I always love the New York Review of Books, but the June 6 issue was particularly good, bringing together so many great writers I adore, publishing reviews about books I've just bought and telling me about movies and artists I can't wait to discover more about.
I'd noticed on the cover the names of Alma Guillermoprieto and Anne Applebaum so I knew from the start I was going to spend a lot of time reading this issue. Applebaum in particular belongs to my pantheon of my favorite female writers, right up there with Jane Mayer. She always writes compellingly about difficult topics, from the Gulag to the crushing of Eastern Europe after World War II to the famine in Ukraine under Stalin. Her essay discusses a recent book by Ian Kershaw on Europe from 1950 to 2017. The main point she makes is that for the most part the book covers much similar material to Tony Judt's Postwar, except for the fact that it extends about a decade after the end of Judt's book, and that extra decade is key in witnessing critical changes about the perception of Europe and even the likelihood of its survival as an institution.
I've also read Guillermoprieto's prose many times in The New Yorker and the NYRB, as well as her books on dancing for Cuba and dispatches from Latin America. Her essay was the transcript of the Robert B. Silvers lecture she gave at the New York Public Library back in December. It is a haunting account of her early days as a reporter in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, and of the misery that Richard Nixon's war on drugs has brought to the region.
I picked up the biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke by George Packer (who wrote the National Book Award winner The Unwinding a few years back) at the bookstore the other day so I was thrilled to see it was the object of a review in the NYRB. Those reviews are always so informative and help me focus on the most important part of the book. Here, what stuck with me was the revelation that, on a fateful day in Sarajevo, 3 U.S. diplomats died because Holbrooke liked speed and the car he was in was going too fast down a treacherous, windy road (well-known to be treacherous). The heavier vehicle behind it that the 3 U.S. aides were in was trying to catch up with Holbrooke's car and went off the road. Such a waste because someone liked speed too much. (The book review is aptly named The Fog of Ambition, in an allusion to Robert McNamara.) After I read that I was glad that Packer's verdict on Holbrooke was "almost great" (emphasis on almost), the story of a man who wanted to do a lot more and fell short. We don't need people like that to achieve greatness, thank you very much. Oblivion will do just fine.
Two other gems in this issue of the NYRB were the article about jazz musician Don Cherry (I was almost at the end of the article before I realized his children were pop star Neneh Cherry and singer Eagle-Eye Cherry, whom I remember listening to when I was much younger) and the review of the prize-winning movie - at the Cannes Festival - Capernaum. I also enjoyed reading the review of the book Churchill: Walking with Destiny, of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of art and identity in the ancient Middle East and of the exhibition that stopped by Houston last year on the royal arts of Jodhpur. I didn't care for the book of stories by Karen Russell but other than that I liked just about everything in this issue.
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