The author of The Baroque Cycle series and works of speculative fiction offers a miscellany of stories and essays, some of classic Stephensonian length.
In a breezy, self-deprecating introduction, Stephenson (Reamde, 2011, etc.) credits (blames?) others for the idea for this collection. The pieces range from mildly hectoring essays of advice (we should move around more) to more learned pieces about the intellectual war between Newton and Leibnitz, to fluff about the differences between “geeking out” and “vegging out.” Stephenson also includes the text of a speech at Gresham College, a revealing interview with Salon and a massively long but massively interesting piece of investigative journalism for Wired, which deals with the history, technology and logistics of the submarine cable industry. The author traveled across the world—and back in time—to explain in ways surely comprehensible to most readers how all of this started, how it works, and what it costs. Although the piece is now dated a bit (as are a number of the others here), the historical significance of his work is sizeable. Readers will emerge from that labyrinthine piece with a more comprehensive understanding of how the Internet works, how information gets from here to there and back again. Stephenson also includes some fiction, including a speculative tale about e-money and a single-sentence beginning to an otherwise-unwritten crime novel set in Middle-earth. In some of the op-ed-like pieces, the author urges more reading, defends his genre against those who disparage it, wonders why we don’t understand religious zealots, and bemoans what he views as a lack of will to pursue the sort of innovation that characterized the era of space exploration. He ends with an explanation and apology for not answering emails from his fans.
A occasionally uneven but mostly engaging assortment from a talented literary mind.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-202443-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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