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Roof
maintenance (for Santa's sake?). 12:15 PM. Photo: JH.
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For those of you who can’t think of what to buy
as a holiday gift for the man, woman or child who has everything, think books.
Here are three very different recommendations, one for each category:
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Click
image to order
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One I wouldn’t
be likely to pick up but was written by a very nice woman I know
because I often see her and her husband Peter Megargee Brown lunching
at Swifty’s.
It’s called Things I Want My Daughters To Know; A Small Book About the
Big Issues In Life, and its author is Alexandra Stoddard (HarperCollins).
I happened to be in the Lenox Hill Bookstore across the avenue
from Swifty’s one day last week talking to Jeanette
Watson,
the shop’s owner, when Alexandra came by and I overheard
Jeanette tell her that her new book was flying out of the store,
that they
couldn’t keep them in stock.
Alexandra is one of those secret best-selling authors. I
don’t
know if she’s sold millions of copies, but I do know she’s
published twenty-one books and her Choosing Happiness; Keys
To A Joyful Life and Daring To Be Yourself and a book called Open
Your Eyes and The Decoration of Houses are considered
classics. Google her and see for yourself. She’s also an
interior decorator, having worked with Eleanor McMillen Brown for fourteen years and
now has her own firm.
She appears frequently on television, on shows such as Oprah, The
Today Show with Katie Couric and Barbara
Walters. I may not be telling you anything you don’t already
know. But because she’s so lovely and pleasantly unassuming,
it all comes as a great discovery to this citified boy used to
the harum-scarum
of pushpushpush. Alexandra Stoddard is not only an interior decorator,
a proponent of living beautifully and soundly, but she’s
known as a philosopher too. Have a look if any of those titles
sound even vaguely intriguing, or sound like a message you’d
like to share with a loved one over these upcoming holidays.
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Click
image to order
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Also last week, I got a call from Libby Pataki, the
governor’s
wife whom I know through myriad meetings/ introductions at myriad
charity benefits at which she is often a guest and a speaker as
well. Mrs. Pataki, who has been First Lady of the State of New
York since January 1, 1995, could pass quite easily for Mrs. All-American
Homemaker and Mother from first appearances. And indeed, she is
very much a family person, devoted to her life with her husband
and their children.
She is also, however, an excellent public speaker – persuasive
and sensitive, low-key and diplomatic. She does it with such ease
that I often wonder if she’s ever thought of running
for office. She too, like Alexandra Stoddard has a very unassuming
and gracious manner that makes her very accessible to conversation,
both everyday, and as I discovered at one luncheon where we were
seated together, about books. Libby Pataki is a reader. She is
also – which is why she happened to call me on this particular
day (from her car, on her way to yet another speaking engagement) – a
writer, and with a woman named Wilson Kimball,
has written a children’s
book called Madison in New York (illustrated by Betsy
Day).
Madison is a little girl who lives in a New York City brownstone
with a garden in the back. And she has a new puppy, a Yorkshire
terrier, with whom she goes on an adventure seeing the great city
of New York. You can learn more about her and even order the book
by going to www.madisonandnewyorkey.com.
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Harry
Evans and Art Buchwald
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The British Ambassador and his wife Lord and Lady Manning hosted
a cocktail party for Sir Harold Evans in Washington last week in
celebration of the publication of his latest book They Made
America (Little Brown, Publishers). All kinds of Washington luminaries
turned out to meet the author and his wife, Tina Brown, including
James Carville and Mary Matalin, Alan Greenspan and Andrea
Mitchell, Stephen Smith and Sally Bedell Smith, Gertrude Himmelfarb
and Irving
Kirstol, Walter Isaacson, Selwa Roosevelt, Pat Schroeder, Alexandra
Wentworth and George Stephanopoulos, Peter Arnett, Albert Hunt
Jr. and Judy Woodruff, Ryan Duffy, Ana Marie Cox, Sidney Blumenthal,
Rita Braver and Bob Barnett, Bill Nitze, James Fallows, Christopher
Hitchens, David and Eve Ignatius, Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Senator
and Mrs. John Warner, Dave Williams, Jim Wolfensohn, Bob Woodward
and Elsa Walsh, Joan and Maurice Tobin, Armstrong Williams,
and, I don’t know … isn’t that enough?
Sir Harry, or Sir Harold, depending on who’s doing the talking,
is well known in New York circles for a host (and a variety) of
literary reasons – one the editor of the Times of London,
later president and publisher of Random House, once editorial director
and vice chairman of US News and World Report, the New
York Daily News, the Atlantic Monthly and Fast
Company, he is, at present,
Editor At Large of The Week magazine, and besides that, the author
of the critically acclaimed bestseller, The American Century. |
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Guest
waiting in line for Harry Evans to sign their books
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The
Evanses, Harry and Tina, as they are known to their legions of
friends and disciples – especially those in the media – are
two British people, born-and-bred, who have an intense fascination
in matters American, particularly culture, politics and history.
So great is their interest that some would argue they exceed
any American in their ability to inform us Americans about ourselves.
As one who is constantly intrigued by historical subjects, I read Mr. Evans’,
Sir Harry’s first book (also a bestseller) The American Century (which
he defines as 1889-1989) with relish because of his keen eye for the revealing
details and drama that enrich any story. This new book They Made America, takes
the first book one step further — focusing in on individuals whose inventiveness,
resourcefulness, creative imagination and just plain stick-to-itive-ness effected
significant innovations and social changes (for better or for worse). These individuals,
to Evans way of thinking, “made a reality of the political promises of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and created our modern world.”
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Click
image to order
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Innovators,
according to Mr. Evans' way of looking at it, are democratizers,
bringing the fruits of invention to the masses. “It gives a flavor,” he
writes, “of where lightning strikes in egalitarian America to mention that
they include a trucker, a portrait painter, a cobbler, a Harvard professor, a
deck boy, an immigrant seller of fruits and vegetables, a drug dealer, a frontiersman
fleeing Indians, a hairdresser, a street peddler, a billboard salesman, a flour
miller, an illiterate daughter of slaves, a 60’s rebel in the streets of
San Francisco, a beach taxi pilot, a piano salesman, a foreman in a power plant,
a hardware store keeper, a clerk and of course a couple of bicycle mechanics.”
They Made America has 70 “innovator” profiles
and an honors gallery of a hundred more. Some names you will recognize,
indeed are even regarded as celebrities in this fleeting popular
culture of ours. Others are household names, generations old, while
others may be names you’ve never heard of or seen before
yet have affected your life personally and even on a daily basis,
such as: Ted Turner, Russell Simmons, Estee Lauder, Gary
Kildall, the betrayed genius behind the birth of PC operating
systems; Samuel Insull, the fugitive who gave
us cheap electricity; Jean Nidetch, the talkative
founder of Weight Watchers; Theodore Dehoune Judah,
the brave pioneer of the transcontinental railway; Herbert
Boyer, the rebel who founded the bio tech industry; and Ida
Rosenthal, the tiny tycoon of the Maidenform bra.
PBS has made a four-part series of the book, produced by WGBH Boston, which premiered
last month, which explore many of these lives, but the book presents it all with
a lastingness that will sustain interest and imagination for a long time to come. |
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Leesie
and Nicolas Hollis
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Adean
King, Armstrong Williams, and Harry Evans
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Joseph
Konzelmann and George Stephanopolous
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Tina
Brown, Alma Powell, Adean King, Armstrong Williams, and
Colin Powell
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Selwa
Roosevelt, Harry Evans, and Tina Brown
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Art
Buchwald and Colin Powell
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Reba
and Dave Williams
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Joan
Tobin and Ann Compton
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Ken
Duberstein and Colin Powell
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Jeanette
Langoria, Jon Marder, Pat Kerr Tigritt, and Nicolas Hollis
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L.
to r.: Sally Bedell Smith, Steven Smith, and Ambassador
Manning; Sharon Hoge; Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan.
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