Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome
Douglas Boin, 2020
W.W. Norton & Company
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393635690
Summary
Denied citizenship by the Roman Empire, a soldier named Alaric changed history by unleashing a surprise attack on the capital city of an unjust empire.
Stigmatized and relegated to the margins of Roman society, the Goths were violent "barbarians" who destroyed "civilization," at least in the conventional story of Rome’s collapse.
But a slight shift of perspective brings their history, and ours, shockingly alive.
Alaric grew up near the river border that separated Gothic territory from Roman. He survived a border policy that separated migrant children from their parents, and he was denied benefits he likely expected from military service.
Romans were deeply conflicted over who should enjoy the privileges of citizenship. They wanted to buttress their global power, but were insecure about Roman identity; they depended on foreign goods, but scoffed at and denied foreigners their own voices and humanity.
In stark contrast to the rising bigotry, intolerance, and zealotry among Romans during Alaric’s lifetime, the Goths, as practicing Christians, valued religious pluralism and tolerance. The marginalized Goths, marked by history as frightening harbingers of destruction and of the Dark Ages, preserved virtues of the ancient world that we take for granted.
The three nights of riots Alaric and the Goths brought to the capital struck fear into the hearts of the powerful, but the riots were not without cause.
Combining vivid storytelling and historical analysis, Douglas Boin reveals the Goths’ complex and fascinating legacy in shaping our world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Douglas Boin is an associate professor of history at Saint Louis University and the author of Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome (2020) and Coming Out Christian in the Roman World (2015), as well as two scholarly books on antiquity. He lives in Austin, Texas. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[R]ichly detailed.... Boin conveys this scholarly insight to general readers in a cogent, readable text that vividly conveys the fear and confusion that surrounded the issue of immigrants’ rights in a period of declining Roman power. He draws the contemporary parallels with a freedom that teeters on the brink of overstatement, but his handling of the relocated Gothic boys’ deaths is characteristic of his bold yet scrupulous reading of ancient sources.
Boston Globe
[A] smart book for the general reader.… Alaric can never emerge as a fully three-dimensional figure, but in Boin’s hands he is lifted convincingly from the realm of brutish caricature…. [Alaric the Goth is] not a polemic. It never invokes modern times explicitly… [but] intended perhaps to be slyly allusive, [which] comes across as winks.
Atlantic
[E]ye-opening…. Taking issue with depictions of Alaric and the Goths as violent barbarians in histories…[Boin's] brisk and well-documented account reveals the Roman Empire… rife with xenophobia and political conflict.… [An] invigorating rehash of ancient times.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he parallels Boin draws to current-day [immigration] issues… are effective, but the positioning of Alaric specifically as an immigrant child torn from his parents by Rome's border policies stumbles given the amount of mights and maybes that Boin must hedge his statements with. —Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA
Library Journal
Anyone who appreciates vividly detailed stories of the past or is morbidly curious about the dying days of a wealthy, self-important, diverse, autocratic global power should pick this up.
Booklist
A fresh look at… the Roman Empire.… Although Alaric never comes fully to life…, Boin delivers a revealing account of the late Roman empire, which was misgoverned, retreating from its frontier provinces, and almost perpetually at war…. An admirable history of a lesser-known Roman era.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for ALARIC THE GOTH … then take off on your own:
1. What were you taught in history about the Goths, and how does Douglas Boin's account differ, perhaps even contradict, what you learned?
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) The same question can be asked about the sack of Rome in 410. What were you taught about those eventful three days, and what does Boin tell us? According to the author, the sack was not unjustified. Agree? Disagree?
3. Boin takes on a near impossible task as a historian vs. a novelist: he attempts to flesh out a real-life character about which little is actually known. How well do you think he does in putting flesh on old bones? Note that he makes ample use of "must have" and "not hard to imagine" and other conditional phrases. Do those phrases detract from the veracity of his portrait of Alaric? Or does his reasoning, even if conditional, make logical sense and help create to a vivid picture?
4. How would you describe the late Roman empire? Much has been made in book reviews and author interviews that Boin might intentionally be drawing out similarities to our own present culture. Do you see any connections?
5. What were the difficulties that Goths, including Alaric, faced as they made their way through Rome's social and military hierarchy?
6. How does Boin view the fact that Alaric turned against the Romans, who had raised and trained him. Deserting his former commrades, he fought on the side of—and led—the Goths? How do you view Alaric's decision?
7. What, according to Boin, did the Goths and other border peoples want from the Romans?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Patrick Radden Keefe, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385521314
Summary
From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs.
They never saw her again.
Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it.
In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress—with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with.
The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past…
…Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1976
• Where—Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University; J.D., Yale University; M.Phil, Cambridge University; M.Sc., London School of Economics
• Awards—National Magazine Award–Feature Writing
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter.
His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and New York Review of Books, among others, and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC.
Patrick received the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun," was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Book Reviews
If it seems as if I'm reviewing a novel, it is because Say Nothing has lots of the qualities of good fiction, to the extent that I'm worried I'll give too much away, and I'll also forget that Jean McConville was a real person, as were—are—her children. And her abductors and killers. Keefe is a terrific storyteller.… He brings his characters to real life. The book is cleverly structured. We follow people—victim, perpetrator, back to victim—leave them, forget about them, rejoin them decades later. It can be read as a detective story.… What Keefe captures best, though, is the tragedy, the damage and waste, and the idea of moral injury.… Say Nothing is an excellent account of the Troubles.
Roddy Doyle - New York Times Book Review
An exceptional new book… [that] explores this brittle landscape [of Northern Ireland] to devastating effect… [and] fierce reporting.… The story of McConville's disappearance, its crushing effects on her children, the discovery of her remains in 2003, and the efforts of authorities to hold someone accountable for her murder occupy the bulk of Say Nothing. Along the way, Mr. Keefe navigates the flashpoints, figures and iconography of the Troubles: anti-Catholic discrimination, atrocities by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and occupation by the British Army, grisly IRA bombings in Belfast and London, the internment of Irish soldiers and the hunger strikes of Bobby Sands and others, the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, unionist paramilitaries, the "real" IRA and the “provisionals," counter-intelligence, the Armalite rile and the balaclava. It is a dizzying panorama, yet Mr. Keefe presents it with clarity.
Michael O'Donnell - Wall Street Journal
Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book Say Nothing investigates the mystery of a missing mother and reveals a still-raw violent past.… The book often reads like a novel, but as anyone familiar with his work for The New Yorker can attest, Keefe is an obsessive reporter and researcher, a master of narrative nonfiction.… An incredible story.
Rolling Stone
As the narrator of a whodunit.… [Keefe] excels, exposing the past, layer by layer, like the slow peel of a rotten onion, as he works to answer a question that the British government, the Northern Irish police and the McConville family has been seeking the answer to for nearly 50 years.… Keefe draws the characters in this drama finely and colorfully.… Say Nothing is a reminder of Northern Ireland's ongoing trauma. And with Brexit looming, it's a timely warning that it doesn't take much to open old wounds in Ireland, and make them fresh once more.
Paddy Hirsch - NPR
★ [Keefe] incorporates a real-life whodunit into a moving, accessible account of the violence that has afflicted Northern Ireland.… Tinged with immense sadness, this work never loses sight of the humanity of even those who committed horrible acts in support of what they believed in.
Publishers Weekly
★ Keefe blends… espionage, murder mystery, and political history into a single captivating narrative.… [He] turns a complicated and often dark subject into a riveting and informative page-turner that will engage readers of both true crime and popular history. —Timothy Berge, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown
Library Journal
Keefe’s reconstruction of events and the players involved is careful and assured.… A harrowing story of politically motivated crime that could not have been better told.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SAY NOTHING ... then take off on your own:
1. A saying at the time of the Troubles went, “If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on." The times were certainly confusing: for those on the outside of the conflict, let alone those on the inside. Does Patrick Radden Okeefe clear up the confusion for his readers—for you? In what way has reading Say Nothing increased your understanding of Northern Ireland's decades-long (many say centuries-long) struggle?
2. Keefe has zeroed in on the murder of Jean McConville. Given the level of brutality and carnage that took place for so long, why might the author have used that particular episode as the opening of his book?
3. In what way would you describe (as some reviewers have) Say Nothing as a murder mystery?
4. Which individuals—in this book of real life people—do you feel more sympathy for than others? What about those individuals whose actions disturbed you? Despite all the carnage, are you able to find any humanity in those who committed acts of violence? Does it matter that they acted in service to a cause, one they believed in passionately?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Dolours Price and others feel that the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement took away any justification for the bombings and abductions she had participated in. How would you answer her?
6. What is the significance of the book's title, "Say Nothing." What are the ways that phrase resonates throughout the book?
7. Since the peace accord, a "collective denial" has washed over the Belfast society. Is this obfuscation, a hiding of sorts, beneficial? Has it lead to a genuine, settled peace? Would an open reconciliation, through confession and forgiveness, work? What are the varying points of view, including yours?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire
Amy Butler Greenfield, 2005
HarperCollins
352
ISBN-13: 9780060522766
Summary
In the sixteenth century, one of the world's most precious commodities was cochineal, a legendary red dye treasured by the ancient Mexicans and sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors.
Shipped to Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had ever seen. Soon Spain's cochineal monopoly was worth a fortune.
As the English, French, Dutch, and other Europeans joined the chase for cochineal—a chase that lasted for more than three centuries—a tale of pirates, explorers, alchemists, scientists, and spies unfolds.
A Perfect Red evokes with style and verve this history of a grand obsession, of intrigue, empire, and adventure in pursuit of the most desirable color on earth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969
• Raised—Adirondack Mountains of New York State, USA
• Education—B.A., Williams College; graduate studies, University of Wisconsin and Oxford
• Awards—PEN/Albrand Award, Veolia Prix du Livre Environnement, Beacon of Freedom Award
• Currently—lives in the English Cotswolds, UK
Amy Butler Greenfield was on her way to a history Ph.D. when she changed course to became a writer. She has written four young adult novels, including Virginia Bound (2003) and the Chantress trilogy (2013-2015). She has also written a work of historical nonfiction entitled A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (2005).
Amy grew up in a small town the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Her family lived in a old Victorian house heated mainly by a wood stove in the kitchen. They raised chickens in the barns off the backyard. Of her childhood, Amy recalls roaming with her friends through the mountains, swimming in nearby lakes in the summer, and skating on them in the winter.
I also spent many afternoons reading my heart out in our local Carnegie library. In the summer I wrote plays, and my brothers and friends performed them in a theater we rigged up in one of the barns. I also wrote stories and poems, and I was a passionate diary-keeper. I've loved books and writing as long as I can remember.
In addition to literature, Amy fell in love with history and decided she wanted to teach at the college level. She headed to Williams College for her B.A. and later to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her Ph.D. She also became a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University where she studied Renaissance Europe, imperial Spain, and colonial Latin America.
A few months into her doctoral dissertation, Amy developed Lupus, which led to the revelation that she wanted devote her life to pursuing a long-deferred dream. So rather than complete her Ph.D., she turned to writing novels and "the sweeping histories" she had come to love.
Amy's first two books grew out of research while studying at Oxford. Virginia Bound was inspired by historical accounts she read of young English people who were essentially kidnapped and sent to the new world as indentured servants. Were they lonely? she wondered. Did they yearn for home and family? What happened to them?
Then, while in Spain researching the history of chocolate, a product introduced to Europe from the West Indies, Amy came across documents about another kind of product entirely—the red die that came from the cochineal, a tiny cactus parasite found in Mexico.
Gradually I realized that tons of cochineal had crossed the Atlantic and poured into Seville, where the dark red dye was unloaded on the city docks. I have a visual imagination, and I love color, so this fascinated me. It also amazed me that something so precious could have been forgotten by the modern world. I thought that someday I'd like to write a book about it.
More remarkably, the love of color and textile dyes is part of Amy's heritage. Her Scottish great-grandfather came to the U.S. where he studied dyes and worked in textiles. Eventually, he joined the faculty of Drexel University in Philadelphia as a professor of textile chemistry. His son, Amy's grandfather, worked for dye companies and married a woman who owned a yarn shop. Amy's mother also studied textiles and married a man who worked in physics and chemistry. Out of what would seem a genetic attraction to color came Amy's 2005 history, A Perfect Red.
Amy met her husband David while studying at Oxford. After living for a number of years outside of Boston, Massachusetts, the couple and their children now live on the edge of the Cotswolds in England. There Amy writes, reads, and bakes double-dark-chocolate cake.
She loves music, romantic adventure, history, quirky science, and suspense, which explains how she came to write her first YA novel, Chantress. (Author bio adapted from various web-based sources, including the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[An] intricate history.... Greenfield paints a broad historical panorama, never neglecting the intimate, eccentric, and often absurd human details.
Boston Globe
Greenfield does what the best historical authors do—follows the thread of a story through history without missing a stitch.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
With A Perfect Red, she does for [red] what Mark Kurlansky in Salt did for that common commodity.
Houston Chronicle
A gem of accessible history.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Delightful, rollicking history.... A fun read, well-supported by extensive research.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Elusive, expensive and invested with powerful symbolism, red cloth became the prize possession of the wealthy and well-born, Greenfield writes in her intricate, fully researched and stylishly written history of Europe's centuries-long clamor for cochineal.
Publishers Weekly
Pirates! Kings! Beautiful ladies! Daring spies! Elements essential for a page-turning action/adventure thriller, yes, but who would think they'd turn up in a scholarly examination of a little-known substance called cochinea?... [E]minently entertaining and educational. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Greenfield...brings a practitioner's knowledge to her study of cochineal, a dyestuff that the Spanish conquerors discovered in the great marketplaces of Mexico and soon brought to a world hungry for things red.... A smart blend of science and culture.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why did attitudes toward dyers begin to change in Europe in the thirteenth century, and in what ways did that shift reflect the changing social organization of dyers at the time?
2. How did the shades of red worn by Renaissance Europeans serve as markers of class, and what do these divisions reveal about the general appetite for the color red in this era?
3. How would you describe the process by which female cochineal insects produce the "perfect red"?
4. What role did the Spanish conquistadors of the New World, led by Hernán Cortés, play in the introduction of cochineal to Europe?
5. Which group do you think was more responsible for the popularization of cochineal -- Renaissance Europeans or indigenous Mexicans, and why?
6. What do Spain's efforts to preserve its global monopoly over cochineal suggest about the significance of cochineal to its economy and its national pride?
7. How do historical figures as diverse as the poet, John Donne; the English pirate, Francis Drake; the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain; the Dutch inventor of the microscope, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte factor in the history of cochineal and the European fascination with the mystery of its origin?
8. To what extent was the 19th-century cultivation of cochineal in Spain seen by the Spaniards as a way of salvaging some of the wreckage of their vast empire?
9. How did the advent of synthetic dyes and chemical production of color affect producers of cochineal around the world?
10. How have politics and class influenced the status of the color red in contemporary times?(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir
Ruth Reichl, 2019
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812982381
Summary
Trailblazing food writer and beloved restaurant critic Ruth Reichl took the job (and the risk) of a lifetime when she entered the glamorous, high-stakes world of magazine publishing. Now, for the first time, she chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet.
When Conde Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss.
Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?
This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.
Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl’s leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication.
This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.
Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 16, 1948
• Where—New York City, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—4 James Beard Awards
• Currently—lives in New York City
Ruth Reichl is an American food writer, perhaps best known as the editor-in-chief of the former Gourmet magazine. She has written more than 10 books, including several best-selling memoirs. These include Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (1998); Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table (2001); Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (2005); Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir (2019). Her first novel, Delicious!, was published in 2014.
Born to parents Ernst and Miriam (nee Brudno), Reichl was raised in Greenwich Village in New York City and spent time at a boarding school in Montreal as a young girl. She attended the University of Michigan, where she met her first husband, the artist Douglas Hollis. He graduated in 1970 with a M.A. in Art History.
She and Hollis moved to Berkeley, California, where her interest in food led to her joining the collectively-owned Swallow Restaurant as a chef and co-owner from 1973 to 1977, and where she played an important role in the culinary revolution taking place at the time.
Reichl began her food-writing career with Mmmmm: A Feastiary, a cookbook, in 1972. She moved on to become food writer and editor of New West magazine from 1973 to 1977, then to the Los Angeles Times as its restaurant editor from 1984 to 1993 and food editor and critic from 1990 to 1993. She returned to her native New York City in 1993 to become the restaurant critic for the New York Times before leaving to assume the editorship of Gourmet in 1999.
She is known for her ability to "make or break" a restaurant with her fierce attention to detail and her adventurous spirit. For Reichl, her mission has been to "demystify the world of fine cuisine" (CBS News Online). She has won acclaim with both readers and writers alike for her honesty about some of the not-so-fabulous aspects of haute-couture cuisine.
Though an outsider's perspective, she harshly criticized the sexism prevalent toward women in dine-out experiences, as well as the pretentious nature of the ritziest New York restaurants and restaurateurs alike.
Despite her widely-celebrated success, and hilarious tales of how she used to disguise herself to mask her identity while reviewing, she is quite open about why she stopped. "I really wanted to go home and cook for my family," she says. "I don't think there's one thing more important you can do for your kids than have family dinner" (CBS News Online).
She has been the recipient of four James Beard Awards: in 1996 and 1998 for restaurant criticism, one in 1994 for journalism and in 1984 for Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America; as well as several awards granted by the Association of American Food Journalists. She was also the recipient of the YWCA's Elizabeth Cutter Morrow Award, celebrating the accomplishments of strong, successful women.
Reichl served as host for three Food Network Specials titled "Eating Out Loud" which covered cuisine from each coast and corner of the United States, in New York in 2002, and Miami and San Francisco in 2003. She is also frequents Leonard Lopate's monthly food radio show on WNYC in New York. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2014.)
Book Reviews
We know the ending to this foodie fairy tale, but it's still fun to read Save Me the Plums, Reichl's poignant and hilarious account of what it took to bring the dusty food bible back to life with artistic and literary flair through the glory days of magazine-making.… Each serving of magazine folklore is worth savoring. In fact, Reichl's story is juicier than a Peter Luger porterhouse. Dig in.
Kate Betts - New York Times Book Review
In this smart, touching, and dishy memoir.… Ruth Reichl recalls her years at the helm of Gourmet magazine with clear eyes, a sense of humor, and some very appealing recipes. (A Must-Read Book of Spring 2019)
Town & Country
(Starred review) [R]eaders will relish the behind-the-scenes peek at the workings of the magazine…. Reichl’s revealing memoir is a deeply personal look at a food world on the brink of change.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) This look back in time… [is] part elegy, part picaresque for a recent history that already feels like another era after the Great Recession and the evolution of digital publishing. —Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] lighthearted but dedicated approach to her work [and] her big-hearted approach to the dinner table.… [R]eaders will be delighted by Reichl’s account of an influential magazine, its final days and the many moments that illustrate the ways food can bring people together.
BookPage
(Starred review) The renowned food writer recounts her adventures as editor-in-chief of the noted epicurean magazine Gourmet in its last decade.… A dream job, it ended in the late-2000s recession, when declining ads forced the closing of the venerable publication. An absolutely delightful reading experience.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SAVE ME THE PLUMS … then take off on your own:
1. What made Ruth Reichl's decision to accept the position of editor-in-chief of her favorite magazine a difficult choice: why was she hesitant to take the job? Why did she end up accepting it?
2. How would you describe the inside world of Conde Naste? Talk, for instance, about the perks of Reichl's job— the country club memberships, hairdressers, and much more. Does it all seem outlandish or just down right wonderful, even enviable?
3. How did Reichl manage to juggle the ever-difficult job of being a working mother? What do you make of her comment that "Children… need you around even if they ignore you. In fact, they need you around so they can ignore you"?
4. There is a good deal of humor in Reichl's memoir. Which episodes delighted you most? Ann Patchett's turtle … or David Foster Wallace's lobster festival? Point to some other incidents you found particularly funny or rich.
5. And the food? Which of the many descriptions made your mouth water?
6. At a book signing, Reichl was confronted by a chef who was fired from his job after her restaurant review talked about his "Mushy sole. Cottonly bread." He was unable to find work ever since, he told her. What do you think about the power a single restaurant critic can wield over the lives of people in the food industry? Fair? Unfair?
7. Talk about the ways that Reichl was able to reinvent Gourmet magazine, all the revisions she made in terms of hiring and firing staff, as well as stylistic changes like reinventing Gourmet's covers. What did you find most impressive about her vision and her management style?
8. After an incident while ordering lunch in France at the onset of the 2008 recession, Reichl tells us, "The more stars in your intinerary, the less likely you are to find the real life of another country." What does she mean? How has she finally come to see the outsized perks of magazine life?
9. Talk about the end of Gourmet and, in Reichl's own words, her "terrible sense of failure." What brought about the magazine's closure?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2017
W.W. Norton & Co.
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393609394
Summary
The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.
♦ What is the nature of space and time?
♦ How do we fit within the universe?
♦ How does the universe fit within us?
There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 5, 1958
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.S., Harvard University; M.S., University of Texas; M.S., Ph.D., Columbia University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
Born and raised in New York City, Tyson became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after a visit to the Hayden Planetarium. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, where he was editor-in-chief of the Physical Science Journal, he completed a bachelor's degree in physics at Harvard University in 1980.
After receiving a master's degree in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1983, he earned his master's (1989) and doctorate (1991) in astrophysics at Columbia University. For the next three years, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210-million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000.
From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were published in his books Death by Black Hole (2007) and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in Star Date magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin." Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998).
Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry, and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015.
In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science." (Excerpted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/72/2017.)
Book Reviews
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a rock star, and his newest book shows why: as small as it is — it practically fits in your pocket — its subject is nothing less than the universe itself. More remarkable, it’s a bestseller. Think about that: a book on astrophysics at the top of the charts. What’s the world coming to?… Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is written for…the layperson, for folks who don’t spend time in labs or at the chalkboard solving equations with Greek letters. Make no mistake, though: Tyson's lucid, accessible prose takes on complicated subjects without dumbing them down. His tone is light, even funny…. READ MORE…
P.J. Adler - LitLovers
Tyson is a master of streamlining and simplification …taking mind-bogglingly complex ideas, stripping them down to their nuts and bolts, padding them with colorful allegories and dorky jokes, and making them accessible to the layperson.
Salon
This book will keep you fascinated with succinct and dynamic explanations of a wide variety of astronomical topics. A winner that every astronomy enthusiast should have on the bookshelf!
David J. Eicher - Astronomy
With wry humor, keen vision, and abundant humanity, Neil deGrasse Tyson distills the big questions of space, time, and reality into short, insightful chapters you can enjoy with your morning coffee.
Discover
This may have been written for people in a hurry, but I urge you to take your time. It will all be over far too soon.
BBC's Sky at Night (UK)
Tyson manifests science brilliantly …[his] insights are valuable for any leader, teacher, scientist or educator.
Forbes
Tyson…has revisited, modified, consolidated, and… updated a number of essays from his Universe column from Natural History magazine.… Tyson fans and newcomers alike — will enjoy this caper through the cosmos. —Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono
Library Journal
Even readers normally adverse to anything to do with physics or chemistry will find Tyson’s wittily delivered explanations compelling and disarmingly entertaining.
Booklist
[Q]uick and thoroughly enjoyable.… [The book] may fundamentally shift your perspective of our place in the universe — and convince you to pursue some of the many fine longer-form books on the subject. A sublime introduction to some of the most exciting ideas in astrophysics that will leave readers wanting more.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Astrophysics for People in a Hurry...then take off on your own:
1. What is your level of scientific education: have you ever had a physics class, for instance? How much do you know, as a non-scientist, of the cosmos — it's history, its present state, and it's possible future, as well as how it works? What have you learned from reading Neil deGrasse Tyson's book?
2. How accessible is Tyson's book to a non-scientist? How much of the information are you able to grasp? Consider the slenderness of the book — and the fact that there are only about 200 words on each page. Does the physical slightness of book detract from or enhance your reading experience? Is the book dumbed down?
3. Do you find Astrophysics for People in a Hurry interesting? Has it inspired you to want to learn more about the subject? Or does this book satisfy your level of curiosity?
4. Is there a particular chapter or topic that you find more interesting than others? Or perhaps find easier — or maybe more difficult — to grasp than others? Consider dark matter or Einstein's General Theory of Relativity? What about the chapter on exoplanets?
5. What does Tyson mean by "cosmic perspective"? Does his view resonate with you or not? Do you have a different sense of the universe than Tyson?
6. Tyson has a gift for picturesque facts and analogies like the fact that two cubic feet of iridium has the same weight as a Buick … or the fact that a pulsar has about as much density as 100 elephants crammed into a Chap Stick case. Are there others that struck you as particularly helpful or clever?
7. Talk about some of the areas of astrophysics for which we've amassed a fair amount of knowledge …as well as the many mysteries that we still don't have answers for.
8. How familiar were you with Neil deGrasse Tyson before reading this latest book of his. Have you read any of his other books or articles? Have you watched any of his television shows, his 2014 sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, for instance. Or perhaps you've seen his Great Courses lectures or listened to StarTalk, his podcast?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)