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.

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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."

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!!

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