Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Year in the Life books VI: Miscellaneous

Duncan, Dayton. Grass Roots: One Year in the Life of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1991.
This book is the whole reason for this category!! I loved this book. The author recreates conversations and interior dialogs there's no way he could've witnessed. But it makes for a compelling story. As one who's volunteered with a local political party, I love how this book focuses on the local volunteers. Most are quite savvy and have been involved with politics before (though there are some neophytes). I think a couple end up taking jobs with the local campaigns. I don't remember the candidates themselves playing big roles in the book (which is fine; this was the election in which the Democratic candidates were called "the seven dwarfs"). I like how the book recognized that all kinds of things motivate volunteers in their efforts.

Daria, Irene. Fashion Cycle: A Behind the Scenes Look at a Year With Bill Blass, Liz Claiborne, Donna Karan, Arnold Scaasi, and Adrienne Vittadini. New York : Simon and Schuster, c1990.
Unlike Grassroots, which is a compelling read in general, I would only recommend this to people seriously interested in the fashion industry. It focuses on the designers, but in the end, I still didn't feel like I had a great sense of their creative processes. If you watch Project Runway for the designing process, this book might be for you.

Goldsmith-Hirsch, Suzanne. City Year: On the Streets and in the Neighborhoods With Twelve Young Community Service Volunteers. New York : New Press : distributed by W.W. Norton, c1993.
I remember liking this book a lot, but I don't remember much about it. It took place in Boston. The volunteers had to meet and do calisthenics in the morning. The volunteers Goldsmith-Hirsch followed were in one group (I think), and were a mix of people who volunteered kind of as a new experience, as a way to take time off from college, and those for whom participation was practically court-mandated, or was practically their only option economically. That is, it was a diverse group racially and economically.

Bates, Douglas. The Pulitzer Prize: The Inside Story of America’s Most Prestigious Award. New York, NY : Carol Pub. Group, 1991.
This book sets out to demystify the process of selecting these journalism rewards. Bates does so by chronicling the awards process for 1990. There was quite a bit about some of the nominees, and how they came to do the stories/photos they were nominated for.

Other entries with "Year in the Life" books: June 20, 2006–restaurants/chefs; June 22, 2006–part II: education; August 26, 2006–part III: theater and business; Oct 11, 2006–part IVa: sports; Feb 21, 2007–part IVb: sports; March 28, 2007–part V: religion; and April 6, 2007–part IVc: sports.

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