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- <text>
- <title>
- (Jan. 06, 1992) Books:Non-Fiction
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Jan. 06, 1992 Man of the Year:Ted Turner
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BOOKS, Page 75
- BEST OF 1991
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> NONFICTION
- </p>
- <p> 1. PATRIMONY by Philip Roth.
- </p>
- <p> Writing of how he cared for his dying father, Roth gives
- us that rarest of reads: a narrative of piercing clarity and
- emotional impact about one of life's crucial events. The son
- finds himself a parent to his own father, a stubborn 86-year-old
- who puts up a gallant fight against the brain tumor that daily
- robs him of his strength and dignity. In Herman Roth, the
- novelist discovers the source of his own tenacious character.
- There are no literary feints or false notes here, only the
- steady, frank voice of a writer who has mastered his craft and
- come to know and enjoy who he is and what he came from.
- </p>
- <p> 2. A LIFE OF PICASSO, VOL. I by John Richardson.
- </p>
- <p> Probably the last serious biography of the artist by
- someone who knew him intimately, this first volume brings
- Picasso from childhood through the Blue and Rose periods, just
- as the 25-year-old was preparing to radically alter the course
- of 20th century painting with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. With
- the help of art historian Marilyn McCully, Richardson explores
- areas untouched by earlier biographers. He is a born storyteller
- and writes in a classic style that employs the full palette of
- ideas and personalities that ushered in the era of Modernism.
- </p>
- <p> 3. THE PROMISED LAND by Nicholas Lemann.
- </p>
- <p> Between 1940 and 1970, in the second great migration of
- the 20th century, some 5 million black Americans moved from the
- farms and hamlets of the South to the cities of the industrial
- North, and the massive relocation left the nation transformed.
- Documenting this population shift with scholarship and
- anecdote, the author makes a major contribution to the
- understanding of the relationship between public policy and
- urban poverty.
- </p>
- <p> 4. VLADIMIR NABOKOV: THE AMERICAN YEARS by Brian Boyd.
- </p>
- <p> Like the author's previous The Russian Years, this
- concluding volume benefits mightily from the cooperation of
- Nabokov's widow and son. But their assistance should not
- overshadow biographer Boyd's ability to penetrate the mysteries
- of the great novelist's art and life with uncommon insight and
- elegance. On his arrival in America, writes Boyd, Nabokov "would
- have to abandon entirely [his] hard-earned fame and to win
- respect over again from scratch, at midcareer, in a new
- language, at a time when to be a Russian emigre seemed deeply
- suspect to much of the American literary intelligentsia."
- </p>
- <p> 5. DEN OF THIEVES by James B. Stewart.
- </p>
- <p> Never have so few plundered so much from so many as did
- those financial buccaneers of the 1980s, Ivan Boesky, Michael
- Milken, Martin Siegel and Dennis Levine. And not often has a
- story of white-collar crime been told in such juicy detail as
- in this best seller by the Wall Street Journal's front-page
- editor.
- </p>
- <p> LESSER MOMENTS IN PUBLISHING II
- </p>
- <p> Narrative that best exemplified the Which side are you on?
- dilemma, or Who is more disagreeable, subject or author?: Nancy
- Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography, by Kitty Kelley.
- </p>
- <p> Book that is least likely to attract a pass-along
- readership: Final Exit, the how-to suicide manual by Derek
- Humphry.
- </p>
- <p> Title that most admirably, if unintentionally, displayed
- truth in advertising: Exposing Myself, by Geraldo Rivera.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-