**"The Escape of Sigmund Freud: Freud's Final Years in Vienna and His Flight from the Nazi Rise" by David Cohen, Overlook Press, New York, 272 pages. A truly great read, covering undocumented moments of Freud's life, the fight of pro-Nazis in the psychiatric movement in Germany,his protection from persecution by a renegade Nazi officer, and his settling into England.
**"David Hockney: A Rake's Progress: The Biography, 1937-1975" by Christopher Simon Sykes, Doubleday,363 pages. The real disappointment is that it ended before the later stages of his career. At least, he gets to California and paints his pool canvases. Gossipy in a fun way but sometimes you real don't care how a marriage that is not central to the main character is dissolving. Critics say the author fails to put Hockney into an historical context. I didn't find this disturbing at all.
**"Man Hunt:The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad" by Peter Bergen, Crown,358 pages. A frequent author about bin Laden and Al Qaeda,Bergen picks up the trail where he left off and examines the training of the Seal Team Six and the decisions about getting bin Laden. A nice summing up.
** "Railsea", China Mieville,Ballatine Books,424p. Moby Dick meets Dune. The captains with amputated limbs speak about their quests as philosophies. Here they hunt down the Giant Mole. Ahab is a a woman. Mieville is one of my favorite young writers exploring alternative worlds.
**"Prague Fatale: A Bernie Gunther Novel" by Philip Kerr,Putnam,401 pages. The series is getting somewhat convoluted but the Nazi milieu provides the active atmo. Heydrich is concerned that he is the objects of assassination plots. So he hires Bernie Gunther to find out the truth of the matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment