Belated Book Fair: Erik on the Burning Bronx

Remember the Underbelly Summer Book Fair? Sure you do. We closed up shop a few weeks ago, but here is my friend Erik with a late entry. Give him a break, he's been billing 2,100 hours a year:

For me, there were no summer doldrums, and my reading list didn't get much shortened. But I have spent the past day going through what would have been the best book of the summer, had I cracked it last summer: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning.

An Amazon reviewer describes it as,

"... an excellent book on a year in the life of New York City. The year is 1977 and it was a year marked by incredible turmoil. The city is under a fiscal crisis, there is a blackout that leads to massive looting, the Son of Sam killings and other problems. There is also a mayoral race and the Yankees race towards the World Series. Mr. Mahler perfectly melds all these elements together. He bounces between stories first starting out with 1976 Bicentennial celebration and ending up with the Yankees winning the World Series. He focuses on the struggles of Mayor Abe Beame, Yankees manager Billy Martin and the Yankees new superstar Reggie Jackson as well as Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, the Bushwick section of Brooklyn and the detectives on the Son of Sam case. He weaves these stories together and shows how New York City was on the brink of collapse and how these people and events did battle for the soul of the city."

Why I recommend this book is far from simple. I remember that year, mostly as it was the year my dad and I rooted for the opposing sides in the World Series: he for LA and I for the Yankees, not out of disloyalty, but because I was stick on baseball and had started playing little league for the Yankees. I wore number seven, and as I watched after game two, I could tangibly feel the Dodgers momentum slipping away.

If a kid from Hawaii can stir strong memories in a retelling of events that occurred on the other side of the country, I don't doubt the same resonance in many others. Also, for a kid who later ended up for a time in New York, I feel some affinity for the author, who came to New York from his own LA upbringing. If he can get it, so can we all. In a sense, summer reading should take the flavor of past summers which, in the end, is about the connections - I live in LA now and root for the Dodgers, like my father before me.

To be clear: the book is about far more than baseball. But the game just happens to be my starting frame of reference.

Sorry about responding so late. Then again it's still practically sunny here and the Dodgers are (barely) in contention. Also, given current events, I have reason to ignore the bad news and take time instead to get last summer's reading done.

Comment: You know, I've been meaning to read that one: I remember thumbing a copy at the Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village a couple of years back while I was sojourning there--and during the time when Erik and I were enjoying the ambivalent rewards of the high-calorie student feeding-troughs along Third Street. Maybe time to revivify the memories of 1977, and of 2006.

Book Fair: Kurp on Thoreau

I’ve never met Patrick Kurp, but I think I’ve gotten to know him over the past couple of years through my regular reading of his weblog, Anecdotal Evidence. You could say that AE is a “literary” blog, but this term is imprecise. Patrick is strong on poetry, particularly modern poetry, but he reads widely; and he is especially strong on the nature and possibility of literature, on what it means to lead a literary life. I am delighted to have Patrick here today as a contributor to the Underbelly summer Book Fair

The Journals of Henry David Thoreau was published in 14 volumes by Houghton Mifflin in 1906, 44 years after the author’s death at age 44. A century later you can still find that first edition in university libraries and discriminating book shops, where its heft and stolidity lend it a misleadingly stuffy, off-putting appearance. Its contents, more than Walden or “On Civil Disobedience,” are the essential Thoreau -- flinty, funny, closely observed, beautifully written. What Whitman said of Leaves of Grass may be said with greater justice of the Journals: "This is no book, / Who touches this touches a man." The first entry, written when Thoreau was 20 and newly graduated from Harvard, is dated Oct. 22, 1837:

“`What are you doing now?’ he asked. `Do you keep a journal?’ So I make my first entry to-day.

“He” is Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau’s mentor, neighbor, rival and landlord. One of many ways to read the Journals is as Thoreau’s prolonged wrestling match with Emerson, his senior by 14 years. Thoreau starts, like his friend, as a good transcendentalist, an heir of the English Romantics and German idealism. Emerson was merely the catalyst; Thoreau, the unprecedented American compound. Read him with precursors and historical context in mind, but mostly read him as a word-generating wonder of nature. His published Journals total more than 2 million words, a bottomless tonic for readers weary of postmodernism. At the bottom of the year, on Dec. 26, 1854, he writes:

I went to walk in the woods with R. It was wonderfully warm and pleasant, and the cockerels crowed just as in a spring day at home. I felt the winter breaking up in me, and if I had been at home I should have tried to write poetry.

A week and a half later, on Jan. 7, 1855, he notes:

The delicious, soft, spring-suggesting air, -- how it fills my veins with life! Life becomes again credible to me.

Thoreau is read as a naturalist, folksy philosopher, proto-environmentalist, anarchist, cranky Yankee and abolitionist. All are true but incomplete. What unifies them is Thoreau the writer. In the Journals you witness his evolution from callow romantic poseur to a prose artist of the first rank. Readers of the Journals tend either to favor the earlier, self-consciously “philosophical” years, or the later, more densely scientific passages. I’m a partisan of the latter, though the demarcation is never absolute. His best biographer, Robert D. Richardson, has called the Journals “a vast accumulation of fact and observation across which Thoreau could strike a line of purpose at any time.” They are the American volume to take to that bookless desert island, and Thoreau is the master of American prose, his only rivals being Lincoln and Henry James. Here, chosen at random (Sept. 25, 1851), is a sample:

Some men are excited by the smell of burning powder, but I thought in my dream last night how much saner to be excited by the smell of new bread.

Afterthought: For those not ready to tackle the 14-volume Houghton Mifflin edition, there is a crisply-edited one-volume Penguin edition of the journal from 1851 (link). Again, all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Rapoport on Goldman/Morgenstern

My friend Nancy Rapoport, attempting to raise the tone of the Underbelly summer Book Fair, recommends: William Goldman, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (25th anniv. ed. 1998). The Amazon blurb says in part:

The Princess Bride is a true fantasy classic. William Goldman describes it as a "good parts version" of "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure." Morgenstern's original was filled with details of Florinese history, court etiquette, and Mrs. Morgenstern's mostly complimentary views of the text. Much admired by academics, the "Classic Tale" nonetheless obscured what Mr. Goldman feels is a story that has everything: "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."

Nancy is a busy blogger in her own right (link). Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Thompson/Gagnon on Doyle, et al.

Marge Thompson, whom I knew as Marge Gagnon, once the pride of Manchester (NH) High School West, now an indefatigable organizer of a 53d-anniversary class reunion, addresses an issue on which I know she feels deeply, in this entry at the Underbelly summer Book Fair.

Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse by Fr. Thomas Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe and Patrick J. Wall. It demonstrates a deep problem that spans the Church's history. So much has been revealed since the Sexual abuse was brought to light by the The Boston Globe articles February 2002. I could also recommend 4 other books about what has been revealed since 2002.

Comment: this item does indeed appear to be available from standard sources; there is also a preview up at Google Books. Recall that for your convenience, we are still collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Sachs on Menaker

My sometimes friend (and sometimes sparring partner, and sometimes drinking companion) Roy Sachs, weighs at the Underbelly summer Book Fair. "My selection," Roy writes, "is The Treatment, by Daniel Menaker, a book that I read for the first time in 1996 or 97; then last month I saw a movie based on the book and decided to reread the book: the second reading was even better than the first." Roy elaborates:

This is a 269 pg novel (novella) so re-reading it required little effort. Daniel Menaker is or was an editor with The New Yorker and tells stories, probably because of this experience, more economically than the average story-teller.

The Treatment has at least three good interlocked stories going on simultaneously with an added humorous, even trenchant, insight into Freudian psychoanalysis (perhaps at its best?). The protagonist and narrator of the story is Jake Singer, an atheistic Jewish English Lit teacher at an upscale prep school (Coventry) on New York City’s west side; he is the analysand for Dr. Ernesto Morales, a Cuban ex-pat psychoanalyst, who is a Freudian, Catholic, investment connoisseur, and a wit. The wit is expressed with a slight touch of Spanglish.

Allegra Marshall is a rich beautiful widow whose son is a student at Jake’s prep school. She becomes Jake’s lover by the time we’re 80 pages into the story, but not before Morales gives Jake a push with remarks such as the following,…”Mr. Singer – 26 years of preventing yourself from healthy involvement in your feelings and your life. I swear to Christ if Marilyn Monroe came to you with no clothes on and a wet pussy, you would not know what to do with her…” and another push close by, “So if there is Mr. Weisenheimer a rich young widow making gooey eyes at you, why should you not fuck her, I ask you? Why should you not marry her when I come to think of it? Why didn’t you mention how she looked when you were speaking of her?”

Although always narrated by Jake the story seems to be told from the POV of the analyst and the Jake. There's a large digression into “The Imponderables”, which although not necessary for the main story, contribute a deeper understanding of what impelled Menaker to write the book which first concerns the unveiling of and healing of Jake’s private mishugas and secondly, life’s unpredictable twists and even more surprising outcomes.

Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Dobris on Cooke

My longtime friend and colleague Joel ("Mr. Principal and Interest") Dobris, offers a nomination in the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I recommend The American Home Front: 1941-1942 by Alistair Cooke. It's his last book and it's the tale of a couple of drives around wartime America. It is about as American a book as I know. On the road and dealing with problems we still have. Fear of Mexicans, anti-semitism, religiousity. Really well written. Joel.

Afterthought: BBC replayed some of Alistair Cooke's election night radio coverage earlier this summer, including his own amused astonishment at the triumph of Dewey over Truman, no wait it was the other way around. Might be still available somewhere in the Listenagain archives. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Giddings on Bryson

I first met Paull Giddings 51 years ago in the city room (!) of the Washington Courthouse (Ohio) Record-Herald. Paull is on hand now to introduce today's item in the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I just finished reading Shakespeare, by the amiable writer Bill Bryson. He says up front, "The Library of Congress... contains about seven thousand works on Shakespeare.... To answer the obvious question, this book was written not so much because the world needs another book on Shakespeare as because this series does." Ah, truth in publishing! Who would have expected it?

Bryson's book is brief and delightful, but he's right: the "Eminent Lives Series" is the reason it exists. I haven't yet read any of the other books in the series, but it contains some promising intersections of writer and subject ...

Observation: The only Bryson I've read is a genial introduction to English culture, which I found lying on the floor of the front seat of a car that a colleague left with me while he was away on leave. . "Amiable" is fair comment; "genial" might do even better. Bryson is one of those lucky people who has found a way to do what he likes to do, and to get paid for it. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: David on Liu and Hanauer

At 82, my cousin David still gets his blood up by slugging it out with the bad guys who, in David's case, are usually Republican. He takes time out from his labors to suit up for the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I recommend The True Patriot, by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. It's almost a pamphlet. The authors are progressives who urge a return to traditional values and principles. They are eloquent and persuasive. Idealistic to the max. A secular New Testament. I mailed my copy to Obama with a letter urging him to adopt it as his secular. bible I now await a call from his headquarters.

Afterthought: I think David may be too modest in his claims. Looks to me like True Patriot has created a fair amount of buzz among its enthusiasts, and what must be a gratifying spurt of venom from its critics (see, e.g., here). There's a C-span video presentation available here. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the phone call, though. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Dalsimer on Michener

My friend John Dalsimer spent a good deal of his adult life engaged in a particular kind of good work: he taught non-profits how to keep their books. In retirement, with his wife he has taken more Elderhostel trips than any other person I know. Here he tees up for the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

It is not a new book, but James Michener's The Source is still a good read. Carefully researched as all his books were, the setting is a tell in Israel. An archaeological dig is under way and as each level is revealed, an object is found and a story develops. Michener is a great story teller.

His character development is good, the plot is fun and anyone who has been to Israel will recognize events that sound familiar. It may be fiction, but you can learn from Michener's ability to tell a good story, but teach at the same time.

FWIW, Israel is where John and I first met. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Swift on Caudill

My old newspaper crony Ivan ( Red) Swift, reminding me again of one of the most eye-opening books I ever read, offers an entry at the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

Compulsive book buyers with loaded shelves know what it's like to look for a book, pull another one off the shelf for a scan, and end up not finding the original search volume. I was looking for Night Comes To the Cumberlands, by Harry Caudill, for a couple of grafs review for Underbelly. The reason i was looking for that particular book was because in the early '60s, when i was political reporter on The Louisville (Kentucky) Times, I wrote a review of it that may be the longest book review ever published in a daily newspaper. It covered, with photos, more than an entire page. newspaper pages were bigger then.

Underbelly was also a reporter on that paper then, and, who knows, he may have remembered the review when he asked me to write this. (Another reporter on the staff then was William Greider, who was notorious for writing long -- really long -- articles. But I'd bet nothing he wrote for the paper exceeded the length of my review of the Harry Caudill book).

To get back to the beginning, the book I pulled off a shelf was The Southern Appalachians by Charlton Ogburn. It's a great book if you like to read about nature and topography and people. (I know a lot about Appalachia. I live at the Alabama end).

But, glancing through it, I saw it mentions Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Ogburn uses the words "almost unbearable poignancy" to describe some of the writing by Caudill, who I knew well. A lot of the book fits that description.

But, the last chapter doesn't. the last chapter covered solutions to Eastern Kentucky's problems. The solutions weren't going to happen, and they read like Harry knew they weren't going to happen. Strip mined mountains, bad roads, poor schools, sicker people -- not much has changed.

Comment: I remember the review, and I certainly remember the book: Caudill created a stir among serious readers in its time, although it is hard to identify anything it did to improve life in the Appalachians. The book was first published in 1962; it was republished in 2001, and is available at online retailers. There’s a Google excerpt available here, and an interesting negative review here. Underbelly Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Johnson on Johnson

Kevin Johnson, dean at the UC Davis Law School, has a non-neurotic approach to making a nomination for the Underbelly summer Book Fair--Kevin nominates his own book, Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Laws (NYU Press 2004). Here's a bit of the publisher's blurb.

Seeking to re-imagine the meaning and significance of the international border, Opening the Floodgates makes a case for eliminating the border as a legal construct that impedes the movement of people into this country. Open migration policies deserve fuller analysis, particularly on the eve of a presidential election. Kevin R. Johnson offers an alternative vision of how U.S. borders might be reconfigured, grounded in moral, economic, and policy arguments for open borders. Importantly, liberalizing migration through an open borders policy would recognize that the enforcement of closed borders cannot stifle the strong, perhaps irresistible, economic, social, and political pressures that fuel international migration. Controversially, Johnson suggests that open borders are entirely consistent with efforts to prevent terrorism that have dominated immigration enforcement since the events of September 11, 2001. More liberal migration, he suggests, would allow for full attention to be paid to the true dangers to public safety and national security.

Afterthought: Kevin also co-hosts (with Bill Hing, whose recommendation appeared here earlier) at the influential ImmigrationProf Blog. Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Wydick on McPhee

Here's my quondam colleague Richard Wydick from the UC Davis law school, weighing in at the Underbelly summer Book Fair:

I recommend The Control of Nature, by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1989). McPhee offers three stories about man's efforts to control nature. All three are about flows. The first is the Army Corps of Engineer's effort to control the flow of the lower Mississippi, to prevent it from shifting West and cutting off New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industrial plants in between. The second story is about Icelanders trying to control the flow of red hot lava that threatened to close off an important fishing harbor. The third is about Los Angeles and debris flows that come down canyons from the San Gabriel mountains after fire has destroyed the vegetation and heavy rains have washed dirt, boulders, Chevy trucks, and houses down the slopes.

Afterthought:Actually, McPhee has an important UC Davis connection. McPhee's Assembling California is "a classic account of the geologic evolution of the Golden State"--an account which McPhee developed under the guidance of UCD geologist Eldridge Moores (cf. link).

For your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Crank on Sittenfeld

I first met my friend The New York Crank, some 50-plus years ago when we were both pretending to be hard-bitten newspaper reporters. Now the Crank weighs in at the Underbelly summer Book Fair. I can't quite tell whether he is kidding or not (and as I write, he is of on vacation and isn't around to explain). Anyway--Crank's choice is American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, scheduled for publication on September 2. The publisher's blurb says:

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. ... [W]hen she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise ....

Comment: No points at all for concluding that this is another effort to turn the Presidency into a Profit Center. Actually, I think when they say "inured," they mean "immune," but you can't get good help any more. Anyway, feel free to fashion your own book from there. Already a bristling comment thread at Amazon. And FWIW, apptly Sittenfeld is a she. Meanwhile, for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair: Former Prof on Miyabe

And now, we turn the mike over to Former Prof, for the first-so-far bankruptcy posting at the Underbelly summer Book Fair.

All She Was Worth (1999) by Miyuki Miyabe. This is a Japanese crime novel by an award-winner author. But it has a surprisingly accessible view of Japanese consumerism, Japanese privacy law and, of course my big interest, Japanese consumer bankruptcy law (which actually plays a central role in the plot). It works as escapist fiction, and as a slice of Japanese life.

Comment: new to me, and much thanks--I'm going to Japan for the first time later in the fall, and I'm trying to do a bit of advanced reading. The catalog of all Book Fair posts is here.

Another Book Fair: Hing on Gladwell

For the next installment in the Underbelly summer book fair, here's my sometimes colleague Bill Hing at the UC Davis Law School:

I recommend The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, because, among other things, the book reinforces what I've long believed: that one person, one idea, can make a difference at the right time.

Editor's note: Bill is also the co-host (with Kevin Johnson, who will be offering a recommendation here later) at the influential ImmigrationProf Blog. I see that Tipping Point gets 922 Amazon reviews--probably not a record, but surely in the top tier (Toni's Amsterdam weighs in with a paltry 291). For your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair III: usbj on Nussbaum

For episode III in the Underbelly summer Book Fair, we welcome our friend usb j (that's Mr. and Mrs. usbj's little boy) who directs our attention to a central issue in public discourse:

I recommend Martha Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience (Basic Books 2007), which is an exercise in intellectual and political history. Her thesis is that the American tradition regarding the interplay of religion and the public polity is one of fairness to all in which the foundational policy traces back to Roger Williams, his disputes with John Cotton, and charters he was able to wrangle from Parliament and the Restoration Crown. Lest one think that means fairness only among Christians, note that Williams particularly emphasized fairness to native American religions. Having laid that foundation, the remainder of the book reviews how that policy played itself out in the late colonial and early national periods and then how specific controversies have been dealt with in the two ensuing centuries. There is fascinating analysis of anti-Catholicism in American poliltics from 1830-1960, as will as the flag salute issues early in World War II; followed by an assessment of present issues. Conclusion: the traditional theme of fairness is under assault from Right and Left in ways that could have profound consequences in our increasingly religiously-diverse society.

Thanks to usbj for challenging us to get serious about a topic that needs to be taken seriously. For your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair II: Bernhard on McEwan

Here's Episode II of the Underbelly summer Book Fair. We pass the mike to my opera-loving friend Toni Bernhard, for a suggestion that has nothing to do with opera:

I recommend Ian McEwan's Amsterdam: A Novel. Not the best reviewed of his books, it's my favorite of his and, for you beachcombers, a quick read. One reviewer called the characters soulless but McEwan knew what he was doing. The plot: two men, former lovers of the same woman, meet at her funeral and make a pact I shall not divulge. The novel is biting, dark, funny, very British and only 198 pages long. It's not a profound book but it's prose at its best and that's good enough for me.

Afterthought: Toni's Amazon opera reviews are here. Much more book fair still to come. For your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Book Fair I: Lawless on Russo

Welcome to episode #I of the Underbelly summer Book Fair! As promised, we'll be offering book suggestions from a variety of friends, neighbors, blogging colleagues and assorted ruffians of assorted stripes and sizes. First up, we give the microphone to Bob Lawless, professor of business-y law at the University Illinois and a principal proprietor of Credit Slips, your one-stop shopping center for the latest on issues of bankruptcy and credit law. Here's Bob in an academic but non-bankrupt mood:

I recommend Straight Man by Richard Russo because Buce will only let me pick one book. If you're not at a university, it probably qualifies as mildly amusing, but every academic who reads the book finds it a spot on send-up of modern academic life. There are the usual vicious fights because the stakes are so small, as the saying goes about life in a university, but the book's characters also have to grapple with a fight where the stakes are not so small. These struggles force the book's main character, Henry Devereaux, Jr., to grapple with the meaning of his labors in the academic backwater that serves as the book's setting. Indeed, most of the book's characters are grappling with that same question. The book is a great summer read, and one of the few books that I have taken the time to read more than once.

Thanks, Bob--another post later in the week. For your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.

Coming Soon: The Underbelly Book Fair

Coming soon, folks--we're almost ready for the rollout of the great Underbelly Book Fair (my fingers itch to type 'Faire'). Here's the deal: I asked 10-20,000 of my best friends (perhaps including you, dear reader) to suggest a title that you'd like to encourage folks to read--along with a brief review or précis, as they thought fit.

I got a gratifying reponse, and I've got a compelling file of suggested entries in the warm-up circle ready to go--highbrow, lowbrow, one that may be a joke; one recommender recommended his own book, which suits me just fine. A few other folks are playing with me, but I think I can tease them along. BTW if you got the original mailing and haven't yet responded, it is not too late. If you did not get the original e-mail, don't be dismayed: feel free to enter your suggetion in the comments or email me on your own (yes, I know, my email address is not listed on this blog, but I suspect a 20-second Google search will blow my cover).