Books tells story of Bacardi rum and Cuba
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press Writer
“Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba” (Viking, 365 pages, $27.95), by Tom Gjelten:
Bacardi is the world’s top-selling rum with annual sales of 20 million cases in more than 150 countries. But it does not sell a drop in Cuba, where founder Facundo Bacardi first opened a tin-roofed, dirt-floored distillery on Matadero Street in the eastern city of Santiago in 1862.
With thorough reporting and an eye for rich, often quirky detail, veteran National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten traces the story of the Bacardi family, whose product helped shape Cuba’s soul until Fidel Castro nationalized its company’s facilities in 1960.
The Bacardis took communist Cuba to court to preserve their international trademark and eventually built a rum empire using operations in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil and the Bahamas. “We just didn’t think to register the Bacardi trademark, so we lost it,” Enrique Oltuski said years later. “We had the factory that produced the real Bacardi rum, but we couldn’t keep the name.” Read more …
Romance Reader: ‘The Edge of Desire’
By Lezlie Patterson
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
“The Edge of Desire,” by Stephanie Laurens; AVON ($7.99)
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There are two problems with reading books written by Stephanie Laurens. First, she’s wordy, often taking a page when a couple of sentences would do — especially with the more steamy scenes. (Thirteen pages?) The second problem is despite often having to muddle through the wordiness, Lauren quickly hooks you and forces you care about the plight of the characters, therefore sentencing you to read the entire book.
The good news? You’re ultimately glad you did. Read more …
Robert Caro speaks of the LBJ centennial
By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer
As the centennial of Lyndon Johnson’s birth approaches, historian Robert A. Caro would like to think of his longtime subject at his happiest and most fulfilled: Not when Johnson was president, in anguish over Vietnam, but a few years before, as Senate majority leader, the one-man legislative machine.
“I want to remember him in his days of just undiluted glory,” says Caro, a Pulitzer Prize winner currently in the middle of his fourth and final Johnson volume, which will cover his vice presidency and presidency.
Johnson, born Aug. 27, 1908, remains a president with a double legacy — the great champion of civil rights and the despairing commander in chief who didn’t bother to seek a second term. Caro, who for 30 years has been writing and reporting on Johnson, believes his presidential standing is higher now than it was when he left office. But the historian says his research confirms that Johnson’s gifts didn’t travel well abroad. Read more …
NYT’s Carr retraces recovery in new book
By JEFF BAENEN
Associated Press Writer
MINNEAPOLIS — When reporter David Carr began thinking about writing his life story, he found he couldn’t trust his own memory.
Was it his best friend who pulled the gun on Carr some 20 years ago when Carr — fired from a job and thrown out of a bar — tried to kick in his friend’s front door and broke a window, as Carr remembered it, or was it Carr himself who held the gun?
Armed with a video camera and digital recorder, Carr revisited his old haunts and interviewed ex-girlfriends, former employers and people he did drugs with. The result is “The Night of the Gun,” a memoir that traces Carr’s rise from cocaine addict to single dad raising twin girls to sobered-up media columnist for The New York Times.
“I’d always said I’d never write a book like this. And then I started to think, ‘But if I ever did, it would be really good,’” Carr says. Read more …
Review: ‘The Lace Reader’ is threaded with suspense
By Joy Tipping
The Dallas Morning News
“The Lace Reader,” by Brunonia Barry; (William Morrow, $24.95)
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Novelist Brunonia Barry has pulled off a major feat with her debut, “The Lace Reader.” It’s a gorgeously written literary novel that’s also a doozy of a thriller, capped with a jaw-dropping denouement that will leave even the most careful reader gasping.
Even before the book started making the rounds of critics, Barry had produced major buzz. “The Lace Reader,” originally self-published in 2007, was picked up by William Morrow in a reported $2 million deal for it and one future novel.
Thankfully, Barry’s talent seems worth the hype.
She intriguingly sets up the story with the opening lines: “My name is Towner Whitney. No, that’s not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time. I am a crazy woman. … That last part is true.” Read more …
Test your knowledge of literary trivia found in ‘Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara’
McClatchy Newspapers
Test your knowledge of literary trivia found in “Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara” by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy (Penguin, $13 in paper).
Match the following statements with the book titles listed. Answers appear below.
1. Which book was saved by the author’s wife, who rescued it from the trash and encouraged her husband to finish it?
2. Which book gets stolen most from libraries? Read more …
The back stories are the best stories
By Audra D.S. Burch
McClatchy Newspapers
Former journalist Peggy Marsh had been quietly working on her novel for more than a decade when she was discovered by a publisher who was scouring the South for new authors. Starring a heroine named Pansy O’Hara, Marsh’s manuscript was a theatrical, longing ode to the lost, pre-Civil War era in the Deep South. Its working title: “Tomorrow Is Another Day.”
By the time the novel was published a year later, in 1936, Pansy had become Scarlett, and Marsh had reverted to her maiden name, Margaret Mitchell. And her title famously had been transformed into the more poignant “Gone With The Wind.”
This is just one of the literary morsels offered in “Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara?” (Penguin, $13 in paper), a compilation of the little-known back stories behind 50 of the world’s most famous books. Read more …
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