by Tim Russert
On his first day on the job as host of NBC's Meet the Press in l991, Tim Russert found himself interviewing Ku Kluxer and Nazi sympathizer David Duke, who was running for governor of Louisiana. Russert demolished him. After the show was over, a few NBC suits complained that Russert had acted too much like a prosecutor, a criticism Russert shared with his father. "I'll tell you something," Big Russ told his son, "if you're going to make a mistake by being too tough, make it with a Nazi."
Advice doesn't get any sounder than that. It is just one of many valuable lessons found in this evocative memoir of a happy childhood in South Buffalo, N.Y. Russert's dad, now 80, is a World War II veteran who rarely worked just one job. A garbageman and later foreman by day, Big Russ (whose first name is also Tim) drove a newspaper truck at night. Along the way, he taught his children about hard work, decency, faith and respect for others. Not that he was some glum disciplinarian: Big Russ also impressed upon his son the importance of serving beer very, very cold.
The junior Russert is rare among D.C. talking heads: He knows how to ask a tough, direct question. For this, too, Russert has his dad to thank. "Don't talk that Washington talk," Big Russ told him before he first went in front of the camera. "Ask questions that my buddies at the [American Legion] post would want to know about." Those words have made Russert one of the most successful journalists on television—and one of the best.
HISTORY
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Here is a wholly different perspective on the "greatest generation" celebrated by the Tom Brokaws and Steven Spielbergs of the world. It's the story of one of World War II's first all-black tank crews, the men of the 761st "Black Panther" Battalion.
These pioneers endured racism yet persevered to fight in the Battle of the Bulge under Patton and helped liberate northern Europe. In his third work of history, basketball great Abdul-Jabbar, along with coauthor Anthony Walton, shows off some painstaking research, finding factual nuggets the U.S. military never cared to publicize.
From the idealistic citizen who learned he could not volunteer for the segregated Army Air Corps to the soldier returning to a nation that—racially—was willing "to go on as if the war had never happened" to vignettes of the seven African-American winners of the Medal of Honor, the book gives welcome salutes to the war's black fighting men.
NOVEL
by Carrie Karasyov and Jill Kargman
There's a lot not to like about this first novel from filmmakers Kargman and Karasyov (they wrote and produced the 2000 indie Intern). The characters come straight out of New York City central casting. The plot is predictable. The dialogue is often awkward. And given that the authors grew up in the tony Park Avenue world where this story is set, they could have dug deeper. Yet even with these flaws, it's impossible to resist the charms of this modern Manhattan fairy tale.
The book's Cinderella is Melanie Korn, an ex-stewardess who's married to a wealthy older guy with an apartment in the right Park Avenue building. Along with the chichi address, Melanie's married life includes all the important designer accoutrements. But what she covets above all is acceptance by the upper-crust ladies-who-lunch. "She's garbaggio," one of the cattiest social kittens says of Melanie. Fairy tales always have feel-good endings, so there's no question about whether Melanie will get her happily-ever-after. What makes it all so enticing is watching those evil society stepsisters get their deliciously just deserts along the way.
MYSTERY
by P.J. Tracy
It has been four months without a murder, and Minnesota detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are stuck working cold cases in the hottest April on record. Just as they are about to buy into the "temporary delusion that the state was actually habitable," three old people get shot and a fourth has a coronary after being tied to a railroad track. With the city on edge, the cops are left to wonder what kind of psycho would off 80-year-olds. When the victims turn out to be Holocaust survivors and one of the guns is traced to six "unsolveds" on Interpol's murder list, the shootings seem anything but hit-or-miss.
Though they don't keep the pace as full-throttled as in Monkee-wrench, their acclaimed debut, the pseudonymous mother-daughter duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht more than compensate with eclectic characters (such as a beautiful and enigmatic computer whiz), zingy dialogue and emotional heft. It all leads to a conclusion that is both exhilarating and bittersweet. With its mix of high tech and street-smart police work, Live Bait makes an enticing catch.
NOVEL
by Paulo Coelho
By the time she's plucked from a Brazilian beach to work as a samba dancer in Switzerland, 22-year-old Maria has long banished love from her life. Her subsequent career move—becoming a prostitute—leads her to philosophize on the nature of love and sex. It also results in a relationship with a handsome artist. "Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly," she writes. Coelho can be corny, and in the hands of a less skilled writer, many of his themes would come off as New Age pap. But his satisfying message is that we are all works of art, constantly creating ourselves.
by John O'Farrell
O'Farrell is one of the funniest things in Britain, funnier even than Prince Charles's ears. This delightful comedy finds Jimmy Conway, a likable nonentity who wants to be famous but lacks key ingredients such as actual talent, having a chance encounter with a famous comedian called Billy Scrivens just before Scrivens's death. At the funeral a reporter assumes Jimmy is a standup comic. Happy to be offered a little hors d'oeuvre of fame, he claims that he only does unannounced dates at tiny clubs and shuns publicity.
Of course, nothing invites publicity more than being called a mysterious recluse, and everyone claims they love Jimmy's nonexistent act. The resulting blizzard of newspaper articles celebrating his aloofness will strike anyone familiar with the London media as entirely probable. O'Farrell coats the ending with a layer of treacle but also supplies a genuinely stunning climactic twist that gives Jimmy just what he deserves.
by Larry McMurtry
The history of how the West was won is a series of bloody, messy tales. And McMurtry is at his bloodiest and messiest in this final installment of his four-book saga about the Berrybenders, a family of English nobles on the American frontier in the 1830s. Decimated by disease, predators and their own ineptitude, the family soldiers on, wondering how they got into such a fix.
Surprisingly, the characters still feel unformed, even cartoonish. Though it has greed and bravery, barbarity and compassion—and of course, folly and glory—in the end this dark and comic epic has more style than soul.
EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES
Lynne Truss British author Lynne Truss uses colons like brass knuckles and apostrophes like daggers in her witty, bestselling punctuation guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
WHY DID YOU WRITE THIS BOOK? I did a radio program about punctuation, and it was while we were making it that I realized I did care, quite strongly, about these things. We interviewed the man who runs the Apostrophe Protection Society. We went for a walk, looked at signs, and he pointed out how many were badly punctuated. By the end I was telling him that he should start a militant wing and that I could lead it.
WHAT IS THE STATE OF PUNCTUATION TODAY? It's pretty dire. Internet and e-mail encourage people to be much more informal. Now everyone says, "It's only an e-mail, it doesn't matter if I don't know where capital letters go."
CAN YOU GIVE US SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW BAD THINGS HAVE GOTTEN? The film Two Weeks Notice. They should have had an apostrophe after Weeks. I saw an enormous sign in a record store which said "This Seasons CDs." It was three feet high and didn't have an apostrophe. That's wrong.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO CORRECT THESE MISTAKES? [For Two Weeks Notice] I stood on a chair outside a London cinema with an apostrophe on a stick and held it up in the right place. I feel responsible for making others notice. They are transformed from perfectly happy people to very unhappy people who are aware of the dire state of punctuation.
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN? It's a punctuation joke. A panda goes into a cafe, has a sandwich, pulls out a pistol, shoots into the air, then leaves. As he exits, the waiter asks him why he did that. The panda tosses him a. poorly punctuated wildlife manual and says, "I'm a panda, look it up." The waiter does and finds, "Panda. Large black-and-white bearlike mammal, native to China. Eats, Shoots and leaves."
- Contributors:
- Eric Felten,
- Neil Graves,
- Allison Lynn,
- Ellen Shapiro,
- Amy Waldman,
- Kyle Smith,
- Joe Heim,
- Bryan Alexander.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
