Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson stopped by yesterday to sign copies of An Army at Dawn. This book is intended to be the first installment of a trilogy that will describe the liberation of Europe in World War II. This first book is about the liberation of North Africa, and the next two will cover Italy and France. Naturally, I asked him how the books were coming along, and he told me that he had put them on hold while he was embedded with the 101st Airborne in Iraq, and now he is writing a book about that experience. It will be exciting to see the many quality books that are being written by journalists and writers who spent time over there. We also discussed John Keegan, who seems to be the authority when it comes to popular histories of war. Atkinson professed to loving both The Mask of Command, which studies generals and commanders in wars from Ancient Greece to the present, and The Face of Battle, which gives similar treatment to the common soldier. Later on, while I was reading about those two Keegan books, I was pleased to discover that he has a new book that is a mere two weeks from hitting the shelves. It is enticingly titled, Intelligence in Warfare: From Nelson to Hitler.
Author Sighting
More New Books
Last time I was at the book store I noticed an interesting cultural history sort of book called Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. The “city” is, of course, New York City and the book uses rats as a vehicle to explore the New York’s intricacies and tribulations. The author of the book, Robert Sullivan, is known for his quirky, narrative-based non-fictions, The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt. If you’re into the whole rat thing check out this Newsday journalist’s account of an evening spent “ratting” with Sullivan. From rats to elephants: during my daily travels the other day I caught an interview with the author of an interesting-sounding book on one of the local public radio shows. Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear is a history of the magic act written by a master magician, Jim Steinmeyer. The book describes the origins of tricks that have become magic cliches, like sawing a lady in half. He also seeks to describe the interesting blend of mystery, showmanship, and hucksterism that embodied the turn of the century magic show. Finally, I mentioned the other day the centennial of the birth of Dr. Suess. It turns out that there is a sturdy coffee table book to commemorate this event. It displays his life and work and bears the somewhat dubious title: The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss.
British artist illustrates the war
British paper The Times hired artist Matthew Cook to do illustrations of the action in Iraq. The resulting drawings and paintings provide a different look at what’s going on over there. An online gallery shows him at work along with a bunch of the illustrations, and an article tells his story. He’s also got a gallery show coming up in London apparently.
Silly names
C.S. Forester’s fictional naval hero, Horatio Hornblower (of the Hornblower series of adventure novels), has one of the more memorably silly names in literary history. So, British researchers were quite surprised when they found a real life Hornblower in centuries old census records. Other silly names uncovered: Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, and many more.
A Report on the Vonnegut Effect
Airplane Reading
New Books: Ben Ehrenreich, Jeffrey Ford, Kate Grenville
The Suitors, a debut novel by Ben Ehrenreich, draws from Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses. The story is another rewrite of those famous epics – there are so many, but then again it’s a fertile place to start – set, as PW puts it, “in a never-never land equal parts contemporary America and classical antiquity.” Ehrenreich is best-known as a widely published journalist whose work regularly appears in the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and The Believer. Ehrenreich is the son of participatory journalist, Barbara, author of the best-selling Nickel and Dimed, in which she tried to get by on minimum wage.Jeffrey Ford’s excellent novel The Girl in the Glass is currently being discussed in exhaustive detail at the Litblog Co-op blog, but he’s got a new book out, too. The Empire of Ice Cream is a collection of stories. Ford, as I recently had the pleasure of discovering, is like very few others writing today. Though he might be labeled as a writer of “speculative fiction,” his work doesn’t really need a label at all, as it is sure to be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good story told well. To see what I mean, check out a few stories from The Empire of Ice Cream: “The Annals of Eelin-Ok,” “The Empire of Ice Cream,” and “A Man of Light.”Kate Grenville’s novel, The Secret River, has already won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and has been shortlisted for the Miles Frankin Prize awarded to the year’s best Australian novel. The Secret River is a historical novel about the convict settlement of Australia and follows the story of a particular convict named William Thornhill. The Guardian writes: “There isn’t much underlying moral ambiguity in this book: the costs of settlement are appalling, which makes Thornhill its villain, even while he carries its sympathetic weight.” Grenville previously won the Orange Prize in 2001 for her novel The Idea of Perfection.
Essential interview
Fans of George Saunders should head over to Maud’s blog where he has been interviewed. What’s the occasion? Saunders has a new book out (today!) called The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.