THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief He's been my friend for over thirty years, from the time we were roommates at Harvard and spent hours comparing the ingenious techniques Radcliffe girls used to...
...Across the river is a Shia village...
...Austin Bay, a public-affairs columnist, Weekly Standard contributor, and colonel in the Army Reserve, unwinds a tale of evil across four continents...
...he was a truly singular comic genius like Jonathan Swift...
...David Skinner...
...She briefs the reader with some biographical background on her subject—and, two seconds later, we're in the middle of a fine discussion of the farcical elements in Iris Murdoch's fiction...
...Ford nearly disobeys his orders, seething as he bears witness to the Iraqis' carnage through his tank's gun-sights...
...William Kristol Desert Storm is over—as decreed by Washington...
...Whatever the case, I started reading Rob's manuscript as a duty, continued as a pleasure, and ended up revisiting it more than once to reflect on it with profit...
...But having disclosed my bias, let me say that Rob Stearns has written one heck of an interesting book...
...Woody West What's most likable about Brooke Allen's essays is how smoothly they shift from literary journalism to literary criticism...
...Greed and power, idealism and evil, weave a lethal series of circumstances that Ford, now an ex-Army officer, must navigate and which illuminate his own scarred youth and family...
...Perhaps all the dreck in "self-help" publishing has driven out the potentially good stuff...
...It's a quick read...
...Peter Ford, a battalion operations officer, is in his tank on the bank of the Euphrates in Iraq after the U.S...
...But as a disciplined soldier he resists...
...He agonizingly watches the jumpsuit-clad leader of the killers shoot a nurse to death, a murder that awakens a horrific memory of another nurse's slaying in another country years before...
...As Ford and his fellow troopers watch, a contingent of Saddam Hussein's thugs begins to slaughter men, women, and children—and the "Rules of Engagement" forbid the American soldiers from intervening...
...Her observations about Evelyn Waugh (to take an author I do know) are important and true...
...And I think you'll find it more than fun, more than interesting, but really thought-provok-ing—and, yes, deep...
...She notes that Waugh's early novels are better than his late work and his very best novel was his first: the peerless Decline and Fall...
...Part autobiography, part reflection on the human condition, part hard-headed and insightful advice, Winning Smart after Losing Big is an unusual work...
...She concludes that Waugh was far more than some jazz-age figure...
...This is a gritty tale with an ethical core, neatly executed...
...But she fills her writing with intelligence and equanimity, making her boldness seem really not so wild after all, but the logical conclusion of good sense and an orderly mind...
...Austin Bay's plot is alarmingly plausible in the vicious landscape of the past dozen years...
...The Standard Reader Books in Brief He's been my friend for over thirty years, from the time we were roommates at Harvard and spent hours comparing the ingenious techniques Radcliffe girls used to tell us to get lost...
...Allen develops a compelling case for the mastery of Henry Greene, for instance—and, because I trust her, I've ordered three of his novels to read...
...there is also the necessary work of simply singling out writers and even making introductions if necessary...
...For obvious reasons, losing—to say nothing of losing big—is an underana-lyzed phenomenon...
...You'll enjoy it...
...With "Jumpsuit" as a major player, this vivid thriller pivots on the illicit African traffic in diamonds and weapons that fuels corruption...
...ejection of Iraqi troops from Kuwait...
...Perhaps I just don't know about other good writing in this area...
...It is not the critic's only task to drive the reader down long roads of philosophical speculation...
...These characters and their international settings are terrifically convincing...
...Given my limited credibility on Rob, I suppose I'll just say this: Read Winning Smart after Losing Big...
...Allen can be quite bold in her opinions (see especially the spanking she delivers to feminist academics in her essay on Virginia Woolf...
...His cast varies from the military to investment banking...
Vol. 8 • September 2003 • No. 48
