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In the wake of Sassy and as an alternative to the more staid reporting of Ms., Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape reflects and impacts women's lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence at the way pop culture informs feminism―and vice versa―and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine's first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It's a recent history of feminist pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism's future.

• Sales Rank: #120616 in Books
• Brand: Miya-Jervis, Lisa (EDT)/ Zeisler, Andi (EDT)
• Published on: 2006-08-08
• Released on: 2006-08-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.91" h x 1.06" w x 6.08" l, .94 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This often mind-stretching, occasionally predictable and generally entertaining collection of articles from Bitch magazine has something for every feminist, postfeminist and reactionary. Bitch was founded in 1996 in response to "post-feminism" by "freshly minted liberal arts graduates with crappy day jobs and a serious media jones." With refreshing depth, literacy and humor, these essays explore questions surrounding puberty, gender identity, sex, "domestic arrangements," beauty, pop culture and mainstream media, and media literacy/activism. Tammy Oler examines menarche and female puberty in horror films; Gaby Moss analyzes the media's obsession with "mean girls"; and Lisa Jervis gives a rundown of sex scenes and pride in YA lesbian novels. Leigh Shoemaker puts down Camille Paglia's contention that males are superior due to their urinary "arc of transcendence" by evoking the Virgin Mary's breasts squirting milk through the air into Jesus' mouth. Audry Bilger protests the use of "guys" as gender neutral. Conspicuously absent is any discussion of women and aging. Maybe we'll just have to wait for Bitch's 20th anniversary, when its editors will be pushing 50. (Aug. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
"Whenever anyone has called me a bitch, I have taken it as a compliment," writes comedian Margaret Cho in the foreword to this anthology from the self-proclaimed Queen Bee of Grrrl Zines. Positioned as an antidote to the patronizing pages of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, Bitch revels in its power to provoke as it ponders the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. In honor of the magazine's tenth anniversary, founding editors Jervis and Zeisler have amassed essays (including some specifically commissioned for the collection) on a bounty of brazen topics, from the ramifications of sexual abuse and rape to the lesbian tendencies of Japanese macaques. Its writers are no wallflowers: Leigh Shoemaker's "stand-up" discussion of female urination, for example, adds new meaning to the expression, "Looking out for #1." From transsexuality to body image to gender-bending "slash fiction" that amorously pairs the likes of Captain Kirk and Spock, there's plenty here to amuse and enlighten the target audience--and plenty to rattle the cages of card-carrying macho men and women who might find the racy rants a bit over the top. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“We love Bitch and think BITCHfest is an essential component of any feminist's library.” ―Guerrilla Girls

“As delicious as a day spent with your funniest, smartest friend, this collection is also a call to action, inspiring readers to fight the fear of female power. As the many writers in here show, few wrongs are righted without a bitchfest first.” ―Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex

“In a society as celebrity-obsessed and fad-saturated as ours, we ignore pop culture at our peril. Hurray for the women of Bitch, who raised their banner of intelligence right at the intersection of pop culture and feminism. They've done so with humor, vision, fire, and guts, as this book of selections from their first decade proves. Read it, learn from it, enjoy it, argue with it, revel in it.” ―Robin Morgan

“With humor and insight Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler, and their contributors explore what it means to be female, a feminist, a lover of pop culture, and that other thing that rhymes with rich but is so much more fun.” ―Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

“Bitch is my favorite magazine. It makes feminism fun, relevant and approachable--it's like the Marlo Thomas of our time.” ―Joel Stein, columnist, Los Angeles Times

“We were working at Ms. magazine in 1996 when a xeroxed pamphlet arrived at the office bearing the name Bitch. We opened the zine and found what we'd been fearing didn't exist: feminist writing that was funny, engaged with pop culture, and yet intellectually rigorous. Eureka! BITCHfest is the greatest hits, and reading them is like hanging out with the smartest people you know.” ―Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, co-authors of Manifesta

“Essential reading for the modern woman.” ―Margaret Cho

“This often mind-stretching, occasionally predictable and generally entertaining collection of articles from Bitch magazine has something for every feminist, postfeminist and reactionary. Bitch was founded in 1996 in response to ‘post-feminism' by ‘freshly minted liberal arts graduates with crappy day jobs and a serious media jones.' With refreshing depth, literacy and humor, these essays explore questions surrounding puberty, gender identity, sex, ‘domestic arrangements,' beauty, pop culture and mainstream media, and media literacy/activism. Tammy Oler examines menarche and female puberty in horror films; Gaby Moss analyzes the media's obsession with ‘mean girls'; and Lisa Jervis gives a rundown of sex scenes and pride in YA lesbian novels. Leigh Shoemaker puts down Camille Paglia's contention that males are superior due to their urinary ‘arc of transcendence' by evoking the Virgin Mary's breasts squirting milk through the air into Jesus' mouth. Audry Bilger protests the use of ‘guys' as gender neutral. Conspicuously absent is any discussion of women and aging. Maybe we'll just have to wait for Bitch's 20th anniversary, when its editors will be pushing 50.” ―Publishers Weekly

“‘Whenever anyone has called me a bitch, I have taken it as a compliment,' writes comedian Margaret Cho in the foreword to this anthology from the self-proclaimed Queen Bee of Grrrl Zines. Positioned as an antidote to the patronizing pages of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, Bitch revels in its power to provoke as it ponders the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. In honor of the magazine's tenth anniversary, founding editors Jervis and Zeisler have amassed essays (including some specifically commissioned for the collection) on a bounty of brazen topics, from the ramifications of sexual abuse and rape to the lesbian tendencies of Japanese macaques. Its writers are no wallflowers: Leigh Shoemaker's ‘stand-up' discussion of female urination, for example, adds new meaning to the expression, ‘Looking out for #1.' From transsexuality to body image to gender-bending ‘slash fiction' that amorously pairs the likes of Captain Kirk and Spock, there's plenty here to amuse and enlighten the target audience--and plenty to rattle the cages of card-carrying macho men and women who might find the racy rants a bit over the top.” ―Booklist

“This work represents an alternating mix of the most hilarious, alarming, and unexpected essays from Bitch magazine's first ten years. Over three-quarters of the works come from the last five years and, with the exception of an approving pre-scandal profile of Martha Stewart, retain cultural currency. About-Face founder Kathy Bruin journals on the eve of her celebrated 1998 ‘Don't Feed the Models' postering campaign. Keely Savoie presents a brilliant journalistic brief on the 400-plus animal species documented in homosexual relationships. Shauna Swartz turns out an indelible account of the severe life of reality porn actresses. BITCHfest writers, a mix of thought leaders and unknown activists, share a talent for asking thorny questions: how can Westerners distinguish between American cosmetic labiaplasty and African genital mutilation? Why can't female Cosmo readers admit they're attracted to, rather than jealous of, waifs on the glossy covers? Readers new to this feminist quarterly will find the articles, almost without exception, original, intelligent, and well written. This compilation has staying power. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.” ―Library Journal

“Feminist-energized pop-culture essays that appeal to a wide array of tastes and reading preferences as they celebrate Bitch's tenth anniversary. Margaret Cho doesn't mind being called a bitch, she quips in the introduction: ‘I have taken it as a compliment.' So have many of the 43 writers assembled here, all equally frustrated by the force-feeding of mass-media values and the lack of motivational role models. Jervis and Zeisler founded the 'zine to eschew the complacent postfeminist viewpoint. Among the inspiring and the outspoken are features on young-adult novelist Norma Klein (‘Stormin' Norma'); ‘the trials of female adolescence' via horror film (‘Bloodletting'); the empowering androgyny of '80s music videos (‘Amazon Women on the Moon'); the atrocity of rape (‘The Collapsible Woman'); and current hot topics gay parenting (‘Queer and Pleasant Danger') and cosmetic reconstruction (‘Plastic Passion,' ‘Vulva Goldmine'). Many of these pieces are spirited with a unique feminine bravado, but the editors don't leave out the male point of view; there are terrific essays on the emasculating effects of male bonding (‘Holy Fratrimony') and the notion of the fading usefulness of men (‘Dead Man Walking'). Less engrossing offerings include discourses on speech tics (‘The, Like, Downfall of the English Language,' ‘On Language'), the art of peeing (‘Urinalysis'), ‘humilitainment' (‘XXX Offender') and the ‘tragedy' of lesbians who sexually desire men (‘What Happens to a Dyke Deferred?'). Pieces that make room for humor are stronger than the indignant, alarmist entries; some of the strongest works get right to the awful truth: Martha Stewart is man-less because ‘she doesn't seem to exude that warmth andcaring nature men enjoy' (‘The Paradox of Martha Stewart'); both Jane Magazine (‘Pratt-fall') and Carnie Wilson (‘Your Stomach's the Size . . . ') should just go away. By volume's end, alas, feminism fatigue definitely sets in and deep, anti-conspiratorially cleansing breaths are in order for all warrior princesses. Smartly written, socio-cultural vignettes that speak to everyone, loud and clear.” ―Kirkus Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Essential reading for young feminists
By Amazonian
What a remarkably smart and satisfying collection of cultural criticism! Whether you're into gender theory, feminist historicism, questions of identity, or simply the deeper consequences of pop cultural phenomena, this book has it all. I studied gender and sexuality in college, and while I love reading more serious philosophers such as Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and even Freud, sometimes I wish there were something appropriate for beach reading that is as intellectually gratifying. Each article in this anthology runs approximately 5 or 6 pages, and touches upon so many key themes in gender/sexuality studies that it leaves me feeling buzzed! The scope and breadth of the articles truly offer a representative vista of contemporary feminism. If you're looking for something lighter than Lacan but heavier than the NOW (National Organization for Women) newsletter, this is the answer. I would strongly recommend it to men too, since any critical view of women inevitably touches upon the tensions between genders and various sexualities. There are more than a few articles that discuss masculinity and identity, including a few that I got my boyfriend to read, simply because they were *that* good, and he enjoyed them too.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Viva la revolucion!
By Edward Aycock
Presenting...

"Bitch" magazine - insightful, educational, hilarious - has been exploring "feminist response to pop culture" for the past decade and, at long last, several essays from the magazine have been collected into a book. The advent of "Bitchfest" is a blessing: the earliest issues of "Bitch" are nigh impossible to find anywhere due to the magazine's non-glamorous beginnings at a copy shop in the Bay Area (no glossy, Midtown Manhattan celebrity-laden launch for Bitch -- and we're all the better for it). I'm glad to finally have the opportunity to read some of the earliest essays.

Plus, you also get ...

How cool is it that some of my favorite essays are together at last? From Lori Tharp's well thought out rant on the absence of black characters from contemporary sitcoms to the snarky and oh-so-funny "Ten Things to Hate About JANE" (a dead-on critique of JANE magazine), each essay proves how all-pervasive pop culture has become, and why feminist thought can not afford to ignore it.

Buy now and we'll send you ...

"Bitchfest" also succeeds as a critical history of the feminist movement - one of the most incisive pieces in the book discusses the disconnect that occured when the feminist movement (at various times in its history) refused to single any one person out to be the "spokesperson" (for lack of a better word) for the movement. The result? The media anointed their own person, leading to infighting and yes, even pettiness that showcases the frustrations that can arise while trying to promote an egalitarian movement in a sensationalistic, media-controlled world.

But wait - there's more!

As an added bonus, there are a handful of articles that appear in this book for the very first time, in addition to introductory essays at the beginning of each section. It's nice to know that the editors cared enough to actually give the readers something extra rather than just throwing a handful of pre-published essays into a book and sending it to the printers.

Sure I don't always agree with "Bitchfest" but nobody ever said I had to. This book is wonderful and truly proves how unique and necessary "Bitch" magazine is (and will hopefully continue to be) during these crazy times.

Order yours today, it'll make a great present!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Buy this book
By J. Aragon
Disclaimer-I subscribe to Bitch Magazine and have for a number of years. I love it! When I saw this book at the university bookstore, I bought it and savored reading through the book.

What I really like about Bitch Magazine, more so than Bust, is that the articles are more theoretical and erudite. I don't consider them dry, but I am WS educator and view BM as more a cutting edge zine that demonstrates the various feminist strands that exist today in the 3rd Wave, No Wave era of the feminist movement.

Buy this book! Subscribe to the zine for thoughtful, well-written articles about all sorts of issues.

After that plug, let me just say that I don't always agree with the essays. Some will definitely leave you with that sense that you want to grab a coffee with a friend and hammer out some of your thoughts.

See all 25 customer reviews...

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~~ Free Ebook Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising, by Alexandra Richie

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The full untold story of how one of history's bravest revolts ended in one of its greatest crimes

In 1943, the Nazis liquidated Warsaw's Jewish ghetto. A year later, they threatened to complete the city's destruction by deporting its remaining residents. A sophisticated and cosmopolitan community a thousand years old was facing its final days―and then opportunity struck. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the underground Polish Home Army decided to act. Taking advantage of German disarray and seeking to forestall the absorption of their country into the Soviet empire, they chose to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves.
Warsaw 1944 tells the story of this brave, and errant, calculation. For more than sixty days, the Polish fighters took over large parts of the city and held off the SS's most brutal forces. But in the end, their efforts were doomed. Scorned by Stalin and unable to win significant support from the Western Allies, the Polish Home Army was left to face the full fury of Hitler, Himmler, and the SS. The crackdown that followed was among the most brutal episodes of history's most brutal war, and the celebrated historian Alexandra Richie depicts this tragedy in riveting detail. Using a rich trove of primary sources, Richie relates the terrible experiences of individuals who fought in the uprising and perished in it. Her clear-eyed narrative reveals the fraught choices and complex legacy of some of World War II's most unsung heroes.

• Sales Rank: #462556 in Books
• Published on: 2013-12-10
• Released on: 2013-12-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.43" h x 2.29" w x 6.20" l, 2.30 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 776 pages

Review

“Deeply moving . . . A detailed narrative of the brutal crushing of the uprising as seen through civilian eyes . . . "Warsaw 1944" is an important contribution to a tragic literature.” ―The Wall Street Journal

“Engrossing … A massively researched, profoundly unsettling work revealing how the battle for Warsaw exposed the perfidy of East and West alike” ―Kirkus

“Richie's detailed and sympathetic history … draws heavily on private archives and recounts many unpublished stories. Such survivors' testimony make it the definitive study of the uprising” ―The Economist

“Unusually well-placed to research and rehearse the story of that terrible event … [Richie] offers a comprehensive narrative of the Polish experience” ―The Sunday Times (UK)

“Richie is an unrelenting storyteller: Page turns offer little respite for the reader in this grim and chilling book that delivers exhaustive and unforgettable details of this gruesome chapter of World War II.” ―Publisher's Weekly

About the Author
Alexandra Richie is the author of Faust's Metropolis, a comprehensive cultural and political history of Berlin that Publishers Weekly named one of the top ten books of 1999. She currently lives in Warsaw with her husband, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.

Most helpful customer reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
Focuses on civilian suffering during the Uprising
By M. Pitcavage
This is a lengthy review, for which I apologize, but I urge readers to be patient and read through until the end because it is at the end that I explain what I think is the best and strongest aspect of this book. I should note that I would have preferred to have given this book 3 1/2 stars, rather than 4, but since I did not have that option, and since 3 was definitely an unfair rating, I gave it 4 stars.

Alexandra Richie's "Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising" is a book with significant strengths and weaknesses. For those who are well versed or particularly interested in the subject of the Warsaw Uprising, I can reassure you that this book does make a legitimate contribution to the body of English-language literature on the Uprising. However, it does have weaknesses that prevent it from being a general "go-to" resource on the Uprising.

Richie, who previously wrote a history of Berlin, lives in Warsaw and is married to Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. The spouses of writers are not usually relevant to reviews, but in this case it should be noted that Bartoszewski, a Polish scholar, is also the son of the more famous man of the same name, who participated in the Polish resistance during the war and had a long career as a writer, scholar, and, after the fall of the Communist bloc, government official. Richie explains that the book is based primarily on Bartoszewski's extensive collection of works and documents related to the Home Army and the Warsaw Uprising. Generally speaking, this work is based on Polish, German and English language primary and secondary materials and is pretty well-researched, with the exception, I would say, of some of the more recent scholarship on the Home Army. There are also a few secondary source omissions on the Uprising that she could have benefited from consulting.

Three things should be noted from the outset about the book in general. First, the title is misleading. The subtitle, "Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising," suggests that much of the book will be about the relationship of Hitler and Himmler to the Uprising. However, this is far from the case--they play a minor role in this book (as they did in the actual event). I can only speculate that someone suggested that this particular subtitle might boost sales.

The second thing is that this cannot serve as a general history of the Warsaw Uprising. There are far too many areas left completely uncovered, and the military aspects of the Uprising are very considerably undercovered. The best one-volume history of the Warsaw Uprising in English remains the venerable Warsaw Uprising by George Bruce, despite its relatively short length and its age. We really need a solid and objective study of the Warsaw Uprising based on the latest sources (Norman Davies' book on the uprising is far too flawed to be considered a replacement for Bruce) and abandoning Cold War attitudes.

Finally, it must be noted that Richie's book gives the impression of being longer than it actually is. This massive book clocks in at over 700 pages, but the purchaser will soon discover that the book's font is large and there is generous spacing between lines, so the book is in effect a couple of hundred pages shorter (in content) than it would appear to be. This is why the book is a much quicker read than one would immediately guess.

Writing and scholarship in English on the Warsaw Uprising since the end of World War II up to the present day has been heavily dominated by the Polish exile community, Poles outside Poland who refused to return to the country after World War II, as well as Poles in Poland who fled that country as the Communists took over. They produced the first works in English and much of the subsequent literature has been written by their descendants or others heavily influenced by this first generation. This body of literature has a number of clear themes and emphases: 1) an extremely strong Cold War attitude, which has persisted even after the Cold War ended; 2) an extreme hostility to Communism, even to the point of sometimes trying to re-write the historical record to deny them (both Polish Communists and the Soviet Union) any positive contributions at all during the War; 3) attempts to whitewash the darker aspects of recent Polish history (including its anti-Semitism, the non-democratic nature of the Polish government, the weakness of its claim to the vast areas of eastern pre-war Poland [which it seized by military might and in which Poles constituted a minority of the population], and its sometimes severe repression of non-Poles in those areas); 4) attempts to portray Poland as having been "betrayed" by the West; and 5) attempts to idealize the Home Army, ranging from exaggerations of its homogeneity to defending/excusing the decision to launch the Warsaw Uprising itself.

Richie's book falls squarely within this historical tradition, which is unfortunate, but in some respects she does take a few steps outside this tradition. She acknowledges that the Warsaw Uprising was a horrible decision and she is sharply critical of the Home Army leadership, including Bor-Komorowski and Monter (Antoni Chruściel). She also discusses the declining civilian morale within Warsaw as the Uprising went on, which is something that previous writers have ignored or downplayed. She also forthrightly acknowledges that the Soviet Union could not have liberated Warsaw at the time the Uprising was initiated, because it was getting its butt kicked by a strong German counterattack at Praga. She does claim, though, that the Soviets were in a position to be able to launch a major offensive by August 15 or so. She does not support this claim with any evidence and, in fact, underlines this claim herself by talking about the huge casualties the Soviet Armies were suffering as a result of the Praga counterattack and the Soviets' subsequent fighting to close up to the Vistula. I think one could clearly argue that the Soviets could have launched such an attack in September, but Richie goes too far in arguing for as early as mid-August. Richie doesn't quite demonize the Soviets, as most previous writers have done, but does come close, mostly (but not always) painting them in black and white terms. However, she does not have the extreme conspiratorial vein that some Polish writers have had when discussing Soviet actions around Warsaw (even positive ones) in September 1944.

It should also be noted that, though Richie falls within the Polish exile tradition, the effects of this are lessened in her book because, unlike some other writers, she does not concentrate on the international situation or on the Soviet Union until some 2/3rds of the way through her narrative. What she does concentrate on in the interim (as we shall see) has the effect of creating a different impression in the reader than many earlier books tend to do. This is a good thing.

Leaving aside the influence of the Polish exile tradition, the main weakness of this book is its coverage of military affairs. Richie is no military historian and this shows. There are many important military aspects of the Uprising that she does not mention or cover at all, and much of what she does cover is vague. The maps are few and often insufficient (especially compared to some of the excellent maps in some of the Polish books on the Uprising to which Richie had access). Moreover, Richie clearly has no experience in translating German military terms into English, nor apparently did she bother to find out the conventions that military historians use when doing such translating (including the fact that they frequently retain German unit names rather than translating them). I don't think she shared the manuscript with any military historian prior to publication, because they surely would have been of some assistance. The result is that German (and other) military terms are often garbled, sometimes hopelessly so, especially unit names. For example, the 1st Polish Infantry Division of the (Communist-equipped) 1st Polish Army is rendered as the "1st Polish Footsoldiers Division" (even though, just a few pages later, she provides a correct translation). Elsewhere, a "company of mine-throwers" is referred to, which may possibly be a reference to grenadiers, but I am not sure. There are numerous examples of this.

Another problem is Richie's portrayal of Hitler, which is pretty hopeless. She portrays Hitler as a deranged madman, accepting and even magnifying the worst of the infamous post-war "German generals" characterizations of Hitler in order to excuse their own poor decisions. At a time when most historians have long such rejected such self-serving portrayals in favor of more nuanced versions that take into account both Hitler's degeneration at this late stage in the war as well as his own strategic and operational considerations (some quite valid), Richie comes close to portraying Hitler as chewing the carpet. This is especially unfortunate as this characterization comes right at the beginning of the book, which can cause a reader to question, right from the get-go, how much knowledge and understanding of the war that Richie actually has (luckily, Hitler recedes into the background fairly soon).

So I have spent some time explaining the book's weaknesses. Why, then, would I still recommend this book? The reason is that this book has something to offer which basically no other work in English on this subject really does. What Richie brings to the table is the most detailed description in English (that I am aware of) of the conduct of German forces against the Poles, especially Polish civilians, during the Uprising. Let me be clear that everybody acknowledges that the Nazi suppression of the Uprising was brutal and that tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. And most works on the uprising will definitely mention examples of Polish civilians being used as civilian shields and will at least refer to the German massacres in Wola as their counterattacks began after August 5. However, despite such references to Wola, works on the Warsaw Uprising tend to leave Wola fairly soon after the fighting there stopped and pick up the narrative at the Old Town. When the fighting at the Old Town is over, then the authors leave the scene and go to Mokotow or Zoliborz or Czerniakov or wherever the fighting picks up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But Richie doesn't quite do that. Richie does something different, something very important. Richie *lingers*. When the fighting in Wola is over, Richie stays. She stays in Wola and reports on what happens there in the aftermath. The same for the Old Town. She doesn't just follow the Home Army through the sewers out of the Old Town. She stays in the Old Town and sees what happens there. Richie uses both Polish and German sources to explain, in great detail, the mass murders and other atrocities that the Germans commit in places such as Wola, the Old Town and elsewhere. Nowhere else in English have I seen these actions discussed in such detail, or with regard to some places, at all. Richie truly brings home the no-limits savagery of the Nazis, discussing in great detail the actions of the men under Bach-Zelewski, Dirlewanger, Kaminsky, Reinefarth. and others. She does a really excellent job here. I find it ironic that a couple of other reviewers apparently got nothing from the book other than that Stalin was nasty, because what Richie really concentrates on in this book is the tremendous brutality and criminality of the Germans in their attempt to subjugate fighting Warsaw.

It is because of this emphasis that Richie's book truly makes a contribution to the English-language literature of the Warsaw Uprising and, indeed, the Second World War. And it is because of this emphasis that I can recommend this book, despite some of the other weaknesses that it may possess.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Warsaw-Delenda Est
By Paul Gelman
This book is well researched and gives the reader a panoramic view about one of the most tragic and least understood episodes in the history of WW2. The AK's arranged Warsaw uprising and the destruction of Warsaw stand in the focus here.
The author who is living in Poland had access to her father-in-law's vast archive about the events which transpired in the summer of 1944 and she writes about the immense scale of beastly brutality perpetrated by the Nazi hordes against the Polish nation. The tragedy of Poland has been already told many timeds, yet this book is a very good microhistory about the fate of those living in the hellish conditions in Warsaw during August, when the uprising was a total failure and, as a result, the Nazis simply decided to erase the city. This was a unique decision and no other city suffered the same fate during the war. The decision to do it was taken under the auspices of Hitler and Himmler, and Ms. Richie is extremely good when describing the whole background of this tragic event, which claimed the lives of at least 200000 Poles.
But why not award this book five stars? There are some things which could have been incorporated here but are missing. First, there is a lack of relevant maps. Even those that are to be found here are simple and do not give the lay reader the information so much needed when reading about microevents.
Second, the fate of the AK's leadership is almost non-existent during this long book and all we get is a good introduction the the topic.
All in all, this is a book I would recommend to those who know something (or nothing) about this tragedy and would like to expand their horizons.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
A Troubling Time
By BookBob
We sometimes forget how brutal and inhumane WWII was, or simply can't comprehend this horrific event. This book takes us to the late stages of the war when the Soviet Union was gaining an upper hand on the German Forces. Beginning in 1939 German occupied Warsaw seen a brutal eradication of their national identity and the murder of over three million Jews. Polish resistance forces of approximately 50,000 were eager to retaliate against the Germans in 1944 believing the Russian Army was on the outskirts & would rally to the rebel's aid. This force was only partially armed and not prepared to attack a modern army - the results lead to a 63 day conflict with the SS & RONA (a Russian force comprised of former POW's allied with Germany) ending in a massacre of both rebels and the civilians of Warsaw.

The home army rebels misunderstood the intentions of Stalin. They did not know his intention was to dominate and bring Poland into the world of Communism. Stalin did not want the uprising to succeed & did not intervene. The uprising resulted in the loss of 200,000 souls (mostly civilians) and a city in total ruin.

The author did a brilliant job in bring this horrific event into focus as it pertains to the human side of this inhumane event. The cold hearted politics of the time resulted in misery and loss that I hope never happens again. A great read and moving tale of history we should all read.

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A New York Times Notable Book for 2011

Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West's rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?

Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.

Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules―for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines―from ancient history to neuroscience―not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

• Sales Rank: #305895 in Books
• Brand: Historical Books Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Published on: 2010-10-12
• Released on: 2010-10-12
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.29" h x 1.56" w x 6.38" l, 2.26 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 768 pages

Features

• Great product!

From Booklist
Only the supremely self-confident put forth all-encompassing theories of world history, and Morris is one such daredevil. An archaeologist by academic specialty, he advances a quasi-deterministic construct that is suitable for nonacademics. From a repeatedly enunciated premise that humans by nature are indolent, avaricious, and fearful, Morris holds that such traits, when combined with sociology and geography, explain history right from the beginning, when humanity trudged out of Africa, through the contemporary rivalry between China and America. Such temporal range leaves scant room for individual human agency: Morris names the names of world history, but in his narrative, leaders and tyrants, at best, muddle through patterns of history that are beyond their power to shape. And those patterns, he claims, can be numerically measured by a “social development index” that he applies to every epochal change from agriculture to the industrial revolution. However, the reading is not as heavy as it may sound. His breezy style and what-if imagination for alternative scenarios should maintain audience interest; whether his sweeping perspective convinces is another matter altogether. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

“In an era when cautious academics too often confine themselves to niggling discussions of pipsqueak topics, it is a joy to see a scholar take a bold crack at explaining the vast sweep of human progress. . .Readers of Why the West Rules-For Now are unlikely to see the history of the world in quite the same way ever again. And that can't be said of many books on any topic. Morris has penned a tour de force.” ―Keith Monroe, The Virginian-Pilot

“If you read one history book this year, if you read one this decade, this is the one.” ―Tim O' Connell, The Florida Times-Union

“A monumental effort...Morris is an engaging writer with deep insights from archaeology and ancient history that offer us compelling visions about how the past influences the future.” ―Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News

“[Morris] has written the first history of the world that really makes use of what modern technology can offer to the interpretation of the historical process. The result is a path-breaking work that lays out what modern history should look like.” ―Harold James, Financial Times

“Morris is a lucid thinker and a fine writer. . .possessed of a welcome sense of humor that helps him guide us through this grand game of history as if he were an erudite sportscaster.” ―Orville Schell, The New York Times Book Review

“A remarkable book that may come to be as widely read as Paul Kennedy's 1987 work, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.' Like Mr Kennedy's epic, Mr Morris's ‘Why the West Rules--For Now' uses history and an overarching theory to address the anxieties of the present . . . This is an important book--one that challenges, stimulates and entertains. Anyone who does not believe there are lessons to be learned from history should start here.” ―The Economist

“Morris' new book illustrates perfectly why one really scholarly book about the past is worth a hundred fanciful works of futurology. Morris is the world's most talented ancient historian, a man as much at home with state-of-the-art archaeology as with the classics as they used to be studied . . . He has brilliantly pulled off what few modern academics would dare to attempt: a single-volume history of the world that offers a bold and original answer to the question, Why did the societies that make up 'the West' pull ahead of 'the Rest' not once but twice, and most spectacularly in the modern era after around 1500? Wearing his impressive erudition lightly -- indeed, writing with a wit and clarity that will delight the lay reader -- Morris uses his own ingenious index of social development as the basis for his answer.” ―Niall Ferguson, Foreign Affairs

“A formidable, richly engrossing effort to determine why Western institutions dominate the world . . . Readers will enjoy [Morris's] lively prose and impressive combination of scholarship . . . with economics and science. A superior contribution to the grand-theory-of-human-history genre.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Ian Morris has returned history to the position it once held: no longer a series of dusty debates, nor simple stories--although he has many stories to tell and tells them brilliantly--but a true magister vitae, ‘teacher of life.' Morris explains how the shadowy East-West divide came about, why it really does matter, and how one day it might end up. His vision is dazzling, and his prose irresistible. Everyone from Sheffield to Shanghai who wants to know not only how they came to be who and where they are but where their children and their children's children might one day end up must read this book.” ―Anthony Pagden, author of Worlds and War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

“This is an astonishing work by Ian Morris: hundreds of pages of the latest information dealing with every aspect of change. Then, the questions of the future: What will a new distribution bring about? Will Europe undergo a major change? Will the millions of immigrants impose a new set of rules on the rest? There was a time when Europe could absorb any and all newcomers. Now the newcomers may dictate the terms. The West may continue to rule, but the rule may be very different.” ―David S. Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

“Here you have three books wrapped into one: an exciting novel that happens to be true; an entertaining but thorough historical account of everything important that happened to any important people in the last ten millennia; and an educated guess about what will happen in the future. Read, learn, and enjoy!” ―Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Natural Experiments of History

“Ian Morris is a classical archaeologist, an ancient historian, and a writer whose breathtaking vision and scope make him fit to be ranked alongside the likes of Jared Diamond and David Landes. His magnum opus is a tour not just d'horizon but de force, taking us on a spectacular journey to and from the two nodal cores of the Euramerican West and the Asian East, alighting and reflecting as suggestively upon 10,800 BC as upon AD 2010. The shape of globalizing history may well never be quite the same again.” ―Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Clare College

“At last--a brilliant historian with a light touch. We should all rejoice.” ―John Julius Norwich

“Deeply thought-provoking and engagingly lively, broad in sweep and precise in detail.” ―Jonathan Fenby, author of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present

“Morris's history of world dominance sparkles as much with exotic ideas as with extraordinary tales. Why the West Rules--for Now is both a riveting drama and a major step toward an integrated theory of history.” ―Richard Wrangham, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

“The nearest thing to a unified field theory of history we are ever likely to get. With wit and wisdom, Ian Morris deploys the techniques and insights of the new ancient history to address the biggest of all historical questions: Why on earth did the West beat the Rest? I loved it.” ―Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money

About the Author

IAN MORRIS is Willard Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University. He has published ten scholarly books, including, most recently, The Dynamics of Ancient Empires, and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy. He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.

Most helpful customer reviews

249 of 262 people found the following review helpful.
Like playing Sid Meier's Civilization
By Bernard Kwan
As can be seem by both the summary and and various book reviews, this is big history, encompassing the dawn of the first homonids (or ape-men as the author put it) to present day, with a chapter conjecturing about the future.

I was going to try and compare it to some of books in the same genre that I have read, but this book takes, disproves and/ or builds on their arguments - books such as Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Pommeranz's the Great Divergence, Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations - and they are all cited in his book and Morris takes pains to show how they only focus on one small piece of the picture. Indeed the feeling of reading this must have been similar for those who read Marx's Das Kapital for the first time (although the language is much more accessible and the conclusion is open ended) in that it attempts to set out underlying laws of history.

In the words of the author - "History is not one damn thing after another, it is a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that always generate new problems (in the form of disease, famine, climate change, migration and state failure) that call for further adaptations. And each breakthrough came not as a result of tinkering but as a result of desperate times, calling for desperate measures." There may be set backs and hard ceilings, with free will and culture being the wildcards that may hinder social development but eventually the conditions give rise to ideas that allow progress to be made.

Indeed the motor of progress is not some economic logic, but what he calls the Morris Theorem - (expanding an idea from the great SF writer Robert Heinlein) to explain the course of history - Change is caused by lazy, greedy frightened people (who rarely know what they are doing) looking for easier more profitable and safer ways to do things. And it is geography that is the key determining factor where something develops first - Maps, not Chaps.

Now all this sounds academic and boring and in the case of the Morris theorem a little oversimplistic, but the presentation definitely is not. As professor Jared Diamond states, it is like an exciting novel (told by a cool eccentric uncle) and he uses a wide range of popular media to support his case, at one point talking about the movies Back to the Future, 300, the Scorpion King or making references to novels such as the Bonesetters Daughter and Clan of the Cave bear to bring conditions to life. Indeed the emotional similarities (and sheer sense of fun!) to playing early versions of the Sid Meier's Civilization Computer Game are uncanny.

There is a wide range of material here to satisfy a range of interests - his summaries of the fossil record, and early middle eastern and Chinese history are succinct and clear. Especially on the Chinese side, I had to read 2 books - the Golden Age of Chinese Archaelogy and the Cambridge History of Ancient China to gain the same understanding of what he summarizes in about 7-8 pages. He discourses on the role of the Axial religions, on whether democracy was important to the rule of the west, the role of free will in history, and on provocative ideas like the Qin and Roman empires expemplifing what he calls the paradox of violence: when the rivers of blood dried, their imperialism left most people, in the west and the east better off. I could go on and on and, of course, there may be many experts who take issue with his interpretations (and his predictions) but it will definitely stimulate thinking.

If I had to make a criticism of the book - it is that, like Marx, it is fundamentally materialistic in its approach, ideas are like memes that facilitate social development and culture is something that can help or hinder development but has no value in itself. The great religious ideas are glossed over as a product of or reaction to their times. It has precious little to say about the spiritual life and spiritual discoveries such as ethics, meditation or psychology. It may be these discoveries and qualities that will be required to get us through the challenges - of climate change, overpopulation, resourse shortages and potential nuclear war.

It is worthwhile comparing the book to two writings that he cites as inspiration (1) Herbert Spencer - Progress its Law and Cause and (2) Isaac Azimov's Foundation series. In each case they try to identify the forces that drive humanity but Spencer just doesn't have the data in the 19th century and the historian Hari Seldon is joke amongst professional historians as the novels seem so implausibly optimistic about what history can do. I don't know if Ian Morris has succeeded in identifying the laws of history but this book could only have been written now, at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, drawing together the strains from archaeology, genetics, linguistics as well as sociology and economics to create something altogether new and wonderful and accessible to that elusive thing - the educated lay reader.

234 of 260 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating as a history book, failure in terms of its target
By PK
It is hard to decide how many stars to assign to this book. Ian Morris' book would deserve 5 stars if it were merely a world history book. It succeeds in creating a unified, comprehensible narrative of world history from the stone age to the present day in a way that no other book I am aware of has done. For this reason, it would deserve to be classified as a classic.

However, on the other hand, the aim of Ian Morris has not been to write a comprehensive history of the the major world civilizations from the stone age to the present. It has been to explain the Western predominance of the last centuries and to predict what the future will look like. His discussion of the future is quite admirable and thoughtful indeed. However, I have found his answer to the central question the book poses to fall below ordinary academic standards on two fronts: it trivializes the question, and lacks novelty.

1. It trivializes the question. The central question of the book is answered by an argument of geographic reductionism and determinism. In short, the Western "rule" of the last few centuries is attributed to the shorter breadth of the Atlantic Ocean as opposed to the Pacific. This shorter breadth made the Americas more easily accessible to Europeans than to Asians, hence the former created an Atlantic economy, therefore faced different challenges than the latter, responded to them by the scientific and industrial revolutions, and hence rule. I find this argument to be rather simplistic, and I do not think that there was a need to write such a long book if its sole purpose was to put this argument down (after all, it has been said before - see below). The problem with this argument is that it stops exactly where the truly important questions should be asked. A case in point is Columbus: the author makes fun of him, calling him the best candidate for a "bungling idiot", because he thought he had arrived to the (by then obsolete) "land of the Great Khan", while he had only reached Cuba. However, the author fails to notice that Columbus did not reach the Americas merely due to the short breadth of the Atlantic Ocean: he ventured in the open sea aiming to sail as long as it took him to reach the other end of Eurasia, knowing that he should end up there eventually. Even if he had to cross the Pacific instead of the Atlantic, there is a high chance he would make it. It is surprising that, while the author tackles so many "what if" scenaria to prove his thesis, he fails to consider this fundamental "what if" question for his main argument: Would Columbus fail to reach the Americas if he had had to cross the Pacific instead? Given that Magellan did cross both the Atlantic and the Pacific a few years later, the answer appears to be in the negative. This observation by itself appears sufficient to refute the author's trivial main argument. The same reasoning applies to several other arguments in the book. For example, the author tries to argue that Newton thought what he thought because of the Atlantic economy, and he has no room for any cultural factor in it; he maintains that "each age gets the thought it needs". In essence, he maintains that thought is geographically determined. I find this fancy argument hard to accept, as I have not seen any convincing evidence for it. Last, but not least, some of the claims in the book are factually wrong: he attributes the invention of the wheelbarrow to China and claims that it was brought to Europe in the Middle Ages; however, there is evidence of wheelbarrows in construction sites in Ancient Athens.

2. It lacks novelty. The central argument of geographic reductionism and determinism that Ian Morris espouses is not new. It has been made by Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and by J. M. Blaut in "Eight Eurocentric Historians" before. Surprisingly, the author fails to give proper credit to these authors for making similar arguments, although he does at least cite Diamond. Moreover, the so-called "advantage of backwardness" of Western Europe, which forms a secondary argument in the author's thesis, has also been made by Patricia Crone in "Pre-industrial Societies". At least Morris does a good job of bringing these arguments together in a coherent way, but does not go beyond them to deeper issues that need to be addressed (as discussed above).

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
From ape-men to, perhaps, the Singularity
By Jay C. Smith
Ian Morris' Why the West Rules is certainly audacious. As the subtitle suggests, Morris ventures to explain all of human history and, apparently still unsatisfied, to see into the future as well. He appears to have read widely and deeply to match his scholarship to his ambition. His exposition is clear and often seasoned with a light touch.

This is not the sort of book many will be inclined to read fully in just a few long stretches, but on balance it is likely to engage and challenge persons with a serious interest in mega-history. While some specialists in particular domains (say the British industrial revolution, for example) may disagree with some of Mr. Morris' interpretations or find them insufficiently nuanced, that is to be expected for works of broad historical synthesis such as this one.

Morris starts with pre-human "ape-men" (he can turn a phrase) and traces comparative East-West "social development" to the present and beyond. He has devised his own method for measuring it, a quantitative index that takes into account (1) energy capture (calories used); (2) organization, as measured by urbanization; (3) information processing, represented by literacy rates; and (4) the capacity to make war. He graphically plots his estimates of the index scores of the East versus those of the West since 14,000 BCE. The main body of the text describes the historical forces and events underlying the graphical patterns.

There are many objections that might be raised against the quantitative index and Morris is aware of them. He has stated that he nevertheless chose to construct it to help make more explicit what he means when he describes social development in any given period or region. In my opinion, he could have well done without it: it leaves an overall impression of being artificially contrived and unnecessary, a sort of Rube Goldberg approach to assessment of historical development.

Moreover, the question of who was "ahead" in any given epoch, East or West, turns out to be rather secondary to the salient lessons Morris draws from the sweep of history. There is no "long-term lock-in," he concludes, no factor established long-ago that has subsequently determined comparative advantage in perpetuity. The "five horsemen of the apocalypse" -- climate change, disease, famine, migration, and state failure -- have at times radically disrupted development and could do so again. So too, ascendant regions face the "paradox of social development" -- adaptations create new problems that call for further adaptations, possibly undermining the very forces that contributed to past success. Prior backwardness can even become advantageous (for a contemporary example think of low wages as an attraction to capital investment in China, an "advantage" that is eroding as Chinese development progresses).

His rejection of long-term lock-in theories is creditable and well-supported, but Morris also contends that short-term accidents and human leadership do not matter much either in the longer term. We could substitute "bungling idiots" for great men or vice-versa, he says, and at most things may have moved at a different pace to the same destination. Nor, in his opinion, do ideas or culture ultimately help shape development; rather, it is the other way around. These views are contestable, at the very least, and are bound to elicit objections from many other historians.

For Morris the operative factors are biology and sociology, which explain global similarities, and geography, which explains regional differences. Geography has determined the probabilities of where development would rise fastest, but social development changes what geography means, he proposes. For instance, when social development reached the stage where trans-oceanic commercial voyages were feasible, Western societies positioned on the Atlantic gained geographic advantages that in turn spurred further development.

How is it, then, that the long history of comparative development might inform our current prognoses? Morris projects that his index will soar, but faster in the East than the West, with a crossover to Eastern leadership by 2103 at the latest (he is that precise). Yet, according to Morris, the East-West framework may or may not turn out to matter much. Perhaps there will be an all-out East-West war, where even winning would be catastrophic, or maybe arguments about "who rules" will become passé as we will see a need to cooperate further to address global problems.

Morris shifts gears and reframes the question. As he sees it, the world's future pretty much comes down to two possibilities: "Nightfall" or the "Singularity." If we can hold off the worst-case climate change outcomes and nuclear disaster (Nightfall) long enough, he suggests, we might morph into a post-human species (Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, where the full contents of our brains can be uploaded into computers), which he seems to regard as salvation.

I have to say I found this eventual conclusion to be a bit surprising, even peculiar, a big leap from where readers were left before reaching the final chapter. The chasm underscores a fundamental antinomy in Morris' message: we should study history to prepare for the future, but development will now accelerate so fast that history will leave us unprepared.

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? Ebook Free Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, by Wendy Lesser

Ebook Free Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, by Wendy Lesser

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"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review, to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it."

Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as "Character and Plot," "Novelty," "Grandeur and Intimacy," and "Authority," Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside quotidian tasks in favor of reading. Lesser's passion for this pursuit resonates on every page, whether she is discussing the book as a physical object or a particular work's influence. "Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different," she writes. "It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else's past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times."

A book in the spirit of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Elizabeth Hardwick's A View of My Own, Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun.

• Sales Rank: #559971 in Books
• Brand: Lesser, Wendy
• Published on: 2014
• Released on: 2014-01-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .89" w x 6.27" l, .78 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• Used Book in Good Condition

From Booklist
Lesser, founder and editor of the Threepenny Review, brings her literary ardor and expertise to a delectably sophisticated inquiry into why reading is a constant source of pleasure and provocation. Celebrating the “close attention” reading engenders and literature’s embodiment of truth in however oblique a manner, she attends to novels, plays, poems, and essays. Lesser eschews the usual, pat book-lover musings and digs deep to illuminate the subtle themes named in such alluring chapter headings as “Novelty,” “Authority,” “Grandeur and Intimacy,” “Elsewhere,” and “Inconclusions.” Right off the bat, she challenges the assumption that Henry James writes psychological novels, observing that in his fiction, “Behavior is the manifestation of thought.” Her spiraling dissection of suspense and the dynamic between characters and plot pulls in Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Hilary Mantel, and Richard Ford. Lesser’s inquiry into literary form, voice, thought, imagination, and satire leads her to Shakespeare, Milton, DeLillo, Bolaño, and Asimov. She closes this luxuriously fluent, sparklingly brilliant, and complexly exciting tribute to reading with a list, “A Hundred Books to Read for Pleasure.” --Donna Seaman

From Bookforum
Lesser’s taste is eclectic, her range large. She offers insights into George Orwell and Henning Mankell, Emily Dickinson and Roberto Bolaño, J.R. Ackerley and Shakespeare, Henry James and Isaac Asimov—to name but a few. There is no claim to a comprehensive approach, nor even a sense that what is discussed is of greater importance that what is not. […] The effect is rather as if Lesser were writing to a friend about the most fabolous literary party of all time, where she’d been in conversation not with authors but with their works. […] Her book is […] thoughtful and intelligent, conversational without being “improving,” and it ultimately encourages us to formulate our own responses, to continue and enlarge the literary conversation. —Claire Messud

Review

“The rare and marvelous pleasure of meeting a fellow reader, the sort of person who, in childhood, automatically turned the cereal box so her eyes could rest on words at all times, is here given new form. Wendy Lesser is candid, democratic, brisk, passionate, stubborn, fiercely exact; as in all memorable conversations, I found myself sometimes wishing to debate, and often bursting into private festivals of concurrence. This is a book of rich provocations and rich delights. More than most contemporary critics, Lesser trusts her instinct: what a joy it is to listen, through these pages, to her bold assessments and charismatic opinions.” ―Louise Glück, author of Poems 1962–2012

“Reading Why I Read delivers all the pleasure of discussing one's favorite books with a marvelously articulate, intelligent, opinionated friend. It's like joining the book club of your dreams, one in which you don't have to do any of the work or think up intelligent things to say, but can simply enjoy reading about books you've read or want to read.” ―Francine Prose, author of Reading Like a Writer

“Wendy Lesser has read just about everything, and proves a wonderfully companionable guide to books high and low. Rather than attempting anything ponderously encyclopedic, she follows her hunches, asking good, probing questions, voicing cultivated, intelligent opinions and surprising judgments, and doing it all with humor, dash, and skeptical humility. The result is a treat for all who love reading.” ―Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction

“Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics.” ―Stephen Greenblatt

“An intellectual of unflinching dignity and gravitas, founder of The Threepenny Review and author of nine previous books--including literary memoir, cultural criticism, and an incandescent study of Shostakovich--Lesser talks within books as few now are able to do . . . We turn to a book like Lesser's not only to help us unravel the DNA of literature (what Hazlitt named the gusto in the soul of literature) but to commune with a mind abler than our own, to augment our own appreciation and understanding. Everywhere in Why I Read lie ribbons of literary wisdom . . . Lesser's voice is so congenial, measured, authoritative and sane, it seems downright impervious to quarrel. From Hopkins to Cervantes to Dickinson, from Herzen to Klemperer to Louise Gluck, she is equally discerning and deft . . . In Why I Read she has written a necessary addition to the canonical titles of appreciation. Wendy Lesser is a serious reader--a quality reader--and this book is a serious pleasure.” ―William Giraldi, The New York Times Book Review

“Exuberantly digressive . . . The effect is rather as if Lesser were writing to a friend about the most fabulous literary party of all time, where she'd been in conversation not with authors but with their works . . . [Why I Read] is thoughtful and intelligent, conversational without being ‘improving,' and it ultimately encourages us to formulate our own responses, to continue and enlarge the literary conversation.” ―Claire Messud, Bookforum

“More than 50 years after [Henry] Miller published The Books in My Life, Wendy Lesser has brought out an equally personal reading memoir . . . Why I Read is a model for the modern age, with a list of 100 books to read for pleasure and a notice at the back advertising an online guide for reading groups. But her instincts are those of her literary forebears.” ―The Economist

“I began Wendy Lesser's Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books with my usual yellow highlighter in hand, notepaper and pen at the ready, opening the reviewer's copy as I would for any normal assignment. By the time I'd finished, the notepaper was still mostly blank, but the thing in my hand resembled a brightly painted fan--every page saturated in color, with so many corners folded down the book had trouble staying closed . . . Lesser, a longtime Berkeley resident, founded and edits the elegant literary journal the Threepenny Review. Author of nine prior books and contributor to various prominent literary venues, hers has been a no-holds-barred, art-loving life, and her dedication to that quest irradiates Why I Read.” ―The San Francisco Chronicle

“Reading Wendy Lesser is like attending a book club where the leader is an Olympic champion reader. Think the Dana Torres of page-turning . . . [In] Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, Lesser tackles a deceptively simple question: Why does one read? The question might be impossible to answer, but it's a pleasure to explore . . . Just like your favorite book club, the discussion is brainy, it's personal, and it's occasionally off topic.” ―Christian Science Monitor

“A witty, wise, and buoyant book full of the sense of adventure and the capacity for surprise that Lesser values in literature itself . . . We finish reading Lesser enlarged by the delights and rewards of her prose, enriched by her insights, and with an expansive sense of possibility.” ―The Boston Globe

“Plenty of surprises . . . wonderfully unpretentious.” ―Columbus Dispatch

“In this elegantly meandering narrative, critic and editor Lesser (Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen String Quartets), founder of the Threepenny Review, takes us through her expansive reading life. This is not so much a memoir of reading as it is about the craft of literature--the merits of both grandeur and intimacy, the double-edged sword of novelty, the ways character and plot are inextricably linked . . . Lesser's idiosyncratic reading list and her wealth of insights will speak to booklovers of all types.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Most helpful customer reviews

39 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
This one is to be taken like chocolate... for readers who love reading... it's delicious!
By oceanshaman
If you've been a reader most of your life, this is a great book. If you have never been much of a reader, I don't know that you will be convinced to become one. This book preaches to the choir and is a festival... a love in....
Wendy Lesser is a lover and she knows whereof she speaks....
this is a book that truly celebrates reading and books read... and the contribution that reading can make to the wisdom, texture, and richness of a lifelong dedication...
You want the book never to end...

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Unconventional list but good reasons for reading
By Parke Muth
Lesser has written books that are much more geared to academic research. This book is quirky is good ways. She writes well about the need for reading and the results that accrue from doing so. I found her list of her best books to be a mix of te usual suspects and a few that I would never have thought about. I have put on a few of these on my 'to read' list as she makes a good case that books talk to us both in general ways that are useful but also in ways that whisper to our own quirky selves in ways that are mysterious, rich, and strange.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
My motives remain obscure to me because reading is, to a certain extent, a compulsion."
By Amelia Gremelspacher
Like all great writing, this book compels the writer to enter the mind of the author. The experience in this book is luxurious in its exact and literate explorations of the author's favorite books. I am always struck with awe when a piece of writing captures my vague or ill formed thoughts into cogent and startling insight. Sharing a compulsion is deep pleasure that is multiplied by glimpses into unknown terrain. This book contains both and can take its place as a great work with literature.

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The long-awaited literary biography of the supreme "poets' poet"

John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive literary biography.

Here at last is his full story told by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his work as an agricultural labourer, his burgeoning promise as a writer--cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons--then his moment of fame in the company of John Keats and the toast of literary London, and finally his decline into mental illness and his last years confined in asylums. Clare's ringing voice--quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous--emerges in generous quotation from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings, and his poems, as Jonathan Bate, the celebrated scholar of Shakespeare, brings the complex man, his beloved work, and his ribald world vividly to life.
Jonathan Bate is the author of The Genius of Shakespeare and The Song of the Earth. He is Leverhulme Research Professor of English Literature at the University of Warick.
A Booklist Editors' Choice John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest working-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never seen the subject of a comprehensive literary biography. Here, at last, is his story, revealed by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his work as an agricultural laborer, his burgeoning promise as a writer cultivated under the gaze of rival patrons, his moment of fame in the company of John Keats as the toast of literary London, and finally his decline into mental illness and confinement in asylums. Clare's ringing voice—quick-witted, passionate, vulnerable, courageous—emerges through generous quotation from his letters, journals, autobiographical writings, and poems, as Jonathan Bate, the celebrated scholar of Shakespeare, brings the complex man, his beloved work, and his ribald world vividly to life. "[An] engrossing volume . . . Bate makes Clare's life as fascinating for us today as it was for Victorians, and his scholarship corrects the mistakes of earlier biographers without clogging the narrative. By surveying a broad selection of his subject's work, he sustains his contention that Clare ought to be considered a major poet. His unaffected diction, blessedly unencumbered by the ornate conventions of his time, sounds contemporary . . . In this groundbreaking biography and the judicious selection of poems [made by Bate] in 'I Am', John Clare's voice carries across the centuries and speaks to us as freshly as the unspoiled nature he loved."—Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader "Splendid . . . It is Clare's love of his native countryside that comes through most powerfully in this volume . . . Thanks to Mr. Bate's biography, Clare will no longer be remembered as a mere madman or prodigy, but will be granted his rightful place in the canon as England's pre-eminent poet of nature."—Amanda Kolson Hurley, The Washington Times "Perceptive."—Adam Kirsch, Bookforum "Bate's thorough and lively [study] provides a more nuanced view both of Clare's psychological complexity as a person and of the possibilities for artistic and intellectual development available in the milieu of Clare's upbringing than has hitherto been available."—Eric Gudas, The Bloomsbury Review "One of the challenges for [Clare's] biographer is to establish a living sense of the diverse realms he inhabited as agricultural worker, fashionable poet, foundering literary celebrity, and mental patient. Another is to trace the development of Clare's crystalline poetic vision, which unerringly focused and deepened itself while his beloved Northamptonshire landscape, his financial prospects, his literary status and even, at last, much of his personality, fell apart round him. Jonathan Bate's biography, the first full-scale life to appear since 1932, succeeds splendidly on both counts, not only making generous use of Clare's own wonderful prose and verse but adding historical perspective and a constant, intelligent probing . . . One of the strengths of John Clare: A Biography is its refusal to propose easy answers to any of the questions raised by Clare's life. Bate has an essayist's ability to walk around a problem, interrogating it from various sides . . . Clare's is an extraordinary story, both disturbing and inspiring. Jonathan Bate tells it in considerable detail and this is a big book, with a level of detail and intricacy of argument which demand stamina from the reader. But its seriousness, compassion, and lightness of touch make it highly readable."—Grevel Lindop, The Times Literary Supplement "Fascinating . . . For more than a century, Clare has been hailed as a victim—of an uncultivated upbringing, of ignorant editors, of brutal doctors, even of the demon of poetry itself. The story of the divinely endowed poetic genius martyred by his gift is hard to resist, but Bate undertakes to dispel these notions, revealing the breadth of Clare's knowledge, the purposefulness of his writing style (he wouldn't take criticism, even from Keats), and his reliance on the generosity and intelligence of his editor, John Taylor. Bate's exploration of these myths is as compelling as his debunking of them. He richly describes the social and cultural life in 19th century England, specifically the presentation of Clare's 'peasant poet' persona, the political pressures Clare faced while receiving aid from wealthy aristocratic patrons, and the 19th century understanding and treatment of mental illness, which, to Clare's benefit, had recently undergone a transformation to a more humane form. Since his life seemed to beg for an explanation and his work espoused no ideology or agenda—merely the quiet appreciation of the natural world—Clare has been a kind of blank slate on which later generations project their own identities. Through scrupulous historical research, at times dizzying in its attention to detail, Bate avoids this pitfall, illuminating rather than obscuring Clare's personality and his poetry. His intimate and definitive account of Clare's life accomplishes more than most biographies could hope to: It gives us plenty of reasons to turn to the poet's verse."—Jason Baskin, Newsday "An appropriately ample and properly judicious biography. It rises from a passionate conviction in Clare's genius, and spreads into a calm appraisal of his experience. But there's cleverness in this calm: Bate knows the sadness of Clare's story has led previous writers to make false claims, or to agitate the clear spirit of his writing with their own well-meant heat. His own tactic is to take nothing for granted, to stay as close as possible to Clare's own intentions, to resist the temptation to read all the poems as being strictly autobiographical, and to admit ignorance where ignorance exists . . . Bate wisely makes space for a thematic approach, winding chapters on (among other things) heredity, childhood, social environment, and friendship around the hard facts of birth, family, and so on. Far from making Clare seem vague, this has the good effect of allowing him to be in a kind of dream. It's a dream which combines elements of bliss—the

• Sales Rank: #910494 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x 2.06" w x 6.00" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

From Booklist
*Starred Review* John Clare (1793-1864) is one of the most compelling figures in English literature, but until Bate, whose previous books include studies of Shakespeare and a novel, took up the challenge, it was widely supposed that Clare's life was rather shadowy. An agricultural laborer with a rudimentary education, Clare was fascinated from childhood by the animals, plants, and weather of his farming community. He taught himself to write some of the most keenly observant nature poetry in English, in essence the first truly ecological poetry. His first book caused a sensation. He was dubbed "the peasant poet" (Robert Burns and the now-forgotten Robert Bloomfield, both of whom Clare admired, held that title before him), endowed with stipends by wealthy magnates, and brought to London to meet the literary lights of the capital and, momentously for his future, witness the funeral procession of Lord Byron. He produced three more collections, each less successful (though acknowledged to be better) than its predecessor. Meanwhile, he broke down mentally and spent his last 30 years in lunatic asylums, for much of that time under the impression that he was Byron. He ceased writing only for some eight years of the 1850s, and he left some 3,500 poems as well as much prose in manuscript, and much of that is better than what he had published. Bate takes Clare's literary work, both sides of his correspondence, and others' written records of Clare as the bedrock of an enthralling book that brings its subject to life as few biographies ever do. It helps that Bate writes like a dream himself. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Jonathan Bate [is] the sanest, shrewdest scholar of Shakespeare at present."--James Wood, The Guardian

About the Author
John Clare (1793-1864) lived all his life in rural Northamptonshire. He is widely celebrated as one of England's great nature and folk-life writers.

Jonathan Bate is the celebrated author of Shakespeare and Ovid (1993) and The Genius of Shakespeare (1997). He is Leverhulme Research Professor and King Alfred Professor of English at the University of Warwick.

Most helpful customer reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Fabulous Portrait
By Gianmarco Manzione
Endearing, moving and mysterious, this is as sensitive a portrait of John Clare as we are likely to get. Bate's love for his subject is obvious throughout the book, in which he succeeds so well at walking the line between adoration and accuracy. Teeming with observations such as "for Clare even a fishpond is saturated with feeling and memory," Clare's unusually intense absorption in nature is brought to light here with the kind of beauty and empathy only a fellow-writer such as Bate could achieve.
Yet despite Bate's insistence on Clare's genius (I'm quite insistent on it myself after having read the biography and skimming through the Selected Poems) he does not look away from uglier aspects of Clare's life: his infidelity and apparent spousal abuse, his alcoholism and, most of all, the ever-bewildering case of his diagnosis as a "lunatic." This is where Bate's book becomes particularly poignant, and I wish he had spent less time gossiping about Clare's wrangles with publishers and more on the man's complicated and harrowing character. For this reason I felt the book to be a bit longer than it needed to be, but perhaps I'd feel differently had the material in the last 150 pages, which deals extensively with Clare's mental illness, been fleshed-out even more. Surely accounts of Clare's occasional belief that he was Lord Byron or Jack Randall the boxer are of far more interest than how many pounds he was paid for a poem published in the London Magazine.
Nonetheless, Bate does an excellent job of avoiding the temptation to romanticize Clare's dramatic mental illness (for which, in the end, "manic-depression" seems to be the most accurate but not necessarily conclusive diagnosis. In her incredible book, Touched With Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison lists Clare's name among the poets she counted as victims of manic-depressive illness). Unlike other biographers of writers (Quentin Bell's book about Virginia Woolf comes to mind) Bate does not settle for Clare's own metaphorical explanations for his "madness." Indeed, Bate often disputes the very term "madness" and exposes it as a dated and even superstitious label. He does not so thoroughly drench the artist's mental struggles in myth and theory as to have it become the stuff of folklore. Surely it would be flattering to think of Clare as some divinely inspired mystic, but Bate's many more logical scenarios are a refreshing contrast to the "mad genius" stereotype.
While Clare attributed his madness to the day he watched a friend fall to his death from a tree as a child, Bate's more plausible suggestions include: Clare's concussion after tumbling out of a tree himself as a boy, his heavy drinking, the awful malnutrition of his diet, the tormenting stress of his perpetual poverty amid obligations to his wife and seven children, his frustrating efforts to further himself as a poet while having to beg for farm work, and "mercury-poisoning resulting from attempted treatment for syphilis." In a further example of Bate's mature handling of this particular issue, he writes that "we should not rule out the possibility that his own derangement was partially shaped by his reading about the mental suffering of other writers." Clare was terribly impressionable. However, where Bate tells us that Clare's "episodes" afflicted him only after being admitted to the aszlum as if to imply that he was bound to become psychotic after living among the mad for two decades, Jamison writes in "Touched With Fire" that "manic-depressive illness not only worsens over time, it becomes less responsive to medication the longer" it goes untreated, so it seems only logical that his condition would have worsened with age, especially since no such "treatment" as Jamison discusses was available in his day.
Compounding the reasonable possibilities Bate offers is the fact that Clare's very devotion to write poetry may have been interpreted as madness by his neighbors. Tragically, this seems to be a chief reason why he was eventually confined. As Bate says early on, "In summer he walked in the woods and fields alone, a book in his pocket . . . his love of books began to isolate him from other boys . . . the villagers found this behavior very odd: `some fancying it symptoms of lunacy.'" Even after reading the book, it is anyone's guess as to whether Clare was insane; but stories of his battles against what illness he may have suffered from as well as the ignorance, incompetence and greed of those purporting to care for him make for a rather heart-breaking read. What we can be sure of, though, is that mad or not, Clare had become more of a liability than a father or husband. "There is no evidence that he was taken to the asylum because he was `mad' in the sense of having lost consciousness of his identity . . . he was taken to the asylum because he needed better care than could be provided by his family," Bate writes.
Though he probably takes a bit too much liberty in attempting to explain nearly every one of Clare's symptoms in a more rational light, Bate's assertions about Clare's psychological temperament make for some absolutely riveting explications and commentary. "To say that he had written the works of Byron and Scott was but an extreme way of saying he had written works that he hoped might one day be regarded as the equal of" those works, he supposes. In an even farther-fetching attempt at psychoanalysis, Bate explains Clare's delusion that he was a famous boxer as a dramatization "of the fact that Clare spent his life fighting battles - for his poetry, for recognition, for survival, against his inner demons." While this is probably the point at which Bate seems more of an adoring and apologetic fan than biographer, who's to say? We will never really know what was going on inside that jewel of a mind, and considering all that was taken from the man in his life by his illness, time, or other people, maybe that secret is the one thing we can let Clare keep.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Absolutely Great
By M. Hori
This is a wonderful biography of Clare. Bate not only paints a convincing picture of this largely self-taught genius, but he also provides illuminating information about the social context in which Clare moved. His speculations concerning Clare's mental illness are also on the mark. Take your time with this book. It's an enjoyable ramble through the fields and by the end you'll have a well-rounded picture of John Clare and a greater appreciation for his work.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Very Fine Biography of Clare
By buckwheatbarleycorn
Jonathan Bate's admirable biography of John Clare is worthy of this unique poet. There were moments while reading the first two hundred or so pages of John Clare A Biography when I began to sense I was residing in Clare's mind and footsteps which is truly a tribute to Bate's fine scholarship and narrative skills. The remainder of the book is excellent as well. Very memorable and very much worth reading and exploring.

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