This terrific book goes immediately to my top shelf of literary biographies. John Cheever lived in endless turmoil with his contradictions—the erudite high school dropout; the closeted bisexual who despised gay men, guilt-ridden, manipulative and rampant in his pursuits; the snob most at ease with workers; a man who idealized husband-and-fatherhood, and an alcoholic compulsively unkind to his children and estranged from his wife. Given a lesser biographer all this could be merely lurid, but Bailey’s clean, low-key style and generous insights tease out the strands of harsh judgment and emollient self-deception in Cheever’s journals, and convincingly trace them into the effort and effect in his stories and novels. I don’t expect to read anything better this year. Brilliant.
Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man
by Garry Wills Mariner Books
Our Price: $15.00
At a 1980’s White House reception for former presidents, Bob Dole saw Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon standing together and said, “Look: See no evil, speak no evil, and evil.” Dole came to regret the remark, and, weeping at Nixon’s funeral, called his own political lifetime “The era of Nixon.” In Nixon Agonistes, Garry Wills had brilliantly elaborated the same point nearly 15 years earlier. Wills’s Nixon epitomizes American political culture at its imperially mawkish, striving, air-conditioned, resentful peak. Wills the classicist smooths the style of the (then) New Journalism, but never misses the needs and cruelties (et tu, Ike?) that propelled Nixon to the head of the Silent Majority. There is no brighter illumination of the politics of the period than this, now finally returned to print.
The Ultimate Baseball Book: The Classic Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Game
by Daniel Okrent Houghton Mifflin
Our Price: $29.95
You know how, in the Harry Potter books, people in photographs smile and wave and go about their daily lives, observed by the person holding the picture? This book is like that. Embedded in personal and moving essays by some very good writers are, I believe, more than 1000 brilliantly-captioned photographs. In this setting pictures find unexpected reaches of excitement, self-conscious delight, sheer physical joy, and real sadness. The result is magical: the book seems inexhaustible and genuinely, complexly alive, delving deeper than mere celebration. Caring about baseball is the first reason to have Ultimate; looking to understand why you care is the best reason.
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties
by Ian MacDonald Chicago Review Press
Our Price: $16.95
It's unquantifiable but a safe guess that during every single second since, at least, mid-1964, a Beatles song has been playing on some radio station somewhere in the world. The impact and persistence of the music is explained here, perhaps, better than anywhere else. MacDonald wears lightly his abilities as cultural critic and musicologist, and the result is easily the best of the song-by-song analyses (read, for example, his brilliant disassembly of what happens int he first few seconds of 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'). Beatles music may be an everyday occurrence now, but MacDonald enriches the hearing with his understanding of what the four were attempting at the time and their part in reshaping what we expect from popular culture. The songs will sound different after you've read this book.
