:: Reading List -- Cassie MacDuff
Columnist for the Press Enterprise

You’ll soon discover that I don’t read books the moment they hit the best-seller list. Sometimes, they are given to me or loaned to me by friends. Sometimes, I pick them up at bookstore bargain racks. Quite often, my interest is sparked by hearing the book reviewed or the author interviewed on my favorite NPR show, “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.” Here are some of my recent readings:


Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, by Bob Edwards

The longtime host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” might be gone from the airwaves but you can still enjoy his work in print. In this easy-to-read volume, Edwards profiles the renowned voice of radio news broadcasts from London in WWII, through Murrow’s courageous challenge of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the Cold War era. A great gift for a young person contemplating a career in broadcast news. A primer on public-service journalism, and the guts it takes to do it.

Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Life in American Politics, by Ed Rollins with Tom DeFrank

Any political junkie will love this memoir of one of Ronald Reagan’s more colorful, gloves-off political advisors. It’s an inside view of what went on in some memorable campaigns -- right up to Rollin’s downfall in the incident that introduced many people -- including me -- to the term, “walking-around money.” Don’t know what that means? It’s only because Californians don’t do that sort of thing -- do they? But then Rollins makes a comeback. A very enlightening read.

Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times, by Helen Thomas

She’s the wire service reporter who gets to close each White House press conference with, “Thank you, Mr. President.” (You haven’t seen much of her lately. Bush 43 doesn’t give many press conferences.) After a choppy start, filled with anecdotes of presidential styles and early days in the press corps, Thomas hits her stride when she analyzes each First Lady and each President in turn (up to Clinton, it was published in 1999). Until I read the chapter, I saw Pat Nixon as little more than a silent presence with a frozen smile. Thomas tells us she was actually a very sharp lady who could have helped her husband, if she hadn’t been shoved into the background by Nixon’s handlers.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by Al Franken

The book that turned Bill O’Reilly’s face into a blotchy mask actually contains an impressive amount of research debunking rabid spoutings of the ultra-conservative talk show hosts, especially O’Reilly. I especially like the way Franken denotes Hannity and (colmes), putting the ineffectual “liberal” voice in tiny type. I wasn’t impressed with Franken’s TV-show answer to the O’Reilly Factor, but the book is great -- with lots of great laughs spliced in with the fact-finding. Who said liberals have no sense of humor?

Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny, by Rikki Klieman

A former star prosecutor, former criminal defense attorney turned Court TV commentator, she married now-LA police chief Bill Bratton. Good for her. The first third of the book alienated me so much with her “Little Miss Perfect, I’m so wonderful, everybody loves me” rendition of her school years, I almost stopped reading, only continuing because the book was a gift from a friend. But if you’ve ever worked yourself half to death, you’ll relate to what she means by “driven”. Her “fairy tale” is falling in love with Bratton. But if I were him, I’d trust her about as far as I could throw her. This woman went through men the way other people go through Kleenex.

Why Things Are: Answers to Every Essential Question in Life, by Joel Achenbach

Another gift from a friend, it’s a humorously written encyclopedia of answers to obscure ponderings, such as “Why is it an insult to call someone a turkey”? and “Why was the second atomic bomb dropped?” It made perfect reading on a recent cross-country flight with two stopovers. Easy to digest in small bites, between repeated interruptions (the seatbelt/emergency exit demonstration, the beverage cart, the fasten-your-seatbelts turbulence). Plus, you’ll be able to wow your friends with cocktail party talk with all the oddments you learned.

The Virgin Blue, by Tracy Chevalier

This novel is by the same author who wrote “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” inspired by a Vermeer painting and made into the movie starring Scarlet Johansson. Good summer reading, it tracks two stories simultaneously. One is contemporary, an American woman visiting France to discover her ancestors. The other is set in 16th Century France during the Protestant Reformation, when Huguenots were persecuted and slaughtered. The historical backdrop refreshes your memory of history lessons about those people who fled to America to escape religious persecution. Well-executed.

The Little Locksmith: A Memoir, by Katharine Butler Hathaway

This is one of many books I’ve picked up because I heard it reviewed on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Reissued after many decades, it’s a magical book about a little girl who grows up with a horrible spinal deformity, spending most of her childhood strapped to a board to straighten her spine (it didn’t work). But she could write and paint and sew in her confinement, and she constructed a microscopic world that made up for the childhood she was missing outside. Arriving at adulthood, she moves to the coast of Maine and gains an independence no one predicted. Her descriptions are beautiful, and the book carries you to a world you wouldn’t have thought of visiting.

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

This is one of those books I picked up because I heard the author interviewed on “Fresh Air,” after his book won the National Book Award in 2001. (Also found the hardbound edition on a bargain rack sharply marked down.) It is a multi-layered book written with absolutely dazzling craft. The author tells the story, Rashomon-like, through the eyes of each of his protagonists. But unlike Rashomon, each teller doesn’t merely recount the same incident through his own eyes, each moves the narrative forward. Franzen even gets into the head of the increasingly senile patriarch of the family. The denouement is stunning. It’s a big book, but you won’t be able to put it down.

Healing Essence: A Cancer Doctor’s Practical Program for Hope and Recovery, by Mitchell L. Gaynor M.D.

This is another book I bought after hearing the author interviewed on “Fresh Air.” This doctor’s approach goes far beyond the medical cures of chemotherapy and radiation and surgery. He recognizes that the human soul has a lot to do with healing, and his book tells the stories of some of this patients and how they got in touch with the internal strength, compassion and caring to help them heal themselves. As one of the blurbs on the dust jacket says, it’s a book for anyone with a serious chronic illness.

*
Submitted June 2005