Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover: Liesl Schillinger on Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen: "It’s unusual — in fact (why be coy?), it’s extremely rare — to come across a first novel by a woman writer that concerns itself with such quirky, philosophical, didactic explorations; a novel in which the heart and the brain vie for the role of protagonist, and the brain wins. While the voice and mood of the novel are masculine, clinical and objective (Leo registers Rema’s distress with detachment, recording it but not feeling it), the book’s descriptions of colors, smells, clothing and bodies show feminine perception."
• Craig Seligman on The Size of the World by Joan Silber: "Few of her sentences call out to be quoted or even remembered, really. Her first two stories ... frankly seem a little bit pallid. But something in them keeps you reading; you may feel lulled but not bored. And as you continue, you perceive what a serious misjudgment 'pallid' is. Slowly, almost while your attention is somewhere else, the intensity level rises. And rises. Notes sounded softly in the early stories deepen and resonate, until Silber’s quiet music has turned symphonic."
• Becca Zerkin on Wave by Suzy Lee: "I am in love with a nameless little girl made of charcoal dust. She is the sparingly drawn heroine of 'Wave,' Suzy Lee’s wordless picture book about a day at the beach, and she bursts from the page with vitality."
• Kakutani on Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip P. Pan: "It is Mr. Pan’s achievement in 'Out of Mao’s Shadow' that he makes the dark side of China’s glittering economic growth palpably real to the reader by showing the fallout of these changes on the lives of individual citizens, just as he shows the potent effect that a few brave individuals — speaking up on behalf of civil liberties, freedom of the press and government accountability — can have on the party’s conduct of day-to-day business.... He interviewed artists, workers, peasants, journalists and entrepreneurs, and his portraits of these people possess both the immediacy of first-rate reportage and the emotional depth of field of a novel."
• David Margolick on Rome 1960 by David Maraniss: "It was, his subtitle tells us, an event 'that changed the world.' He never really proves his case. A gold medalist of a writer ... he has put together a silver medal of a study of a bronze medal of a topic."

Washington Post:

• Andrew J. Bacevich on The Dark Side by Jane Mayer: "With the appearance of this very fine book, Hillary Clinton can claim a belated vindication of sorts: A right-wing conspiracy does indeed exist, although she misapprehended its scope and nature. The conspiracy is not vast and does not consist of Clinton-haters. It is small, secretive and made up chiefly of lawyers contemptuous of the Constitution and the rule of law."
• Randall Balmer on The Family by Jeff Sharlet: "In the film version of 'All the President's Men,; Deep Throat castigates Bob Woodward for his uncorroborated accusations against H.R. Haldeman. 'You've done worse than let Haldeman slip away,' Deep Throat says. 'You've got people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible. . . . If you shoot too high and miss, everybody feels more secure.' The same might be said about Jeff Sharlet's book about a loose coalition of religiously conservative individuals and organizations that operates in and around the councils of power in Washington."

Los Angeles Times:

• Jesse Cohen on The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind: "'The Black Hole War' is a gregarious narrative of intellectual brinkmanship.... Like the best teachers, Susskind makes it fun to learn. With a deft use of analogy and a flair for language, he tames the most ferocious concepts. In his hands, a D-brane in anti de Sitter space seems like the most natural thing in the world. He has also come up with the best visual metaphor for the multidimensionality of string theory that I've yet come across, one that alone is worth the price of the book."
• Tim Rutten on Mayer's The Dark Side: "If you intend to vote in November and read only one book between now and then, this should be it."

New York Sun:

• Tyler Cowen on The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson: "Don Thompson provides the single best guide to both the anthropology and the economics of contemporary art markets. This book is fun and fascinating on just about every page.... You'll ... learn how to bid at an auction (inexperienced buyers start too soon in the process), how auctioneers entertain a crowd (they count on the non-buyers to keep the buyers interested), and why art critics don't matter much anymore. If the magazine Art in America pays $200 for a review article, why listen to that writer? We have a much richer and generally more accessible guide to the value of art — namely the market itself."

Globe & Mail:

• Michelle Berry on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski: "In this powerful and compelling book, Wroblewski works with his own kind of rich, detailed language; at times, it almost feels as if he invents language. Words and phrases become images so completely that you often forget you are reading.... I would much rather have too many details written beautifully than just the right amount of really bad writing.... This is a long book. One you will want to think about as you read. It can be meandering and detailed one minute and fast and action-packed the next. Run with it. You won't be disappointed."

The Guardian:

• Tim Radford on The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow: "He writes in the best traditions of the genre: the prose is simple and suitably vivid, the explanations pop up as brisk anecdote and lively example rather than as uncompromising strings of numbers, and the personal detail - which is lively enough - is sternly contained by the needs of the narrative. There have been many literate and diverting books by physicists and mathematicians, but this one starts with one distinct advantage. Most of us don't want to know about quantum mechanics, even if we do want to know why the universe is as it is. But we all want to know what follows when we take a chance on love, the lottery or a smear test for cancer. We may not understand how to calculate the rate of false positives, or the margin of error, but we know that we have a lot to lose."

The New Yorker:

• Elizabeth Kolbert on anti-lawn books: "The anti-lawn treatise attacks both the idea of the velvety expanse—David Quammen has observed, only half jokingly, that though Communism has fallen, 'lawnism' continues—and the real labor that goes into pursuing it. The writer in this tradition toils in the hope (probably vain) of reversing more than a hundred and fifty years of gardening history. He envisions an American landscape that looks more like it did in Downing’s day—one covered in moss, or scrub, or, alternatively, just weeds."
• Also, Jill Lepore unearths a powerful librarian's failed attempt to block E.B. White's Stuart Little at publication: "'I never was so disappointed in a book in my life,' Moore declared. She summoned Nordstrom to her rooms at the Grosvenor Hotel, where she warned her that the book 'mustn’t be published.' To the Whites she sent a fourteen-page letter, predicting that the book would fail and that it would prove an embarrassment, and begging the author to reconsider its publication."

--Tom