Barry
Beloved by staff and customers alike, Barry held court at our front register for over twenty years – he was proud of having been hired on the very first day the bookstore opened on Central Street in 1999. Considered by many the unofficial mayor of Wellesley, he took a genuine interest in those around him, warmly greeting customers (and their dogs) by name and recalling every detail of previous conversations. Barry was a gifted writer and a formidable scholar, possessing a deep knowledge of history, religion, baseball and music. He always relished the challenge of helping a customer track down some esoteric and often out-of-print treatise on one of his favorite subjects. We will miss his sense of humor, his affectionate banter, his freely-expressed opinions, his extraordinary intellect and his kind heart. Our community has lost a dear colleague and a true friend. We love you, Barry. Rest in peace.
In Barry's own words: "The great majority of the books I read are nonfiction--mostly history, religion, archaeology, linguistics, and science, with occasional forays into music, sports, and food lit."
We may not have baseball right now, but we do have classic baseball books, and Jane Leavy's 2010 biography of Mickey Mantle is one of the very best. Almost from the beginning of Mantle's career, he was enveloped by thick layers of mythology. When he was playing, that mythology was overwhelmingly positive; he was, without a doubt, the best-loved player of his era. After he retired, frequent reports of behavior not befitting an idol added a dark element to the whole Mantle myth. Jane Leavy's signal accomplishment in this biography is rescuing Mantle from the realm of caricature and supplying a perspective that was hardly available for sixty years: Mickey Mantle as a flesh-and-blood human being. A stunning piece of reportage, research, and writing.
For much of ancient history, religious belief and practice were so intertwined with civilization as a whole (whether Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Indian, Chinese or other) that it doesn't appear that people thought of "religion" as a separate or separable human activity. Eventually, that all changed, at least in some parts of the world. How did it happen that humans began to categorize religion as a particular kind of activity, to the point where the comparative study of religion evolved as its own field of study? Jack Miles offers a thoughtful, elegant, convincing explanation.
This is not a book for beginners, but if you already know something about the life of Muhammad and the emergence of Islam, the freshness of Bowersock's interpretations--and the exceptionally broad scope of his research--will be a revelation. He looks at what was happening in the Arabian peninsula, the Byzantine empire, the Sassanian Persian empire--even in Ethiopia--in the decades just before Muhammad's birth, during his life, and just after his death. By establishing a firmer context for the seventh-century CE rise of Islam, he is able to make persuasive sense out of the ocean of often conflicting data that confronts historians who devote themselves to this controversial subject.
Has Bowersock succeeded in telling us exactly what happened? No, no one can do that. That's not what writing history is about. But I think this book likely brings us a little closer to the truth than we have ever been before.
You want erudite? This book is erudite, although it wears its learning lightly. (Oy--only the second sentence, and already he's dragging out the cliches.) You want funny? Trust me, it doesn't stint on the funny. You want definitive? Of course it's not definitive--take a look at the subtitle. You want good writing? Contributors include Ruth Reichl, Mimi Sheraton, Joan Nathan, Maira Kalman, Ian Frazier, Daphne Merkin, and plenty of others who are comparably gifted.
There are people who won't appreciate this book, but they put mayonnaise on pastrami and ketchup on scrambled eggs.
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David Reich of Harvard Medical School is one of the geneticists who led the way in developing new methods for studying very ancient DNA and using those techniques to sequence the genomes of individuals who lived many thousands of years ago. Here he combines the results (many of which came out of his own lab) with findings from archaeology, anthropology, and historical linguistics to tell a substantially revised story of how early humans spread out of Africa and settled the globe. If you're familiar with an older version of the migration-out-of-Africa-to-everywhere-else story, you're in for some stunning surprises.
If I were to tell you this is a book that's largely about ancient Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) and left it at that, you'd probably say, "Uh, that doesn't really sound like my cup of tea" (or Sumerian beer, as it were). But this book happens to ask very big, extremely interesting questions. To wit: What do we mean when we refer to the "origins of civilization" or "early civilizations"? Was "civilization" typically a good thing for all those involved? Admirers of Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari -- prepare to engage with James Scott's restless and brilliantly original mind.
Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game: A Library of America Special Publication (Hardcover)
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Of course Michael Jordan is pictured on the cover, because -- and I say this with full awareness that I'm at risk of being tried, convicted, and sent to Clichémongers Prison -- this book is the Michael Jordan of anthologies of basketball writing. Take a look at the table of contents: John McPhee, Pete Axthelm, David Halberstam, Frank Deford, Curry Kirkpatrick, Bob Ryan, Charlie Pierce, Darcy Frey, John Edgar Wideman, Pat Conroy. . . . a veritable Dream Team! (Did I really say that?)
I'm fascinated by language, but I've never been very adept at learning foreign languages. Dutch linguist/polyglot Dorren is clearly quite good at learning them (he claims to speak six and read an additional nine, and I have no reason to doubt him). In sixty short chapters, he succeeds in telling us one or two (or more) really interesting things about each of sixty of the languages of Europe. All the biggies are here, of course, but think what a star you'll be at parties when you inject something about Galician, Romani, Manx, or Frisian into the conversation! I guarantee that the book's breezy, conversational style will draw you in if you're at all predisposed to the subject matter.
Of the many famous profiles that have appeared in The New Yorker, two of the best known are the two published by the late Joseph Mitchell--22 years apart -- about Joe Gould, a Greenwich Village derelict/madman/man-about-town who claimed to have written a 9-million-word "Oral History of Our Time." Current New Yorker staff writer (and Harvard history professor) Jill Lepore began to suspect that there was a lot more to Gould's story than Mitchell had ever uncovered (or let on), and this riveting little book is the result of her investigations. An amazing piece of detective work that leads to unexpectedly creepy revelations.
Guns, Germs, and Steel was first published in 1997, but I didn’t read it until 2005-2006, shortly after a hardcover edition containing a new chapter on Japan and Korea became available. I underlined the text generously and filled my copy with notes in the margins – everything from expressions of amazement at Diamond’s brilliant insights to angry dissents when I thought he was overstating the role of geography in the development of human civilizations. A boundless intellectual feast whether you agree with the author’s conclusions or not.