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Subject:
Books Update: A Perfect Test Case
Date:
Fri, 23 Mar 2001 22:39:20 -0500
From:
The New York Times Direct
To:
medei@UOL.COM.BR
Books Update from NYTimes.com
Friday, March 23, 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
One Woman's Epic Struggle With New York's Foster Care System
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Nina Bernstein's "The Lost Children of Wilder"
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Joyce Carol Oates's "Faithless"
3. Featured Author: Robert B. Parker
4. New in Stores: Anthony Bailey's "Vermeer"
5. In the News: Kerouac's "Road" Scroll Is Going to Auction
6. New on the Best-Seller List: David Limbaugh's "Absolute Power"
7. In the Forums: Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy inAmerica"
\----------------------------------------------------------/
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Nina Bernstein's "The Lost Children of Wilder"
======================================================
A Perfect Test Case
Shirley Wilder sued New York over its foster care system; the case was
settled in her favor, but by then she was dead.
THE LOST CHILDREN OF WILDER
"The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change
Foster Care," by Nina Bernstein, "is a brilliantly
researched account of an attempt to make the New York City
foster care system fair for all its children," writes Tanya
Luhrmann, an anthropologist on the Committee on Human
Development at the University of Chicago.
The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care.
By Nina Bernstein.
482 pp. New York:
Pantheon Books. $27.50.
The book examines the case of Shirley Wilder, who entered
the foster care system in 1972 and was raped while at
Hudson, a Dickensian reformatory; it was the first in a
series of abusive acts. Bernstein wrote a series about the
Wilder case while a reporter for Newsday (she now reports
for The New York Times).
"The Lost Children of Wilder" describes the 26-year history
of the case "that was at last settled, more or less in
Shirley Wilder's favor, in 1999. Its legal analysis is rich,
but . . . the drama is human," writes Luhrmann.
Related Links
Judge Approves Settlement in Child-Welfare Suit (Jan. 23, 1999)
Also: Nina Bernstein's article from The Times about the 1999
decision that settled the Wilder case.
First Chapter: 'The Lost Children of Wilder'
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Joyce Carol Oates's "Faithless"
===========================================================
Lives of Noisy Desperation
Joyce Carol Oates's stories deal with female passion and male identity,
divorce and guns.
Oates's latest book, "Faithless: Tales of Transgression," is
a collection of 21 stories on the themes of terror, female
passion, collapsing male identity, loneliness, divorce,
revenge "and not a little gun ownership," writes novelist
Colin Harrison. Harrison says that "Oates displays her
well-known tics -- she seems obsessed with sweatiness, and
perhaps falls into breathless internal monologue a bit too
often. But again and again she finds new language to
describe the immensity of desire."
Featured Author: Joyce Carol Oates
This retrospective on Oates includes reviews of her previous
books, book excerpts, articles she has written for The Times
and an audio interview.
Related Links
Featured Author: Joyce Carol Oates
-----
Writing. Hiding. Drinking. Disappearing.
Henry Green was a famous novelist once and now he's not. How much
would he have minded?
ROMANCING
The Life and Work of Henry Green.
By Jeremy Treglown.
Illustrated. 331 pp.
New York:
Random House. $26.95.
Related Link:
First Chapter: 'Romancing'
"Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green," by Jeremy Treglown
"Fifty years ago, anyone who cared about fiction knew the
work of Henry Green -- the aristocratic, publicity-shy
English novelist whose books were seductive and pleasing
because of their very oddness and elusiveness," writes
Charles McGrath, the editor of The New York Times Book
Review, in his review of a new biography of Green.
The book, by a former editor of The Times Literary
Supplement and the biographer of Roald Dahl, "ought to bring
new readers to this original and engaging author, who wrote
about social class -- or, rather, the social classes, all of
them -- with a mordancy and affection that have seldom been
surpassed, and who managed as well to give this old subject
a new, modernist spin. Treglown's book also tells a
fascinating, heartbreaking story of its own -- about, among
other things, the precarious relation between literary
talent and the person it happens to occupy."
-----
Culinary Institutions
A series of food-related books includes volumes by Édouard de Pomiane
and Henri Charpentier.
LIFE À LA HENRI
Four books on the culinary arts inaugurate a new series from
the Modern Library, edited by Ruth Reichl, a former
restaurant critic for The New York Times and now editor of
"Gourmet." "Life a la Henri," by Henri Charpentier; "Cooking
With Pomiane," by Edouard de Pomiane; "Clementine in the
Kitchen," by Samuel Chamberlain; and "Perfection Salad," by
Laura Shapiro are reviewed by Craig Seligman, former
executive editor of Food & Wine magazine.
Being the Memories of Henri Charpentier.
By Henri Charpentier and Boyden Sparkes.
246 pp. New York:
The Modern Library.
Paper, $13.95.
-----
COOKING WITH POMIANE
By Édouard de Pomiane de Pomiane.
Edited and translated by Peggie Benton.
281 pp. New York:
The Modern Library.
-----
Paper, $13.95.
PERFECTION SALAD
Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century.
By Laura Shapiro.
Illustrated. 274 pp.
New York:
The Modern Library.
Paper, $13.95.
"Three of her first four selections are panegyrics to a
bygone style of French cooking, written by portly gourmands
who are appalled at the very notion of self-denial," writes
Seligman. "The odd book out in Reichl's quartet is
'Perfection Salad,' Laura Shapiro's splendidly researched
1986 study of the devastation that reform-minded women
brought to American cooking more than a century ago."
Related Links
First Chapter: 'Life à la Henri'
First Chapter: 'Cooking With Pomiane'
First Chapter: 'Clémentine in the Kitchen'
First Chapter: 'Perfection Salad'
Collected Cookbook Reviews
3. Featured Author: Robert B. Parker
====================================
"Potshot," by Robert B. Parker>
Spenser's Posse
In Robert B. Parker's latest, you may have trouble telling the goodfellas
from the badfellas.
POTSHOT
By Robert B. Parker
294 pp. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$23.95.
Related Links:
Featured Author: Robert B. Parker
First Chapter: 'Potshot'
Marilyn Stasio, who writes the Crime column for The Times
Book Review, looks at the work of Robert B. Parker, who is
just publishing his 28th Spenser novel. "Sometimes you have
to wonder how Robert B. Parker keeps his mojo working. It
can't be easy, year after year, sending his aging knight of
a private eye, Spenser, into a cynical world that distrusts
heroes and barely pays lip service to the romantic code of
honor he lives by."
On the most essential level, Stasio writes, "Parker still
believes in Spenser, which means that he's not going to
force his beefy but courtly sleuth to compromise his values
or drastically change his style. When a comely widow asks
him to go out to Potshot, Ariz., and inflict his tough brand
of justice on the gang of desert rats who killed her husband
and are terrorizing her town, you know that he is not going
to refer her to the state police or the office of the
attorney general -- although that would be the smart thing
to do. He's going to take the case and, even when it looks
hopeless, he's going to honor his word."
Featured Author: Robert B. Parker
This retrospective features reviews of Parker's books,
including "The Godwulf Manuscript," the novel that
inaugurated the Spenser series, interviews with the author
and articles by Parker about Raymond Chandler and P. D.
James.
4. New in Stores: Anthony Bailey's "Vermeer"
============================================
"Vermeer: A View of Delft," by Anthony Bailey -- April
Anthony Bailey, who writes for The New Yorker magazine, has
brought out a new biography of the 17th-century Dutch master
Vermeer. In a review in The Times this week, Michiko
Kakutani said that "there is little new in 'Vermeer,'" but
that "the book nonetheless serves as a lovely and succinct
introduction to the painter's work."
5. In the News: Kerouac's "Road" Scroll Is Going to Auction
===========================================================
Fifty years after its completion, the scroll on which Jack
Kerouac composed "On the Road" is to be auctioned at
Christie's in Manhattan.
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/daily/index.html?0323bk
6. New on the Best-Seller List
==============================
Hardcover Nonfiction
#14) "Absolute Power," by David Limbaugh
A lawyer's critical evaluation of the Clinton-Reno Justice
Department.
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 April 1 and are based on sales through
last weekend.
7. In the Forums: Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"
=======================================================
Responding to those in the Reading Group who had expressed
frustration with what they saw as Tocqueville's ambiguity in
"Democracy in America," one reader suggested that
Tocqueville may have sacrificed scholarly precision for
literary eloquence: "Tocqueville, somehow, gives us a
portrait of Americans that is still recognizable. Is that
portrait composed exclusively of scholarly concepts or is
there something else going on here, something that
transforms a good book into a Great Book?"
There has also been a debate about Tocqueville's views on
religion. While some readers have noted affinities between
his thought and modern religious conservatism, another
reader sensed that Tocqueville did not feel a "deep-seated
religious conviction," but that his "ambivalence allowed him
to better see the role religion played in American society."
In my appearance this weekend on WNBC's "Saturday Today in
New York" (Channel 4, 9-10:30 a.m.), I'll talk about
movie-related books in celebration of this weekend's Oscars
ceremony. Please let me know your reactions if you live in
the New York area and 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 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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