Collected Miscellany

Here are some worthwhile links for your browsing pleasure:

– The American Spectator has an interesting piece on Jim Baen editor and founder of the U.S. science-fiction publisher Baen Books:

His role as a cultural warrior was a proud one. He contributed very significantly, below the radar of sociological and cultural commentators, to the strengthening of Western culture.

He also did something not many cultural warriors, and not many publishers, can claim: he may have contributed directly and significantly to the West winning the Cold War.

Not bad for an ex-hippie who left home at 17, lived on the streets for several months and finally enlisted in the U.S. Army to avoid starving.

– Also in the Spectator, check out the Interview with John O’Sullivan on his new book (The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister) which I hope to read this year. A sample:

BC: As someone who knows Prime Minister Thatcher, what is her personality like? Did she deserve the nickname “Iron Lady” or was that just Soviet agitprop?

O’Sullivan: Lady Thatcher is a warm, lively and combative personality. She likes a good argument and so she likes people who argue with her. She certainly deserved the title “The Iron Lady” because she was firm and authoritative in the face of attack. She also had the administrative stamina to push through her labor and economic reforms not only against union opposition but also against the usual bureaucratic obstructionism in government. Because Blair lacks this stamina, his achievements will fall far short of hers on the day he leaves office. As a boss she was kind, thoughtful and considerate, especially to those lower down the pecking order. But she was also demanding and tough towards ministers and senior civil servants. Sometimes she took this too far — it’s generally agreed that she treated Geoffrey Howe badly because she misread his mild good-natured personality as a sign of weakness. She paid heavily for that error. In general, though, she is a very kind woman. She also has a strong domestic side. She used to cook supper for aides working late with her on speeches. I think of her as a combination of towering world-historical figure and ordinary British housewife — and equally good in both capacities.

Continue reading →

Here are some worthwhile links for your browsing pleasure:

– The American Spectator has an interesting piece on Jim Baen editor and founder of the U.S. science-fiction publisher Baen Books:

His role as a cultural warrior was a proud one. He contributed very significantly, below the radar of sociological and cultural commentators, to the strengthening of Western culture.

He also did something not many cultural warriors, and not many publishers, can claim: he may have contributed directly and significantly to the West winning the Cold War.

Not bad for an ex-hippie who left home at 17, lived on the streets for several months and finally enlisted in the U.S. Army to avoid starving.

– Also in the Spectator, check out the Interview with John O’Sullivan on his new book (The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister) which I hope to read this year. A sample:

BC: As someone who knows Prime Minister Thatcher, what is her personality like? Did she deserve the nickname “Iron Lady” or was that just Soviet agitprop?

O’Sullivan: Lady Thatcher is a warm, lively and combative personality. She likes a good argument and so she likes people who argue with her. She certainly deserved the title “The Iron Lady” because she was firm and authoritative in the face of attack. She also had the administrative stamina to push through her labor and economic reforms not only against union opposition but also against the usual bureaucratic obstructionism in government. Because Blair lacks this stamina, his achievements will fall far short of hers on the day he leaves office. As a boss she was kind, thoughtful and considerate, especially to those lower down the pecking order. But she was also demanding and tough towards ministers and senior civil servants. Sometimes she took this too far — it’s generally agreed that she treated Geoffrey Howe badly because she misread his mild good-natured personality as a sign of weakness. She paid heavily for that error. In general, though, she is a very kind woman. She also has a strong domestic side. She used to cook supper for aides working late with her on speeches. I think of her as a combination of towering world-historical figure and ordinary British housewife — and equally good in both capacities.

Continue reading →

Readers interested in the history of the conservative movement and/or National Review will want to be sure to check out an internet special over at ISI Books. For a limited time they are offering a special price for three books:

Take advantage of this opportunity to get The Making of the American Conservative Mind, Principles and Heresies, and James Burnham and the Struggle for the World, at a deep discount.

All three volumes are available for $57.00, not including shipping and handling. List price for these titles purchased individually is $89.85. That’s a savings of $32.85, and you save on shipping too.

I have read The Making of the American Conservative Mind and James Burnham and the Struggle for the World and hope to get to Principles and Heresies in the not to distant future. As I said, if you are interested in American conservatism these are three excellent books about the men at the center of the movement.

We get mail. That’s right. People take time out of their busy day to send me email about a wide variety of stuff. I am often not sure why, but it happens. I am often not very good about communicating the contents of those emails as I am cynical as to the good I can accomplish with this humble web site. But in the hopes that people’s faith in me will be rewarded, allow me to share with you some links that have found their way to my inbox.

– Matt Hansen stumbled up his book and a Booklist blurb in a recent edition of “In the Mail” and wanted to let readers now about his website. If his book, a thriller that involves Big Foot called The Shadow Killer, interests you, or if you just want more information before you decide, please check it out. You can learn more about Scott and about the book.

– L. Lee Lowe sent me a note alerting me to the fact that the pilot pod cast of Mortal Ghost is now available. Mortal Ghost is a YA fantasy novel being serialized on a blog. In the pod cast the novel is read by a young British theatre student.

– I think some others have made note of this, but Sarah Walker from Wetpaint wrote to let me know about the launch of Book Lust Wiki, which is the community piece to Nancy ’s regular website, Book Lust. Be sure to check out the book blog section and add your own if it isn’t there.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out Robert Birnbaum’s conversation with Heidi Julavits.

Eric Dezenhall’s latest Jonah Eastman novel, Spinning Dixie, treads dangerously close to being a one dimensional, paint-by-numbers satire. But a nostalgic, and rather touching, core and a talent for pop culture references (and criticism) make it a readable and entertaining romp despite an overly complex plot and some flat characters.

Here is the dust jacket plot summary:

When a gorgeous woman appears at the gates of the White House bearing a mysterious letter, disgraced Presidential Press Secretary and professional spinmeister Jonah Eastman knows that his past has finally caught up with him. Raised by a Jewish mobster in Atlantic City, Jonah was only seventeen when he met Claudine Polk, an unabashed Southern belle, and placed her on an unshakable pedestal for one glorious summer of reckless youth and first love.

Now Claudine desperately needs Jonah’s help to save Rattle & Snap, her family’s plantation in Tennessee, from the hands of her crooked soon-to-be-ex-husband. Jonah must use all of his connections, from shady undercover agents to the President himself, to engage in Operation Dixie Knish and save his Southern belle’s ancestral home.

Continue reading →

The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of James Ellroy nostalgic for his gritty, cynical take on postwar Hollywood in such noir classics as L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia should enjoy Edgar-finalist Abbott’s second novel (after Die a Little). The author uses a less-celebrated real-life crime—the disappearance of actress Jean Spangler from Los Angeles in 1949—as her hook to spin a downbeat tale about a journalist-turned-studio-flack, Gil “Hop” Hopkins. Hop was with Spangler, a stunner but a second-rate acting talent, the last night she was seen, and harbors guilt over leaving her in the company of a famous acting and singing duo, Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel, who have a reputation for rough play. Hop’s efforts at amateur sleuthing unearth a blackmail ring and a possible mob connection to Spangler’s disappearance. Abbott deserves credit for resurrecting this virtually forgotten case and concocting a plausible fictional solution to a true crime.

Show I’ll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concert-going Experience by Sean Manning

From Publishers Weekly

In this uneven but engaging collection of essays, 50 writers recall their most memorable concert experience, spanning about 50 years of popular music history. Manning does a great job of collecting a diverse range of writers and musicians for this project, and his sequencing has the intuitive logic of a well considered set list. Though the book is chronological, the parallel movements of different musical eras are allowed to bump up against each other in fascinating ways, such as when the smooth showmanship of Billy Joel gives way to the raw violence of X in 1979. The pieces in this collection are most successful when they combine personal anecdotes with specific and original recollections of the band being profiled. Tracy Chevalier’s essay about seeing Queen in 1977 is a perfect evocation of experiencing live music for the first time, as she describes “the familiarity and yet also the strange rawness of the songs.” While the overall pace of the collection is slowed by “you had to be there” essays about a Bruce Springsteen show, Woodstock and other events, there are enough high points to satisfy a dedicated live music aficionado.

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s by Joe Boyd

Book Description

When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the 1960s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running UFO, the coolest club in London; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd.

More than any previous sixties music autobiography, Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention.