Seleções PenAzul
Subject:
Books Update: Bombingham Revisited
Date:
Fri, 16 Mar 2001 22:34:23 -0500
From:
The New York Times Direct
To:
medei@UOL.COM.BR
Books Update from NYTimes.com
Friday, March 16, 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
A Hard Look at Birmingham's Civil Rights Struggles
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Diane McWhorter's "Carry Me Home"
2. Also Reviewed: A. S. Byatt's "On Histories and Stories"
3. Audio Reading: Pat Barker
4. New in Stores: Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher"
5. In the News: Jim Crace Wins Critics Circle Fiction Award
6. New on the Best-Seller List
7. In the Forums: "Democracy in America"
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Diane McWhorter's "Carry Me Home"
=======================================================
Bombingham Revisited
A daughter of Birmingham's white elite explores the causes of the city's
civil rights violence in the summer of 1963.
CARRY ME HOME
In "Carry Me Home. Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle
of the Civil Rights Revolution," Diane McWhorter, a daughter
of Birmingham's white elite, explores the causes of the
city's civil rights violence during the summer of 1963. On
Sept. 15, 1963, she was about the same age as the four black
girls who were killed by the bomb that exploded at the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. But in her
childhood world of white Birmingham, the bombing's immediate
consequence was trivial, she writes.
Birmingham, Alabama:
The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.
By Diane McWhorter.
Illustrated. 701 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $35
Her book is "an exhaustive journey through both the
segregationist and integrationist sides of Birmingham's
struggle," writes reviewer David K. Shipler. McWhorter
"expertly follows the tangled threads of culpability until
they reveal what she calls 'the long tradition of enmeshment
between law enforcers and Klansmen,' which included the
Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the state and
city police. Her precision in filling in the particulars of
that collaboration contributes significantly to the
historical record," in Shipler's view.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18shiplet.html?0316bk
Related Link:
An Interview with Diane McWhorter
McWhorter discusses her father's involvement with the Klan,
which is an important part of her book. She also explains
why it took 19 years to write what she first envisioned as a
modest memoir.
2. Also Reviewed: A. S. Byatt's "On Histories and Stories"
==========================================================
The Real Nonfiction Novel
In her collection of essays, A. S. Byatt makes a case for historical fiction.
ON HISTORIES AND STORIES
In her new book, "On Histories and Stories: Selected
Essays," A. S. Byatt explores the intersections of history
and fiction, a "two-way street," writes reviewer Thomas
Mallon, a critic and novelist, that is "on Byatt's patrol,
busier than ever." Recent historians, including Simon
Schama, she writes, have "made deliberate and self-conscious
attempts to restore narration to history" in books like
"Citizens." Conversely, "the idea that 'all history is
fiction' has led to a new interest in fiction as history."
Selected Essays.
By A. S. Byatt.
196 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press. $22.95.
Featured Author: A. S. Byatt
This retrospective features collected reviews of Byatt's
earlier books, including "Possession" (1990) and "The Djinn
in the Nightingale's Eye" (1997), articles by the author and
an audio reading from the story collection "Elementals."
Audio
A. S. Byatt Reads From 'Elementals'
A. S. Byatt on the Best Story of the Millennium
-----
The Mandate of Heaven
China, Jonathan D. Spence says, was as ideologically sensitive in the 18th
century as it is now.
TREASON BY THE BOOK
"Treason by the Book," by Jonathan D. Spence
By Jonathan D. Spence.
300 pp. New York:
Viking. $24.95.
In his new book, Spence, a Yale historian and recent
biographer of Mao, explores the China of the early 18th
century, when Manchu rulers occupied the throne. Reviewer
Ian Buruma writes that the book is "a slice of history told
in the lively manner of a novel." The subject here is "an
elaborate intellectual witch hunt" that grows out of an
anonymously written letter full of anti-Manchu sentiments.
Related Links:
Richard Bernstein Reviews 'Treason by the Book' (March 9, 2001)
First Chapter: 'Treason by the Book'
-----
The Punch-Card Conspiracy
A journalist explores relations between I.B.M. and the Third Reich.
IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST
"IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation," by Edwin Black.
The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.
By Edwin Black.
519 pp. New York:
Crown Publishers. $27.50.
This controversial book -- and instant best seller --
reports on the author's finding that I.B.M. knowingly
provided the Third Reich with the technology to identify
German Jews in the period 1933-39, and that I.B.M. founder
Thomas J. Watson eagerly conspired with the Nazis as they
carried out their murderous program. Reviewing the book is
Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of Commentary magazine,
who writes that Black "often tells his story not in the
subtle hues of genuine scholarship but in the Day-Glo paint
of the potboiler."
"The key question, in any case, is not whether I.B.M. sold
Germany its equipment but whether, as alleged, it made the
Final Solution part of its 'mission' and whether its
relationship with Germany in any way 'energized' or
significantly 'enhanced' Hitler's efforts to destroy world
Jewry. On the first point," Schoenfeld continues, "Black
never even attempts to substantiate his accusation -- a
scandalous omission considering the gravity of the charge.
As for the second, his shaky evidence leads him to oscillate
between two completely irreconcilable positions."
3. Audio Reading: Pat Barker
============================
Pat Barker is perhaps best known for her "Regeneration"
trilogy. Her latest novel, "Border Crossing," writes
reviewer Richard Eder, "is an angry work, though narrower in
its desolation, more explicitly didactic and, to that
extent, less alive. It does provide some of the same
exhilarating moral exploration, and prose as naked and
jolting as an unwrapped live wire."
Border Crossing First Chapter
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18ederlt.html?0316bk
Featured Author: Pat Barker
This retrospective includes reviews of Barker's
"Regeneration" trilogy and other New York Times coverage of
her career, including an interview.
Audio:
Pat Barker Reads From 'Border Crossing'
In an exclusive audio recording, Pat Barker reads from the
first chapter of "Border Crossing," in which the protagonist
braves the icy waters of the River Tyne to save a drowning
man.
4. New in Stores: Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher"
===============================================
"Dreamcatcher," by Stephen King -- March 20
The yearly reunion of four old friends in the woods of Maine
is interrupted by a strange man, whose body may have been
taken over by space aliens. In her review for The Times,
Janet Maslin wrote "there is a new urgency" in King's novel,
his first since he was grievously injured in 1999.
5. In the News: Jim Crace Wins Critics Circle Fiction Award
===========================================================
Jim Crace of Britain was awarded the National Book Critics
Circle Award for best fiction for "Being Dead," a novel
about the murder of a middle-aged couple on the beach dunes
where they met 30 years earlier. The article includes links
to reviews of "Being Dead" and news about the winners in
other categories.
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/daily/index.html?0316bk
6. New on the Best-Seller List
==============================
Hardcover Fiction
#1)"First to Die," by James Patterson
Four women -- a homicide inspector, a medical examiner, an
assistant district attorney and a journalist -- search for a
killer who is stalking newlyweds.
A note on our best-seller policy: The Times on the Web
publishes the New York Times best-seller lists a week in
advance of the printed Sunday Book Review. The best-seller
lists published this week on the Web will appear in the
print edition dated March 25 and are based on sales through
last weekend.
7. In the Forums: "Democracy in America"
========================================
Members of the Reading Group can rarely be accused of undue
deference to a classic. One reader, expressing
disappointment with Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of
America, wrote "I fail to see this as the work of a scholar,
but of a popular scientist playing into most of the
previously held conceptions and misconceptions of American
democracy." And several Americans in the Reading Group have
reacted with instinctive cultural pride to de Tocqueville's
comment that, as of the 1830's, "America has hitherto
produced few writers of distinction."
There has been particular criticism of de Tocqueville's
overview of racial issues in America. "I felt that
Tocqueville wasn't particularly interested in the subject,"
wrote one participant, "and just slopped something
together." But the book has its defenders, such as one
reader, who writes, "To criticize this work in the modern
context would miss the point."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/forums/index.html?0316bk
As usual, I will make my weekly appearance this weekend on
WNBC's "Saturday Today in New York" (Channel 4, 9-10:30
a.m.). In this Saturday's segment I'll talk about Maureen
Dezell's new book, "Irish America: Coming into Clover," as
well as new novels, available in stores next week, by
Stephen King and Robert B. Parker. Please let me know your
reactions if you have a chance to tune in. The videos of my
last few television appearances are now available on a Web
site jointly created by The Times and WNBC:
http://www.wnbc.com/bookreview/weekend.html
Feel free to forward this e-mail to a friend and to drop me
a note with your feedback about this newsletter or the site.
I enjoy hearing your opinions, ideas and suggestions and
will do my best to respond individually to each e-mail.
Bill Goldstein
Books Editor
The New York Times on the Web
bill@nytimes.com
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------------------------------
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http://www.nytimes.com/books?0316bk
