Both are by authors who assume that to make sense of today's China, we need to understand the clashes between China and the West of what in the PRC is called China's "century of humiliation," lasting from the 1840s through the 1940s.
I didn't plan to make a woman exclaim, "But he's such a dick." (Because the book that inspired her is entitled Lost on Treasure Island: A Memoir of Longing, Love, and Lousy Choices in New York City, and because I'm the author I assume that by 'he,' she meant me.)
It was late at night, and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had swapped her hot cups of tea for whiskey sours. The room was filled with cigarette smoke.
Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain provides a splendid opportunity, for anyone open-minded enough to take it, to sort out the relationship between beliefs and reality, superstition and science.
With Sarah Palin making headlines for a gaffe on Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, it seems an apt time to pick up Lepore's The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History.
Marcus Aurelius was Rome's last great emperor, but there's nothing regal about him. He snatches time to write without once mentioning his primary task -- leading the most powerful army in the world.
Even if you don't have de la Fressange's striking looks and height (or her diamonds), Parisian Chic offers advice for looking and feeling chic the French way -- at all ages.
In the way that Rick is capturing commercial and critical success and Keen is impacting the education profession, both have one thing in common: They have "hit it big" as authors.
The gift of artistic vision on the large stage of life is rare. When witnessed it is so overwhelming few can appreciate its impact for years to come.
Gabrielle Hamilton, chef/owner of Prune in New York City, stopped by The Interview Show at Union Hall in Brooklyn to talk about her life, restaurant and more.
Pablo Neruda once wrote, "We all arrive by different streets, by unequal languages, at Silence." But just how the great poet arrived at his ultimate silence is the subject of heated debate in his home country, Chile.
I was born with an unhealthy need for everyone to be looking at me, so it would seem that writing a book about myself would be right up my alley. But recounting my worst behavior with brutal honesty presented some problems.
It's one thing to choose your filters. It's quite another to have your interests assumed and accounted for by software without your knowledge.
Atwood is socially conscious without being preachy. This is certainly the case in three dystopian novels that say a lot about things like women's rights and the despoiling of the environment but do that via the books' interesting characters and plots.
With TV Oprah-free at the moment, authors just want to win the literary musical chairs that gets them a seat across the desk from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
If you aren't familiar with Sedaris, listen to "Santaland Diaries" -- a diary of his Christmas as an elf at Macy's -- which catapulted him to fame. It generated more requests for tapes than any story in Morning Edition history.
Poetry contests are about the only remaining way to publish a first poetry book. And that's one way poetry is being killed in this country, reduced to consensus-by-committee, stripped of individual vision.
Jessica Lost is the true story of a mother and daughter separated at birth. Their joint chronicle of an almost life-long separation, search for each other and dramatic reunion is part mystery, part love story.
Today is the anniversary of what John Fowles calls "one of the most famous private thunderbolts in the history of love," to which one would have "almost to go back to Dante and Beatrice to find its equal."
Steve Volk, 2011.06.07
C. Christine Fair, 2011.06.07
Glenn C. Altschuler, 2011.06.07
