling, a journalist and memoirist (Necessary Sins), recalls a difficult time shortly after her daughter goes off to college and Darling moves from New York City to the remote woods of Woodstock, Vt. A widow in her mid-'50s, Darling finds the woods around her small, eclectic house at the end of the road inviting yet frightening, and soon learns how "directionally challenged" she is-thus vulnerable. Having fled her life in the city out of a sense of failure and shame, she admits that she no longer knows what map of her life . She turns to a point by point "metaphysical" to-do list, including "get sense of direction; find authentic way to live; figure out how to be old; deal with sex; learn Latin." With her companion a yellow Lab puppy she named Henry, and occasionally help from wilderness experts-or a compass and a map-Darling embarks on a clarifying journey of self-navigation. Despite being sidetracked by cancer and a year of grueling treatments, which she endured largely alone, she gradually finds her moorings, emerging from this dark spell with a profound and grateful understanding of what it means to take responsibility for yourself. --Publishers Weekly
By Dave van Ronk (Get the Book)
Singer-songwriter Van Ronk did more than most to earn the heady title of his memoir, gussied up for publication by the author of the outstanding blues history Escaping the Delta (2004). In the folk-music ferment of late-fifties/early-sixties Greenwich Village, Van Ronk was a larger-than-life presence with a blustery personality to match his big frame, headlining the famous folk-music haunts and mentoring such up-and-coming stars as Bob Dylan. A masterful storyteller and robust singer who prided himself in making a living without leaving the Village, he was a musical sponge who picked up a wildly eclectic repertoire. He recalls the heyday of the pretourist, 1950s Village, before the so-called Folk Scare, when regulars went to Washington Square on Sunday afternoons for loose sessions that continued late into the night. He recalls first hearing Dylan--the scruffiest-looking fugitive from a cornfield I do believe I had ever seen --at a Village coffeehouse and being impressed (the new arrival thereafter often crashed on Van Ronk's sofa). A richly evocative paean to a lost era. --Booklist
