Like many old cookbooks, Jessie Conrad’s contains recipes we all still know and enjoy, such as an apple tart from scratch, as well as those you might not have enjoyed in a generation or two, such as calf’s kidney on toast; bacon pudding; pigeons with carrots; and “Boiled Mutton for an Invalid.”
You might say, as the youngsters do, that Fetterman did his party “a solid” simply by winning, especially as that seemed not so assured during the campaign. The problems Fetterman encountered during his Senate campaign are mostly what “Unfettered“ is about.
Though their lives wound up linked, these three men could not have been more different. Perry Smith was as poor as used-up dirt. Truman Capote sparkled like diamonds and partied with stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra…. Philip Seymour Hoffman landed in the shy middle, living off his talent as simply as one can in New York. What they shared was a sensitivity too raw to hide, and pain that sent them running.
I ate a lot more cheese than usual while reading this book, which is testament to Finnerty’s passion for the subject and his ability to sell it on the page and verbally in the market. While reading through New Year’s, I realized I still had half a dozen leftover bits of different cheeses I found before Christmas in a supermarket in Metro East St. Louis.
‘Phasers on Stun!’ may not make future efforts at assembling a franchise-spanning overview of Star Trek obsolete, but Britt’s comprehensive approach makes such labor redundant, at least for now. He analyzes, anatomizes, celebrates, and criticizes every extant Trek television series and film in sometimes granular detail, making ‘Phasers on Stun!,’ despite its sloganeering subtitle, too accomplished to ignore.
Years ago, thrilled to be wandering through Oxford, I heard strains of classical guitar and peeked into a gorgeous old stone church. The music lifted me; we soared together, joining the apostles on the vaulted ceiling. No wonder Sir Neville Marriner conducted in St. Martin-in-the-Fields church rather than a…
Taken together, “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” reveal not only the fun of laughing at ourselves as Americans, but also the folly of how painfully ridiculous we look when we fail to acknowledge our faults and the collective injustices of our history that we would rather walk past. There is no virtue in unyielding, unquestioned “patriotism,” much less iron-clad nationalism. There is only material for ridicule, waiting for the next outsider with literary acumen to describe and document in cold-eyed prose.
What are we to make of this smackdown, all of us who thought AI would never sound profound or witty? Will the writing of books cease to be a human endeavor?
“A Dream Deferred” is a thoughtful book, especially for those who lived through and remember Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs. Abby Phillip gives us Jackson warts and all, the maddening egotism and opportunism, and the rumors of infidelity. Informed, highly readable, and even exciting at times as she recounts the thrills of the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is famously terse and inscrutable and likes it that way. But the senior senator from Kentucky is a more complicated figure, and his successes as a legislator and leader are just part of what makes him an intriguing subject. Michael Tackett captures McConnell in all his complexity.