Moying Li at the Boston Athenaem

Moying Li: Snow Falling in Spring
WGBH Forum Network

In 1966 Moying Li, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, and her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck while he himself is taken away. From labor camp, her father smuggles a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Then, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning. This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.

Boston Boston Athenaeum member Moying Li, one of the first students to leave China for study abroad after the Cultural Revolution, came to the United States in 1980 on a full scholarship from Swarthmore College. Li's first book, Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of a Neighborhood, was published in 2002.

For the full article and video, click here.

James Galbraith's THE PREDATOR STATE in Reuters

Galbraith takes on the predator
Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:59am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Like father, Like son. In his new book, "The Predator State," James Galbraith does justice to the late John Kenneth Galbraith's tradition of flipping conventional wisdom on its head -- and offering bold prescriptions for a more socially just economy.

He attempts to do so, in large part, by revisiting key moments in U.S. economic history and casting them in a radically new light: one that gets away from an inherent faith in the market and allows for some measure of planning on the part of government.

James Galbraith acknowledges the intellectual appeal of the conservative notion that unfettered markets produce optimal economic results. But he argues theory has failed to find any grounding in practice.

Yet while conservatives have long discarded their own ideology in the real world, its principles still imprison liberal economists and policy-makers, preventing them from offering constructive alternatives, he says.

In one fell swoop Galbraith questions the effectiveness of monetary policy, derides strict adherence to balanced budgets and sets out to debunk what he sees as the myth that America's economic might has its roots in free trade.

"My aim, in this exercise, is to free up the liberal mind," writes Galbraith, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Galbraith traces the success of the American economy over the years to public institutions like Social Security, Medicare and public education, which date back to the New Deal of the 1930s.

"In a properly designed system," he says, "planning and markets do not contradict each other."

For the full article, click here.

Ruth Butler's HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER in PW Online

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 7/28/2008
-- Publishers Weekly, 7/28/2008

Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin
Ruth Butler. Yale Univ., $32.50 (368p) ISBN 9780300126242

Had they been literate, any of this book’s three subjects—wives to the founders of French Impressionism—could have penned fascinating memoirs; as professor and author Butler (Rodin: The Shape of Genius) explains in her introduction, “we know almost nothing in a direct way from Hortense, Camille, or Rose,” and that therefore her book “depends both on fact and imagination.” Providing a sketch of their lives, Butler takes readers to Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, where the women lived on extremely limited means, married to men whose only true love was their art. Hortense Fiquet and Camille Doncieux, the wives of Cezanne and Monet respectively, modeled for some of the artists’ most well-known paintings and bore their first children, yet receive little mention in most biographies. Rose Beuret is more well-known, but only because Rodin was slightly more open about their relationship. Beuret acted as Rodin’s model and his assistant, and watched over a studio “full of sculpture” in his absence, “mostly works of clay needing constant attention.” Looking beyond their work, Butler considers the human side of these artistic giants through the foggy lens of their most dedicated subjects. (June)

For the full article, click here.

Paul Goldstein's A PATENT LIE on NPR's All Things Considered

A Patently Thrilling Legal Drama

by Alan Cheuse
All Things Considered, July 16, 2008

A Patent Lie, the new novel by Paul Goldstein, trumps John Grisham's work in every way — character, setting, plot and the prose — and gives readers interested in the drama of a high-value legal case a great reward for their attention.

The protagonist is an intellectual property lawyer named Michael Seeley, a former alcoholic who has retreated from high-powered corporate law in New York City to his native Buffalo. When his only sibling, a medical adviser to a Northern California biotech firm, shows up at his office to hire him as main counsel for a federal patent law case — the former lead counsel has somewhat inconveniently committed suicide — Seeley puts his solitude and his doubts about the case behind him and flies West.

The case is timely and fascinating; it's all about patent infringement on an American company's AIDS vaccine by a huge European conglomerate. Seeley's preparation for the trial — and the trial itself — form the heart of the story. Goldstein narrates all this so skillfully — from jury selection to final judgment — that even novices at the law can understand it without the author having to sacrifice any of the complex chemistry of the case.

But this is more than just a story about procedure. Attorney Seeley is hardly cold-blooded; he fights back his thirst for alcohol and allows his sympathy to go to work when the former counsel's widow asks him to help prove that her husband was actually murdered. Seeley also succumbs to the attractions of a somewhat-reluctant potential witness, a beautiful Chinese scientist whose work on the AIDS vaccine eventually takes center stage in the development of the plot.

There's no stopping Seeley when it comes to following his passion for this case's intricate truths, and there's no stopping the reader either. I read the book in nearly one sitting on a recent cross-country flight. I wished the flight had been longer.

For the full article and an excerpt from the novel, click here.

Ruth Butler's HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER in the Boston Globe

Married to the Masters

By Jan Gardner, June 22, 2008
Boston Globe

Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, and Auguste Rodin were among a generation of French artists who turned away from traditional subjects such as the Bible and painted scenes from everyday life. In doing so, they immortalized their wives: the regal figure of Cezanne's wife, Hortense Fiquet, perched on a red armchair; a playful Camille Doncieux - Monet's wife - in a kimono, fan in hand; the troubled visage of Rodin's wife, Rose Beuret.

In a new book, "Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, & Rodin" (Yale University), art historian Ruth Butler reports that the women's lives were "difficult and lonely - more unhappy than not." Each woman met her husband-to-be on the streets of Paris when he asked her to model for him. Each bore him a son before marriage. Money was a struggle for all three couples early on, and the challenges of living with a striving genius never ended, according to Butler, professor emerita at UMass-Boston.

For the full article, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING in the Taipei Times

A child's view of the 'Great Leap'

Moying Li's new memoir details her experiences growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, which she says gave her a hunger for education.
By David Mehegan
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, BOSTON
Sunday, Jun 15, 2008,Sunday, Jun 15, 2008, Page 14

Once upon a time in faraway China, a little girl lived with her father and grandparents in a house with a courtyard in Beijing. She was happy, playing with her schoolmates and little brother. Then hard times came. She lived through them safely, grew up, and came to the US to study. Now she lives happily with her husband in a house with a courtyard on Beacon Hill, in Boston.

That’s the story of Moying Li, 53, author of the just-published Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution. Published in the young-adult category, the book is written in a style that could appeal as readily to adult readers. It begins with China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1958 and ends in 1977, with the 26-year-old English student crossing the Luohu Bridge into Hong Kong en route to a flight that will take her to a new life in the US.

There are many accounts of the Cultural Revolution, which ravaged Chinese society from 1966 to 1976. What sets Li’s witness and memory apart is its simplicity, lack of clutter or moralizing. It is almost entirely about relationships, with little of politics or history. She does not look back in anger. “I see it in a Taoist way,” she said in an interview at her home. “The good and the bad are part of each other, somehow. Even though I and my generation went though hard times, without it I wonder if we would have gained maturity and reflection. In one sense, the experience of the Cultural Revolution has become to me a strength.”

Li’s mother, assigned to teach in another city, was often absent, so the key adults in the child’s life were her father, who was a screenwriter for an army film bureau and a book lover, and her dynamic grandmother. Both lavished warmth on the two children, and encouraged them to be students and readers. But they were not immune from the troubles around them. In the late 1950s, the family built a backyard furnace, part of a delusional national campaign to build a steel industry that would overtake the productivity of the West. That and other policies of national mismanagement led to failure and famine.

For the full article, click here.

SNOW FALLING IN SPRING reviewed by readers on BookBrowse

Snow Falling in Spring : Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution
by Moying Li

READER REVIEWS

Rated 5 of 5 by Laurie Milton
Inspiring!
This book was given to me as a birthday present and I am so grateful. The beautiful soul of writer Moying shines through and matches the beautiful author photograph. I am inspired to follow my dream and I deeply believe I can do it, referencing the tenacious strength of the author. I sit in awe of her story of coming of age in China during the cultural revolution. God bless you Moying for sharing with all of us.We need it. I live by your quote: EACH ONE,TEACH ONE - and you have.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rated 5 of 5 by H.
Supreme
I am only half way through the book but is one of the best books I have ever read! I usually do not read memoirs (because I like fiction) but my wonderful grandmother turned me to this book and I decided to give it a try. When i started to read Snow Falling In Spring I was blown away by how well the book flowed from one topic to another. Each chapter was like it's own separate story but the author Moying Li always found a couple of ways to tie the previous chapter into the next chapter. Every time I would read this book, I would get so lost in the time period, the plot, the big events that I would forget where I was. One time, I was reading the book at school and the teacher had to call my name at least 5 times to get my attention because I was entirely engulfed in the book. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, even if you don't like certain types of books. Read about the first 3 chapters and I can almost guarantee that you will fall in love with this spectacular book. Give it a try!!

For the full article, click here.

Moying Li's SNOW FALLING IN SPRING in the Asian Review of Books

Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution by Moying Li

Karmel Schreyer
15/06/2008

Snow Falling in Spring is a memoir -- the story of MOYING LI's childhood in China. It is an idyllic beginning; her carefree days are spent with DiDi (little brother) and cousins running around the family's courtyard under the doting watch of extended family and like-family members. Then, one day, the adults, excited and preoccupied, no longer pay the children much attention, and the beloved sanctuary of the courtyard has been invaded by a horrible belching "backyard furnace". The Great Leap Forward has begun, and Moying Li's life will never be the same...

Like so many memoirs and works of fiction about this time and place, the author finds escape and solace and hope in books -- and especially in the Western classics. People are in fact risking their lives to read these now-forbidden stories, giving us startling proof, perhaps, of the value of literature. Secret reading clubs are formed, whole novels are copied out by candlelight -- all this will surely be inspiration for any reluctant reader to start looking at the classics in a new light (although if they are reading this book, they are certainly doing well in the book-loving department).

Moying writes how reading about Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as Jack London's The Call of the Wild gave her, basically, the will to keep on living. Shakespeare was a struggle (she read in English, with a dictionary nearby) but could relate to the tragedies, such as King Lear: "Loyalty and betrayal, honesty and deception -- all of this had become so recognizable in my own world."

But the book-reading is just a small part of the story, of course.

For the full article, click here.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the Oklahoman

Oklahoman
June 22, 2008 Sunday
City Edition

Author details financial 'High Wire'

BYLINE: Dennie Hall
SECTION: LIVING; DENNIE HALL; Pg. 9D

Things are going smoothly. Both spouses have jobs. They live in a comfortable house in the suburbs.
Then their world comes crashing down. Bam!
Maybe it's a job loss. Perhaps it's a spike in interest rates. It could be a death in the family. Likely it's a big medical bill, or maybe it is runaway inflation at a time when pay increases are nil.
Whatever the cause, author Peter Gosselin provides a scary look at the plight of average folks in "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families" (Basic Books, $26).
Gosselin writes that Americans have had a year in which "we've had to hold our breath as one disaster after another has swept over us - the mortgage mess, the financial freeze-up and now, recession." He writes that economic risks once carried on the shoulders of business and government have shifted "to the backs of working families."
Many employers no longer provide health insurance. Families able to provide it for themselves do so at tremendous expense and often find that a co-pay - or even an insurer's refusal to pay a claim - can be financially ruinous. Some employees work and save for years toward retirement only to learn a company, such as Enron, has failed them.
With so many employers moving their operations to foreign countries, a sudden pink slip is not unusual.
"Our near-exclusive reliance on free-market principles to solve every financial and social problem has led the nation down a political and ethical dead-end," the book's publisher writes. "Now is the time for a new direction."
Gosselin helps readers understand what that direction would be. His writing is made more meaningful by use of real personalities to illustrate problems, putting a human face to the new reality of financial upheaval.
His book should be imperative reading for anyone concerned about financial woes and their causes.
Gosselin is the national economics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and a member of the paper's Washington bureau. He is now a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.
Words on the book's cover by Mark Shields of NewsHour put it succinctly: "If you have time to read only two books this year about the condition of the country and the challenges we all face, do yourself a favor and read 'High Wire' twice."

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE in the Star-Ledger

The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
June 22, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

BRIEFLY
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 5

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families
Peter Gosselin; Basic Books, $26.95

Los Angeles Times national economics correspondent Gosselin's book examines the broader lessons in our current economic crisis. The author traverses readers' material lives to show how changes in work, benefits, homeownership, college and retirement, even insurance, have shifted economic risks, once borne on the shoulders of business and government, to the backs of working families. With new data and real-life examples, Gosselin explains why Americans' mounting anxiety is warranted and how everyone is on a high wire, only one misstep away from disaster.

Peter Gosselin's HIGH WIRE reviewed in the LA Times

'High Wire' by Peter Gosselin
American families struggle to make ends meet in a world of globalization, mortgage meltdowns and ever-soaring fuel prices.

By Chris Hedges
June 29, 2008

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families
Peter Gosselin, Basic Books: 374 pp., $26.95

In his book "High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families," Peter Gosselin writes movingly of the personal wreckage endured by many Americans in today's volatile economy. Gosselin, the Los Angeles Times' national economics correspondent, chronicles in detail the emotional, physical and economic devastation caused by outsourced jobs and insurance companies that rescind coverage to the seriously ill, as well as the roller-coaster fortunes of U.S. workers competing in the global marketplace.

Gosselin paints a portrait of an America where citizens suffer profound dislocations because of vanishing safety nets and can expect to be discarded by corporations without comparable job prospects or benefits. The human cost, which he adroitly conveys, is heartbreaking. It is also, as he notes, widespread. He illustrates wild income swings that have left the poor, the middle class and even formerly well-do-do families suddenly struggling to survive. These dramatic plunges from lost jobs have now "reached into the majority of working American households."

The relentless efforts of corporations to maximize profit has a human cost. For example, when Rebecca J. Rowlands was diagnosed with cancer, her insurance company, Blue Shield of California, promptly cut off her benefits in a process known as "post-claims underwriting," or "rescissions." Rowlands, her health deteriorating, fought back and won a settlement. But during that legal fight, as Gosselin notes, her chemotherapy was delayed for a prolonged period, saddling her with "increasingly severe medical problems" that are likely to leave her with "a six-figure medical debt."

"High Wire" is filled with such tales: of people crushed by credit card debt, mortgages they should never have been granted, predatory lenders, as well as sudden and catastrophic unemployment caused by "outsourcing."

Chris Hedges is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" and, most recently, "I Don't Believe in Atheists."

For the full article, click here.

POISONED PROFITS by Philip and Alice Shabecoff listed in Chicago Tribune

HOT SUMMER READS
www.chicagotribune.com, July 10, 2008

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children
By Philip and Alice Shabecoff
Random House, $26 (August)
Two journalists cite astounding evidence that children are increasingly ill due to industrial toxins.

For the full article, click here.

Benjamin Taylor's THE BOOK OF GETTING EVEN reviewed in Seattle Times

"The Book of Getting Even": Young man's tale fascinates, until he graduates

By Mary Brennan
Special to The Seattle Times

"The Book of Getting Even" by Benjamin Taylor
Steerforth, 166 pp., $23.95

Benjamin Taylor's "The Book of Getting Even" is elegant and beautifully evoked, right down to the pediatrician — "the worst, the noisiest Nixon-lover in town" — who appears only in a couple of paragraphs. Set in the 1970s, "Book" follows brilliant, odd Gabriel Geismar, a kid with — literally — two left thumbs and a passion for mathematics, as he leaves his home in the South and heads for college in Philadelphia.

Gabriel is a rabbi's son who grows up in a New Orleans household ruled by his handsome, tyrannical father, who saves all his charm for strangers. At home, his tirades are awful but also funny and cartoonish. "He'd carry on in third person, like a sports hero or gangster: 'Tell a lie to Milton Geismar? You'll wish you hadn't!'"

On Gabriel's last night before leaving for college, he determinedly loses his virginity in a dim cubicle at a gay bathhouse, with eager Clarence Rappley, cold-heartedly described as a "king-sized cracker." After their brief encounter, Gabriel stills his racing mind with a foray into mathematics: "His mind veered to numbers, clean things, the cleanest indeed anywhere in or out of the world." It is a theme — the lifelong duel between mind and body — that resonates through the novel.

At Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, Gabriel meets the eccentric, irresistible brother-sister twins, Marghie and Daniel Hundert, who both fall in love with him. This strange, powerful triangle offers him everything he lacks: Danny and Marghie's parents are literate, worldly, opera-loving Hungarian émigrés — everything Gabriel's family isn't. Their father, to Gabriel's amazement, is a Nobel laureate. Gabriel quickly incorporates himself into the family.

For the full article, click here.

Ronald Florence's LAWRENCE AND AARONSOHN reviewed in Reform Judaism Magazine

Ronald Florence recreates the Middle East in the First World War. by Bonny V. Fetterman

Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T. E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
by Ronald Florence (Viking, 512 pp., $27.95)

For anyone who thinks the Arab-Israeli conflict started with Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Ronald Florence’s history of the Middle East during World War I is an important corrective. It takes us back to a time when none of the borders we now recognize on the map existed—only a vast region called “Arabia” held by the Ottoman Turks. Florence tells this story through the biographies of two men who tried to help the British wrest this area from Turkey and win the war.

T. E. Lawrence (later known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), an Oxford-trained archaeologist, was a young second lieutenant attached to the British intelligence desk in Cairo. In the spring of 1917 he tried to organize the army of Bedouin irregulars (called the Army of the Arab Revolt) under the Hashemite Emir Faisal for a raid against Turkey at Aqaba. Faisal’s father, Sherif Hussein, the religious ruler of the Hejaz (which included the holy cities of Mecca and Medina) envisioned a new Arab caliphate on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire; Faisal himself had eyes on an extensive kingdom based in Damascus. Lawrence hoped that a successful raid on Aqaba would serve their political aspirations, despite British colonial designs in the region and wartime agreements with the French.

Meanwhile, Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew and an internationally known agronomist (his parents were among the founders of Zichron Ya’akov when they came from Romania in 1882), was convinced that the Jews of Palestine would fare better under Britain than Turkey. Fearing that Jews would suffer the same fate as the Armenians under the Turks, he offered his considerable skills to the British. Giving up his scientific career, he converted his research institute in Athlit, the Jewish Agricultural Experiment Station, into a spy ring for the British (called NILI). Aaronsohn knew every inch of Palestine, having served Turkish commander Djemal Pasha as a scientific consultant during the locust invasion (a crop-destroying insect infestation); he recommended the plan of attack through Beersheva that General Allenby ultimately used to take Jerusalem in December 1917. At the war’s end, Aaronsohn drafted a map of Palestine—not based on arbitrary borders, but on topographical features that would permit the development of a viable state. He carried this map with him when his plane went down in the English Channel on his way to the Paris Peace Conference.

This gripping narrative captures so many facets of this history that suspense remains high even though we know the outcome. The victors of the Great War shaped the Middle East even as their conflicting promises shaped its political future. The stories of Lawrence and Aaronsohn remind us of a time of flux between the waning of the Otto­man Empire and the birth of the modern Middle East.

Bonny V. Fetterman is literary editor of Reform Judaism magazine.

For the full article, click here.