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It’s been mostly the season of rereading, as though books chosen were never read before.
Funny how that happens.
One could either blame age or just the well-written word since, this is where the term classics comes from, like pearls handed down.
So let’s start with history, shall we, since after all it does repeat itself.
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Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman…Harlow Giles Unger (2015) The Elvis of the Senate who should be as well-known as Lincoln who like me, idolized him. Mr. Unger, a passionate historian writing for everyone, not just the tight-assed academic along the same lines as David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Clay never displayed better, his southern bravado and patriotism doing a fine dance.
“I’d rather be right than president,” he said, and meant it after being defeated three times.
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Lafayette…Harlow Giles Unger (2002) Our Founding Fathers take a curtain call alongside their French brother, Gilbert de Lafayette, who at nineteen came here to fight alongside them for our nation’s independence. In 1826 as an old man, coming back to his second country as he called America, to say a final farewell, Mr. Unger wrote...his visit not only revived American patriotism, it reminded Americans of their good fortune as the only people on earth with the freedom to govern themselves…
We could sure use Lafayette now, couldn’t we?
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Lucy…Ellen Feldman (2004) There’s nothing like a little historical fiction on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The love story between Franklin Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer that ended his marriage to Eleanor, afloat in name only, making you rather happy the man, though a cad perhaps as penance spending half his life in a wheelchair, claimed such a romance.
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How The Good Guys Finally Won: Notes From an Impeachment Summer…Jimmy Breslin (1975) Watergate just got a fresh coat of paint, the reader, that fly on the wall watching House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill and a cast of merry Congressmen bring down President Richard Nixon smart enough to leave the party before tossed out on his cunning coattails.
You’ll inhale every word by Breslin, one of the finest journalists of all time.
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Triangle: The Fire That Changed America…David Von Drehle (2003) The building still stands 110 years later while a plaque commemorates that on March 25, 1911 at 23 Washington Place in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, 146 people, 123 of them Italian and Jewish immigrant girls ages fourteen to twenty-three, jumped to their deaths after being locked in rooms at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory when the blaze broke out on its upper three floors ladders couldn’t reach.
I’ve stood on those ancient cobblestones that, if could, would weep in remembrance.
The upside? Conditions for factory workers changed forever including establishing the Ladies Garment Center Union, but alas, look what it took.
Warning…like witnessing an accident you don’t want to see, but can’t turn away from.
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Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, And The Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby…Dan Abrams and David Fisher (2021) I was 9 when I saw Jack Ruby shoot JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach, like a movie I wasn’t supposed to see.
Ruby said he wanted to spare Jackie and the children a painful trial. Dallas police claimed they had no idea how he got to be that close enough to fire.
Our authors did a fine job putting us in that courtroom as top lawyers on both sides tried solving the puzzle of Jacob Leon Rubenstein, better known as Jack.
A helluva read.
Seguing into memoir some old, some new.
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Paul and Me: 53 Years of Adventures and Misadventures With Paul Newman…A.E. Hotchner (2010) A sincere tribute to his friend who died in 2008 at 83 of lung cancer, and their Huck and Jim partnership from mixing salad dressing in Paul’s barn to what Newman’s Own is today, still helping kids with cancer have a summer they’ll never forget.
Funny, poignant and pretty remarkable proving, where there’s a will, and a Paul, they’ll always be a way.
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Note Found in a Bottle: My Life As A Drinker…Susan Cheever (1998) Daughter of John, the apple not falling far from the tree. Every word shared candidly wrapped in New York glamour, its packaging splitting at the seams seeking sobriety on her knees.
It’s mighty impressive…not easy spilling your guts recapping when you were far from your best.
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The Kid Stays in the Picture…Robert Evans (2002) Talk about a page-turner, Evans taking candor out for a spin. Married to actress Ali MacGraw, losing her carelessly to actor Steve McQueen, his ego heading Paramount Pictures producing such iconic films as The Godfather, Love Story and Chinatown as if he were Zeus, to being involved in a mob murder all while keeping Jack Nicholson as his best pal, and that’s just for openers. Forgive my triteness…an oldie but goodie, Evans departing in 2019 at the crisp, unapologetic age of 89.
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Bright Precious Things…Gail Caldwell (2020) Another she-ro, to quote Maya Angelou, honesty on her own terms writing in a men’s world, turning to alcohol for solace then sobriety for a more serene life. I yearn to write like Ms Caldwell…brave, spare and true.
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Among the Porcupines…Carol Matthau (1992) In my All Star collection of memoirs, twice married to writer William Saroyan, then actor Walter Matthau from 1959 till his death in 2000.
Best friends for life with Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O’Neil Chaplin, married to Charlie, and as an added bonus, the real Holly Golightly her pal Truman Capote wrote about in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1950).
Are you sold yet?
A very special lady she was, alas, joining her beloved Walter in 2003.
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Miss Aluminum…Susanna Moore (2020) A tell-all, air out your dirty laundry and everyone else’s, from her years as a model and Hollywood beauty often in the company of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson to name just two bad boys with their pants pulled down.
Think National Enquirer written well you won’t have to hide so no one sees you’re reading it.
Ms Moore who now in her 7th decade teaches writing at Princeton, could use a course in discretion.
The antidote to too much truth is fiction, so what’s better than baseball, The National Pastime.
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Shoeless Joe…W.P. Kinsella (1982) The novel that inspired the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, about the 1919 Black Soxs Scandal when 8 members of the Chicago White Soxs allegedly threw the World Series for a sorry buck, never being allowed to play the game they so loved again, all seen from the eyes of a haunted corn field.
A special read.
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North River…Pete Hamill (2007) It’s 1934 and the great depression has New York by the tail, a tale only a veteran New Yorker like Hamill could tell with such realism and dash.
Dr. James Delaney ministering to anyone in need from the poor to the corrupt running the city, inheriting a grandson when his daughter leaves him on his doorstep, while Rose, a woman we all know…Third World, beautiful and bighearted, steps in to help.
I read it in two sittings never thinking I could ever love Pete even more than I already do.
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Highland Fling…Nancy Mitford (1931) Nothing like a classy English novelist to make you want a nice cup of tea while shredding all your fallow attempts at fiction since, though it’s her very first book, the lady in a mere 199 pages, hits a grand slam.
When I think she was so unhappy in love in her own life, one can only cheer that her characters end up happy in theirs.
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The Dime…Mark Paxson (2021) A lofty novel reading like a brush fire. I remember keeping it in my bag to sneak a chapter during the course of my day, so that should tell you something.
Short, sweet and compelling our prolific author a natural storyteller.
Now for great essays.
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American Rhapsody: Writers, Musicians, Movie Stars and one Great building…Claudia Roth Pierpont (2016) From Edith Wharton to James Baldwin, Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn, George Gershwin, Nina Simone with The Chrysler Building as a grand finale.
The lure of the essay? You can read one from start to finish before falling asleep, in this case dreaming of words, music, film and great architecture.
A few bios for good measure.
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Everybody was so Young…Amanda Vail (1998) Sara and Gerald Murphy who F. Scott Fitzgerald immortalized in his novel, Tender is the Night (1934), are given a more accurate view from the opulent way they lived to the loss of two sons, and how a couple who never really knew themselves, knew each other so well, our author tenderly telling their tale.
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Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream…Michael Shnayerson (2021) For the gangster in you, who’ll no doubt remember Ben as he preferred being called with a gun to your head, disguised as Vegas’s Moe Green in The Godfather right down to that bullet in his eye, courtesy of his cronies retiring him at the age of 41.
I especially liked his beginnings growing up on New York’s Lower East Side, history snapping at your heels.
Great writing.
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Simply Halston: The Untold Story…Steven Gaines (1991) Having a resurgence since the Netflix series, Halston, Roy Halston Frowick, gifted, generous and gay, dying in 1990 of AIDS at the age of 57, as famous as a fashion icon can be, comes back to life with a swagger taking you back to the era of anything goes, Studio 54 its opulent playground.
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Woody Allen: A Biography…John Baxter (1998) A new author I’ve discovered penning lots on Paris, captures Woody at his best and not so, apt for a true portrait of anyone, especially our present most famous, alleged fallen icon.
Couldn’t put it down especially reading what a nymphet Mia Farrow apparently was.
Who would have guessed?
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A Year in Paris: Season by Season in the City of Light…John Baxter (2019) I read this first along with his Five Nights in Paris (2015), The Perfect Meal (2013), and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World (2011) now making me a faithful Baxterette, especially when he said...a meal without wine, is like a kiss without a cuddle, so let me warn you since, you’ll suddenly have an urge to don a beret and pack your bags, or at least head to the nearest bistro for Boeuf Bourguignon, a bottle of Burgundy breathing heavily on the table while a Pain au Chocolat waits in the wings, John, the little profiterole, that persuasive.
Since we aspire to inspire, I’ll end with…
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Pocket Wisdom: Inspirational Quotes and Wise Words From a Legendary Icon…Maya Angelou (2019) Like finding a treasure in the sand, a little 5 by 6 volume brimming with Mayaisms that will uplift, lending clarity as it strokes your cheek.
One that gently strokes mine…
When you learn teach…when you get give.
Happy reading everyone.
What a privilege.
SB