ShareThisWhat I've been reading:"Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History"By Ted SorensenHarper, $27.95Looking back on his 80 years of a life marked by responsibility, loyalty and circumspection, the former aide to President John F. Kennedy has written a memoir reflecting those traits.The hardworking and sheltered son of a Nebraska family, Ted Sorensen became JFK's assistant in 1953, dutifully serving until his death 10 years later.Painfully, Sorensen describes his major roles in writing Kennedy's 1955 Pulitzer-Prize history, "Profiles in Courage," his position papers and speeches and, most importantly, letters to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.I use "painfully" because, after all of those years since Kennedy's death, he remains the most important figure in Sorensen's life, and anything short of bountiful praise might seem disloyal.Sorensen, though, was no party animal. The women, the Rat Pack, "Dr. Feelgood" and other dubious behavior was not part of his job description, apparently, although he does admit confronting Judith Campbell, a notorious JFK bedmate.Sorensen devotes a good deal of his book to life after Kennedy, although it was a difficult transition for someone whose eloquence and sincere liberal politics found a powerful outlet.He admits that the Bush administration's performance "spurred me on as I wrote this book, rekindling my memory and reinvigorating my consciousness. ... I still am a 1960s liberal and I am saddened to find my idealism -- and Kennedy's idealism -- considered by many to be a relic from some bygone, irretrievable past."The torch still burns hot."A Writer's People: Ways of Looking and Feeling"By V.S. NaipaulKnopf, $24.95Authors should hope that V.S. Naipaul never reads their books. His withering dismissals of them could emerge later, as they do in this collection of autobiographical essays.Born to Indian parents in Trinidad in 1932 and educated in Great Britain, the prickly writer has long hidden his sense of rootlessness behind sharp and arrogant putdowns.Published first last year in Britain, the book takes particular aim at the late Anthony Powell, who had befriended the struggling Naipaul in the 1950s, then pays for it years later.Powell's sin, it seems, was to bid Naipaul farewell as his health declined, but to continue to see other people. As these essays show, the writer was oblivious to his own unpleasant personality and couldn't imagine why a sick old man didn't want him around anymore.Naipaul's other targets include another Nobel Prize winner, poet Derek Walcott, the father-son team of Evelyn and Auberon Waugh, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Flaubert and his father, already belittled in a 1984 memoir.Indian writers including Gandhi also receive the Naipaul treatment.A superb and highly honored writer, Naipaul lets his negative nature emerge here and the picture is not very pretty."Taking On The Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller"By Steve WeinbergNorton, $25.95The subtitle of this history is "How An Investigative Journalist Brought Down Standard Oil," a thoroughly researched effort by a University of Missouri journalism professor.Neither Tarbell's 1902-03 series in McClure's magazine and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1911 "brought down" the oil monolith, but forced it to change, a point Steve Weinberg effectively explains. That piece of history, as well as the biography of Rockefeller, has been covered in more depth by other writers.The impact of Tarbell, a native of Pennsylvania, on American journalism is the author's real concern. She was in her early 40s and inexperienced with the in-depth research her subject required when assigned the story. The result, later a book, "The History of the Standard Oil Company," was a seminal moment in investigative reporting as well as the best portrait of unfettered capitalism.Tarbell showed the way, as Weinberg passionately relates. His book is also a poignant reminder of how American journalism is in danger of running aground in the current sea of red ink and focus on gossip and celebrity.(Book editor Bob Hoover can be reached at bhoover(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
On the critic's reading list: Naipaul, Sorensen and Tarbell
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