- Wonderful, in-depth WaPo article on the head of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and his long-term spy and sabotage campaign against a writer who said his father was in the closet in an article.
- Jenny Davidson reviews Paul Collins new biography of Thomas Paine for the Village Voice. (She also posts her favorite poem about marmosets.)
- Anne has a new FITT report over at the Vertical Blog.
If anyone out there has access to the NYTimes’ select content and wants to email me Jonathan Lethem’s piece on Italo Calvino, you’d be my favorite. (GWENDA007ATGMAILDOTCOM)Thanks!- Rosemary Graham on pink book covers in YAland. (Via Cecil.)
- The WaPo reviews Ray Kurzweil’s new book on singularity, providing a pretty good primer on the subject.
- Also in this week’s BookWorld, Walter Mosley on the importance of politics and poetry in novels.
2 thoughts on “Sunday Hangovers”
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I just finished Paul’s book also for a review I’ll be writing for Bookslut – I’m a little surprised by Jenny’s review. Maybe she was constrained by space, but it seems so trite to just mention a couple of the more lurid bits about skulls and bones and leave out the massive amount of research that Paul must have done to write this book. She also makes it sound like he didn’t travel anywhere in the process which is not true – he is all over the place in the book, visiting every place critical to the life and “afterlife” of Paine. I thought the book was fantastic, and for any fan of history, it’s a perfect choice.
I had 300 words, I think, which is pretty tight. But I really liked the book too, and am sorry if that doesn’t come across in the review! Here’s what I wrote on my blog when I linked to the Voice review: “I thought it was excellent (give me this kind of founding-father book over David McCullough’s any day); it would make a good holiday present for someone who likes reading smart funny non-fiction with a historical bent. Highly recommended.”