Shelf Life

Author: Jane Simon Ammeson

  • American Heiress By Jeffrey Toobin

    9780385536714On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst was engaged and living with a man who had previously been her high school teacher. Though the times reflected social change and a rethinking of traditional gender roles, for Hearst, an heiress to the Hearst fortune and Steven Weed life was humdrum and she felt stifled, emotionally unfulfilled and depressed.

    And then the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) broke into the apartment, beat up Weed, shot at—and fortunately missed—their neighbors, and finally managed to push Hearst into the trunk of a stolen car. It was an act that shocked and enthralled the country as the SLA made demands for free food for poor people and Randy and CathlerineToobin, Jeffrey Hearst went on television as they tried desperately to free their daughter.

    But in an even more bizarre twist, within months of her kidnapping, Hearst declared herself a member of the SLA and willing participated in a bank robbery and shoot out.

    “One of the things that impressed me is that Patty was a sheltered woman who learned to handle a machine gun, that there was a part of her that enjoyed this complete departure from her former life,” says Jeffrey Toobin, an attorney and the author of American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst (Doubleday 2016; $289.95) a mesmerizing book about a tumultuous time in our nation’s history. “The SLA had no idea that Patti Hearst was at this cross point in her life—she wanted to get away from her boyfriend and get away from her parents.”

    Toobin’s take on Hearst is non-judgmental but he sums up her strengths such as staying calm under horrific conditions as well as her ability to understand the psychology of her captors and bond with them and concludes that in the end she was not a victim.

    “The clearest example that she was a voluntary member of the SLA is that at Mel’s, she could have drove away, walked away, but instead she chose to shoot a machine gun into a crowded street to free them,” says Toobin referring to the episode where Bill and Emily Harris were caught shoplifting and were trying to flee a sporting goods store.

    There were other times when Heart could have sought help—when she was by herself and being treated for poison oak at a hospital and when she was driving across country with author Jack Scott and his parents who tried to convince Hearst to turn herself in.

    “When she was arrested she put her occupation as urban guerilla,” continues Toobin

    Though the country was rife with revolutionary groups at the time (bombings were almost an everyday occurrence in San Francisco) like the Weatherman Underground and the Black Panthers, they thought the SLA were insane.

    “And that’s saying something,” says Toobin.

    So how did the 1960s, a decade of peace and light, turn into the chaotic 70s? Toobin thinks it all began to change when the Vietnam draft ended.

    “Many of the idealists drifted away but the embittered remained,” he says.

    As for the SLA, who believed that people in prison were all political prisoners and noble, Toobin says that after senselessly murdering an African American superintendent of schools, there was nothing left the to run for their lives. “They never thought through what their ultimate goal was.”

    Hearst was ultimately captured and convicted, her lawyer F. Lee Bailey trying to sell the rights to his story while the trial was still going on (Toobin notes that almost everyone involved was trying to snag a book contract), but she never served her full sentence.

    “I don’t know what the right sentence was,” he says when asked.  “But I do know that she got an extraordinarily good deal. She is the only person in American history who got a commutation for Jimmy Carter and a pardon from Bill Clinton.”

    Ifyougo:

    What: Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin in conversation with former federal prosecutor, Dan Purdom.

    When: Monday, August 15 at 7 p.m.

    Where: Meiley-Swallow Hal-North Central College, 31 S. Ellsworth  St., Naperville, IL

    Cost: $32

    FYI: (630) 355-2665

     

     

     

     

  • The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

    Obsessive himself, Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay The Imitation Game, immersed himself in 19th century Manhattan
    THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHTto write The Last Days of Night (Random House 2016; $28), his historic tale about the lawsuit between two other obsessive and driven people–Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse–over who invented the lightbulb. Though it may seem like a minor question, the court’s decision would determine which of these powerhouses held the right to light up America and earn billions while doing so. It takes us to the time when darkness prevailed and people viewed Edison as “The Wizard” because of the magic of electricity.

    “I am so paranoid that there’s something I missed,” says Moore, explaining why he spent a year and a half digging deep in archives, scientific and engineering journals of the time. It took another four years or so to write and even then Moore would often stop to peruse more census data or old newspapers. His book centers on 26-year-old Paul Cravath, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School who finds himself handling the lawsuit on behalf of Westinghouse.

    Moore, a Chicago native and the New York Times bestselling author of The Sherlockian, sees some parallels between Cravath and himself.

    Graham Moore © Matt Sayles“We were both the same age. When I started this book, I was just beginning my career as a writer; Paul was just starting his career, we were both trying to hold our own and not let them know we were afraid,” he says, adding that he’s a big admirer of the writing of Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City.

    Though his book isn’t due to be released until the 16th, Moore is already working on the film adaptation. The movie stars one of Moore’s favorite actors, Eddie Redmayne.

    “I’m very passionate about making popular art—films and books,” he says. “My great dream about this book is that it starts conversations—that it connects. I want to write fiction that invites people in.”

    ifyougo:

    What:  Oscar winner Graham Moore book signing

    When: Thursday, August 8 at 7 p.m.

    Where: The Book Cellar, 4736 N Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL

    Cost: Free

    FYI: (773) 293-2665; bookcellarinc.com

     

     

     

     

     

  • Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago

    Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago

     

    Almost 12,000 people streamed into the First Cavalry Armory on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on May 25, 1889 to view the coffin of Dr. P.H. Cronin, an Irish physician and political activist who had been savagely murdered.

    “It was one of the first ‘sensational’ murders covered by the Chicago press and far beyond,” says Gillian O’Brien, author of Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago(University of Chicago Press, 2015; $17). “It wasn’t just the newspapers that were fascinated – there were Dime Novels written about the crime, waxwork reproductions were made of the body, the suspects and the horse that took the doctor to the scene of his murder was put on show at a Dime Museum. The house where he was killed was opened to the public for a fee.”

    Blood Runs Green

    For O’Brien, a historian and Reader in Modern Irish History at Liverpool John Moores University, it wasn’t just the luridness of the crime that caught her interest but that Cronin, involved in a secret Irish American republican society, was murdered because he fell out with the leadership of the organization called Clan na Gael. She first learned about the murder while researching at the Newberry Library in Chicago and after running across numerous references to the investigation and trial she searched for a book about Cronin but learned that little had been written since shortly after the trial.

    “The repercussions of the murder on the Irish in Chicago and the Irish in America more broadly were very significant,” she says explaining her reason for undertaking extensive research to and writing the book. “There was a backlash against the Irish with many arguing that a hyphenated identity was problematic. There was a feeling that the Irish could never be truly American because of their residual loyalty to Ireland. The fact that an Irish political murder took place on American soil was also a cause for great concern. It was the combination of the sensational crime and the impact of it on Irish America and on Irish republicanism that made it a very compelling story for me.”

     

  • A New Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron

    Stephanie Barron (credit Marea Evans)As a Jane Austen fan, I was happy to interview Stephanie Barron, author of 13 Jane Austen mysteries including her most recent Jane and the Waterloo Map and Jane Austen and the 12 Days of Christmas, who was in Chicago last Saturday for a book event.Jane and the Waterloo cover (1)

    “Jane and the Waterloo Map is set in November, 1815, four months after the Battle of Waterloo,” Barron, who started reading her books when she was 12, told me. “Jane is in London tending to her sick brother and supervising the publication of her fourth novel, Emma, when she is invited to visit the Prince Regent at Carlton House. While on a tour of the royal palace she stumbles over the body of a dying cavalry officer, a hero of Waterloo, in the Prince’s library.”

    At the event which was titled “An Afternoon with Stephanie Barron,” she also talked about her previous book in this series, Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas, which takes place during the holiday in 1814—when England and the United States signed a treaty ending the War of 1812.”
    Barron started her series in 1802 when Jane was 26 and in the latest she is 40, with only 18 months left to live. It’s a span of time when the Napoleonic Wars in England were taking place and Barron says her books are as much about the transitions in English society during those years as they are about Jane Austen’s life and work.

    I asked her why she thinks Austen still continues to be popular some 200 years after her death.

    “Part of Jane’s enduring appeal is that she understood how women think, and just as importantly, that women like to be appreciated and valued for their intelligence as much as their physical appeal,” she said. “Austen had an acute understanding of the human heart and human motivation; this allowed her to fashion complex and compelling characters, both male and female. Her perceptions remain true to human lives today—we’re still learning from her acute understanding.”

  • The Devil Wears Prada Author Lauren Weisberger Writes Novel About Women’s Championship Tennis

    In her latest novel, The Singles Game (Simon & Schuster 2016; $26.00), Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Loves Prada, tells the story of another heartless boss as we follow the attempts of Charlotte “Charlie” Silver to regain her tennis star status. Ten minutes away from playing her first match on the Centre Court at Wimbledon, Silver has to play in an untried pair of shoes after being told the pink soles of her sneakers don’t meet the championship’s stringent dress requirementThe Singles Games. On the verge of winning, Silver suffers an almost career killing Achilles’’ heel injury, undergoing surgery and a long bout of physical therapy. Willing to do almost anything to get back to the top, Silver hires Todd Feltner, a hot shot trainer known for both his ability to create champions as well as his brutal methods.

    “This is what she needs to do to get ahead,” says Weisberger, describing Silver’s motives for putting herself under the influence of Feltner who introduces her to a lifestyle not only of grueling practices and humiliation for the chance of earning Grand Slam titles but also to the celebrity life of magazine cover shoots, drug-fueled private parties, charity matches on private yachts and a sort-of secret romance with the sexist male tennis star in the world.

    Weisberger, who has been playing tennis—though, she says, not nearly at the level of Silver—since she was around four, interviewed tennis champions, learning all she could about the game and those who play it.

    “It’s not typical of me to do so much research,” says Weisberger, author of four top-ten New York Times bestsellers, “but I wanted to know everything about this world and how Charlie would fit into it.”

    Like she did for fashion in The Devil Wears Prada, which was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, Weisberger sLWeisberger_final_credit Mike Cohenhows us the backstory of competitive tennis. It is a sport that impacts women players in a much unkinder way. For women, she says, it’s a lonely life.

    “Seven of the top ten current men stars are married, one is divorced and four are fathers,” says Weisberger, noting that Roger Federer has four children.

    Of the top ten women players?

    “None are married and none have children,” she says. “The statistics amazed me.”

    Fascinated by how many women stars are known by just one name—Venus, Serena, Maria—Weisberg says that the women work so hard and they’re so obsessed with what they do.

    “And there’s the appearance aspect,” she says. “I like the crossover between glamour and dedication. You don’t have to love tennis to love the story.”

    Ifyougo:

    What: Lauren Weisberger book signing

    When: Friday, July 22 at 7 pm

    Where: Hollywood Palms Cinema, 352 S Illinois Rte. 59, Naperville

    Cost: $27.95

    FYI: 630
    -355-2665

  • My Journey from Shame to Strength: A Memoir by Liz Pryor

    Bundled into a car during a winter storm, 17-year-old Liz Pryor left her home in Winnetka with her mother to what she thought was a Catholic home for pregnant teenagers. Instead, Pryor found herself in a locked government-run facility filled with impoverished delinquent girls whose experiences and backgrounds were totally different than hers.PRYOR AUTHOR PHOTO_(c) Susan Sheridan Photography_Fotor

    Over the years, Pryor, who went on to become an author, speaker, parenting columnist and life advice expert, appearing on Good Morning America, never talked about her time in confinement. She had promised her mother to keep it a secret.

    “Before she passed, I asked her how she would feel if I wrote my story and she said I should do what I want, adding ‘look at you now,’” recalls Pryor who chose to write about her experiences in latest book, (Random House 2016; $28).

    “Emotionally it was cathartic for me to write this book, it was incredibly cool to see myself then and now,” says Pryor who didn’t talk about what happened for 36 years. “None of my friends or family knew my story and I thought it was important to share it with my children particularly as I was pretty much the same age as they are now.”

    Pryor sees her book as a coming of age story as well as a way of learning to understand the limitations of those we love.

    “My mom really thought she was doing the best thing for me by sending me there, she thought otherwise my life would be ruined,” says Pryor. “Those months really changed my outlook. Many of the girls I met started so far behind the starting line.”

    Look at you now coverIndeed, the comparison between her lifestyle and those in the detention facility were totally different. Pryor was from wealthy suburb, a background unfathomable to the girls she found herself living with—many of whom came from foster homes or were homeless and had lived on the streets. Pryor had become pregnant during a long term relationship with her boyfriend. Others had been raped and sexually abused. Feeling abandoned by her parents (her mom visited twice, her father once—family and friends were told she was ill and at the Mayo Clinic), Pryor learned to forge friendships with the other women who were locked up with her.

    “I think that facing real adversity, if you can make it through, makes you stronger,” she says. “I think what I went through gave me the scrappiness and confidence to do what I’ve done.”

    Ifyougo:

    What: Liz Pryor talk and book signing

    When & Where: Wednesday, July 13 at 7pm, The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago; July 14 at 6:30 pm on July 14, The Book Stall, 811 Elm St., Winnetka.

  • Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the US Film Industry

    When California was still all about oranges, Chicago ruled when it came to movies—a brief but glorious decade where local girl Gloria Swanson earned money as an extra to pay for pickles (of all things) before moving on to stardom, becoming Joe Kennedy’s mistress and then later the fading actress in the classic Sunset Boulevard. Charlie Chaplin came to town to film as did child star Jackie Coogan and heart throb Francis X. Bushman who lost his adoring fan base when it turned out not only was he married with five children but he was also having an affair with his co-star in the The Plum Tree which was filmed, in part on Miller Beach.

    It was during these early years of the 19th century when two Chicago power house studios, Essanay and Selig Polyscope, churned out thousands of serials and silent movies.

    “Almost 99% of those movies are gone now,” says Adam Selzer, who with Michael Glover Smith, wrote Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the US Film Industry (Wallflower 2015; $25). “But between 1907 and 1917, Chicago was the place to make movies.”

    Not all is lost. Remnants of that time remain including the studios themselves. Essanay is part of the St. Augustine College campus and the Selig Polyscope Company, its S encased in a diamond still above the entranceway, is now condominiums.

    And every once in a while, a gem reappears including the 1916 film Sherlock Holmes produced by Essanay Studios which had disappeared for decades only to be found a year or so ago in a French film archive.

    “We’re gong to be hosting a screening of the film a century after it was first made at the old Essanay Studio,” says Selzer. For more about the event which is the same date as their book signing at the Chicago Public Library, visit Selzer’s Website, mysteriouschicago.com. Tickets can be purchased through eventbrite.com and be sure to dress in your best Sherlockian attire.

    There are of course anecdotes as well.

    “When you drive through the entrance to St. Augustine,” says Selzer, “you can see a cemetery across the way. One day George Spoor, the owner of Essanay, saw actor Ben Turpin walking over to the cemetery carrying flowers. Spoor said Ben, I think that’s a great thing to do, we should always take the flowers we used in the movies to the cemetery. And Ben said ‘sure boss, that’s where I get them.’”

    Likening their research to a treasure hunt, albeit a time consuming one, the two not only compiled a trove of information on those early days by reading microfilm editions of now defunct Chicago newspapers at the Harold Washington Library and locating relatives of the Selig family many of whom live in and around Chicago and were willing to share their extensive scrapbook collections. The two also perused the Website, mediahistoryproject.org, a digitized collections of classic media periodicals.

    “I like to say that I’m a Chicago historian who knows a bit about films,” says Selzer who also operates ghost tours in the city and has written other books about Chicago. “While Mike is a film historian who knows a bit about Chicago.”

    What made the Windy City so attractive?

    According to Selzer, it was far enough west to stay under Thomas Edison’s radar.

    “Edison had—or claimed he had—patents on the equipment and if film makers didn’t pay royalties, he’d send his goon squad to wreck the equipment,” says Selzer. “The studios didn’t stay here for long, a lot of people say it was because of the cold weather but they may have moved further west to get even further from Edison. But I think the the movies got to so big they needed their own town.”

    ifyougo

    What: Book signing and chat with Adam Selzer and Michael Glover Smith

    When: 3:30pm, Saturday, March 12

    Where: Bezanian Branch Chicago Public Library, 1226 W. Ainslie Street, Chicago IL

    Cost: Free

    FYI: 312-747-4300; chipublib.org

  • Brad Thor’s Foreign Agent

     

    “Complicated problems don’t often have simple solutions,” says New York Times best selling author Brad ThorForeign Agent cover whose latest novel, Foreign Agent (Simon & Schuster 2016; $27.99), is very timely considering the recent events such as the massacre in Orlando, Florida. “My novels let people peer into the worlds of espionage and counterterrorism. What I’m trying to do with my thrilleBrad Thor_Fotorrs is beat the headlines. Often times, you can’t tell where the facts end and the fiction begins.

    With a growing interest in how, for certain people, the Quran is used to justify violence, Thor, whose other thrillers include Code of Conduct and Blowback (which NPR listed as one of the “Top 100 Killer Thrillers of All Time”), immersed himself in the life of Mohammed, the seventh century Islamic leader. Thor traces Mohammad’s early peaceful beginnings in Mecca to his later years when he led 10,000 Muslim converts on Medina in a bloody confrontation. Using what he learned as part of the fabric of his book, Foreign Agent is the latest in the Scott Harvath series.

    Harvath, a former Navy SEAL and the kind of guy you definitely want on your side in a fight, is on the hunt across Europe and the Middle East for those responsible for an ambush of American operatives near Syria and a man he considers capable of the greatest evil ever known.

    In Foreign Agent, Thor has created a thriller that is not only riveting but also offers a historic and personal perspective on events that we read about in today’s news.

    Ifyougo:

    What: Brad Thor book signing

    When: June 25 at 1 p.m.

    Where: COSTCO, 2746 N. Clybourne Ave., Chicago, IL

    FYI: 773-360-2053; http://www.costco.com/author-signings.html

     

     

     

  • Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home

    When six-year-old Gonker, a much loved family pet decided to do some typical canine spontaneous off-site exploring when navigating the Appalachian Trail with his owner Fielding Marshall, he was expected to shortly return. But after a while, while calling the six-year old Golden Retriever’s name, Marshall began to worry that his dog was lost. To make it even more serious, Gonker suffered from Addison’s9781101947012—a serious disease that effects dogs and is characterized by a deficient production of glucocorticoids and/or mineralocorticoids. If Gonker doesn’t get the necessary hormone medication needed to control the disease, he will die within 23 days.

    The story of the search for Gonker is told by Marshall’s brother-in-law, journalist Pauls Toutonghi is his latest book, Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home (Knopf 2016; $25). It’s a tale of a family’s search to find their dog in time and also of how, after Fielding’s mother, Virginia, sets up a command center, the community and ultimately the country. Indefatigable—she long had mourned the loss of her own dog decades ago, Virginia uses a map and phone book to jumpstart what will become a nationwide network of those wanting to help find and save Gonker. Relentlessly contacting radio stations, park rangers, animal shelters, the police and local retail stores, Gonker’s disappearance and the family’s search gets a write-up in a local newspaper where it is picked up by AP. Before long the nation is offering their help in finding the missing dog.

    Ifyougo:

    What: Pauls Toutonghi conversation and book signing

    When: Saturday, June 11 at 11:45 am

    Where: Printers Row Lit Festival, South Loop Stage, Dearborn Street, Chicago

    FYI: printersrowlitfest.org/

     

  • Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival

    There was a time when folk music rang out across the nation, signaling a call to social change. Among its leaders were such well known musicians as Bob Dylan and the trio known by their first names — Peter, Paul and Mary.

    But though they reigned in the 1950s and ’60s and were part of the New York folk music scene, the roots of the city becoming a magnet for folk musicians date back even earlier as is chronicled in “Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival” (Oxford University Press 2015; $39.95). It is written by Stephen Petrus, an Andrew W. Mellon research fellow at the New-York Historical Society, and Ronald D. Cohen, emeritus professor of history at Indiana University Northwest.

    “I start out in the 1920s when musicians started coming to the city to record,” said Cohen, who lives in Miller Beach. ”There were hillbilly and blues musicians from the South, Phil Ochs from Texas and Woody Guthrie who grew up in Oklahoma but moved to New York from Texas.”

    Cohen long has been fascinated with folk music, having written numerous books on the subject, including “The Pete Seeger Reader” (OUP, 2014), “Woody Guthrie: Writing America’s Songs” and was the co-producer/writer of the 10-CD boxed set “Songs for Political Action: Folk Music, Topical Songs and the American Left 1926-1954.”

    When Petrus was put in charge of Folk City, a multi-media exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, he asked Cohen to lead the committee for the exhibit. It features original instruments, handwritten lyrics and video and film footage showing folk music’s growth and impact on American politics and culture.

    “Then they decided to have a companion book, and Steve asked me to be his co-author,” said Cohen, noting the book contains many rare photos, original documents and first-hand interviews with those from that time period.

    Cohen said New York is much more important than any other city because it attracts so many musicians, recording studio executives, producers and other performers.

    “I knew a lot as I’d written a lot about the history of folk music,” said Cohen, whose next book, “Depression Folk,” is coming out in spring. “But I had to research Greenwich Village and what is happening there.”

    Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, which is near the New York University campus, was seen as the epicenter of the folk music revival. It attracted so many musicians and their followers that in 1961 the city parks commissioner tried to shut it down because he saw people coming “from miles away to display the most terrible costumes, haircuts, etc. and who play bongo drums and other weird instruments, attracting a weird public.” But the folk musicians played on.

    “Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival” is at the Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street; mcny.org.