Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family's Journey From Worn-Torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanhai
Vivian Jeanett Kaplan, 2004
St. Martin's Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312330545
Summary
To Nini Karpel, growing up in Vienna during the 1920s was a romantic confection. Whether schussing down ski slopes or speaking of politics in coffee houses, she cherished the city of her birth. But in the 1930s an undercurrent of conflict and hate began to seize the former imperial capital. This struggle came to a head when Hitler took possession of neighboring Germany. Anti-Semitism, which Nini and her idealistic friends believed was impossible in the socially advanced world of Vienna, became widespread and virulent.
The Karpel's Jewish identity suddenly made them foreigners in their own homeland. Tormented, disenfranchised, and with a broken heart, Nini and her family sought refuge in a land seven thousand miles across the world.
Shanghai, China, one of the few countries accepting Jewish immigrants, became their new home and refuge. Stepping off the boat, the Karpel family found themselves in a land they could never have imagined. Shanghai presented an incongruent world of immense wealth and privilege for some and poverty for the masses, with opium dens and decadent clubs as well as rampant disease and a raging war between nations.
Ten Green Bottles is the story of Nini Karpel's struggles as she told it to her daughter Vivian so many years ago. This true story depicts the fierce perseverance of one family, victims of the forces of evil, who overcame suffering of biblical proportion to survive. It was a time when ordinary people became heroes. (From the publisher.
Author Bio
• Birth—June, 17, 1946
• Where—Shanghai, Peoples' Republic of China
• Raised—Toronto, Canada
• Education—University of Toronto
• Awards—Canadian Jewish Book Award; Adei-Wizo Literary
Award (Italy)
• Currently—lives in Canada
Vivian Jeanette Kaplan was born in Shanghai, where her parents were married. As her family originated in Vienna, her mother tongue is German. When she was two years old, her parents arrived in Canada, settling in Toronto. She graduated from the University of Toronto, where she studied English, French, and Spanish. She is married and has three sons.
For a number of years the family owned and ran a lakeside lodge in Muskoka, north of Toronto. For twenty years she had her own business, Vivian Kaplan Oriental Interiors, an import-export firm with interior design showrooms specializing in decor from the Far East.
Ten Green Bottles, which tells her own true family saga, is her first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Her powerful, harrowing story grips the reader. In an odyssey of horrors that takes place over a decade...what shines through is the family's indomitable will to survive.
Ottawa Citizen
Kaplan's prose is simply stunning . . . Kaplan's descriptions bring wartime Shanghai, its people and smells, to life... Although nonfiction, Ten Green Bottles reads like a novel. Kaplan captures the mood and feelings of her mother experiences as if they were her own.
Canadian Jewish News
For a brief period between 1938 and 1941, roughly 20,000 Jews found refuge from the Nazis in the one place not requiring visas, police certificates or proofs of financial independence: Shanghai. In this spellbinding memoir, Kaplan recounts her family's transition from the "delight" of Vienna to "a mysterious blob on the map, China." Writing in a fictional present tense, Kaplan narrates this evocative, moving saga in the voice of her mother, Nini. The halcyon early years of cafes and skiing end as the Nazis rise to power. Still, in 1936 when Nini meets her future husband, Poldi, a Polish refugee, she is "adamant that [persecution of Jews] could never happen here." It does. By 1939, her family will make the month-long, 7,000-mile journey to Shanghai. Amid "pervasive poverty... overpowering heat... [and] strange faces," Nini and Poldi find an anxious and precarious normality, but after Pearl Harbor, they struggle terribly. With the war's end comes the shock of learning what became of family and friends left behind in Europe. Although Vienna is rebuilt and a daughter (the author) is born, Communist troops arrive, and Nini and Poldi move again, this time to Canada. Kaplan's intimate knowledge of her parents' story makes it seem as if she experienced it herself, and her remarkable achievement will make readers feel that way, too. Agent, Barry Kaplan. Although there is a ton of Holocaust literature, the China experience is not as well mined, which sets this book winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award apart.
Publishers Weekly
One of the great, tragic epics of the last century was the odyssey of Jewish families from Hitler's Europe to relative safety in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the late 1930s. (The Japanese were not anti-Semites, though when war broke out they were happy enough to accommodate their Fascist allies.) This beautifully composed and engrossing memoir relates the story of the author's mother, who traveled from 1920s Austria to Shanghai and eventually settled in Canada. Kaplan, winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award in Biography/Memoir, brings the history of the period to life as she shows how the family adapted to each development. Somehow, as in The Diary of Anne Frank, the outcome of this tale is uplifting and instructive, showing us that nobility endures despite political oppression, war, poverty, disease, and human pettiness. Although the general historical facts are well known, this is a worthwhile retelling of a story that each new generation should hear. Recommended for larger public libraries. —Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL
Library Journal
Riveting account of a family who fled the Nazis only to endure further persecution in Shanghai. Characterizing her work-winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award-as "a memoir in the creative non-fiction genre," the author, who was born in Shanghai and now lives in Canada, tells the story in the voice of her mother, Nini Karpel, the youngest daughter of a prosperous and patriotic Viennese department-store owner. Her father died suddenly in 1922 when Nini was six, leaving her mother responsible for the business as well as their four children. Life went on more or less as usual, but the political situation was of increasing concern. In 1936, Nini fell in love with Poldi Kosiner, the son of Polish refugees, but he could find work only in Italy, and they had to continue their romance by correspondence. When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, the Karpels were immediately affected by the new anti-Jewish laws; their business and assets were seized, relatives were beaten, and they feared for their lives. Learning that refugees were welcome in Shanghai, Nini, acting on her own, approached a gentile lawyer, who bought their tickets for the long voyage to China. Her courageous initiative helped save her mother and siblings; with travel arrangements in place, the Karpels were able to obtain exit visas. Once in Shanghai, a place quite unlike any they had ever known, they were joined by Poldi, who came overland. Richly evoking the city's sights and smells, Nini's narrative details their struggle to find work; the arrival of the Japanese, who made Jews live in Shanghai's rundown Hongkew section; the brief interlude of peace and prosperity when the war finally ended; and then the Communist takeover that made it impossible for the family to remain in China. Kaplan closes with their 1949 arrival in Toronto. A moving and memorable portrayal of a less familiar aspect of the Jewish plight during WWII.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In many ways Nini was a typical Austrian in her upbringing. What did she especially love about her youth in Vienna?
2. What Jewish cultural teachings impacted on her during childhood and adolescence that lay a foundation for her feelings towards her religion?
3. Nini's journey took her to self-discovery. From isolation to a world-view how did her outlook on the rest of humanity change because of the events of her life?
4. Nini attended a seder at Poldi's family's home. During the reading of the Haggadah she had a feeling of impending doom. The Passover tale is a foreshadowing of events that will take place. Consider the similarities between her life and the Exodus story. How many can you think of?
5. The book is written in a visual way. Words are used as pigments to depict the events that take place. Think of the story in terms of light and dark as a painter or film-maker might do. If light represents hope and dark is sadness what has the writer done to express the mood in descriptive terms?
6. The title "Ten Green Bottles" is enigmatic. It can be interpreted in various ways. Thinking of the actual words of the song that it is derived from, what other aspects of the title are present in the book? Think of the number ten, significant in various ways and then of the idea of broken glass. Even the color green is important. How are the words of the title evident throughout the book?
7. The book has been written as an exploration of the senses. How many can you find? Give examples of ways that the reader is invited into the pages to relive the experiences of the protagonist.
8. One aspect of the book is that of the strong female heroine. How is Nini the central figure in the survival of the family? Are there other strong women in the book? How do they take control of their destinies?
9. There are inanimate objects that play important roles in the story. What are they and what do they have to "say"?
10. Between them Nini and Poldi are hinges by which the Axis powers swung. They were involved with each of the three: Germany, Italy and Japan. How were these seemingly average people affected by the grand scheme of the waring nations? What did they do to take control of their own lives when they seemed destined to become victims?
11. Nini and Poldi looked for help to get them through the most difficult of their ordeals. How did Herr Berger, Herta Weinstein, Leon Druck, and Mother Laula influence them and change their outlook on life?
12. Nini's father wrote a poem that had eerie foreshadowing elements. How did the words that he wrote years before the Nazi takeover and the war years provide comfort and advice to Nini when she needed guidance?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Bitch is the New Black
Helena Andrews, 2010
HarperCollins
244 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061778827
Summary
Meet Helena Andrews, sassy, single, smart, and, yes, a bitch—but Tina Fey said it best, bitch is the new black!
When Helena Andrews heard this declaration on Saturday Night Live, her first reaction was How daaare you? But after a commercial break and some thought, she decided to poke at the stereotype that says "successful" and "bitch" are synonyms. Unafraid and frank, she comes to realize that being a bitch is sometimes the best way to be—except, of course, when it's not.
Bitch Is the New Black follows Andrews—sexy, single, and a self-described smart-ass—on her trip from kidnapped daughter of a lesbian to Washington, D.C., political reporter who can't remember a single senator's name. Told in Andrews's singular voice, this addictive memoir explores the roller coaster of being educated and single while trying to become an "actual adult" and find love.
In these candid yet heartfelt essays, she chronicles that ride from beginning to end: a childhood spent on an all-white island, escaping via episodes of The Cosby Show; being set up with Obama's "body guy" Reggie Love by Maureen Dowd; and the shocking suicide of a best friend. Through it all, Andrews and her gang of girlfriends urge each other to "keep it moving." But no one can stay strong all the time—not even the women we believe do so without trying.
As Andrews says, "Despite the fact that the most recognizable woman in the United States is black, popular culture still hasn't moved past the only adjective apparently meant to describe us— "strong." She is also flawed, tired, naive, greedy, gutsy, frightened, and kind: secret sides that come out in honest detail here. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 28, 1980
• Born—southern California, USA
• Education— B.A., Columbia University; M.A.
Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Helena Andrews is a graduate of Columbia University and has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times and Marie Claire. She lives in Washington, D.C., and is currently working on the film adaptation of Bitch Is the New Black with the creator of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, Shonda Rhimes. (From the publisher.)
More
Helena Andrews is an author, journalist and pop culture critic. Her first book, Bitch is the New Black (2010) is a collection of essays chronicling her experiences as a single Black female in Washington, DC. First conceptualized as a daily blog documenting the sad state of dating among educated African Americans, Bitch is the New Black evolved to describe all the influences and impacts on the modern Black woman. The film rights have been optioned by "Grey's Anatomy" creator/executive producer Shonda Rhimes, who will serve as executive producer for the project.
In a interview with The Root.com she discussed the book:
Despite the fact that the most visible woman in the United States is black, popular culture still hasn't moved past the only adjective apparently meant to describe us: "strong." Bitchwill hopefully function as a sort of dictionary (abridged, of course), providing a new vocabulary for black women. Almost automatically I'd describe myself as strong, but I'm also flawed, tired, sexy, depressed, frightened, naïve, hilarious, greedy and, of course, bitchy. In 16 essays, 'Bitch' gives credence to each one of my faces—secret sides every woman often keeps hidden.
Career
Helena began work in publishing as an intern at O, the Oprah Magazine in 2002. After leaving O, she worked brief stints at Seventeen, Domino, and Rap Up magazines. After a year pursuing a master's degree from Northwestern University in 2005, Helena worked as a news assistant in the Washington bureau of the New York Times. In 2006 she became a staff writer for the online political magazine Politico.com where she covered the cultural goings on of Capitol Hill. Helena has appeared on CNN, Inside Edition, Fox News and XM Radio. Currently, she is a regular contributor to Slate’s TheRoot.com and AOL’s PoliticsDaily.com.
Helena graduated from Columbia University in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing. At Columbia she joined the Rho Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She earned a master's degree in print journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2005. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Andrews's exploration of what it's like to be young, black and single in Washington, D.C., is at times cringingly frank. Still, any young professional woman, regardless of color, will relate.
Nancy Trejos - Washington Post
[A] bitingly funny—and honest—read....[Andrews] establishes herself as an individual, proving that the women who fit into the “strong (single) black woman” category are more complex than the one-dimensional persona lets on.
Associated Press
Andrews offers a caustic and humorous running account of her life, mad texting her girlfriends about dates and career horrors, as she navigates the prickly terrain of a modern America getting used to a black First Lady and struggling to rethink its image of black women in general.
Booklist
Political reporter Andrews assembles 16 autobiographical essays exploring her unconventional upbringing, academic and professional accomplishment and the challenges of being a successful, single black woman in Washington, D.C. The scathingly witty author examines a wide variety of topics that, beneath the jokes and sarcasm, address weighty issues (depression, aging, abortion) with wry astuteness. The "bitch" referred to in the title is an allusion to the tough veneer—perhaps subtly survivalist—that Andrews claims is necessary for a black woman who is often the only black woman in school or at work. She reveals the inception of this facade in chapters about her childhood, where she describes being the only child of an openly gay single mother whose eccentricities were both fascinating and impenetrable. One anecdote describes the author's abduction by her grandmother at age six, in a misguided attempt to protect her; another details her attempt to reconcile the Bible with her mother's homosexuality (she couldn't). Whatever the effect of these profound incidents, the author clearly inherited ambition and confidence. She attended Columbia and Northwestern before climbing the ranks as a reporter in Washington—a situation that presented an entirely new set of obstacles, from finding an apartment without rats to finding camaraderie in the workplace. "There's something terribly frightening about being the only black person at a political newspaper when there's a black guy running for president," she writes. "Or should I say freeing?" Much of the book chronicles Andrews's dating misadventures. Nearing 30, and with a hilariously grandbaby-crazed mother, the author's reaction to a Washington Post headline titled "Marriage Is for White People" is understandably incredulous. Andrews, however, finds comfort in her artistic success, and has already sold the movie rights to her book. An irreverent, savvy and sharp memoir.
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 Bitch is the New Black:
1. Talk about the title: what does it mean? How does Helena Andrews use the word "bitch? How does she apply the word to herself? Is it a pejorative or a compliment? Does she use the title out of malice or self-confidence?
2. Why, according to Andrews, are successful black women lonely and single? Is her assessment—that success gets in the way of romance—accurate? What are your personal experiences and observations?
3. Why does Andrews admire with astronaut Lisa Nowak?
4. Talk about Andrews' prayers for her father's return. How did his absence haunt her life as a young girl...and later, as a young woman?
5. Discuss her growing up years on Catalina Island. In particular, what do you think of her mother? What kind of mother was she? Did you agree with the friend's accusation that Frances was raising Andrews to have no feelings?
6. Talk about the kidnapping scene? What were your emotions while reading it?
7. What impact did The Bill Cosby show have on Andrews and her expectations for life? Talk about her hopes for the TV-film, Polly and its effect on her white classmates?
8. In general, how does Andrews describe the various people who enter her life—the interior designer, Reggie Love, Rayetta, or Dexter? Are her assessments of them fair, funny, mean, perceptive? Does she present them as fully-developed individuals...or as one-diminsional figures?
9. How does Andrews relate to the Obamas, Michelle in particular—her "diplomas in plural, a career in progress, a presidential husband, and perfect babies"?
10. What do you think of Dexter? At one point, he tells Andrews that she's too good for him—do you agree, or not? Why is Andrews attracted to him?
11. Talk about Andrews' treatment of difficult subjects—abortion and abusive relationships.
12. What, if anything, does Andrews come to learn by the close of her book? Do you feel she has examined her life, and her own role in its unfolding, with depth and perception? Or do you see the book as a more superficial treatment, written primarily as an entertaining, comedic take on life for a single black woman?
13. Which of the book's 16 essays are your favorites? Which parts are the most humorous? Most moving? Most enlightening? Most irritating?
14. Overall, what is your response to Helena Andrews and her book? Would you describe her writing as crass and offensive—a way to gain attention? Or is her writing a raw and openly honest presentation of life's disappointments. Does she strike a chord in your own life?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Known and Unknown: A Memoir
Donald Rumsfeld, 2011
Penguin Group USA
832 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781595230676
Summary
If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. —Rumsfeld's Rules
Few Americans have spent more time near the center of power than Donald Rumsfeld. Now he has written an unflinching memoir of his half-century career, sharing previously undisclosed details that will fascinate readers and force historians to rethink many controversies.
Starting from a middle-class childhood in Illinois, Rumsfeld had a rapid rise that won him early acclaim. He shows us what it was like growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, going to Princeton on scholarships, serving as a naval aviator, then getting his first political job on Capitol Hill during the Eisenhower administration. He recalls how he won a seat in the House of Representatives at age thirty and what he experienced as a Republican in Congress during the Kennedy and Johnson years.
We also follow him back to the executive branch as he took on key cabinet positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including his service as the youngest-ever secretary of defense, just after the trauma of Vietnam. And we learn about the challenges he later faced as a CEO in the private sector, and during his special assignments for President Reagan, including a face-to-face meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983.
All of that would have been enough material for a fascinating book. But as 2001 began, Rumsfeld's greatest challenges lay ahead of him. At age sixty-eight he returned to the Pentagon as President Bush's secretary of defense, with a mandate to transform the military for a new century. Just nine months later he would confront the worst acts of terrorism in American history, followed by unexpected wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he would be on the firing line for many controversies, from the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison to allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay.
Known and Unknownreveals what happened behind the scenes during the critical moments of the Bush years, as the President's inner circle debated how best to defend our country. It is based not only on Rumsfeld's memory but also on hundreds of previously unreleased documents from throughout his career. It also features his blunt, firsthand opinions about some of the world's best-known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Elvis Presley, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, and about each American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush.
In a famous press briefing, Rumsfeld once remarked that "there are also unknown unknowns . . . things we do not know we don't know." His book makes us realize just how much we didn't know.
Donald Rumsfeld is donating his proceeds from the sales of Known and Unknownto the military charities supported by the Rumsfeld Foundation.. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 9, 1932
• Where—Evanston, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton University
• Currently—lives in St. Michaels, Maryland
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman who served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977, under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006, under President George W. Bush. Combined, he is the second longest-serving defense secretary after Robert McNamara.
Rumsfeld was White House Chief of Staff during part of the Ford Administration and also served in various positions in the Nixon Administration. He was elected to four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and served as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO.
He was president of G. D. Searle & Company from 1977–1985, CEO of General Instrument from 1990–1993, and chairman of Gilead Sciences from 1997-2001.
Youth
Donald Rumsfeld was born in Evanston, Illinois, to George Donald Rumsfeld and Jeannette (née Huster). His great-grandfather, Johann Heinrich Rumsfeld, emigrated from Weyhe near Bremen in Northern Germany in 1876. Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, Rumsfeld became an Eagle Scout in 1949 and is the recipient of both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America and its Silver Buffalo Award in 2006. He was a camp counselor at the Northeast Illinois Council's Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan in the late 1940s and a ranger at Philmont Scout Ranch in 1949. Rumsfeld later bought a vacation house 30 miles (48 km) west of Philmont at Taos, New Mexico.
Education
Rumsfeld went to Baker Demonstration School, a private middle school, and later graduated[6] from New Trier High School. He attended Princeton University on academic and NROTC partial scholarships (A.B., 1954). In extracurricular activities he was an accomplished amateur wrestler and a member of the Lightweight Football team playing defensive back, and at Princeton he became captain of both the varsity wrestling team and the lightweight football team. While at Princeton he roomed with another future Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci.
His Princeton University senior thesis was titled "The Steel Seizure Case of 1952 and Its Effects on Presidential Powers." That precedent was later used against him in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
In 1956 he attended Georgetown University Law Center but did not graduate.
Domestic life
Rumsfeld married Joyce H. Pierson on December 27, 1954. They have three children and six grandchildren. Rumsfeld lives in St. Michaels, Maryland, in a former plantation house, Mount Misery, the site of Frederick Douglass's resistance to the unsuccessful breaking by Edward Covey. (From Wikipedia—where a longer and more indepth biography can be found.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Rumsfeld’s memoir plays a fast and loose game of dodge ball with what are now “known knowns” and “known unknowns” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tedious, self-serving volume is filled with efforts to blame others—most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III)—for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years. It is a book that suffers from many of the same flaws that led the administration into what George Packer of The New Yorker has called “a needlessly deadly” undertaking—that is, cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions and an unwillingness to re-examine past decisions.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
A hefty and heavily annotated accounting and defense of [Donald Rumsfeld's] life in public service. "Never much of a handwringer, I don’t spend a lot of time in recriminations, looking back or second-guessing decisions made in real time with imperfect information by myself or others,” he writes. But hand-wring he does, in repeated blasts of Rumsfeldian score-settling that come off as a cross between setting the record straight and doggedly knocking enemies off pedestals.... The book is full of little nuggets..., but at its heart, it is a revenge memoir.... Rumsfeld has careful and consistent praise for only a few — chief among them George W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Richard B. Cheney.
Gwen Ifill - Washington Post
Donald Rumsfeld's Known and Unknown is thus one of the most important contributions to a growing list of remembrances of our most recent wars. The book is crisply written, blending narrative detail with personal judgment and reflection. Mr. Rumsfeld begins by giving us a fine, if compressed, account of his life before becoming George W. Bush's defense secretary in 2001.... But the bulk of Known and Unknown inevitably refers to the events that followed 9/11—that is, to the Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq. From his accounts of various meetings and planning sessions, it is clear that the decision to go to war was not taken lightly, and Mr. Rumsfeld, to this day, does not doubt the wisdom of removing Saddam Hussein from power, even if weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq.
Robert H. Scales - Wall Street Journal
It's wearisome always being right, particularly when so many others are so wrong, so often — at least that's the impression a reader is most likely to draw from Rumsfeld's exhaustive, exasperating but vigorously written memoir.... Masterful bureaucratic survivor that he was until he ran out of room to maneuver, Rumsfeld delivers a memoir that is all about shifting blame and settling scores.
Tim Rutten - Los Angeles Times
Discussion Questions
1. What is the meaning of the book's title? It was taken from a well-known, and oft-repeated, statement Rumsfeld made in a 2002 press conference: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” In what way is his statement relevant to his memoir? Why might Rumsfeld have chosen it as his title?
2. There is disagreement about the tone and purpose of Known and Unknown. Some reviewers believe it is a self-serving, blame-others memoir and scathing attempt to settle scores, especially regarding Colin Powell. John Scales, however, a retired major general, writes in the Wall Street Journal that Rumsfeld is always gracious to his opponents, that he "treats almost everyone with respect and softens his barbs." What is your opinion of the book's tone and thrust?
3. Mr. Rumsfeld writes that...
there is not a persuasive argument to be made that the United States would be in a stronger strategic position or that Iraq and the Middle East would be better off if Saddam were still in power. In short, ridding the region of Saddam’s brutal regime has created a more stable and secure world.
What reasons does he give for this statement? Do you agree or disagree with him?
4. How does Rumsfeld dispute his critics who have said the war in Iraq diverted attention from Afghanistan? Do you agree with Rumsfeld or his critics?
5. How does the author defend himself against his critics who claim that his preoccupation with building a fast, light, and flexible force crippled the military's ability to secure Iraq? Are his arguments convincing to you?
6. Rumsfeld distances himself from the neo-conservatives whose goal was to export democracy and engage in nation-building secure democratic societies. Why doesn't he agree with the neo-cons? What about you?
7. What accomplishments is Rumsfeld most proud of—and why? What are some of the things he regrets having said, done or not done—and why?
8. In writing of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld says that Cheney could have served George W. Bush as defense secretary and vice president. Why does qualities does Rumsfeld admire in Cheney?
9. What does Rumsfeld think of the former president George H.W. Bush (the then-president's father)? Why was the relationship between the two older men so chilly?
10. Who else in George W's administration does Rumsfeld criticize...and why? What does he say about, for example, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?
11. Why does he dispute Powell's charge that he, Powell, had been misled about the existence of WMD in Iraq, particularly in his presentation of evidence to the United Nations?
12. Discuss Rumsfeld's observations regarding the pernicious in-fighting between the Pentagon and the State Department. How does he say the bad relations underminded the war effort?
13. According to Rumsfeld, what was L. Paul Bremer's role, as head of the provisional government, in stabilizing or destabilizing Iraq? What about the decision to disband the Iraqi army and ban Ba'ath party members from public life? Why were those decisions made, who made them, and what were the consequences?
14. Rumsfeld admires then-President George W. Bush. What presidential qualities ad actions does he praise?
15. Overall, what impressions do you take away from having read Known and Unknown? Do you find yourself agreeing with Rumsfeld? Do you find him honorable, likeable, fair-minded? Do you find him arrogant and defensive? Do you believe he is willing...or unwilling...to accept responsibility for what went wrong in Iraq?
16. What have you learned from reading this memoir? What surprised you? What impressed you? What angered you? Does the book confirm or alter your basic views of former Secretary Rumsfeld and the prosecution of the War in Iraq?
17. Have you read other accounts of the war, and lead-up to the war, in Iraq—Assassin's Gate (Packer), Bush at War and State of Denial (Woodward), Fiasco (Ricks), The Forever War (Filkins), or others. If so, how does this memoir compare?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth
Hilary Spurling, 2010
Simon & Schuster
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416540434
Summary
She recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in The Good Earth, an overnight worldwide bestseller in 1932, later a blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long before anyone else, she foresaw China’s future as a superpower, and she recognized the crucial importance for both countries of China’s building a relationship with the United States. As a teenager she had witnessed the first stirrings of Chinese revolution, and as a young woman she narrowly escaped being killed in the deadly struggle between Chinese Nationalists and the newly formed Communist Party.
Pearl grew up in an imperial China unchanged for thousands of years. She was the child of American missionaries, but she spoke Chinese before she learned English, and her friends were the children of Chinese farmers. She took it for granted that she was Chinese herself until she was eight years old, when the terrorist uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee for their lives. It was the first of many desperate flights. Flood, famine, drought, bandits, and war formed the background of Pearl’s life in China. "Asia was the real, the actual world," she said, "and my own country became the dreamworld."
Pearl wrote about the realities of the only world she knew in The Good Earth. It was one of the last things she did before being finally forced out of China to settle for the first time in the United States. She was unknown and penniless with a failed marriage behind her, a disabled child to support, no prospects, and no way of telling that The Good Earth would sell tens of millions of copies. It transfixed a whole generation of readers just as Jung Chang’s Wild Swans would do more than half a century later. No Westerner had ever written anything like this before, and no Chinese had either.
Buck was the forerunner of a wave of Chinese Americans from Maxine Hong Kingston to Amy Tan. Until their books began coming out in the last few decades, her novels were unique in that they spoke for ordinary Asian people— "translating my parents to me," said Hong Kingston, "and giving me our ancestry and our habitation." As a phenomenally successful writer and civil-rights campaigner, Buck did more than anyone else in her lifetime to change Western perceptions of China. In a world with its eyes trained on China today, she has much to tell us about what lies behind its astonishing reawakening. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 25, 1940
• Raised—Clifton, Bristol, UK
• Education—University of Oxford
• Awards—Whitbread Book of the Year; Duff
Cooper Prize; Rose Mary Crawshay Prize
• Currently—lives in North London, England
Hilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL* is a British writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. Pearl Buck in China was published in March 2010. (From Wikipedia.)
More
Born in 1940, Spurling spent her childhood years in Clifton, Bristol—a port city heavily bombed during World War II. "I loved the bangs and flashes," she says. "Children ran free, in packs and alone, in the streets and in the woods. And bombsites were wonderful playgrounds—ruined houses, façades ripped away."
Later, she attended University of Oxford, and while there married John Spurling (playwright, critic, novelist) in 1961.
After Oxford, the couple moved to Ladbroke Grove, where Hilary became the theater critic for Spectator magazine, a post she held until 1969. She herself claims to have been "the most dreadful, scathing, swingeing, destructive critic, a battleaxe." Her notorious reviews got her banned from various venues, including the Royal Court theater. Other reviewers, however, pledged to stay away in solidarity with Spurling, and the ban was eventually lifted.
In 1974 Spurling published her first biography—on Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, whose unconventional novels about the Edwardian gentry had been long-time favorites of Spurling. The first volume, Ivy When Young, was considered a stunning debut.
The second Compton-Burnett volume wasn't published till 1984; in the 10 intervening years, Spurling had three children and wrote the well-received A Handbook to Anthony Powell's Mustic of Time (a detailed guide and index to Powell's 12-volume work...see the LitLovers Reading Guide). She was also chosen to write Powell's official biography after his death in 2000, which she is still working on.
Her next big book was published in 1990—Paul Scott, a biography of the author of the Raj Quartet (which includes The Jewel in the Crown; see the LitLovers Reading Guide). Spurling considers Soctt's Quartet an "extraordinarily vivid description of the end of the empire, the cracking apart of India."
It was with her biography of Henri Matisse, however, that Spurling achieved greatest acclaim. The first volume, The Unknown Matisse, came out in 1998; the second volume, Matisse the Master, issued in 2005, won the Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year. (The two volumes took Spurling 15 years to complete.)
In 2010 Spurling published her biography of the first half of Pearl S. Buck's life—Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China (the US title is Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth).
When not under the pressure of publishing, the Spurlings spend time in the Greek mountain village of Arcadia where they have a house. There's is, according the Hilary's long-time publisher, "a good, generous marriage." (Author bio adapted from The Guardian, April 17, 2010.)
* Commander of the Order of the British Empire; Fellow of the Royal Literary Society
Book Reviews
Penetrating.... Ms. Spurling’s book isn’t a full-dress biography. (For that, there’s Peter Conn’s sturdy Pearl S. Buck: a Cultural Biography, published in 1996.) It focuses instead on Buck’s first four decades, her formative years as a woman and as a writer. It’s a good story, easily as curious as any Buck herself put to paper. Ms. Spurling writes well, and with real feeling.... The resulting portrait is a complicated one, but it has an absorbing glow.... It's a good story, easily as curious as any Buck herself put to paper.
Dwight Garner - New York Times Book Review
This elegant, richly researched work is at once a portrait of a remarkable woman ahead of her time, an evocation of China between the wars, and a meditation on how the secrets and griefs of childhood can shape a writer…Spurling's biography is a compelling tribute to the woman who first focused American attention on [China].
Leslie T. Chang - Washington Post
Pearl Buck in China is one of those exceedingly rare biographies where the reader senses the most powerful connection between author and subject, enabling remarkably sensitive understanding and insight.
San Francisco Chronicle
From its wonderful opening sentence to its poignant close, this is a superb biography. Spurling has brought her characters to robust life. Readers will learn what they need to know about China in that tumultuous time and place at the beginning of the 20th century.
Peter Conn - Professor, University of Pennsylvania
(Starred review.) Weaving a colorful tapestry of Pearl Buck's life (1892–1973) with strands of Chinese history and literature, Spurling, winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Prize for Matisse the Master—vividly correlates Buck's experiences of China's turbulent times to her novels. Growing up in a missionary family in China, Buck lived through the upheavals of the Boxer Rebellion and China's civil war, two marriages, and a daughter with a degenerative disease; her closeup view of the horrors of China's extreme rural poverty made her an American literary celebrity as well as a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize winner when she enshrined her observations of China in the Good Earth trilogy. Back in the United States, having opened America's eyes to China, Buck worked to repeal America's discriminatory laws against the Chinese and established an adoption agency for minority and mixed race children. For her support of racial equality, Buck was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer even as her books were banned in Communist China for spreading reactionary, imperialist lies; Spurling'sfast-paced and compassionate portrait of a writer who described the truth before her eyes without ideological bias, whose personal life was as tumultuous as the times she lived in, will grip readers who, unlike Spurling, didn't grow up reading Buck's work.
Publishers Weekly
[C]ritics reading Pearl Buck in Chinamostly used their articles as occasions to celebrate the subject rather than the biography.... Still, if reviewers were not effusive in their praise, they had few complaints about Spurling's book and clearly admired her thorough research and elegant prose.
Bookmarks Magazine
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 Pearl Buck in China:
1. What do you think of Pearl Buck's parents? How was it, for instance, that women had no souls, according to his beliefs?
2. Why, emerging from childhood, had Pearl developed such an abiding faith in the power of fiction? How might her childhood experiences have drawn her to read—and re-read—Charles Dickens. What would she have found so appealing in Dickens?
3. Why was Buck critical of the missionary zeal of the Christians who, like her father, worked in China? What did she observe in their treatment of the Chinese?
4. Buck's light-colored hair and gray-green eyes made her a stand-out in China. Her appearance was shocking to Chinese. How would you react to the constant stares—always made to feel different, even freakish? Nonetheless, despite the fact that she was caucasian, she still felt more comfortable in China than in the U.S. Why?
5. Talk about Pearl's marriage to John Lossing Buck. What was the initial attraction and what were the stress points? What were the reasons for its ultimate failure?
6. What do you make of Buck's decision to take her daughter to New Jersey—and leave her there while she returned to Nanjing?
7. In what way do Pearl Buck's experiences of China correlate to her novels?
8. What are the qualities, according to Spurling, that make Pearl Buck such a stirring writer? If you have read works by Buck, how would you describe her qualities as a writer?
9. Talk about the descriptions of Chinese rural poverty. What observations struck you most powerfullly?
10. What was America's racial attitudes toward the Chinese, and how were those attitudes put into practice in the U.S.? What was Buck's role in challenging a discriminatory legal system?
11. Describe China's patriarchal culture, especially how wives were treated, as well as the attitudes regarding female babies. Does that cultural bent exist today?
12. What happened to Buck's career, and life, after she moved back to the U.S., especially her involvement with Theodore Harris? What does Spurling mean when she says that Buck began writing on an "industrial scale"?
13. How was Buck's treated in the U.S. at the height of the anti-communist scare? How did the Chinese also feel about Buck? What's the irony here?
14. What did you learn from this book about Chinese culture and about Pearl S. Buck? Does this biography inspire you to read any..or more...of her books?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disaster, and Survival
Anderson Cooper, 2006
HarperCollins
222 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061136689
Summary
Writing with the same emotional intensity that distinguishes his news broadcasts, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper describes his powerful personal reaction to the tragic events of 2005—a year that brought a tsunami to Asia, escalating violence to Iraq, famine to Africa, and two devastating hurricanes to the United States. (From Barnes & Noble.)
More
Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news.
After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother.
But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.
Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 3, 1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Emmy Awards for journalism
• Currently—lives in New York City (?)
Anderson Cooper joined CNN in 2001 and has anchored his own program, Anderson Cooper 360°, since 2003. He had previously served as a correspondent for ABC News and was a foreign correspondent for Channel One News. Cooper has won several awards for his work, including an Emmy. He graduated from Yale University in 1989 and also studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi. He writes regularly for Details magazine. (From the publisher.)
More (than you need to know. Still...)
Anderson Hays Cooper is an Emmy Award winning American journalist, author, television personality and former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. He currently works as the primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories.
Cooper was the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II of the prominent Vanderbilt Family of New York. His ancestry is primarily of English, Irish, Welsh, Spanish and Dutch descent.
Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar.At the age of three, Cooper was a guest on The Tonight Show on September 17, 1970, when he appeared with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. From age 10 to 13, Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.
Cooper's father suffered a series of heart attacks, and died January 5, 1978 while undergoing open-heart surgery at the age of 50. This is said to have affected the young Cooper "enormously." He has said, in retrospect, "I think I’m a lot like my father in several ways," including "that we look a lot alike and that we have a similar sense of humor and a love of storytelling." Cooper considers his father's book Families to be "sort of a guide on...how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him."
After graduating from the Dalton School at age 17, Cooper went to southern Africa in a "13-ton British Army truck" during which time he contracted malaria and required hospitalization in Kenya. Describing the experience, Cooper wrote "Africa was a place to forget and be forgotten in."
Cooper's older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on July 22, 1988, at age 23, by jumping from the 15th-floor terrace of Vanderbilt's New York City penthouse apartment. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book A Mother's Story, in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma prescription drug Proventil. Carter's suicide is apparently what sparked Anderson to become a journalist:
Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?
Cooper also has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski (born 1950) and Christopher Stokowski (born 1952), from Gloria Vanderbilt's ten-year marriage to the conductor Leopold Stokowski.
Cooper has never married and has actively avoided discussing his relationships, citing a desire to protect his neutrality as a journalist:
I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you're supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that.
His public reticence contrasts deliberately with his mother's life spent in the spotlight of tabloid journalists and her publication of memoirs explicitly detailing her affairs with celebrities. Independent news media have reported that he is gay, and in May 2007, Out magazine ranked him second among "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America." He does discuss some aspects of his personal life including his desire to have a family and children.
He also said to Oprah Winfrey while promoting his book that he had suffered from dyslexia as a child. He confirmed his "mild dyslexia" on The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, who is also dyslexic, on August 1, 2007.
Cooper graduated from The Dalton School in 1985. He continued his education at Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College, claimed membership in Manuscript Society (one of the secret senior societies), studied both Political Science and International Relations and graduated in 1989.
During college, he spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency. Although he technically has no formal journalistic education, he opted to pursue a career in journalism rather than stay with the agency after school, having been a "news junkie" "since I was in utero."
After his first correspondence work in very early 1990s, he took a break from reporting and lived in Vietnam for a year, during which time he studied the Vietnamese language at the University of Hanoi. Speaking of his experiences in Vietnam on C-SPAN's Students & Leaders, he said he has since forgotten how to speak the language.
His first position at CNN was to anchor alongside Paula Zahn on American Morning. In 2002 he became CNN's weekend prime time anchor. Since 2002, he has hosted CNN's New Year's Eve special from Times Square. On September 8, 2003 he was made anchor of Anderson Cooper 360°, a fast-paced weeknight news program.
Describing his philosophy as an anchor, Cooper has said:
I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.
In January 2005 he was sent to Sri Lanka to cover the tsunami damage. That same month, he also went to Baghdad, Iraq to cover the elections. In February and March 2005, he covered the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon. In early April 2005 he reported from Rome, covering the death of Pope John Paul II, and from London, covering the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
In July 2005 he covered Hurricane Dennis from Pensacola, yielding one of the most memorable bits of footage from that particular storm. He and John Zarella were standing outside a Ramada during the worst of the storm when a large metal sign blew down. During CNN coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he confronted Sen. Mary Landrieu, Sen. Trent Lott, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson about their perception of the government response. As Cooper later said in an interview with New York magazine, “Yeah, I would prefer not to be emotional and I would prefer not to get upset, but it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by brave people who are suffering and in need.” As Broadcasting & Cable magazine noted, "In its aftermath, Hurricane Katrina served to usher in a new breed of emo-journalism, skyrocketing CNN's Anderson Cooper to superstardom as CNN's golden boy and a darling of the media circles because of his impassioned coverage of the storm."
In August 2005, he covered the Niger famine from Maradi.
In September 2005 the format of CNN's NewsNight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent hurricane season. To help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future."
Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for NewsNight increased significantly; Klein remarked that "[Cooper's] name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue." To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on November 2, 2005. Cooper's 360° program would be expanded to 2 hours and shifted into the 10 p.m. ET slot formerly held by NewsNight, with the third hour of Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room filling in Cooper's former 7 p.m. ET slot.
With "no options" left for him to host shows, Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly after having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter. In early 2007, Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN, which would allow him to continue as a contributor to 60 Minutes as well as doubling his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million. In October 2007, Cooper began hosting the documentary, Planet in Peril, with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN. (Above from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Powerful. . . . Packs a visceral punch. . . . Cooper opens a tantalizing window into his own soul.
USA Today
Most listeners will already be familiar with Anderson Cooper's dangerous field reporting on CNN. While this autobiography is heavy with those tales of wars and natural disasters, it is also rife with a surprising number of very personal incidents and revelations. His straightforward reading of his on-camera adventures is clear and engaging. But what keeps this reading from being great is his detachment. Perhaps because he has spent his professional life trying to be objective in his role as a journalist (although it could be argued that he became a media star when that facade cracked during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina) the more personal bits of the book are spoken with a level of distance that doesn't quite match up with the subject matter, especially when dealing with such delicate personal issues as his feelings concerning the suicide of his brother. Anderson is a sensational writer and reporter, but this mixture of public and private dispatches would have more power if he'd let his professional persona slip more.
Publishers Weekly
In straightforward yet passionate prose, the author recounts his experiences not only in Louisiana and Mississippi but also in sniper-riddled Sarajevo, famine-plagued Niger, tsunami-destroyed Southeast Asia, and civil-war-ravaged Somalia.... Cooper is both respected and popular; expect the same attitude toward his book. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
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 Dispatches from the Edge:
1. In your opinion, is Anderson Cooper a serious broadcast journalist or a TV news celebrity? What's the difference?
2. Did Cooper's descriptions of the hotspots, the tragic or newsworthy events, he has covered around the world, inform you or inspire you in anyway? Did the book expose you to a different world view, open your eyes...or confirm existing beliefs about world conditions?
3. Which episode did you find most moving, or surprising, or frightening?
4. Talk about Cooper's personal background (his own family's tragedic events)—how it motivates his work and provides a lens through which he views the world. Do you feel he writes about his personal life with depth and genuineness—or did you feel a sense of detachment?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)