Seleções PenAzul
From: The New York Times Direct
To: "medei@uol.com.br"
Friday, May 18, 2001
Books Update from NYTimes.com
Friday, May 25, 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
"John Adams" by David McCullough
1. In Sunday's Book Review: David McCullough's "John Adams"
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun"
3. Featured Author: Philip Roth
4. New in Stores: Mark Kram's "Ghosts of Manila"
5. In the News: "On the Road" Sets Record on the Block
6. New on the Best-Seller List: Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers"
7. In the Forums: Etymology
/------------------ Also From NYTimes.com ---------------\
Allow us to introduce you....
Introducing TIMES PERSONALS, a new place for New York Times
readers to connect. Every Sunday in these Times sections:
The City, Long Island, Connecticut, Westchester and New
Jersey. Personals are also available on
nytimes.com/personals. Call 1-800-806-5286.
http://search.nytimes.com/search/personals.html?0525bk
\----------------------------------------------------------/
1. In Sunday's Book Review: David McCullough's "John Adams"
===========================================================
Plain Speaking
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In David McCullough's telling, the second president is reminiscent of the 33rd (Harry Truman).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JOHN ADAMS
By David McCullough.
Illustrated. 751 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $35
Related Links:
* Audio: An Interview With David McCullough
* Michiko Kakutani Reviews 'John Adams' (May 22, 2001)
* First Chapter: 'John Adams'
McCullough's last book, "Truman," was a number-one best
seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1993. The
esteemed historian now turns his attention to the second
president, John Adams. Few men, McCullough argues,
"contributed more to the early history of the United
States," writes reviewer Pauline Maier, author of "American
Scripture." In Jefferson's words, Adams was "the colossus of
independence."
In Maier's view, "Above all . . . McCullough's appreciation
for Adams, like his appreciation for Truman, depends on an
adherence to certain old-fashioned moral guidelines, which
is to say on strength of character. Now, 175 years after his
death, we can at last give Adams the esteem he deserves. It
remains true nonetheless that the wonderfully congenial
subject of McCullough's carefully researched, lovingly
written biography is more consistently companionable, and
also less interesting, than John Adams was in his own time."
Audio: An Interview With David McCullough
First Chapter: 'John Adams'
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/reviews/010527.27maiert.html?0525bk
A Web-exclusive Audio Interview With David McCullough, May
23, 2001
"[John Adams wrote] many hundreds of the most extraordinary
letters I'd ever read, second only perhaps to those written
by his wife, who really was one of the most interesting
people in that extremely interesting time."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/specials/mccullough.html?0525bk
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Shadow of the Sun"
======================================================
Reviewer William Finnegan, author most recently of "Cold New
World: Growing Up in a Harder Country," explains that
Kapuscinski's new collection contains 29 narratively
unconnected pieces. "It is, in other words, a miscellany,"
he writes. "Still, there is a strong emotional and
historical arc to the book, which begins in the high
enthusiasm of West African independence (Ghana, 1958),
passes through coups and horrors (Uganda, Liberia, Rwanda)
and then sinks into disillusionment, even despair. Having
studied the handiwork of too many warlords, Kapuscinski
concludes: 'We are in a world in which misery condemns some
to death and transforms others into monsters. The former are
the victims, the latter are the executioners. There is no
one else.'"
In Finnegan's view "this piece of bleak hyperbole is not an
atypical slip, for Kapuscinski displays, in many of the
sketches collected here, a weakness for the dramatic -- and
not necessarily original or rigorous -- generalization." The
absence of a "narrative engine -- a topic more specific than
'Africa,'" is a weakness, writes Finnegan. "Kapuscinski's
great books have had great subjects. This one has only great
moments."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/reviews/010527.27finnegt.html?0525bk
An Interview With Ryszard Kapuscinski, May 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/14/arts/14KAPU.html?0525bk
-----
"The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl"
By Elisabeth Gitter
"The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language"
By Ernest Freeberg
Natalie Angier, science writer for The Times and author of
"Woman: An Intimate Geography" reviews these two books about
Laura Bridgman, who was, in the second half of the 19th
century, "one of the most famous females in the world, her
every action celebrated in newspapers, ladies' magazines,
the writings of Charles Dickens." But by the time she died
in 1889, she was almost totally forgotten, her
accomplishments eclipsed by those of Helen Keller.
Gitter, a professor of English at John Jay College of the
City University of New York, and Ernest Freeberg, an
assistant professor of humanities at Colby-Sawyer College in
New Hampshire, give us very different takes on the
intertwined stories of Bridgman and Samuel Howe, her
teacher. "Gitter emphasizes the emotional relationship
between teacher and pupil, while Freeberg focuses on Howe's
war against the religious orthodoxy of his time and his
attempts to use Laura as cannon fodder," writes Angier.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/reviews/010527.27angiert.html?0525bk
-----
"The Bay of Angels"
By Anita Brookner
Anita Brookner's admirers recognize her novels "remarkable
virtues," writes Angeline Goreau in reviewing Brookner's
latest. But many readers may have "come to feel, as her
novels appear punctually year by year, that Brookner is
writing the same book over and over again."
At first glance, the new book "seems to lend support to this
view, since it worries at a subject she has dealt with
extensively from the very beginning of her career as a
writer of fiction -- the hazards of confusing literature
with life." Goreau writes that the beginning "as well as
other themes and details in the novel will be very familiar
to Brookner's regular readers." But "Brookner is in fact
shifting, in subtle and highly interesting ways, the terms
of the dilemmas she habitually sets forth and dramatizes.
'The Bay of Angels' is up to something different."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/reviews/010527.27goreaut.html?0525bk
3. Featured Author: Philip Roth
===============================
"The Dying Animal"
By Philip Roth
The protagonist of Roth's latest novel is David Kepesh, the
main character in Roth's earlier books, "The Breast" and
"The Professor of Desire." In the former book he had turned
into a 155-pound female mammary gland, notes reviewer A. O.
Scott, film critic for The Times. In "The Professor of
Desire," Kepesh "migrated from the wilderness of allegory
into the more familiar and populous landscape of the erotic
Bildungsroman. The novel chronicled -- in the needy,
argumentative, hyperarticulate first-person voice that has
been both Roth's limitation and his great contribution to
American prose -- Kepesh's sexual escapades from adolescence
to the mellow age of 34."
Now, at 70, Kepesh teaches one seminar a year. Each year, at
the end of the term, he gives a party for his students, one
of whom, seduced by his library, his art books and his
piano, invariably hangs around to sleep with him. The new
novel is the story, "told in harried, discursive retrospect,
of one such affair, with an impossibly gorgeous young
Cuban-American woman named Consuela Castillo."
In Scott's view, "The question, as it so often is with Roth,
is one of distance and perspective. Does the author condone
his creation's pompous wheedling, or is he daring us to like
-- or to recoil from -- the evident flaws in Kepesh's
character? The novel's end invites -- though, in my view,
does not earn -- forgiveness."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/reviews/010527.27scottt.html?0525bk
Featured Author: Philip Roth
This retrospective includes reviews of the two previous
Kepesh books, "The Breast" (1972) and "The Professor of
Desire" (1977), other articles about and by Roth and two
audio readings.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/07/specials/roth.html?0525bk
4. New in Stores: Mark Kram's "Ghosts of Manila"
================================================
Mark Kram's "Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier" -- May
In "Ghosts of Manila," which examines the divergent lives of
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier through the prism of their
three fights, Mark Kram demystifies Ali's often-deified
public image.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/21/sports/21KRAM.html?0525bk
5. In the News: "On the Road" Sets Record on the Block
======================================================
The scroll on which Jack Kerouac composed "On the Road" 50
years ago was auctioned at Christie's in Manhattan for $2.4
million, setting the world auction record for a literary
manuscript.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/23/arts/23KERO.html?0525bk
Kerouac on the Block: A New York Times Editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/opinion/24THU2.html?0525bk
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/daily/index.html?0525bk
6. New on the Best-Seller List
==============================
Hardcover Nonfiction
#7) "Ghost Soldiers," by Hampton Sides
The story of a United States Army plan to rescue prisoners
of war (including survivors of the Bataan death march) in
the Philippines in early 1945.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/bsp/index.html?0525bk
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 June 3 and are based on sales through
last weekend.
7. In the Forums: Etymology
===========================
The etymology forum is a great place to find the sources of
words or phrases. Between those with an Oxford English
Dictionary handy, linguistics hobbyists and other fanciers
of word trivia, a reliable answer is usually forthcoming. In
the last week, readers found responses to their queries
about the sources of the words "pelagic" and "doughnut" and
the phrase "Great Caesar's Ghost!"
The forum has moved beyond just acting as a resource for
word derivations. One reader not only got a Latin
translation he requested, but a Biblical chapter-and-verse
citation. There are also more general discussions about
language issues. A fair warning that the etymology forum
also attracts shameless punning.
Participants in the Reading Group have selected "Soul
Mountain," by the Nobel Prize-winning author Gao Xingjian,
for the June book.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/forums/index.html?0525bk
About the Books Section
------------------------------
The Books site is much more than the highlights above. We
offer the Web's best access to authoritative book reviews,
the broadest array of first chapters, and exclusive audio
interviews you can't get anywhere else on the Web. From
historical features on the world's best authors to up to the
minute information on what's new in bookstores this week,
The New York Times on the Web tells you what you need to
know about Books.
http://www.nytimes.com/books?0525bk
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
