Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Antonia Fraser, 2001
Knopf Doubleday
544 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385489492
Summary
France’s iconic queen, Marie Antoinette, wrongly accused of uttering the infamous "Let them eat cake," was alternately revered and reviled during her lifetime. For centuries since, she has been the object of debate, speculation, and the fascination so often accorded illustrious figures in history.
Antonia Fraser’s lavish and engaging portrait excites compassion and regard for the queen, immersing the reader not only in the coming-of-age of a graceful woman, but in the culture of an unparalleled time and place.
Brilliantly written, Marie Antoinette is a work of impeccable scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of family letters and other archival materials, Antonia Fraser successfully avoids the hagiography of some the French queen s admirers and the misogyny of many of her critics. The result is an utterly riveting and intensely moving book by one of our finest biographers. (From the publisher.)
The book was adapted to film in 2006 with Kirsten Dunst and Jacob Schwartzman.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 27, 1932
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University (degree?)
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in London, England
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, DBE, née Pakenham, is an Anglo-Irish author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction, best known as Antonia Fraser. She is the widow of Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, and, prior to her husband's death, was also known as Antonia Pinter.
Fraser is the daughter of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001), and his wife, Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002). As the daughter of an Earl, she is accorded the honorific courtesy title "Lady" and thus customarily addressed formally as "Lady Antonia."
As a teenager, she and her siblings converted to Catholicism, following the conversions of their parents. Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians—a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform...". In response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said: "I have no Catholic blood." Before his own conversion in his thirties following a nervous breakdown in the Army, as she explains, "My father was Protestant Church of Ireland, and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20 when she abandoned it." She was educated at St Mary's School, Ascot and Dragon School, Oxford and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; the last was also her mother's alma mater.
From 1956 until their divorce in 1977, she was married to Sir Hugh Fraser (1918–1984), a descendant of Scottish aristocracy 14 years her senior and a Roman Catholic Conservative Unionist MP in the House of Commons (sitting for Stafford), who was a friend of the American Kennedy family. They had six children: three sons, Benjamin, Damian, and Orlando; and three daughters, Rebecca Fitzgerald, wife of barrister Edward Fitzgerald, QC, Flora Fraser and Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. All three daughters are writers and biographers. Benjamin Fraser works for JPMorgan, Damian Fraser is the managing director of the investment banking firm UBS AG (formerly S. G. Warburg) in Mexico, and Orlando Fraser is a barrister specializing in commercial law (Wroe). Antonia Fraser has 18 grandchildren.
On 22 October 1975, Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together with Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their Holland Park home, in Kensington, west London, were almost blown up by an IRA car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to go off at 9 am when he left the house; the bomb exploded killing a noted cancer researcher, Dr. Gordon Hamilton-Fairley (1930–1975). Hamilton-Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, had been walking his dog, when he noticed something amiss and approached the vehicle when the bomb went off.
In 1975 Antonia Fraser began an affair with playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant. In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved. Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter.
In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married. After the deaths of both their spouses, Fraser and Pinter were married by a Jesuit priest, Fr. Michael Campbell-Johnson, in the Roman Catholic Church. Harold Pinter died from cancer on 24 December 2008, aged 78.
Lady Antonia Fraser lives in the London district of Holland Park, within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, south of Notting Hill Gate, in the Fraser family home, where she still writes in her fourth-floor study.
Commentators have stated that, "more than just a pretty face", Antonia Fraser is an accomplished historian and "an intellectual."
A Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), she was elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to literature.
Career
She began work as an "all-purpose assistant" for George Weidenfeld at Weidenfeld & Nicolson (her "only job"), which later became her own publisher and part of Orion Publishing Group, which publishes her works in the UK.
Her first major work, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), which was followed by several other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973). She won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th century England. From 1988 to 1989, she was president of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee.
She also has written detective novels; the most popular involved a character named Jemima Shore were adapted into a television series which aired in the UK in 1983.
In 1983 to 1984, she was president of Edinburgh's Sir Walter Scott Club.
More recently, Fraser published The Warrior Queens, the story of various military royal women since the days of Boadicea and Cleopatra. In 1992, a year after Alison Weir's book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with the same title, which British historian Eric Ives cites in his study of Anne Boleyn.
She chronicled the life and times of Charles II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography. The book was cited as an influence on the 2003 BBC/A&E mini-series, Charles II: The Power & the Passion, in a featurette on the DVD, by Rufus Sewell who played the title character. Fraser has also served as the editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings and Queens of England and Royal History of England series, and, in 1996, she also published a book entitled The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, which won both the St Louis Literary Award and the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-Fiction Gold Dagger.
Two of the most recent of her thirteen non-fiction books are Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001, 2002), which has been made into the film Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by Sofia Coppola, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role, and Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006). (From Wikipedia.)
Awards
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1969)—Mary, Queen of Scots.
• Wolfson History Prize (1984)—The Weaker Vessel.
• Crime Writers' Assn. Macallan Gold Dagger/Non-Fiction (1996)—The Gunpowder Plot.
• St Louis Literary Award (1996)—The Gunpowder Plot.
• Historical Association Norton Medlicott Medal (2000).
• Enid McLeod Literary Prize (2001) from the Franco-British Society—Marie Antoinette.
Book Reviews
A child-princess is married off to a husband of limited carnal appetite. Her indiscretions and na vet , scorned by elderly dowagers, are coupled with charity, joie de vivre and almost divine glamour but her life is cut brutally short. The queen of France's life is rich in emotional resonance, riddled with sexual subplots and personal tragedies, and provides fertile ground for biographers. Fraser's sizable new portrait avoids the saccharine romance of Evelyne Lever's recent Marie Antoinette, balancing empathy for the pleasure-loving queen with an awareness of the inequalities that fed revolution after all, Marie herself was fully conscious of them. Her subject shows no let-them-eat cake arrogance, but is deeply (even surprisingly) compassionate, with a "public reputation for sweetness and mercy" that is only later sullied by vituperative pamphleteers and bitter unrest. She would sometimes be trapped by ingenuousness, and later by a fatal sense of duty. Yet her graceful bearing, acquired under the tutelage of her demanding mother, the empress Maria Teresa, made her an unusually popular princess before she was scapegoated as "Madame Deficit" and much, much worse. The portrait is drawn delicately, with pleasant touches of humor (a long-awaited baby is conceived around the time of Benjamin Franklin's visit: "Perhaps the King found this first contact with the virile New World inspirational"). Fraser's approach is controlled and thoughtful, avoiding the extravagance of Alison Weir's royal biographies. Her queen is neither heroine nor villain, but a young wife and mother who, in her journey into maturity, finds herself caught in a deadly vise.
Publishers Weekly
Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots) has written an exciting biography of a young Austrian woman named Marie Antoinette, the future bride of a future king of France, during a period of increasing political unrest. This volume moves quickly, but not without the most interesting of historical detail, through the courts of Austria and France. Marie Antoinette was the bride at 14 to Louis Auguste, her senior by just over a year; they both lacked the maturity for marriage, let alone the political leadership to command a European power. Fraser leads us through the daily lives of the two young people constantly before the public eye; from the planned marriage we move into an era of political and social revolution, knowing what the final violent outcome will be yet hoping for a different end. A well-researched biography that may cause one to rethink the role in which history has cast Marie Antoinette, this complements but doesn't replace Evelyne Lever's slightly less sympathetic Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. —Bruce H. Webb, Clarion Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.
Library Journal
Novelist and historian Fraser (Faith and Treason) manages to turn this spoiled, not-too-bright princess into a likable character.... Antoinette did have a heyday, though. After the birth of her son, she made a splash by abandoning the elaborate dresses and makeup that marked Versailles, a bold move for the leading figure of worldfashion in the late-18th century. While Antoinette never made the oft-repeated line to peasants seeking bread, she was a spendthrift, a trait that helped do her in when the revolutionary lawyers made their case against her. Antoinette's story isn't really a tragedy—but Fraser somehow makes it seem like one.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How important was Marie Antoinette's childhood in Austria–historical enemy of France–in influencing her career? Would it ever have been possible for an Austrian princess to have a satisfactory life in France?
2. Was Marie Antoinette's relationship with her mother, the Empress Maria Teresa, a damaging or a supportive element of her life?
3. Marie Antoinette's marriage to the Dauphin, later Louis XVI, remained unconsummated for seven and a half years. What effect did this have on her character—and her relationship wth her husband?
4. Were the accusations of extravagance and frivolity leveled against Marie Antoinette justified–both during her own lifetime and since? Marie Antoinette was also the target of numerous vicious libels about her sexuality. What part did these libels played in blackening the image of royalty in France, and how valid were they?
5. Assess the political role of Marie Antoinette in the years shortly before the French Revolution: Should she have tried to influence Louis XVI more or was she correct to let history take its own course?
6. Marie Antoinette was a patron of the arts and a nature enthusiast. Is philanthropy an essential part of the royal role?
7. Once the French Revolution started, Marie Antoinette could probably have escaped by herself, or with her little son disguised as a girl. Instead she saw it asher duty to remain at the King's side. Knowing that she was an unpopular queen, why did she make that decision?
8. Marie Antoinette's courage and composure at her trial and execution aroused widespread admiration at the time, even from her enemies. How much had her character changed since her youth? Or were such qualities always latent in her personality?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Brother, I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat, 2007
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400034307
Summary
Winner, 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award
From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart—her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.”
And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.
Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation.
Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Education—B.A., Barnard College; M.F.A., Brown University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short-story writer. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, she was two years old when her father Andre immigrated to New York, to be followed two years later by her mother Rose. This left Danticat and her younger brother, also named Andre, to be raised by her aunt and uncle. Although her formal education in Haiti was in French, she spoke Kreyol at home.
Early years
While still in Haiti, Danticat began writing at 9 years old. At the age of 12, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, to join her parents in a heavily Haitian American neighborhood. As an immigrant teenager, Edwidge's disorientation in her new surroundings was a source of discomfort for her, and she turned to literature for solace.
Two years later she published her first writing in English, "A Haitian-American Christmas: Cremace and Creole Theatre," in New Youth Connections, a citywide magazine written by teenagers. She later wrote another story about her immigration experience for the same magazine, "A New World Full of Strangers". In the introduction to Starting With I, an anthology of stories from the magazine, Danticat wrote, “When I was done with the [immigration] piece, I felt that my story was unfinished, so I wrote a short story, which later became a book, my first novel: Breath, Eyes, Memory…Writing for New Youth Connections had given me a voice. My silence was destroyed completely, indefinitely.”
After graduating from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, Danticat entered Barnard College in New York City. Initially she had intended on studying to become a nurse, but her love of writing won out and she received a BA in French literature in translation. In 1993, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Brown University—her thesis, entitled "My turn in the fire—an abridged novel," was the basis for her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was published by Soho Press in 1994. Four years later it became an Oprah's Book Club selection.
Career
Since completing her MFA, Danticat has taught creative writing at the New York University and the University of Miami. She has also worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme, on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haïti. Her short stories have appeared in over 25 periodicals and have been anthologized several times. Her work has been translated into numerous other languages, including French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Danticat is a strong advocate for issues affecting Haitians abroad and at home. In 2009, she lent her voice and words to Poto Mitan: Haitian Women Pillars of the Global Economy, a documentary about the impact of globalization on five women from different generations.
Edwidge Danticat is married to Fedo Boyer. She has two daughters, Mira and Leila.
Books and Awards
- 1994 - Breath, Eyes, Memory (novel)—Granta's Best Young American Novelists; Super Flaiano Prize
- 1996 - Krik? Krak! (stories)
- 1998 - The Farming of Bones (novel)—American Book Award
- 2002 - Behind the Mountains (young adult novel)
- 2002 - After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (travel book)
- 2004 - The Dew Breaker (novel-in-stories) The Story Prize
- 2005 - Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 (young adult novel)
- 2007 - Brother, I'm Dying (memoir/social criticis ) National Book Critics Circle Award; Dayton Literary Peace Prize
- 2010 - Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (essay collection,) OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
- 2011 - Tent Life: Haiti (essay contributor)
- 2011 - Haiti Noir (anthology editor)
- 2011 - Best American Essays, 2011 (anthology editor)
- 2013 - Claire of the Sea Light (novel)
(From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/15/13.)
Book Reviews
In Brother, I'm Dying, Ms. Danticat brings the lyric language and emotional clarity of her remarkable 2004 novel The Dew Breaker to bear on the story of her own family, a story which, like so much of her fiction, embodies the painful legacy of Haiti's violent history, demonstrating the myriad ways in which the public and the private, the political and the personal, intersect in the lives of that country's citizens and exiles. Ms. Danticat not only creates an indelible portrait of her two fathers, her dad and her uncle, but in telling their stories, she gives the reader an intimate sense of the personal consequences of the Haitian diaspora: its impact on parents and children, brothers and sisters, those who stay and those who leave to begin a new life abroad. She has written a fierce, haunting book about exile and loss and family love, and how that love can survive distance and separation, loss and abandonment and somehow endure, undented and robust.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
How does a novelist, who trades in events filtered through imagination and memory, recreate an event so recent, so intimate and so outrageous, an attack on her own loyalties and sense of deepest belonging? The story of Joseph Dantica could be, perhaps will be, told in many forms: as a popular ballad (performed, in my imagination, by Wyclef Jean); as Greek tragedy; as agitprop theater; as a bureaucratic nightmare worthy of Kafka. But Edwidge Danticat, true to her calling, has resisted any of these predictable responses. "Anger is a wasted emotion," says the narrator of The Dew Breaker, her most recent novel; in telling her family's story, she follows this dictum almost to a fault, giving us a memoir whose cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an astringent undercurrent of melancholy, a mixture of homesickness and homelessness.
Jess Row - New York Times Book Review
As she recounts in her powerful new memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, Danticat was 2 when her father left Haiti for the United States and 4 when her mother followed him to New York City. "Then, as now, leaving often seemed like the only answer, especially if one was sick like my uncle or poor like my father, or desperate, like both." She lived for eight years with her father's older brother, Joseph, a dynamic pastor who ran a church and school in the hilltop neighborhood of Bel Air overlooking Port-au-Prince, while waiting to join her parents. Danticat interweaves the story of her childhood spent between her two "papas" with the final months of both men's lives, which happened to coincide with her first pregnancy. In the process, Brother, I'm Dying, a nominee for this year's National Book Award, illustrates the large shadow cast by political and personal legacies over both the past and the future.
Bliss Broyard - Washington Post
(Starred review.) In a single day in 2004, Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory; The Farming of Bones) learns that she's pregnant and that her father, Andre, is dying—a stirring constellation of events that frames this Haitian immigrant family's story, rife with premature departures and painful silences. When Danticat was two, Andre left Haiti for the U.S., and her mother followed when Danticat was four. The author and her brother could not join their parents for eight years, during which Andre's brother Joseph raised them. When Danticat was nine, Joseph—a pastor and gifted orator—lost his voice to throat cancer, making their eventual separation that much harder, as he wouldn't be able to talk with the children on the phone. Both Andre and Joseph maintained a certain emotional distance through these transitions. Danticat writes of a Haitian adage, " A When you bathe other people's children, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty." I suppose this saying cautions those who care for other people's children not to give over their whole hearts. In the end, as Danticat prepares to lose her ailing father and give birth to her daughter, Joseph is threatened by a volatile sociopolitical clash and forced to flee Haiti. He's then detained by U.S. Customs and neglected for days. He unexpectedly dies a prisoner while loved ones await news of his release. Poignant and never sentimental, this elegant memoir recalls how a family adapted and reorganized itself over and over, enduring and succeeding to remain kindred in spite of living apart.
Publishers Weekly
Haitian-born American writer Danticat (The Dew Breaker) is at her best-fearless, persuasive, and captivating-in recounting her family history. We meet the author as a child in her native country when she is left in the care of her pastor uncle, Joseph, after her parents and brothers immigrate to America. Fast-forward several years, and a teenage Danticat joins the family she barely remembers in New York City, leaving behind her beloved "second father" and island country. What comes next are not uncommon threads in an immigrant narrative-political uncertainties and the colorful figures imposing them, rogues empowered with guns to protect the interests of a self-serving dictator, visa aspirations, cultural woes, and the soothing power of family. In a world where the concept of the distinct nation is fast giving way to the preeminence of diasporas, this is a tale for all, both uplifting and tragic (in 2004, 81-year-old Joseph fled to Miami after escaping a pro-Aristide mob only to be detained and die in prison). Most readers will likely recognize a kindred spirit or something familiar in this family account, brought so vividly to life and captured for the ages by a fine writer. Recommended for all public libraries.
Edward K. Owusu-Ansah - Library Journal
Danticat (The Dew Breaker, 2004, etc.) tells the dramatically twinned stories of her father's and uncle's hardworking, tragedy-haunted lives. This exceptionally gripping memoir starts off momentously in 2004, when the author discovers she's pregnant on the same day she learns that her father has end-stage pulmonary fibrosis. From there, Danticat angles backward in time, sketching a family history marked by long absences and a backdrop of political unrest. While her parents tried to make a better life in Brooklyn, the author was raised in Haiti by her uncle Joseph; she didn't join her mother and father until she was 12. She depicts Joseph, a pastor in Port-au-Prince, as a quiet, dignified man who suffered as only good men do. A radical laryngectomy in 1978 took away his voice. Years later, fleeing the gangs terrorizing Haiti in the post-Aristide years, he died in an undeservedly ugly fashion, humiliated and denied his medication by the U.S. authorities to whom he applied for asylum. Shifting back and forth in time, Danticat alternates between her uncle's and her father's stories. She keeps herself solidly in the background, using her childhood experiences as a means to vividly portray two honorable, duty-bound men who wanted nothing more than to lead respectable lives in a peaceful and prosperous Haiti. The country's troubled history is always smoldering in the background, and there's an explosion of tears waiting behind almost every sentence. But Danticat avoids sentimentality in smoothly honed prose that is nonetheless redolent with emotion. Deeply felt memoir rife with historical drama and familial tragedy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Danticat tells us that she has constructed the story from the...
borrowed recollections of family members.... What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time [pp. 25-26].
Discuss what this work of reconstruction and reordering means for the structure of the story she presents, as well as for her own understanding of what happened to the two brothers
2. Consider the scene in which Danticat sees the results of her pregnancy test. How do her fears for her father affect her first thoughts of her child? She says to herself, "My father is dying and I'm pregnant" [pp. 14-15]. How does this knowledge change her sense of time? How does it affect her understanding of the course of her family's history?
3. As a child, Danticat was disturbed at how little her father said in the letters he sent to the family in Haiti. He later told her, “I was no writer.... What I wanted to tell you and your brother was too big for any piece of paper and a small envelope” [p. 22]. Why, as a child, did she “used to dream of smuggling him words” [p. 21]?
4. How does young Edwidge retain her loyalties to her parents, even though they are absent from her life for so many years? Is there evidence that she feels hurt or rejected by their decision to leave for the States? How does she feel when they come back to visit Haiti with two new children [pp. 87-96]?
5. Haiti's history is briefly sketched on page29 and elsewhere. While many readers will know that Haiti was a slave colony, why is the fact of the American invasion and nineteen-year occupation less well known [p. 29]? Danticat's paternal grandfather, Granpe Nozial, fought with the guerrilla resistance against the Americans. How does the family's engagement with Haiti's political history affect Joseph's unwillingness to emigrate to the U.S.? Why does he refuse to leave Haiti, or even to remove himself from the dangers of Bel Air [pp. 30-36]?
6. If so few words are passed between Danticat's parents and their two children in Haiti, how is emotion transmitted? Is there a sense, in the book, that Danticat is emotionally reticent even after her reunion with her parents? Why is she reluctant to tell her parents the news about her pregnancy [p. 44]? Why is it important that her father gave her a typewriter as a welcoming present [pp. 118-20]?
7. Danticat found a scrap of paper on which she had written, soon after coming to Brooklyn, “My father's cab is named for wanderers, drifters, nomads. It's called a gypsy cab” [p. 120]. What does this suggest about how she understood, or thought about, her father's work and her family's status in America? What does it reveal about a young girl's interest in the power of words?
8. Brother, I'm Dying is Danticat's first major work of nonfiction. What resemblances does it bear, if any, to her works of fiction in terms of style, voice, content, etc.?
9. Danticat says of her story, “I am writing this only because they can't” [p. 26]. As a girl, Edwidge was often literally her uncle's voice, because after his tracheotomy she could read his lips and tell others what he was saying. Why is it important that she also speak for her father and her uncle in writing this memoir?
10. Consider the relationship between the two brothers, Mira and Joseph. There is a significant difference in age, and Mira has been away from his brother for decades, by the end of the story. Despite this, they remain close. What assumptions about kinship and family ties are displayed in their love for each other? Are these bonds similar to, or stronger than, ties you would see between American-born brothers?
11. When Danticat describes the death of her cousin, Marie-Micheline, or her uncle's list of the bodies he has seen on the street, or when she recounts the story of the men laughing as they kick around a human head, or the threat of the gangs to decapitate her uncle Joseph, or the looting and burning of his home and his church, what is your response as a reader? How does this violence resonate against the warmth and love that are so clearly expressed by the feeling of Danticat's extended family members for each other?
12. How does Danticat convey a sense of the richness of Haitian culture? What are the people like? What are their folk tales like? How does their use of both Creole and French affect their approach to language and speech? How does she make us feel the effects of the violence and poverty that the Haitians endure?
13. Does what happened to Joseph while in custody in Florida suggest that racist assumptions lie at the heart of U.S. immigration policy? Is Danticat right to wonder whether this would have happened had he not been Haitian, or had he not been black [p. 222]? Does it seem that the family could have taken legal action against the Department of Homeland Security?
14. Danticat's description of what happens to her uncle in U.S. custody is reconstructed from documents. How does Danticat control her emotion while presenting these events? How, in general, would you describe her writing style as she narrates these often devastating events?
15. Danticat relates her Granme Melina's story about the girl who wanted the old woman to bring her father back from the land of the dead [pp. 265-67]: what is the effect of her decision to end the book with this story? How does the story reflect on the book as a whole, and on the act of writing?
16. As one reviewer put it, “If there's such a thing as a warmhearted tragedy, Brother, I'm Dying is a stunning example” (Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor). Do you agree? If so, what elements in the writing and the story contribute to this effect?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Decision Points
George W. Bush, 2010
Crown Publishing
497 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307590619
Summary
In this candid and gripping account, President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life.
George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached his desk impacted people around the world and defined the times in which we live.
Decision Points brings readers inside the Texas governor’s mansion on the night of the 2000 election, aboard Air Force One during the harrowing hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, into the Situation Room moments before the start of the war in Iraq, and behind the scenes at the White House for many other historic presidential decisions.
For the first time, we learn President Bush’s perspective and insights on:
- His decision to quit drinking and the journey that led him to his Christian faith
- The selection of the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, Supreme Court justices, and other key officials
- His relationships with his wife, daughters, and parents, including heartfelt letters between the president and his father on the eve of the Iraq War
- His administration’s counterterrorism programs, including the CIA’s enhanced interrogations and the Terrorist Surveillance Program
- Why the worst moment of the presidency was hearing accusations that race played a role in the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and a critical assessment of what he would have done differently during the crisis
- His deep concern that Iraq could turn into a defeat costlier than Vietnam, and how he decided to defy public opinion by ordering the troop surge
- His legislative achievements, including tax cuts and reforming education and Medicare, as well as his setbacks, including Social Security and immigration reform
- The relationships he forged with other world leaders, including an honest assessment of those he did and didn’t trust
- Why the failure to bring Osama bin Laden to justice ranks as his biggest disappointment and why his success in denying the terrorists their fondest wish—attacking America again—is among his proudest achievements.
A groundbreaking new brand of presidential memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history—and on the man at the center of events. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 6, 1946
• Where—New Haven, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University; M.B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Crawford, Texas
George Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States (2001-2009), and the 46th Governor of Texas (1995-2000).
Bush is the eldest son of President George H. W. Bush, who served as the 41st President, and Barbara Bush, making him one of only two American presidents to be the son of a preceding president. He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.
After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. In a close and controversial election, Bush was elected President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, defeating then-Vice President Al Gore in the Electoral College. He was named Time Person of the Year 2000 and 2004.
Early on, the Bush administration withdrew from a number of international treaty processes, notably the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. A series of terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term as president on September 11, 2001. In response, Bush announced a global War on Terrorism, ordered an invasion of Afghanistan that same year and an invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, and social security reform. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors. His tenure saw national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques".
Bush successfully ran for re-election against Democratic Senator John Kerry in 2004, in another relatively close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the political spectrum. In 2005, the Bush Administration dealt with widespread criticism over its handling of Hurricane Katrina. Following this and other controversies, as well as dissatisfaction with the direction of the Iraq War, Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 elections.
As the U.S. entered its longest post–World War II recession in December 2007, the Bush Administration took more direct control of the economy, enacting multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Though Bush was popular in the U.S. for much of his first term, his popularity declined sharply during his second term. He was a highly controversial figure internationally, with public protests occurring even during visits to close allies, such as the UK
After leaving office, Bush returned to Texas and purchased a home in a suburban area of Dallas. He is currently a public speaker and published his memoir, Decision Points, in 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
There is something very modern, almost New Agey, and endearingly insecure, about the tone and posture the son adopts in Decision Points. Even as he's bombing Baghdad back to the Stone Age, he s very much in touch with his feelings. In college, he says, he was appalled to learn how the French Revolution betrayed its ideals.
Michael Kinsley - New York Times
Of the postwar presidents who lived long enough to assemble their autobiographies, not a single one produced a book of any real merit. It's not so much that they're bad books as that they're dull ones, reducing flesh-and-blood presidents—all of them interesting men, no matter how one may feel about them politically or ideologically—to cardboard figures representing Virtue in various forms, described in prose that for the most part appears to have been put together by committee, or a computer on autopilot. Decision Points is no exception. It's competent, readable and flat. The voice in which it is written is occasionally recognizable as that of George W. Bush—informal, homespun, jokey—but more often it's the voice of a state paper, impersonal and dutiful.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post
The book contains delightful and telling personal observations. Hank Paulson's family was so Democratic that his mother cried when he joined the Bush cabinet. After Mr. Bush refuses to pardon Scooter Libby, convicted of obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame affair, Vice President Dick Cheney tells him: "I can't believe you're going to leave a soldier on the battlefield." When Gen. Pete Pace is removed as Joint Chiefs chairman in a bonfire of political correctness, Mr. Bush says that Gen. Pace took off his four stars and left them at the Vietnam Memorial near the name of a Marine in his old platoon. In contrast to the ugly cartoon figure drawn by his opponents, Mr. Bush is unfailingly gracious to virtually all his opponents, including Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist who had lost a son in Iraq.
Daniel Henniger - Wall Street Journal
As former President George W. Bush—barely two years out of office—points out in the acknowledgement of his memoir, Decision Points, virtually every member of his extended, very political family has published a bestseller, including his parents' dogs. Where does Bush's account of his astonishingly eventful eight years rank in such company? Probably far higher than many of his detractors expected. As Bush writes..., he enjoys surprising those who underestimate him.
Tim Rutten - Los Angeles Times
After eight years in the White House, George W. Bush has written a memoir that offers up a staunch defense to the critics who questioned his domestic and foreign policies.... The book reads at a steady pace with a conversational voice. Bush offers behind-the-scenes views from the Oval Office as well as his discussions with and the input from others in his successes and failures on policy and events during his two terms in office.... [He] offers few major surprises, other than contemplation of replacing Vice President Dick Cheney as a running mate in 2004.... Unlike other presidential memoirs, Bush touches on just a few personal milestones before his years in the White House.
Gary Martin - San Antonio Express
Here is a prediction: Decision Pointswill not endure. Its prose aims for tough-minded simplicity but keeps landing on simpleminded sententiousness. Though Bush credits no collaborator, his memoirs read as if they were written by an admiring sidekick who is familiar with every story Bush ever told but never got to know the President well enough to convey his inner life. Very few of its four hundred and ninety-three pages are not self-serving.
The New Yorker
Bush, smartly dividing the book into themes rather than telling the story chronologically, offers readers a genuine (and highly readable) look at his thought processes as he made huge decisions that will affect the nation and the world for decades. Many will ridicule his thinking and bemoan those decisions, but being George Bush, he won’t really care. —Ilene Cooper
Bookist
In a page-turner structured around important decisions in his life and presidency, Bush surprises with a lucid, heartfelt look back. Despite expected defenses of past decisions, Bush is candid and unafraid to say when he thinks he was wrong. Critics on both the left and right are challenged to walk in his shoes, and may come away with a new view of the former president—or at least an appreciation of the hard and often ambiguous choices he was forced to make. Aside from the opening chapter about his decision to quit drinking, the book is not chronologically ordered. Bush mixes topics as needed to tell a larger story than a simple history of his administration. Certain themes dominate the narrative: the all-encompassing importance of 9/11 to the bulk of his presidency, and how it shaped and shadowed almost everything he did; the importance of his faith, which is echoed in every chapter and which comes through in an unassuming manner; the often unseen advisor whom the president conferred with and confided in on almost every subject—his wife, Laura Bush; and the wide array of people who helped him rise to the White House and then often hindered him once he was there. The book is worthwhile for many reasons. Even if many readers may not agree with his views on the subjects, Bush's memories of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and other major events are riveting and of historical value on their own. Additionally, Bush provides insight into the daily life of the president. The author accepts blame for a number of mistakes and misjudgments, while also standing up for decisions he felt were right. Honest, of course, but also surprisingly approachable and engaging.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Decision Points:
1. Why do you think former President Bush wrote Decision Points?
- To shape his legacy?
- To defend his presidency against critics on both left and right?
- To contribute to historical knowledge?
- To offer leadership advice on decision-making?
- To acknowledge his mistakes?
- To explain and provide insights into controversial decisions?
- Another reason?
2. Does this book matter? Given the astonishing events that occurred during the Bush presidency, events that required far reaching decisions, will this memoir survive? Do you think it will be read 50 years from now?
3. Mr. Bush says that "decades from now, I hope people will view me as a president who recognized the central challenge of our time and kept our vow to keep the country safe." Do you think his hope will be fulfilled—that people will acknowledge that he kept the U.S. safe?
4. Mr. Bush admits that he drew inspiration from 14 biographies of Abraham Lincoln. Why does he feel such an affinity with Lincoln?
5. After reading his memoir, what do you think was the toughest decision Mr. Bush had to make during his presidency?
6. After reading his memoir, what do you feel was Mr. Bush's most successful policy decision as President?
7. After reading his memoir, what do you think was Mr. Bush's most controversial decision—vis-a-vis national or international opinion—during his tenure in the White House?
8. What are some of the mistakes Mr. Bush acknowledges during his presidency. In his acknowledgment, does he accept blame or attempt to absolve himself of responsibility? What's your opinion?
9. Mr. Bush says that in terms of polarizing the nation, some Democrats never got over the 2000 election and were determined not to cooperate with me." But he also says that "no doubt I bear some of the responsibility as well." What are your views about those two statements?
10. How does Bush defend himself against charges of racism leveled at him after Hurricane Katrina? What does he say about his response to Katrina?
11. Why does Mr. Bush say that it was the Louisiana state officials—rather than Michael Brown, the head of FEMA—who hampered the federal response to Katrina? How did Louisiana interfere with Washington's efforts?
12. How does Mr. Bush defend the waterboarding, a practice that stimulates drowning during interrogation of suspected terrorists? What are your views?
13. Why does Bush remain adamant that his bailout "spared the American people from an economic disaster of historic proportions"? How does he describe the efforts of those who worked on the bailout? What are your views?
14. Talk about how Mr. Bush eventually abandoned the course of action in Iraq that was pushed by Donald Rumsfeld and Generals George Casey and John Abizaid. How did he arrive at the new solution—the "surge" with Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno in charge? Why does he say he waited for three years to make the changes?
15. Why didn't Mr. Bush pardon Scooter Libby after he was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case? What are your views?
16. What reason does Mr.Bush give for not firing Donald Rumsfeld after Abu Ghraib? What are your views?
17. At one point, Mr. Bush says, by the end of 2005, much of my political capital was gone." What does he mean and why did he write that statement?
18. What surprised you most about the Bush Presidency, or any of the events—national and international—that occurred during those eight years
19. What have you learned from reading Mr. Bush's memoirs? For instance...
- Have you gained insight into the different forces that influence decision-making?
- Have you learned something new about the personalities of the White House staff or about Mr. Bush himself?
- Do you have a greater understanding of various (unsexy) issues such as foreign trade, immigration, or social security?
- Anything else?
20. After reading his memoirs, have your views toward Mr. Bush and his years in office been altered...or left unchanged? Do you admire Mr. Bush more...or less?
21. How would you describe the personality of Mr. Bush after reading his memoir? Would you call him affable, calm, determined, candid, defensive, deceptive, open to other views, narrow-minded, strong-willed...how does he come across
22. Talk about Mr. Bush's conversion to Christianity and the role faith played in both his personal and political life.
23. Mr. Bush's memoirs are remarkably gracious to his political opponents. He does, however, indulge in a few barbs directed at the press, academia, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Fair...unfair? Justified... unjustified? Agree...disagree?
24. Mr. Bush says he learned from Theordore Roosevelt and Ronald Regan how important it is to "lead the public, not chase the opinion polls.... As I told my advisers, 'I didn't take this job to play small ball.'" Talk about where in his memoirs he leads the country, ignoring public opinion, and taking what he believes is the correct path for the country. But also then, how does one explain the prominence of Karl Rove as a friend and adviser?
25. How does Mr. Bush describe himself during his bout with alcoholism. To what does he attribute his ultimate decision to quit drinking? Do you admire his candor?
26. Much was made in the press about Mr. Bush's desire to "out-do" his father. How does Mr. Bush describe his relationship with his father, the former President George Herbert Walker Bush? How would you describe the relationship? Talk about the letter he wrote to his father before the Iraq War.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Monster of Florence
Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi, 2008
Grand Central Publishing
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446581271
Summary
In the tradition of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, Douglas Preston weaves a captivating account of crime and punishment in the lush hills of Florence, Italy.
Douglas Preston fulfilled a lifelong dream when he moved with his family to a villa in Florence. Upon meeting celebrated journalist Mario Spezi, Preston was stunned to learn that the olive grove next to his home had been the scene of a horrific double murder committed by one of the most infamous figures in Italian history. A serial killer who ritually murdered fourteen young lovers, he has never been caught. He is known as the Monster of Florence.
Fascinated by the tale, Preston began to work with Spezi on the case. Here is the true story of their search to uncover and confront the man they believe is the Monster. In an ironic twist of fate that echoes the dark traditions of the city's bloody history, Preston and Spezi themselves became targets of a bizarre police investigation.
With the gripping suspense of Preston's bestselling novels, The Monster of Florence tells a remarkable and harrowing chronicle of murder, mutilation, suicide, and vengeance-with Preston and Spezi caught in the middle. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Where—Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Pomona College
• Currently—live in both Maine and in New Mexico
Douglas Preston was born in 1956 in Cambridge, MA, was raised in nearby Wellesley (where, by his own admission, he and his brothers were the scourge of the neighborhood!), and graduated from Pomona College in California with a degree in English literature.
Preston's first job was as a writer for the American Museum of Natural History in New York—an eight year stint that led to the publication of his first book, Dinosaurs in the Attic and introduced him to his future writing partner, Lincoln Child, then working as an editor at St. Martin's Press. The two men bonded, as they worked closely together on the book. As the project neared completion, Preston treated Child to a private midnight tour of the museum, an excursion that proved fateful. As Preston tells it, "...in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to [me] and said: 'This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!'" Their first collaborative effort, Relic, would not be published until 1995, by which time Preston had picked up stakes and moved to Santa Fe to pursue a full-time writing career.
In addition to writing novels (The Codex, Tyrannosaur Canyon) and nonfiction books on the American Southwest (Cities of Gold, Ribbons of Time), Preston has collaborated with Lincoln Child on several post-Relic thrillers. While not strictly a series, the books share characters and events, and the stories all take place in the same universe. The authors refer to this phenomenon as "The Preston-Child Pangea."
Preston divides his time between New Mexico and Maine, while Child lives in New Jersey—a situation that necessitates a lot of long-distance communication. But their partnership (facilitated by phone, fax, and email) is remarkably productive and thoroughly egalitarian: They shape their plots through a series of discussions; Child sends an outline of a set of chapters; Preston writes the first draft of those chapters, which is subsequently rewritten by Child; and in this way the novel is edited back and forth until both authors are happy. They attribute the relatively seamless surface of their books to the fact that "[a]ll four hands have found their way into practically every sentence, at one time or another."
In between, Preston remains busy. He is a regular contributor to magazines like National Geographic, The New Yorker, Natural History, Smithsonian, Harper's, and Travel & Leisure, and he continues with varied solo literary projects. Which is not to say his partnership with Lincoln Child is over. Fans of the bestselling Preston-Child thrillers can be assured there are bigger and better adventures to come.
Extras
• Douglas Preston counts among his ancestors the poet Emily Dickinson, the newspaperman Horace Greeley, and the infamous murderer and opium addict Amasa Greenough.
• His brother is Richard Preston, the bestselling author of The Hot Zone, The Cobra Event, The Wild Trees, and other novels and nonfiction narratives.
• Preston is an expert horseman and a member of the Long Riders Guild.
• He is also a National Geographic Society Fellow, has traveled extensively around the world, and contributes archaeological articles to many magazines.
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:
• My first job was washing dishes in the basement of a nursing home for $2.10 an hour, and I learned as much about the value of hard work there as I ever did later."
• I need to write in a small room—the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back."
• My hobbies are mountain biking, horseback riding and packing, canoeing and kayaking, hiking, camping, cooking, and skiing.
• When asked what book most influenced his life or career as a writer, here is his response:
I would have to say the novel War and Peace influenced me more than any other book. This greatest of novels demonstrated to me the enormous power of literature and fired me up with a desire to become a writer, to participate in what I considered then to be the greatest of all endeavors.
(Author bio and interview by Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
The most memorable scene captures the collateral damage every murder inflicts.... Preston is indeed a stranger in a strange land.... Hard as this book is on the Italian legal system, a deep love for Italy, Italians and Italian culture permeates it. Particularly on the part of Preston, who often sounds like a man locked out of paradise.
Seattle Post Intelligencer
One of the most fascinating criminal cases in recent memory.... A vivid look at a largely close society, with elaborate mores and convoluted history, and a Byzantine justice system to match.... The perfect summer page turner—enough grim details to satisfy those fascinated with serial killer lore, enough twists and turns to engross those who are drawn to police procedures, as well as a chilling story of what happens when a writer becomes identified with a murder investigation in the eyes of the authorities.
New Orleans Time-Picayune
Remarkable true-crime story...passionately describes the investigations gone wrong.... Preston knows how to load his storytelling with intriguing evidence and damning details. His feverish style keeps the reader turning with the hope of uncovering the killer's identity.
USA Today
As taut and tense as any of the author's bestselling thrillers...fascinating, stomach-churning...nerve-tingling action and vivid writing...The Monster of Florence is a gripping tale, filled with shocking crimes, boldly drawn characters, and the careening suspense of the ultimate whodunit.
Dallas Morning News
(Starred review.) United in their obsession with a grisly Italian serial murder case almost three decades old, thriller writer Preston (coauthor, Brimstone) and Italian crime reporter Spezi seek to uncover the identity of the killer in this chilling true crime saga. From 1974 to 1985, seven pairs of lovers parked in their cars in secluded areas outside of Florence were gruesomely murdered. When Preston and his family moved into a farmhouse near the murder sites, he and Spezi began to snoop around, although witnesses had died and evidence was missing. With all of the chief suspects acquitted or released from prison on appeal, Preston and Spezi's sleuthing continued until ruthless prosecutors turned on the nosy pair, jailing Spezi and grilling Preston for obstructing justice. Only when Dateline NBC became involved in the maze of mutilated bodies and police miscues was the authors' hard work rewarded. This suspenseful procedural reveals much about the dogged writing team as well as the motives of the killers. Better than some overheated noir mysteries, this bit of real-life Florence bloodletting makes you sweat and think, and presses relentlessly on the nerves.
Publishers Weekly
In 2000, Preston, the best-selling coauthor of thrillers with Lincoln Child (e.g., The Relic) moved to Florence, Italy, to research a new mystery and fell headlong into the case of the Monster of Florence. Between 1968 and 1985, seven couples had been murdered in their cars in secluded lovers' lanes in and around Florence. (The murders took place near Preston's 14th-century farmhouse.) Intrigued, Preston teamed up with Italian journalist and "Monsterologist" Spezi to write an article-and became part of the story. The investigation of these serial murders had taken on a surreal edge, with wild conspiracy theories involving satanic cults being seriously considered by desperate investigators. At one point, Spezi himself was accused of the murders, while Preston was accused of planting evidence and even suspected of being an American spy. Eventually, the authors came to believe they knew the identity of the Monster, but nothing has been proven. Truth is truly stranger than fiction, as lives are destroyed, reputations are ruined, and evidence is manufactured to fit the suspect-of-the-month. Preston fans and true-crime fans are sure to be riveted. Recommended for public libraries.
Library Journal
Talk about your knotty true-crime situations! Officially, the investigation “grinds on with no end in sight,” having claimed one more victim—Spezi’s peace of mind. — Mike Tribby
Booklist
Meticulous account of the collaboration between American thriller author Preston (Blasphemy, 2008, etc.) and Italian journalist Spezi to plumb a long-unsolved series of murders. Between 1974 and 1985, seven couples were killed while having sex in parked cars in the hills around Florence, Preston learned shortly after he moved to Italy in August 2000. One of those double homicides occurred in an olive grove next to the stone farmhouse he had just moved into with his family. Preston's informant was Spezi, who had covered the serial killings and dubbed their perpetrator "the Monster of Florence." Italian authorities had charged various men with one or more of the murders. Some had been brought to trial; one had been convicted but acquitted on appeal. Looking back to a seemingly unrelated killing in 1968, Spezi believed he had determined the identity of the actual killer, and Preston bought his theory. The pair began to write a book outlining their ideas, and the Italian authorities retaliated by harassing them. In February 2006, Preston was interrogated by a police captain who accused him and Spezi of planting false evidence, then essentially told the American to get out of Italy and not come back. Spezi was arrested on April 7, 12 days before Dolci Colline di Sangue was slated to be published, accused not only of obstructing justice but of somehow being involved in the Monster of Florence murders. Three weeks later, a judicial tribunal exonerated him of all charges and he was released. The police detective and prosecutor responsible for Preston's interrogation and Spezi's arrest, as well as mishandling the serial-killing investigation, are awaiting trial on charges of abuse of office. With so many characters and so many theories about the case, the book is sometimes difficult to follow, and Preston's flat prose does little to help. He is a likable narrator, however, and his commitment to untrammeled press freedom is inspiring. A cautionary saga about how the criminal-justice system can spin out of control.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
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Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Joshua Foer, 2011
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594202292
Summary
Foer's unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion frames a revelatory exploration of the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives.
On average, people squander forty days annually compensating for things they've forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of those people.
But after a year of memory training, he found himself in the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship. Even more important, Foer found a vital truth we too often forget: In every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
Moonwalking with Einstein draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human remembering
Under the tutelage of top "mental athletes," he learns ancient techniques once employed by Cicero to memorize his speeches and by Medieval scholars to memorize entire books. Using methods that have been largely forgotten, Foer discovers that we can all dramatically improve our memories.
Immersing himself obsessively in a quirky subculture of competitive memorizers, Foer learns to apply techniques that call on imagination as much as determination-showing that memorization can be anything but rote.
From the PAO system, which converts numbers into lurid images, to the memory palace, in which memories are stored in the rooms of imaginary structures, Foer's experience shows that the World Memory Championships are less a test of memory than of perseverance and creativity.
Foer takes his inquiry well beyond the arena of mental athletes-across the country and deep into his own mind. In San Diego, he meets an affable old man with one of the most severe case of amnesia on record, where he learns that memory is at once more elusive and more reliable than we might think.
In Salt Lake City, he swaps secrets with a savant who claims to have memorized more than nine thousand books. At a high school in the South Bronx, he finds a history teacher using twenty- five-hundred-year-old memory techniques to give his students an edge in the state Regents exam.
At a time when electronic devices have all but rendered our individual memories obsolete, Foer's bid to resurrect the forgotten art of remembering becomes an urgent quest. Moonwalking with Einstein brings Joshua Foer to the apex of the U.S. Memory Championship and readers to a profound appreciation of a gift we all possess but that too often slips our minds. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1982
• Where—Washington, DC, USA
• Education—Yale University
• Currently—lives in the New Haven, Connecticut
Joshua Foer is a freelance journalist living in New Haven, USA, with a primary focus on science. He was the 2006 U.S.A. Memory Champion, which was described in his 2011 book, Moonwalking with Einstein.
Foer is the younger brother of New Republic editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. He is the son of Esther Foer, president of a public relations firm, and Albert Foer, a think-tank president. He was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown Day School. He then went on to graduate from Yale University, where he lived in Silliman College, in 2004.
Foer is married to Dinah Herlands, a medical student at Yale, whom he met while an undergraduate at Yale.
Career
Foer published his first book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, in 2011. He received a $1.2 million advance for the book when he was 24. Film rights were optioned by Columbia Pictures shortly after publication.
In 2006, Foer won the U.S.A. Memory Championship, and set a new record in the "speed cards" event by memorizing a deck of 52 cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds. [4] Moonwalking with Einstein describes Foer's journey as a participatory journalist to becoming a national champion mnemonist, under the tutelage of British Grand Master of Memory, Ed Cooke.
Foer's work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, and The Nation. In 2007, the quarterly art & culture journal Cabinet began publishing Foer's column "A Minor History Of." The column "examines an overlooked cultural phenomenon using a timeline.
Foer has organized several websites and organizations based on his interests. He created the Athanasius Kircher Society which had only one session featuring Kim Peek and Joseph Kittinger." He is the co-founder, along with Dylan Thuras, of the Atlas Obscura—an online compendium of "The World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica". He is also a co-organizer of Sukkah City—an architectural design competition planned in partnership with New York City's union Square Park in 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In his captivating new book, Moonwalking With Einstein, the young journalist Joshua Foer tackles the subject of memory the way George Plimpton tackled pro football and boxing…Mr. Foer writes in these pages with fresh enthusiasm. His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it's informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural contex.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
His passionate and deeply engrossing book...is a resounding tribute to the muscularity of the mind... In the end, Moonwalking with Einstein reminds us that though brain science is a wild frontier and the mechanics of memory little understood, our minds are capable of epic achievements.
Washington Post
It's delightful to travel with him on this unlikely journey, and his entertaining treatment of memory as both sport and science is spot on...Moonwalking with Einstein proves uplifting: It shows that with motivation, focus and a few clever tricks, our minds can do rather extraordinary things.
Wall Street Journal
"[An] inspired and well-written debut book about not just memorization, but about what it means to be educated and the best way to become so, about expertise in general, and about the not-so-hidden "secrets" of acquiring skills.
Seattle Times
He explores various ways in which we test our memories, such as the extensive training British cabbies must undergo. He also discusses ways we can train ourselves to have better memories, like the PAO system, in which, for example, every card in a deck is associated with an image of a specific person, action, or object. An engaging, informative, and for the forgetful, encouraging book. —David Pitt
Booklist
In his first book, freelance journalist Foer recounts his adventures in preparing for the U.S. Memory Championship, investigating both the nature of memory and why the act of memorization still matters. For much of human history, remembering was the key to retaining accumulated knowledge and wisdom. The invention of printing sparked the development of "externalized memory," which has been greatly accelerated by computers and the Internet. We need no longer remember everything, but rather know where to find it, relegating memory experts to a "quirky subculture" comprised of individuals able to remember a list of 1,000 numbers, the exact order of two decks of playing cards and other feats. Foer began to investigate this subculture and then joined it as he trained for a year to compete among other "mental athletes." Mental athletes are neither geniuses nor savants, but they have mastered the art of translating what the brain is not good at remembering—words and numbers—into what it is good at remembering—space and images. They employ the 2,500-year-old mnemonic device of constructing "memory palaces"—imaginary buildings with distinct images throughout these spaces. For example, an image of President Clinton smoking a cigar on the couch might be the number three. It becomes, of course, quite complex, but Foer emphasizes that memorization is neither a gift nor a trick; it is hard work developing "a degree of attention and mindfulness normally lacking." The author is as concerned with what memory means as he is with learning how to memorize. He offers fascinating and accessible explorations into the workings of the brain and tells the story of a man who could forget nothing and of another man who could only remember his most immediate thought. If "experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience," writes the author, what does it mean that "we've supplanted our own natural memory with a vast superstructure of technological crutches"? An original, entertaining exploration about how and why we remember.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Moonwalking with Einstein:
1. How's the state of your memory?
2. Talk about techniques to improve the memory—the PAO system and the Memory Palace. How do they work? Have you attempted to use either technique to improve your own memory? What are some of the lurid objects...or houses you would use to recall objects you want to remember?
3. How important is memory to us today when our culture provides so many other ways of recalling information: our ability to write, printed texts, photos, computers, and smart phones?
4. In the ancient world, learning was memorizing. How would you characterize today's learning? What role does memory play in acquiring knowledge? Were the students Foer visited in the South Bronx learning history or memorizing it...or both?
5. Talk about the way memory shapes our identities and perceptions of the world. How does it do so?
6. What is Foer's reaction when he wins the U.S. Memory Championship? Did it fulfill his hopes and ideals of what an improved memory would bring him?
7. What do you think of Foer's coach, Ed Cooke? What about his philosophy that "a heroic person should be able to withstand about 10 years of solitary confinement without getting terribly annoyed"?
8. Talk about Ribot's Law—the process of integtrating memories into the brain's network. Does that law seem to hold true for your brain?
9. What is the role of memory in our culture and why does Foer say it is eroding at an ever faster pace? How serious a problem is this national amnesia...if, in fact, that's what it is?
10. Foer says that in the process of learning to memorize, he also learned "to pay attention to the world around" him. Are you keenly aware of your surroundings? How much attention do you pay to the world around you?
11. What sections in this book did you find funny? What was most interesting to you?
12. How much of this book do you remember?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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