by Samuel C. Gwynne (Get the Book)
Dispensing with a chronological march through the life of Confederate General Thomas Jackson, Gwynne presents Jackson's eccentric personality in biographical episodes that he injects into the arc of Jackson's Civil War campaigns and battles. For example, the book covers the future hero's boyhood and his 1850s tenure at the Virginia Military Institute (a rich source of anecdotes of Jackson's oddities) after the 1861 Battle of Bull Run. Gwynne's technique succeeds, thanks to his spry prose and cogent insight, in revealing Jackson's character. Describing him as shy, serious, determined, and profoundly religious, Gwynne captures the stiff, asocial persona Jackson presented to the world. Yet Jackson did exhibit warmer traits in female company, evidenced by Gwynne' quotations of surviving letters, though those don't reveal his feelings about his estrangement from his Unionist sister, Laura. Better known is Jackson's inflexible attitude toward military duty and, most important to history, his tactical and strategic command of warfare. Showing Jackson's exploitation of speed and deception, Gwynne's vivid account of his Civil War run, which ended with his death in the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, is a riveting, cover-to-cover read for history buffs. --Booklist
by Vinh Chung (Get the Book)
Memories of Communist Vietnam are often limited to the American side of the tension, and particularly the harrowing experiences that soldiers faced during the war. Chung, a dermatologist, offers a tripartite portrait: his family's everyday life under the Communist regime, agonizing escape as refugees, and assimilation and integration into American society. Readers are given a glimpse into the dynamics that define the Chinese-Vietnamese family and how these intricate relationships and their elements, such as elder authority, influence interactions more broadly, within the community and, ultimately, American society. After his family's near-death encounters in Vietnam and the South China Sea, Chung is given a life his parents could not have. He offers a conversational, unpretentious narrative of the young immigrant/refugee experience, with its unconscious social faux pas; growing awareness of American class, race, and gender relations; and ambition to not only attain the American Dream but to take back what was taken away from his parents' generation: opportunity. This may remind those with immigrant/refugee experiences of their own lives; for others, Chung provides a humble story about coping with uprootedness, adversity, and assimilation into new social landscapes. --Publisher's Weekly
by Charles M. Blow (Get the Book)
In this brave and powerful memoir, New York Times columnist Blow describes growing up poor, African-American, and sexually conflicted in the 1970s Deep South. The Civil Rights era barely touched his Louisiana hometown of Gibsland, and Blow's family struggles in segregated, rural poverty. Sexual abuse at the hands of an older cousin when Blow is seven drives the already sensitive boy into isolation and depression. Although Blow becomes a superior student and athlete, he remains haunted by his experiences. Thirteen years later, this inner turmoil explodes, and he feels compelled to murder the man who molested him. Gibsland seems trapped in a pre-industrial era (young people there eat clay). The rare intrusions of modernity are shocking: when his family learns of an overturned cattle truck on a nearby highway, they rush out, steal an injured cow, and slaughter it. The great bravery in the book lies in Blow's nuanced treatment of his uncertain sexuality. While he waxes sentimental at times, and the decision to shoot his cousin comes off as melodramatic, this is a singular look at a neglected America. --Publishers Weekly
by Mark Edmundson (Get the Book)
Cultural critic Edmundson largely attributes his teenage transformation from a doughy dreamer to a disciplined man of serious thought to his stint as a high school football team benchwarmer. Here, the author reflects on the qualities that are often said to be taught by football including character, courage, pride, toughness, loyalty and resilience in a balanced analysis of their impact. Drawing on both his own experiences and the writings of such poets and thinkers as Homer and William Shakespeare, Edmundson comes to view each quality as a double-edged sword, especially when taken to extremes. In short, the game to him is both a poison and an elixir. While at times Edmundson seems to be overreaching, this work is a wide-ranging and insightful meditation on what football means in American culture. VERDICT Beautifully written and impressively thought out, this smart memoir should appeal to a wide audience. --Library Journal
by Carmen J. Viglucci (Get the Book)
The author, a retired newspaperman, recreates his early growing up years in the NY state capital, with wit and irony. There were the sandlot ballgames, row boat trips down the Hudson, visits to the Palace and Paramount Theaters, and even hikes to the neighborhood dump with his ten-year-old buddies, to do battle with the rats.There is also mention of the conflict stemming from his mother Nell's roots "as Irish as a Fitzgerald and Gilligan could make her" and his father's Italian immigrant background. The telling is laced with humor. (Summary)
by Doug J. Swanson (Get the Book)
Benny Binion is not as well known as Bugsy Seigel, who created Las Vegas, but, as crime-novelist Swanson makes clear in this rollicking biography, Binion also deserves his place in the Sin City Hall of Fame. Born poor in rural Texas in 1904, Binion soon was on the road with his horse-trader father. The game, Swanson recounts, was to trade a bad horse for a good horse, a scam requiring plenty of chutzpah. Benny soon realized the downside the best you could do was end up with a better horse but he also noticed that the gamblers who ran the games in which the traders lost what little money they had were doing just fine. In a few years, he was running the numbers game in the black neighborhoods of Dallas. After scaring off or killing a few too many rivals, Benny found that Dallas had become a bit too hot for comfort, sending him to Vegas, where he carved out a dominant spot for himself and eventually had the crazy idea of hosting something he decided to call the World Series of Poker. Swanson, a Dallas Morning News editor when he's not writing crime novels, has turned the biography of Binion into a great piece of narrative nonfiction that reads like, well, a great crime novel. When Las Vegas gets its faux Mt. Rushmore (and can that day be far off?), Benny's mug will be there, right alongside Bugsy's.
by Jan Swafford (Get the Book)
Winner of the PEN/Winship Award and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Swafford's Ives is a wonder of music biography; the author, who teaches at Boston Conservatory, re-created the very sounds surrounding Ives in childhood to help us understand his daring musicianship. Here, Swafford offers a study of Beethoven, ten years in the making, that investigates the ideas tumbling through the air in Enlightenment-era Bonn so that we can see how Beethoven and his music were shaped. With a 25,000-copy first printing.
