Admittedly formulaic, but also learned, educative and even provocative.
A baker’s dozen of titles that have altered the course of history.
The 13 “winners” include the expected (Walden, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), the indisputable (The Federalist Papers, The Journals of Lewis and Clark), the pleasant surprise (Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care) and the capricious (How to Win Friends and Influence People). With this last, readers of The Art of Teaching (2005) will recognize another tribute to the influence of Dale Carnegie in Parini’s youth. Each chapter has the same structure: an introduction, some background on the writer and the book, a summary of the text (15 pages or so being too long for some of them) and a discussion of the work’s legacy. The Promised Land (1912), for example, spawned an entire genre of literature written about the immigrant experience, stretching into the present with Frank McCourt, Amy Tan and Sandra Cisneros. Parini (English and Creative Writing/Middlebury Coll.) is usually generous, although Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique takes some shots. (He finds it on occasion “cursory and reductive.”) The author also aims some pokes at the current Bush Administration, at minister Joel Osteen (“one of the shallowest of current hucksters”) and at Bill Clinton. Parini does not always work sufficiently hard to eliminate clichés; we read about a work’s “sheer impact”; we learn how Friedan, in college, “spread her wings.” Still, his analysis of the racial controversy about Huckleberry Finn is illuminating and wise; his discussion of Of Plymouth Plantation, invigorating. A point not much discussed: Will books ever again so greatly affect our ever-more-nonliterate society? Perhaps anticipating snarls of displeasure about omissions, the author offers a lightly annotated appendix, “One Hundred More Books That Changed America.”
Admittedly formulaic, but also learned, educative and even provocative.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-52276-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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