The Book BenchLoose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department.<img src="http://feeds.newyorker.com/rss_views/books.gif">Books: The Other Half- September 15, 2008 Jacob Riis, an ambitious carpenter from a rural town in Denmark who became famous for his photojournalistic expos&233; of the squalor of Manhattan&8217;s tenements, abandoned his homeland after being spurned by a local beauty, and spent several years as a tramp and itinerant worker in Buffalo and western Pennsylvania. This&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/22/080922crbn_brieflynoted3 Books: Something to Tell You- September 15, 2008 Kureishi&8217;s latest novel returns to the subject of immigrant life in London--a theme that brought him early success, with the screenplay for &8220;My Beautiful Laundrette&8221; and the novel &8220;The Buddha of Suburbia&8221;--but adds to it the jaundiced outlook of middle age. Jamal, an outwardly respectable psychoanalyst, harbors dark&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/22/080922crbn_brieflynoted2 Jill Lepore: Jefferson, Hemings, and a disclaimed lineage.- September 15, 2008 In 1852, when Harriet Beecher Stowe finished &8220;Uncle Tom&8217;s Cabin,&8221; she wrote to a congressman, Horace Mann, who happened to be Nathaniel Hawthorne&8217;s brother-in-law, to beg a favor. Might he know how to get a copy of her book to Charles Dickens &8220;Were the subject any other I&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/09/22/080922crbo_books_lepore Books: Vanity Fair: The Portraits- September 15, 2008 Because Vanity Fair ran from 1913 to 1936, ceased publication, and then resumed in 1983, this dazzling panoply of twentieth-century fame has some striking absences: no Elvis, no Marilyn, no Beatles. The two resulting eras are presented not chronologically but mostly as a series of then-and-now diptychs&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/22/080922crbn_brieflynoted4 Books: Exit Music- September 15, 2008 The seventeenth and final novel in Rankin&8217;s Inspector Rebus series is set during the Edinburgh detective&8217;s final week at work. (He is nearing the mandatory retirement age of sixty.) The novel begins with a dissident Russian poet beaten to death, and expands to take in small-time drug dealers, cloak&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/22/080922crbn_brieflynoted1 Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks- September 15, 2008 BARNES &38; NOBLE Peter Manseau, the author of the 2005 memoir &8220;Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son,&8221; reads from his d&233;but novel, &8220;Songs for the Butcher&8217;s Daughter.&8221; (Broadway at 82nd St. No tickets necessary. Sept. 16 at 7.) MUSEUM OF MODERN ART The film composers Johnny&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/readings/2008/09/22/080922goab_GOAT_above1 Books: "Man in the Dark"- September 8, 2008 A car accident and the death of his wife have left the retired book critic August Brill a physical and spiritual invalid. Virtually confined to his house with his recently divorced daughter and a twenty-three-year-old grandchild stricken with grief after the murder of her ex-boyfriend, Brill&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/15/080915crbn_brieflynoted1 Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks- September 8, 2008 BUCKMINSTER FULLER SYMPOSIUM Engineers, architects, artists, and writers discuss the polymathic innovator, who is currently the subject of a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. (The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 7 E. 7th St. For more information, visit www.whitney.org. Sept. 12-13.) BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL Joan Didion, Richard Price&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/readings/2008/09/15/080915goab_GOAT_above1 Books: "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants"- September 8, 2008 This engrossing portrait of Virginia Woolf and the women who looked after her explores how modern ideas of class and gender crucial to Woolf&8217;s writing ran up against her lingering ties to a waning Victorian domestic order. Woolf frequently pondered the &8220;servant question,&8221; but her concern for those she employed&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/15/080915crbn_brieflynoted4 Books: "American Wife"- September 8, 2008 In her third novel, Sittenfeld offers a thinly veiled account (Wisconsin, not Texas) of the life of Laura Bush, in the story of Alice Lindgren, who marries Charlie Blackwell, the ne&8217;er-do-well son of a political dynasty who becomes President. The early chapters, in which Sittenfeld depicts an innocent&160;.&160;.&160;.http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2008/09/15/080915crbn_brieflynoted2 |