Category Archives: Books

Books

Grin and Bear it: “The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh: How E.H. Shepard Illustrated an Icon” is a Delight!

Since his first appearance in 1924, Winnie-the-Pooh has become a beloved household name. Created by A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh Bear was illustrated from the start by E.H. Shepard; the two of them had an unusual partnership for the time, in that their books were very much a collaboration between author and illustrator. While the Winnie-the-Pooh books have never been out of print, the story of how the images of the much-loved bear—and his friends—came to be has remained largely untold.

We were delighted to find and read The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh: How E.H. Shepard Illustrated an Icon (Harper Design, $29.99), James Campbell offers a thorough account of the origins and development of the characters who populate the Hundred Acre Wood, complete with more than 125 images, many of which have never been published before—including previously unseen sketches, the first illustrations of Pooh, finished artwork, personal family photographs, and memorabilia. The husband of Shepard’s great-granddaughter, Campbell has overseen the artist’s estate for years, and is uniquely qualified to offer just such a deep dive into his iconic characters.

The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh: How E.H. Shepard Illustrated an Icon by [Campbell, James]

Campbell takes us back to the early days of Shepard’s friendship and collaboration with Milne, and Winnie-the-Pooh’s first appearance alongside a poem in Punch magazine. He traces the history back to the initial inspirations—the real Christopher Robin’s own teddy bear was the first model for Pooh, but was deemed too threatening, so Shepard turned to his own son’s teddy named Growler, which quickly resulted in the more cuddly, charming bear we know today.

Campbell details the collaboration between Milne and Shepard on the four Winnie-the-Pooh books—When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six, and The House on Pooh Corner—and the real-life toy inspirations for characters like Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, and Roo. Even after Milne stopped writing about Pooh in 1928, Shepard continued to provide new illustrations for franchised projects; and he went on to draw, color, and illustrate new editions of the four books for the rest of his life.

In addition to the beautiful illustrations throughout, The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh features a keepsake art print and a foreword by E.H. Shepard’s granddaughter, Minette Hunt. With Disney’s feature film Christopher Robin coming this summer, there’s sure to be a renewed interest in the classic characters, and this book is a perfect collector’s item for the many fans of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends.

Books, TV

Two new books, published in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, remind us of 100 great flicks

Running Press has two interesting books, published in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies.

Spanning nine decades and showcasing the most memorable songs, dazzling dancing, and brightest stars ever to grace the silver screen, TCM’s Must-See Musicals: 50 Show-Stopping Movies We Can’t Forget by Richard Barrios ($24.99) is a guide to the greatest musicals of all time.

Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Musicals: 50 Show-Stopping Movies We Can't Forget

Movie musicals have been a part of pop culture since films began to talk, nine decades ago. From the premiere of The Jazz Singer in 1927 to La La Land in 2016, musicals have sung and danced over a vast amount of territory, thrilling audiences the world over.

In their uniquely entertaining way, they transport us to marvelous places: a Technicolor land over the rainbow in The Wizard of Oz, a ballroom in Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek, a day in the life with The Fab Four in A Hard Day’s Night; and Berlin’s seedy Kit Kat Club on the eve of the Nazi takeover in Cabaret.

Spanning nine decades and branded by the most trusted authority on film, Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-Fi : by Sloan De Forest () showcases 50 of the most shocking, weird, wonderful, and mind-bending movies ever made.

Science fiction films have been around since the dawn of cinema, but never before have they been more respected or widespread than now, in the 21st century, with blockbusters released on a regular basis. Unlike other genres, sci-fi has never gone out of style and has been well-represented across all eras of filmmaking. With that in mind, Must-See Sci-Fi:  50 Movies That Are Out of This World ($24.99), profiles 50 unforgettable films, including beloved favorites like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), groundbreaking shockers like Planet of the Apes (1968) and Alien (1979), and lesser-known landmarks like Things to Come (1936) and Solaris (1972).

Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-fi: 50 Movies That Are Out of This World

Illustrated by astounding color and black-and-white images, the book presents the best of the genre, detailing through insightful commentary and behind-the-scenes stories why each film remains essential viewing.

Books

The Story of Chang & Eng, the Original Siamese Twins, is told in “Inseparable”

Two are always more interesting than pne.
No?
In classic literature it is often the foil or “other” who reveals something crucial about the hero. So it goes in the case of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, whose career of posing as an “other” on stages across the country would come to reveal much about the American psyche. In Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History (Liveright, $28.95), Yunte Huang recounts the peculiar, and often ironic, rise of Chang and Eng from sideshow curiosity to Southern gentry—an unlikely story that exposes the foibles of a young republic eager to tyrannize and delight in the abnormal.

First “discovered” by the enterprising Scotsman Robert Hunter in Siam, the twins left their family behind on April 1, 1829 to set sail for Boston. The whirlwind tour—through Boston, London, New York, Philadelphia and New York—was only supposed to last five years. But the land they wandered into was one newly taken with such curiosities “imported” from exotic lands, a nation reveling in the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; a home, in other words, obsessed with “monsters.”

Famous for their quick wit (they once refunded a one-eyed man half his ticket because he “couldn’t see as much as the others”), Chang and Eng became a nationwide sensation, heralded as living symbols of the humbugged freak.  Their unrivaled success quickened the birth of mass entertainment in America, leading to the minstrel show and the rise of showmen like P.T. Barnum. Breaking off from their manager in 1832 to strike out on their own, they eventually earned enough to leave show business altogether and settle in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

And it is here that we encounter a twist. Miraculously, despite the 1790 Naturalization Act which limited citizenship to “free white persons” (until 1952), Chang and Eng became American citizens under the Superior Court of North Carolina. They then went on to marry two white sisters—Sarah and Adelaide Yates—and father 23 children despite the interracial marriage ban (in place until 1967). They owned 18 slaves and became staunch advocates for the Confederacy, so much so that their sons fought for the South during the Civil War.

Image result for chang and eng photos

Bringing an Asian-American perspective to the lives of the Bunker twins for the very first time, Huang reveals that it was perhaps their very “otherness” that worked for them: they were neither one individual, or quite two. As Chinese immigrants before the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the states, they were neither white or non-white; in US Census Bureau documents, they were deemed “honorary whites.” Thus they joined the ranks of the Southern gentry.

Animating a history we have never seen clearly before, the book is not only a sensational biography, but a profound investigation into our enduring penchant for finding feast in the abnormal—a tradition, Huang reveals, as American as apple pie. One that, in perhaps the greatest “act” of their career, Chang and Eng were able to manipulate and subvert.

Books

Richard Munson’s “Tesla” asks: Did Tesla’s eccentricities eclipsed his genius?

It’s a shame many still don’t know his name. Or his genius.
Nikola Tesla invented the radio, the induction motor, the neon lamp, and the remote control. His scientific discoveries made possible X-ray technology, wireless communications, and radar, and he predicted the Internet and even the smart watch. Today, he is hailed as a visionary by the likes of Elon Musk (whose electronic cars bear his name) and Larry Page, the founder of Google. His image appears on stamps, the Encyclopedia Brittanica ranks him as one of the ten most interesting historical figures, and Life magazine lists him as one of the one hundred most famous people of the last millennium. And yet, his contemporaries and fellow inventors Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi achieved far greater commercial success and popular recognition.

In Tesla: Inventor of the Modern (W. W. Norton & Company, $26.95), Richard Munson asks whether Tesla’s eccentricities eclipsed his genius. Ultimately, he delivers an enthralling biography that illuminates every facet of Tesla’s life while justifying his stature as the most original inventor of the late nineteenth century.

Born at midnight during a lightning storm, between “today and tomorrow,” as Munson writes, Tesla’s unusual entry into the world foreshadowed a life in flux. He was raised a Serb in what is now Croatia by a religious father and a mother who encouraged his early scientific investigations. Though he never married and often craved isolation, he could be a master showman, entertaining crowds by exposing himself to thousands of volts of electricity. He enjoyed lavish living—he dressed impeccably and lived for years at the Waldorf Astoria—but died penniless after letting a series of promising business opportunities slip away. His alternating-current system formed the basis of the electric grid and long-distance electrical transmission, and yet he spent his later years feeding the pigeons in Bryant Park, speculating about communication with other planets, and maintaining an unusual exercise regimen (including toe-wiggling exercises) that he claimed sustained his health. He was alternately praised as a “man ahead of his time” and labeled an eccentric unable to draw practical application from his prophecies.

In this authoritative and highly readable biography, Munson explores the paradoxes that defined this underappreciated genius, as well as the relationships that altered the course of his life. Drawing on colorful accounts of his lectures and demonstrations, Munson brings to vivid life the “War of the Currents,” during which Tesla and Edison publicly debated the merits of direct and alternating currents. Compelling excerpts from Tesla’s correspondence with George Westinghouse reveal the complexities of this partnership—Westinghouse brought Tesla’s polyphase system to the world, but the company’s struggle to survive a culture of robber barons and monopolies led Tesla to sacrifice lucrative royalty payments. An examination of Tesla’s friendship with Robert and Katharine Johnson reveals the inventor’s human side, as does an account of his acquaintance with Mark Twain.

Image result for tesla inventor

In these and other relationships both personal and professional, Tesla alternately amazed and infuriated his admirers, often letting ego and stubbornness get in the way of business deals that might have converted his visions into reality and commercial success. But, as Munson argues, even his failures in business and public relations can’t obscure the fact that he “made at least five outstanding scientific discoveries . . . that others ‘rediscovered’ up to forty years later and for which they then won Nobel Prizes.” He was a “poet and visionary,” from whom we can still learn today, an out-of-the-box thinker whose regard for innovation over money speaks to our current need for clean energy solutions.

While others, most notably Edison, produced more recognizable products, Tesla’s discoveries power our modern economy, even if those of us benefiting from them understand little of his contribution. In Tesla, Richard Munson grants the inventor the recognition he deserves for both his practical achievements and prophetic visions, skillfully placing him within the context of his time while acknowledging the many ways in which he lived outside of time, ultimately ushering in a future that others could not yet see.

Books

Why do we still love “Little Women”? Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters Answers the Question

Just in time for the 150th anniversary this September of the publication of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel comes Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (W. W. Norton & Company, $27.95 hardcover). This delightful and illuminating book tells the story of the novel that has captured the imaginations of generations of young readers and adults alike, and explores its phenomenal staying power.

Author Anne Boyd Rioux, who first read Little Women in her twenties and fell in love with it, tells us the unlikely story of the novel’s creation, beginning with the moment in September of 1867 that Louisa May Alcott was asked to write a book for girls. Alcott, who had always wished she were a boy, wrote in her journal that she “never liked girls or knew any” other than her sisters. Despite her initial reservations to write a book specifically for girls, she accepted the assignment for the same reason she had written so many other stories for publication: she needed the money to support her family.

A year later, on September 30, 1868, the first part of Little Women was published to great acclaim. The first printing sold out in a matter months. Fans clamored for a sequel, desperate to know the futures of the March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Alcott finished the novel’s second part by the end of 1868, completing a story that would shape children’s books, influence American literature, and inspire generations up until today.

In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux tells the story of the Alcott family and how they inspired the novel. Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s transcendentalist father, championed his daughters in their creative pursuits but was ultimately unable to provide for his family. Abigail May Alcott, the Marmee of the Alcott girls, while a steadying force, had times of depression and confessed to feeling angry nearly every day of her life. Rioux details how the lives of each of Louisa’s sisters—Anna, Lizzie, and May—paralleled those of their fictional counterparts, and how Louisa came to be thought of by readers, who would make unannounced visits to her house, as nearly interchangeable with Jo.

Rioux also traces the novel’s influence through the 150 years since its publication and its appearances on Broadway, radio, television, and three times, so far, on the silver screen. She also describes the character of Jo’s notable influence on diverse women writers as a model to which they could aspire and explains how characters, including Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series, can be seen as her descendants.

The book is ultimately a tribute to the novel that has played a vital role in the way decades of girls understood family, sisterhood, love, and their own capabilities. Rioux rightfully places the importance of both Louisa May Alcott and her great work in the fabric of American literature.

Books

Chuck Palahniuk’s “Adjustment Day” tells the story of a U.S on the brink of chaos

For more than two decades, Chuck Palahniuk has been holding up a dark mirror so that we might view ourselves—all too often leading us to wonder, is the darkness within the mirror or within our own psyches? Palahniuk’s works have been hailed as “astonishing,” “diabolical,” “powerful,” “important.” His reality-bending tales have sparked debate and stirred controversy.

Now, Palahniuk has returned home to the publisher that launched his career 22 years ago with Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Co. has released Adjustment Day ($26.95), a book that does for the current apocalyptic zeitgeist what Fight Club did for ’90scorporate unease. Indeed, Palahniuk has said: “Adjustment Day is to Fight Club what Atlas Shrugged is to The Fountainhead—a bigger package of bold characters and norm-bashing ideas.”

In this devastating and comic novel of rebellion, he looks at the heart of America and finds it frightening. Palahniuk has never pulled his punches. Here is a book designed to challenge, to provoke, to enrage—everyone. Adjustment Day tells the story of a United States on the brink of chaos—a simmering cauldron, ready to boil over.

The book calls to mind a politicized Hieronymus Bosch panel, wherein the disaffected citizens of a lost world prepare to take control—or blow everything up trying. And the directives for these widespread acts of malice and assassination all seem to be coming from a single source: a mysterious blue-black book with a gold-embossed cover.  A book that brands the carrier as a hero.  A volume found in no library, and which can be purchased in no bookshop.  A book that men carry “every day, everywhere, as they’d carry a flag into battle.”

 

Books, TV

Oh! We love Guy Branum. Chubby, gay and fucking funny as hell!

Oh, we do love Guy Branum. The openly gay man has written for The Mindy Project and Billy on the Street, as well The New York Times and Slate. We’ve seen him on Chelsea, Lately and is currently the host and star of Talk Show the Game Show on TruTV.

Welcome his debut book, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture (Atria Books, $26). Branum always felt as if he were on the outside looking in, especially being gay and overweight. While other boys played outside, he stayed indoors reading Greek mythology. In this collection of personal essays, Branum writes about finding his way out of the darkness of his insular upbringing and finding himself as a stand-up comedian and TV show writer.

The book is about “the life I was supposed to lead as a sad, fat,
closeted bumpkin and my decision to be something thoroughly more fabulous,” Branum writes. “My life has not been practical, it has not been meaningful . . . but it has at least stayed interesting. Because a goddess’s job isn’t to be good, it’s to have compelling stories lyre players can tell about her at the courts of kings and princes.”

My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un)Popular Culture

These essays read like a dance re-mix of Hillbilly Elegy and David Sedaris’ Naked—they’re really, really good. We pissed in our pants reading his trademark comic takes on pop culture phenomenon and sacred cows—from Bewitched to The Devil Wears Prada, Entourage to This is Us.

Others rave about the work:

  • Tiffany Haddish: “Guy Branum is one the funniest men I know.  He is Smart, Fast, Clever, and Funny!  (As Fuck!!) Go ahead and buy his book Cuz….He Ready!”
  • Billy Eicher: “Guy Branum not only makes you laugh out loud, his perspective is singular, genuinely ballsy, and essential.”
  • Ali Wong: “Empowering, funny and so incredibly different than anything you’ve ever read.”
  • Lindy West: “Guy Branum knows everything. A lot of people are funny, though few are as funny as Guy, but his intellectual curiosity and moral sure-footedness make him not just a comic but a lifeline. Long live our Patron Saint of Too Much.
  • Jon Lovett “Generous and withering, hilarious and precisely observed, putting his incredible talent toward trying to understand what it means to feel apart from the world. I wish I could give this book to the fourteen year-old version of myself, who probably wouldn’t have appreciated how much he needed it. You’ll devour every story and be struck by how lucky we all are to have Guy’s gay voice. Just buy this fucking book you idiots.”
Books

“Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love” is an absorbing introspective account of a controversial life

During a time when there has been unprecedented concern about the support of religious leaders for political figures, a timely new memoir appears from one of America’s most influential religious leaders and a spiritual counselor to some of the country’s high-profile policymakers. Rob Schenck has spent decades in the spotlight at the epicenter of faith and politics, but several years ago, he stepped back to assess the spiritual cost of his involvement in politics. Long a polarizing figure revered and reviled in equal measure, this man of God has an indisputably compelling story to tell with a special message for our troubled times.

In his timely new memoir, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love (Harper, $26.99), Schenck recounts his three conversions, from nominal Judaism to right-wing Christianity to pro-gun control activism sparked by a return to the fundamental tenets of the gospel. This deeply introspective account offers a revealing glimpse of a remarkable life and a highly controversial career, while also providing an invaluable lens through which to view the phenomenon of evangelical support for Donald Trump and his presidency.

Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister's Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love

Along with his twin brother, Schenck converted from Judaism to Christianity as a teenager in the ’70s. Public ministry became his passion and his purpose. In the ’80s, he helped shape and lead the national anti-abortion movement Operation Rescue and emerged as an aggressive presence on the front lines of the anti-abortion crusade, resulting in numerous arrests and a stint in jail. Later he helped then Chief Justice of Alabama Roy Moore install a monument of the Ten Commandments in the state’s judicial building and did jail time defending it against a court-ordered removal. He enjoyed a swift rise to national political prominence. The ambitious outsider quickly became a powerful fixture embedded in the GOP establishment, serving as advisor and minister to the D.C. elite in what was a heady and personally gratifying trajectory.

Yet, despite fulfilling his dream of shaping the conservative agenda in significant ways, Schenck experienced a profound spiritual crisis several years ago. His participation in a documentary about evangelical attitudes towards guns and lethal self-defense—as well as his immersion in the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a World War II-era German pastor and Nazi resister—instigated a dramatic and often painful reckoning with his conscience, resulting in his most radical transformation of all. Taking responsibility for his part in allowing the sacred to be coopted by the secular and for veering from the humble and biblical path, he recommitted fully to Jesus’ teachings. His mission now, undertaken with an open heart and a contemplative mind: to liberate the evangelical community from the oppression of a politicized gospel, and to urge Washington conservatives to forsake the politics of hate, fear, and violence.

Image result for rob schenck

With candor and unflinching self-scrutiny, Schenck opens up about a range of incendiary topics including:

  • His perspective on the NRA, the Second Amendment, and the specific measures he advocates in his calls for stricter gun control;
  • Where he stands on the issue of abortion rights today;
  • Why he did not vote for Donald Trump and his take on the 45th president;
  • His current attitude about those he has condemned in the past, from women seeking abortions to Democrats to LGBTQ people;
  • How his beliefs about homosexuality and same-sex marriage have taken a uniquely principled perspective—in sur­prising ways.

As he reflects on his extraordinary journey—from his early commitment to God to his ego-driven deviation from his values to his redemptive reclamation of the gospel’s core principles—the Rob Schenck illuminated in these pages is very human, universally relatable, and altogether inspirational.

Books

“How Fear Works” argues that one of the main drivers is unraveling of moral authority

Ever have that feeling of being “scared shitless”?
We have.
In How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury Continuum, $28), Frank Furedi argues that one of the main drivers of the culture of fear is unraveling of moral authority. Fear appears to provide a provisional solution to moral uncertainty and is for that reason embraced by a variety of interests, parties, and individuals. Furedi predicts that until society finds a more positive orientation towards uncertainty the politicization of fear will flourish.
This is a really good read.

Fear has become a problem in its own right to the extent that people now use the term “culture of fear” as an everyday idiom. It has become detached from its material and physical source and experienced as a secular version of a transcendental force. It has become a “Perspective” accepted throughout society. Furedi claims that this perspective has acquired a dominant status because in contrast to other options it appears to be singularly effective in influencing people’s behavior.
Society is trained to believe that the threats it faces are incalculable and cannot be controlled or regulated. The acceptance of this outlook has been paralleled by the cultivation of helplessness and passivity—all this has resulted in a redefinition of personhood. As a consequence, we are constantly searching for new forms of security, both physical and ontological. What is the role of the media in promoting fear and who benefits from this culture of fear? These are some of the issues Furedi tackles and much more.

Books, Music

Any Major Dude Will Tell You Not to Miss Barney Hoskyns’ anthology of all things Steely Dan

Hear that? Those are the notes that music journalist Barney Hoskyns is hitting in his unprecedented new anthology of all things Steely Dan:  Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion (The Overlook Press, $27.95).

Published within a year of founding member Walter Becker’s passing, this is a first of its kind book about Steely Dan—an anthology of the most essential critical dispatches about the band—rants and raves alike, alongside a selection of highly informative profiles and interviews from the ’70s through the ’00s.

In the vein of Hoskyns’s previous book JoniI: The Anthology, Major Dudes serves simultaneously as an accessible critical introduction to the group, a treasure trove of little-known facts (did you know that a pre-fame Becker and Fagen once recorded a B-movie soundtrack, or ghostwrote for Barbra Streisand?), and an invaluable collection of primary source documents, many of which Hoskyns has rescued from the archives of now-defunct magazines and newspapers.

Any major dude will tell you not to miss it.