Category: book
-
How to make prison cheesecake
Piper Kerman learns a lot during the 13 months she spends at the federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut. Like how to make prison cheesecake in the microwave with graham crackers, margarine, Laughing Cow cheese, vanilla pudding, Cremora and lemon juice. She also learns that sometimes all you can do is make the best of…
-
Don’t hire me to type
Elizabeth Warren, United States senator, once was a law school student applying for an internship with a Wall Street law firm. During an interview, one of the firm’s partners leaned back in his chair, scowled at her resume and looked up at her with barely concealed contempt. “There’s a typographical error on your resume,” he…
-
Hard work at Oak Ridge
Thousands of civilians—many of them women from across the South—came to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II to work on a secret project. They were offered good wages and promised that their labor could help end the war. Inspired by Rosie the Riveter, they “left farms for factories willingly, wrote letters hopefully, waited patiently…
-
Amy Tan’s ramble
Amy Tan admits that she is embarrassed when people learn that it took her eight years to write her latest novel The Valley of Amazement. Sometimes she takes a rambling path, she told the audience at Arts & Letters Live in Dallas earlier this year. She is “lured away by many distractions.” While she was…
-
Lean in or lean out?
Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, explained why she hates Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Lean In, in an essay published in the March 16, 2014, issue of The Dallas Morning News. “I leaned in some more,” she wrote. “I ate protein bars and made important calls during my commute. I stopped reading…
-
Think big, but make small changes
Just a year ago, Sheryl Sandberg published a book called Lean In. Today, women in more than 14,000 Lean In Circles around the world meet regularly to help each other focus on their goals, says Lisa Bonos, an assistant editor at The Washington Post. Advising women to ‘lean in’ connotes small changes—a tilt here, a…
-
A second chance
Today we’re living long lives—long enough to give most of us a second chance, explained Anna Quindlen, author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs, during a recent visit to Dallas. In her new book, Quindlen gives Rebecca, the main character, a second chance at success in her career and in love. As the book jacket…
-
Yesterday
For Bela, who was four years old, yesterday “was a receptacle for anything her mind stored,” writes Jhumpa Lahiri in her book The Lowland. It contained “any experience or impression that had come before. Her memory was brief, its contents limited. Lacking chronology, randomly rearranged.” Even though it had been many months since her hair…
-
The power that comes from the heart
Malcolm Gladwell wrote his latest book because he really is “interested in the power that comes from the heart—courage, determination, persistence.” Gladwell talked about his book David and Goliath—Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants recently at an Arts & Letters Live presentation in Dallas. He called that power of the heart “a weapon…
-
Alva Vanderbilt’s definition of success
Alva Vanderbilt thought that she was a very successful woman. Alva always had great ambitions for herself, explained Malcolm Gladwell, author of David and Goliath, recently in an Arts & Letters Live presentation in Dallas. She managed to marry William Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius, in 1875. However, even though the Vanderbilts were among the richest…