From January 1993 through December 1994, Dee Dee Myers served as the press secretary for President Bill Clinton. She was the first woman, and the youngest person, ever to hold the job. Throughout her career, Myers has had the opportunity to meet and work with many powerful and interesting women. In this book, she uses her many contacts to help build her case.
Myers also uses the results of many research studies that have shown how, and why, women should be included at all levels of business and government. Why Women Should Rule the World is very well-written and well-researched (20 pages of end notes and a 4 page bibliography). That said, this book does not seem to make any ground-breaking statements. It’s basically everything we’ve heard, but put together in an appealing, attractive manner.
I did enjoy reading this book. I do believe, however, it will have a limited shelf life. Myers often refers to very recent events, including those that occurred last year or this year. History will determine if readers of the future even know what she is referring to.
I had received a free, signed copy of this book a few months ago when I attended a breakfast at which Myers spoke. Her talk included many of the anecdotes in this book, so that made much of the book redundant for me. That, of course, should not be an issue for most people.
In USA:
Published in hardcover-HarperCollins-2008
Why Women Should Rule the World
This first novel by fiction writer Travis Holland is short, and spare, and very moving. Set in Soviet Moscow during the Stanlinist purges of 1939, The Archivist’s Story is loosely based on the arrest and imprisonment of the (real) short story writer Isaac Babel.
Babel has been arrested, his writings seized, and been imprisoned and interrogated at the infamous Lubyanka Prison. A former literature teacher, Pavel Dubrov, works as an archivist at the Lubyanka. His job is to organize, catalog, and eventually incinerate writings seized from Russia’s literary notables. Dubrov meets Babel when he is assigned to authenticate an unsigned work. Soon, Dubrov plans to save Babel’s last, unknown works.
The Archivists’s Story portrays pre-war Moscow as a frightening place. The infrastructure is falling apart, criminals roam the streets, and food is scarce. Muscovites, ordinary and otherwise, live in fear of the knock on the door that means their arrest, torture, and conviction of crimes against the state.
The book is very real and quite disturbing. it is also a good reminder that we need to pay attention to, and understand, recent world history.
In USA:
Published in hardcover-Dial Press-2007
Softcover edition-Dial Press-2008
The Archivist’s Story
3D is awesome. I realize that in ten years (or five years or two years) the technology in this movie will seem, well, prehistoric, but right now it’s a lot of fun. Journey to the Center of the Earth is, of course, loosely based on the Jules Verne novel. The story is not groundbreaking. The characters are not well-developed or even that interesting, but it doesn’t matter. Brendan Fraser plays scientist Trevor Anderson, who takes off for Iceland with his nephew to find the brother who went missing ten years ago. Trevor, his nephew Sean, and their guide, Hannah, get trapped in a cave. In an effort to find their way out, they find the “other world” of the movie’s promos. There, they find all kinds of Vernean wonders: diamonds as large as a man’s fist; bioluminescent birds; fossilized mushrooms; magnetic fields; and rampaging dinosaurs, to name a few.
There is no great dialog, or even much tension is this action film. However, it’s worth the price of admission when Trevor Anderson brushes his teeth at the beginning of the movie. Not every theater has 3D capability, so double check before you go. And don’t worry about wearing the silly glasses. Everyone in the theater has them on.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Unabridged Classics)
Dalia Sofer, the author of The Septembers of Shiraz, is an Iranian Jew who fled with her family to the United States at the age of ten. She writes with feeling for the country of Iran, and with the authority of someone who understands the terror of the uncertainty of life during a revolution.
Isaac Amin, the main character in The Septembers of Shiraz, is a wealthy Jewish gemologist and jeweler in post-revolutionary Tehran. As the novel opens, Isaac is arrested at his office, blindfolded, and imprisoned. His wife, Farnaz, and nine year old daughter, Shirin, have no idea where he has been taken. As Farnaz searches for Isaac, he is interrogated, tortured, and placed in solitary confinement.
Farnaz and Shirin attempt to continue with their lives. Isaac and Farnaz’s son, eighteen year old Parviz, has already been sent to study in New York. He is a tenant in the basement apartment of an Hasidic family in Brooklyn. He struggles to continue his schooling, while surviving without family support.
Isaac’s previous connections to the deposed Shah, though tenuous, leave him and his family in jeopardy. While he is imprisoned, the family home is searched. Isaac’s office is looted. Farnaz begins to suspect that Habibeh, the family’s long-time housekeeper, has stolen items from their home, as well as betrayed them to the revolution.
The Septembers of Shiraz is a moving depiction of a family whose very lives are on the edge. Throughout the book, I hoped that they would come through this ordeal alive, all the while knowing that they would never be the same.
I found this novel compelling, and easy to read, and highly recommend it.
In USA:
Published in hardcover-HarperCollins-2007
Softcover edition-HarperCollins-2008
The Septembers of Shiraz
