VaBook10: Short Takes 4

While I anticipated attending four events at the Virginia Festival of the Book today, in the end I went to just two.

That might sound disappointing, but the two sessions were quite good. In fact, the second -- A Conversation from Left and Right: With Hendrik Hertzberg and Richard Brookhiser -- may have been the highlight of the festival.

That one, sponsored by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at UVA and moderated by its executive director, Bob Gibson, offered a wide-ranging exploration of American governance and constitutional issues that could serve as a model for civil discussion between (as the event's title indicated) "left" and "right."

Here's what Bob Gibson had to say shortly after the program, held in the Culbreth Theatre on the grounds of the University of Virginia, ended:

I was also able to ask the two conversationalists, Hendrik Hertzberg and Richard Brookhiser (both, as Gibson noted, called "Rick"), to give their basic elevator speech about their most recent books.

National Review editor Brookhiser talked about his new memoir, Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement:

Hertzberg, a senior editor at The New Yorker, spoke with great affection about his new book about Barack Obama, called Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era:

Earlier in the day, at the UVA Bookstore, the producers of the public radio program Backstory: With the American History Guys sponsored a panel featuring three historians. (Like the Virginia Festival of the Book, this radio show is underwritten by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.)

Tony Field, the show's producer, acted as moderator and said a few words about Backstory for the camera:

One of the panelists was Backstory's "20th Century Guy" Brian Balogh, who teaches at the University of Virginia and is the author of the new book about 19th-century America, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America:

A second speaker also wrote a book about the 19th century, though a more discrete segment of it. Attorney David O. Stewart once worked on an impeachment case before the U.S. Senate and has now produced Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy:

The third speaker was Guian A. McKee, an historian at UVA's Miller Center for Public Affairs and author of The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia:

Tomorrow is the last day of the book festival, with twelve programs remaining.

VaBook10: Short Takes 3

On the Third Day of the Virginia Festival of the Book, I found authors in unexpected places.

Attending a session in City Council Chambers called "The Business of Book Reviewing: Changes and Challenges," I caught up with Kristin Swenson, a religious studies professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who is currently a visiting fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in Charlottesville. I had missed Swenson's presentation on Wednesday about her new book, Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time, and thought I had also missed any opportunity to interview her. Fortunately, in asking a question of the panel from the audience, she identified herself by name and I was able to approach her after the program ended to ask her to say a few words about her book.

In addition to a favorable review of Bible Babel by Michael Dirda in The Washington Post, Swenson was profiled in this week's edition of The Hook.

Here is what she said on Friday afternoon:

One of the panelists discussing the business of book reviewing was novelist Katharine Weber, who also has a new book, called True Confections.  She describes it better than I can, as about "race and chocolate and a family business":

Another discussant -- actually the moderator -- on the book reviewing panel was Bethanne Patrick, who is also one of the four guest bloggers for the Virginia Festival of the Book. Bethanne is herself a book reviewer and author of An Uncommon History of Common Things, of Native American Languages, and of a biography of Ulysses S. Grant (focusing on his childhood), as well as a similar book about Abraham Lincoln.

I asked Bethanne to give her assessment of the Festival so far; her enthusiasm shines through her response:

Following the book reviewing panel discussion, I hurried down Market Street through Preston Avenue to Barracks Road (and never making a turn; Charlottesville streets are like that) to attend a presentation by Jag Bhalla at Barnes & Noble about his book, I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World. The Russian expression, "I'm not hanging noodles on your ears," is the equivalent of the English idiom, "I'm not pulling your leg." Bhalla has collected about 1,000 such idioms from ten languages.

Saturday promises to be a busy day at the Festival, with programs beginning in the morning and lasting until early evening.

VaBook10: Short Takes 2

On the second day of the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book, I was not able to get to as many programs as I planned -- a situation I hope to balance out on Day Three.  With some 300 authors divided up among several venues, it's nearly impossible to get more than a taste of the Festival's many offerings.

Fortunately, I was able to grab two authors and the Festival's program director for short interviews.

Program director Nancy Damon attended a session in Charlottesville City Council Chambers called "Gangs, Schools and the Great American Dream," which was marred by the absence of one of the scheduled authors, Samuel Logan, whose book, This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang, accounted for the first word in the program's title. I asked her to comment on the 2010 Festival so far:

At that same program, emeritus professor of education at the University of Virginia James M. Kauffmantalked about his most recent book, The Tragicomedy of Public Education, which is so new, he said, that it does not yet appear on the publisher's web site -- nor, it seems, is it yet available on Amazon.com. (Look for it there soon; as you can see from the video, the book is in print and ready to read.)

Earlier in the evening, Escafe restaurant (on the other end of Charlottesville's downtown mall) hosted a reading and remarks by Robert Leleux, author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, which is about his growing up gay in East Texas and -- he says -- is a comical look at his parents' divorce.

Look for more "short takes" tomorrow, and perhaps some longer-form video reports, as well.

VaBook10: Short Takes 1

Wednesday was the first day of the Virginia Festival of the Book.

I caught two panel discussions at the UVA Bookstore.  After each panel, I asked the participants to speak to the camera and tell me why someone should buy and read their books.

The first was titled "Giants of the Twentieth Century: Ayn Rand and Louis Brandeis," and it featured University of Virginia history professor Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, and Melvin Urofsky, emeritus professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Louis D. Brandeis: A Life.

First, Jennifer Burns:

Second, Melvin Urofsky:

The second panel was called "The Crash of '08 and Its Aftermath," with presentations by UVA political scientist Herman Schwartz, author of Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble, and Hunter Lewis, cofounder of Cambridge Associates and author of Where Keynes Went Wrong: And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts.

Here is Herman Schwartz:

Finally, Hunter Lewis:

I was able to record the whole of the first panel and all but the last five minutes or so of the second. I will be posting those videos here or on my other blog, Rick Sincere News and Thoughts, within the next few days.

On the Eve of VaBook10

Tomorrow is the day logophiles have been waiting for.

No, not St. Patrick's Day, though the Irish are known for their ability to string words together in a mellifluous manner.

Wednesday is the first of five days of the Virginia Festival of the Book, which draws some 20,000 book lovers to Charlottesville in what might be the biggest book festival in the country.

Last week's cover story in The Hook highlighted the "sweet sixteen" programs that that newspaper's editors thought were most interesting.  (At first I thought the cover referred to the NCAA basketball tournament, but luckily I overcame being misled and read it anyway.)  Surprisingly -- or perhaps not -- none of The Hook's top picks are among mine.  That just goes to show the wide variety of authors and books that will be on display at the Festival -- a little something for everyone.

In the run-up to the book festival, WINA-AM's Coy Barefoot and his substitute host on Charlottesville Right Now, Jay James, have been interviewing authors who will be appearing here over the weekend.

On Monday, Coy interviewed Hendrik Hertzberg, who will be appearing on a panel with Richard Brookhiser at the Culbreth Theatre on Saturday, moderated by Bob Gibson of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.  Hertzberg is the author, most recently of ¡OBÁMANOS!: The Rise of a New Political Era.  The prolific Brookhiser, who began writing for National Review as a teenager, is the author of Founding Father:  Rediscovering George Washington, and his memoir, Right Time, Right Place:  Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement.  Saturday's panel, entitled "A Conversation from Left and Right: With Hendrik Hertzberg and Richard Brookhiser," promises to be an intellectual feast.

On Tuesday's show, Coy interviewed local political activist David Swanson, who talked about a demonstration against an appearance of law professor John Yoo at the University of Virginia on Friday.  Swanson will also be speaking at a book festival event on Saturday, on the topic Where Does America Go from Here?  Swanson is the author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.

Also on Tuesday, Jay James interviewed VCU professor Kristin Swenson, who will be speaking on a panel at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday called Bible Babel and Holy Curiosity: Questions and Answers about the Bible. Swenson, who teaches religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, is the author of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time.

Last week, Coy interviewed Paul Gaston, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia, whose memoir of the civil-rights era, Coming of Age in Utopia, will be featured in a panel on Thursday called "Social Justice: The Power of Individuals."

As for me, I'm looking forward to Wednesday's noon panel at the UVA bookstore, featuring Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, and Melvin Urofsky, author of Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. Urofsky also teaches at VCU, while Burns teaches history at UVA. Urofsky's book is reviewed in the April 2010 issue of Reason magazine by Damon W. Root. (That issue is not yet on line, but Root had a "Hit & Run" blog post on Urofsky's book last September.)  I have already read Burns' book, which was a real page-turner.  It was so interesting, I read every page -- including the footnotes, bibliography, and acknowledgments.

For a full schedule of events at the Virginia Festival of the Book, look here.  Most of the events are free and open to the public.Those with a gaming spirit might want to buy a raffle ticket in hopes of winning one of four exciting prizes; proceeds support the Festival and its programs.

VaBook10: Countdown to Virginia Festival of the Book

A Digression for VaBook10

Let me interrupt the usual format of this web log to point to a couple of exciting (at least from my perspective) developments.

First, the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book is coming up next month.  From Wednesday, March 17, through Sunday, March 21, dozens of authors representing a wide range of genres will be in Charlottesville (at multiple venues including City Council chambers, various bookstores, and the Culbreth Theatre on the grounds of the University of Virginia) to discuss their books.  Examples include Karen Spears Zacharias, Bob Zellner, and Elizabeth Zelvin -- and those are just the Z's.  (A complete alphabetical listing can be found here, and listings by topic -- crime wave, family, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and publishing -- are also available.)

It will be my pleasure to be one of four guest book bloggers for the Festival.  The others are Elizabeth McCullough (Cville Words), Bethanne Patrick (The Book Studio), and John Reinhart (Biblio's Bloggins).

I am currently reading one the books whose author will be speaking at the Festival, and I hope to publish a fresh review of that book here soon.

I also hope that, during the Festival, I will be able to conduct short video interviews with some of the authors at the Virginia Festival of the Book, as I did at the National Press Club last November with Frank Aukofer, Joan Biskupic, Ann Coulter, Haynes Johnson, James Reston, Deborah Tannen, Henry Waxman, and others.

For those so inclined, there is a fan page for the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book on Facebook, and a rather inactive Twitter feed for it, too.  (Don't forget the hash tag, #vabook.)

In other book review news, I will be hosting the Book Review Blog Carnival on March 28.  The current carnival is at Kitsch-Slapped.  The next edition is scheduled to appear on Valentine's Day (February 14) at Mysteries in Paradise.  (The 35th edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival, hosted by Home School Dad, led off with a mention of my review of Rose Marie's memoir, Hold the Roses.)

A news conference to announce some of the events and activities anticipated at the 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book was scheduled for February 10 but postponed because of the inclement weather (that is, the largest snow dump on Central Virginia in recent memory).  It has been rescheduled for February 18 and I plan to be there.

If all goes well, the next post you will find here will be a book review, old or new.