PositiveThe Wall Street JournalBesides his analysis, Mr. Thomson’s great strength is the literary equivalent of the sound bite ... makes you feel alive.
Philip Gefter
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... takes Avedon at his own estimation as a serious 20th-century artist. It creates a dense, convincing portrait of a man with huge talent and a gift for life ... A lot of Mr. Gefter’s book is given over to documenting Avedon’s relentless careerism ... The wary mutual respect between Avedon and Diane Arbus provides a fascinating counterpoint to the showbiz hurly-burly of Avedon’s life and also offers a paradigmatic lesson in the way specific, pointed images filter through different media and become fixed points in public consciousness ... Mr. Gefter has done his research, perhaps too much so—the book is clearly comprehensive and written with passion and intelligence, but Avedon’s basic style (white background, finely graded black and white, overwhelmingly large prints) and preoccupations were all in place very early. He didn’t evolve so much as alter his level of intensity depending on the job, so the book has occasional slow spots.
Greg Mitchell
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... quietly amusing ... Mr. Mitchell’s narrative is two-pronged: wry amusement at MGM’s fumbling of a potentially fascinating story, and residual anger with the conventional wisdom that Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened World War II and saved American lives. Regarding the former: The creation of the atomic bomb is an extremely dense subject that’s intrinsically difficult to dramatize for a mass audience, as was proved in 1989 with another unsuccessful movie on the same subject called Fat Man and Little Boy, wherein a padded Paul Newman played Groves and an egregiously miscast Dwight Schultz played Oppenheimer. As for the latter: Historians will be arguing about the decision to deploy atomic bombs for as long as their occupation exists. From a dramatic standpoint, however, it’s always seemed obvious that the decision was, in some manner, intended as vivid retribution for the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Donna Rifkind
RaveThe Wall Street JournalThere have been other books about the immigrant diaspora that providentially landed in Los Angeles and enriched American culture for decades, but Donna Rifkind’s idea to use Viertel (1889-1978) as the focus for a moving, mournful new biography, The Sun and Her Stars, was a particularly brilliant idea. Viertel was the best representation of both her country and her sex imaginable—a combination of mother hen, chef, career counselor, referee and, in her own right, artist ... One of the few flaws of Ms. Rifkind’s book is that she doesn’t quote from these letters; another is occasionally taking her eye off the ball by spending pages writing about extraneous locations—the German colonies in other places, for instance ... performs an act of spiritual as well as cultural resurrection ... a feat of daunting research and appropriately passionate writing. Translating quantities of letters and diary entries from the German would put off many biographers, but Ms. Rifkind sailed ahead. It’s the story of a valiant earth mother who transcended an emotionally nomadic existence and devoted her energy to providing for others while managing to write Queen Christina in what seems to have been her spare time. Like the multitudes who came to 165 Mabery Road, you’ll be glad you met her.
Les Standiford
MixedThe Wall Street JournalLes Standiford’s book is a once-over-brightly jog through the history of Palm Beach. Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and the Rise of America’s Xanadu has only two flaws. First, Mr. Standiford never introduces the reader to Johnnie Brown. Second, for most of the first 100 pages he rehashes material from Last Train to Paradise (2002), his definitive life of Henry Flagler, one of two men who made modern Florida possible ... Once the enfeebled Flagler meets his maker by falling down marble steps at his Palm Beach mansion, the book takes off.
Victoria Riskin
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalRiskin remembers her parents with warmth and a perceptible touch of melancholy ... Wray’s diary entries, along with the adoring love letters Riskin wrote her when he was engaged in his war work, constitute the raw, mournful heart of their daughter’s touching memoir.
Vanda Krefft
MixedThe Wall Street JournalThe Man Who Made the Movies is more of a chronicle of a business than a biography of a man, despite its claims to be about ‘the meteoric rise and tragic fall of William Fox.’ This occasionally makes for dry reading, a problem exacerbated by the loosely edited state of the book—the six months between the 1929 stock-market crash and Fox’s loss of his companies seem to take place in real time. … Ms. Krefft has done an extraordinary job of putting him in the spotlight through exhaustive research in archives and libraries across America. The book is an immensely valuable resource. Ms. Krefft does not create an alternate picture of her subject so much as she deepens the existing one: a frightening level of expedience and aggression, with a touch of megalomania … But there is a central issue of identity and responsibility that Fox dodged, as does Ms. Krefft.
Marc Eliot
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalCharlton Heston is a welcome event if only because it restores a sense of balance, offering some overdue appreciation to an actor whose belief system mitigated against a full appreciation of his worth. The man that emerges from Mr. Eliot’s book is earnest, hard-working and unfailingly decent.
Molly Haskell
MixedThe Wall Street JournalLuckily, Molly Haskell is far too wise a critic to be flummoxed by Mr. Spielberg’s seemingly critic-proof oeuvre. She nails Mr. Spielberg when he needs to be nailed ... Ms. Haskell’s great on the movies that give her something to write about, like Duel (1971), Jaws (1975) and Empire of the Sun (1987). She tends to slip quickly past those that obviously bore her, although I wished for more about the devastating sense of isolation that haunts A.I. (2001) or even Munich (2005), which is more interesting in its failures than some of Mr. Spielberg’s successes. But Mr. Spielberg’s is a mainstream career, which means there are no obscure gems to be analyzed and celebrated. This occasionally makes the book feel like a twice-told assignment rather than a passion project.
Simon Callow
RaveThe Wall Street JournalIn the years since Welles’s death in 1985, many books about him have filled their pages with varying degrees of pedantic journalism, but Simon Callow’s prose is something to bask in. The distinguished actor and director understands Welles the way Welles understood Falstaff. His tone is sympathetic, often amused and occasionally aghast ... One-Man Band is the richest as well as the best of Mr. Callow’s three books on the protean rogue he chose as his subject. It is the author’s monument, his Chimes at Midnight.”
