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Amin Maalouf

Maalouf is a Lebanese-born journalist who moved to Paris in 1975 to escape the ravages of the civil war in his homeland. In this riveting and intriguing memoir, he describes himself and his family as a rather nomadic clan, without deep emotional ties to place or religious affiliation. When his father died, Maalouf was given the task of informing his grandmother. As a result, he came into possession of several letters from a great uncle, Gabrayel, who had immigrated to Cuba and died there early in the twentieth century. His brother, Boutros (Maalouf's grandfather) had traveled to Cuba to rescue him from some dire circumstances, and Maalouf's investigation of that mission forms the core of his narrative. The result is an excellent family saga that also works as a mystery and even as a discourse on the political culture of Lebanon. Maalouf is a gifted writer; he has a knack for maintaining dramatic tension as he reveals his efforts to uncover his family's secrets, layer by layer, as his search extends over three continents. This is an intensely personal and compelling story.

Growing up memoir

For a white child in Botswana in the 1980s and 1990s, home is an adventure in paradise, with horses, snakes, crocodiles, baobab trees, starry nights, and more. Growing up "on the fringe," Robyn and her siblings are homeschooled by their independent mother, who argues all the time with her physician husband, who flies around to rural clinics and argues with his eccentric dad. Robyn's dream is to go to school, but when she finally does in neighboring Bulawayo, it is not what she expected, including the raging racism. Immensely privileged as they are, her family is not prejudiced (Mum hates being called Madam), and they are aware of the power struggles and disasters, whether it is the diamond boom (for a very few) or the devastation of AIDS (for many). But nature is the story in this idyllic memoir, and not as background. Out of Africa fans will be enthralled.

Evelyn Nesbit

The first in a long string of female beauties whose heady rises and catastrophic falls would captivate a nation, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions by her sixteenth birthday in 1900. The most photographed woman of her era, she was an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. She was a model for the Gibson Girl, the famous Ragtime female archetype, and a Florodora chorus girl whose underage sexuality titillated Manhattan's stage-door Johnnies. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. But when her life of fantasy became all too real, and her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover, Stanford White, architect of much of New York City, she found herself at the center of a media frenzy. The scandal, and the wildly popular courtroom drama that followed, sparked an entire industry of news and gossip that captivated the nation, signaling the beginning of America's growing obsession with youth, beauty, glamour, celebrity, and sex.

Lorenzo de' Medici

The milieu of the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century always presents a puzzling dilemma. It was an epoch of constant political chaos when class antagonism, family rivalry, and intrigue and assassination were endemic, yet high culture flourished and left an immortal legacy in literature, architecture, painting, and sculpture. An excellent example of these streams is seen in the personality and career of Lorenzo (the Magnificent) de' Medici. Unger, a contributing writer for the New York Times, lived for several years in Florence. He has written an excellent biography that deftly weaves Lorenzo's story with the wider saga of politics and culture in both Florence and the other Italian city-states. Unger views Lorenzo as a compelling mix of aesthetics and action. He was a gifted poet, a wise philosopher, and a patron of the arts who loved beauty for its own sake. He was also a tough, shrewd battler who knew how to survive in a dog-eat-dog environment where he was constantly threatened by serpentine plots. This is an outstanding chronicle of the man and his time.

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Humor

by the author of Funny in Farsi (2003)

Poet and activist

*Starred Review*

An unconventional life

Debra Winger

Black aviators

Knox County, TN

Knox County Public Library