Coming in May from Nicholas Basbanes
About the Author
The final quarter of the last century was a period of extraordinary fervor in American letters—a time when post–World War II authors reached their peak and well before the Internet had eroded book publishing and changed everything. Writer Nicholas Basbanes, acclaimed author of A Gentle Madness, enjoyed the rare opportunity as literary editor of the Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram & Gazette to interview literally hundreds of authors passing through Boston on publicity tours.
About the Author: Inside the Creative Process collects together more than forty of Nicholas Basbanes’s interviews and essays that grew from this unique period of publishing. The list includes novelists, biographers, poets, historians, and others who were regularly among the best-selling authors. Perhaps no one has been more suited to this kind of reporting than Nicholas Basbanes. Using the skills of an experienced interviewer and the considered analysis of an impartial critic, Basbanes pioneered a new kind of journalism for his weekly column. These pieces collected together paint a remarkable picture of authors at the heights of their creativity.
With the loss of so many of these writers and the imposing behemoth called the Internet, this sort of collection may never again be culled from the morning papers. As alive and refreshing as the day they were published, About the Author explores the creative process that was—and is—the foundation of books and publishing.
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New Children’s Book Reviews
Hot Diggity Dog: The History of the Hot Dog
Every kid’s favorite summer food is known by many names, “franks,” “wieners,” “red hots,” and, of course, the ubiquitous “hot dog,” devoured more in July than in any other month of the year. Introduced to this country by immigrants from Europe in the nineteenth century, this quintessential form of comfort food has acquired a distinctively American image over the years, enjoyed with such toppings as mustard, relish, onions, sauerkraut, and chile, often with baked beans or cole slaw on the side, so universally appreciated it was served by President Roosevelt to King George VI of England during a visit to the White House in 1939. Adrienne Sylver, who acquired her taste for hot dogs at Cleveland Indians baseball games, offers an entertaining history of this classic treat; artist Elwood Smith’s illustrations are the perfect condiment.
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From the Fine Book’s Blog
Casanova and Other Librarians
The news this week that the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had acquired the manuscript memoirs of the great eighteenth-century Venetian lothario known to one and all as Casanova—Tiger Woods can only dream of walking in this guy’s remarkable footsteps—brought to mind a very nice book published by Louisiana State University Press ten years ago, Casanova Was a Book Lover: And Other Naked Truths and Provocative Curiosities about the Writing, Selling, and Reading of Books. The smart collection of bibliophilic essays was written by John Maxwell Hamilton, an occasional commentator on NPR and dean of LSU’s School of Mass Communications; you have to love a book that is dedicated to “all reviewers,” and includes the explanation that “only ungrateful asses would pan a book after having it dedicated to them.”
Hamiltons title piece took irreverent note of the fact that Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) spent the final years of his eventful life as a librarian in the noble household of Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein of Bohemia, and it was in that castle that he took pen to paper and wrote Histoire de ma vie, the racy memoirs for which he became famous, and which an anonymous benefactor acquired on behalf of the French National Library (BNF). Though the actual purchase price was not disclosed, the figure was widely reported to be five million eurors, about $9 million, which, if correct, would qualify it as the costliest manuscript transaction on record. The papers—comprising 3,700 pages of yellowing sheets—were transfered Monday to the BNF in thirteen boxes, and represent the complete, uncensored account of Casanova’s amorous adventures. The material had been owned since 1821 by the Brauckhuas publishing company in Germany, and had once been thought to have been destroyed in World War II; it was later found safely stored in a bank vault. read more …