You're Invited! Yale Medal Dinner Nov. 14
UPDATED Oct. 21 (see new reservation details below): This year, the class of 1971 is honored by having not one, but two, Yale Medal recipients among our ranks: ROSLYN MILSTEIN MEYER and DON T. NAKANISHI. If you would like to join us in New Haven on Friday, November 14 to celebrate their many contributions to Yale, please contact Ann Griffith at AYA by phone (203 432-1940) or email ann.griffith@yale.edu
Rubin on Diane Johnson's 'Lulu'
Friday, October 3, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
'Lulu in Marrakech' - worldly comic thriller
Martin Rubin
Lulu in Marrakech By Diane Johnson Dutton; 307 pages; $25.95
It should be a truth universally acknowledged that there is no better tonic for a writer in midcareer than a change of perspective. For San Francisco writer Diane Johnson, already an accomplished novelist and essayist, that came when her husband's medical work took them to Paris in the 1990s. Immersion in another culture for part of each year broadened her horizons, and the result was three highly amusing novels taking a fond if wry look at French mores: "Le Mariage," "Le Divorce" and "L'Affaire." This departure into a frothier form of fiction, rather surprising from a hitherto serious writer with a doctorate, found her a much larger readership. Judging by her latest novel, "Lulu in Marrakech," it also served to invigorate her as a novelist, for here she has blended her interest in heavier issues with a lightness of touch perfected in those more frivolous works.
For Martin's full review, click here or visit www.sfgate.com.
Credit Crisis Panel in NYC Thurs. Oct. 2
Katherine Hyde writes (Sept. 29, 2008):
On Thurs. Oct. 2 at noon there'll be what should be an interesting program at Japan Society in NY titled "Outlook for the U.S. Economy: Distilling the Credit Crisis and Lessons from Japan." One of the panelists is Ann Rutledge of R&R Consulting, a bond analyst and friend of mine whom I got to know when she taught at NYU. Lunch at 12:30, panel 1-2:30pm. For details: www.japansociety.org
Update: video archive of this program is at http://media.japansociety.org/080925_Outlook_Economy.html
Martin Rubin Reviews 'Kenya'
Forging a Country in African Wilds
By MARTIN RUBIN
Wall Street Journal Sept. 27, 2008
Kenya: A Country in the Making 1880-1940
By Nigel Pavitt
Norton, 303 pages, $50
"When most people think of colonial Kenya, the 'Happy Valley' comes to mind, that hellish paradise where rich English expats disported in an orgy of drinking, drug-taking and bed-hopping. 'If he wants to be tight all the time,' said Julia Flyte of her dipsomaniacal brother Sebastian in Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited,' 'then why doesn't he go and live in Kenya?' . . .
"Some of the denizens of Happy Valley show up in 'Kenya: A Country in the Making 1880-1940,' an evocative collection of photographs chronicling 60 years of colonial life in the jewel of Britain's African empire, gathered by Nigel Pavitt, a photographer and writer in Kenya. Local celebrities also show up---author Karen Blixen, aviatrix Beryl Markham---and visiting dignitaries, including British royalty and a broadly smiling Theodore Roosevelt. But the focus is very much on the people---African, Indian and British---who actually built the thriving colonial hub. The book's black-and-white photographs, drawn from scrapbooks as well as from official sources, capture the amazing story of Kenya's transformation from a colony concentrated mostly along a narrow tropical coastal strip into a vast country of diverse climates and topography. . . ."
For Martin's full review, click here or visit www.wsj.com.
Roz Meyer, Don Nakanishi Awarded Yale Medal
Congratulations to Roz Milstein Meyer and Don T. Nakanishi, two of five alumni receiving the Yale Medal for 2008. The AYA citations read:
Roslyn Milstein Meyer's dedication extends to many areas of the University and the surrounding community. Dr. Meyer (Class of 1971, 1973 MS, 1977 PhD) is a clinical psychologist and assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry as well as a community activist. She has shared her professional expertise as a voluntary member of the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine. Meyer's interest in medicine has led her to serve as a member of the Volunteer Council for Women's Health Research at Yale. In addition, Meyer has served as a board member of the Yale University Art Gallery and as a trustee for the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life. She was a co-founder and past chair of New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas and the Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership program (LEAP). Most recently, her commitment and generosity has supported melanoma research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Don T. Nakanishi has been a tireless supporter of the Admissions Office since his undergraduate days and has been a strong advocate for Yale's diversity efforts in student and faculty recruitment and academic programs. For nearly three decades, he has chaired the Alumni Schools Committee of Los Angeles County, which interviews over 1,200 applicants annually, and has written a highly praised newsletter that helps incoming Southern California freshmen and their parents make the transition to Yale. He has also served as an AYA delegate and an AYA Board member. Nakanishi, son Thomas (Class of 2005), and wife Marsha established a prize that is awarded annually to two seniors who have contributed most to advancing ethnic relations at Yale. Nakanishi is the director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the leading program of its kind in the nation.
NOTE: The Yale Medal dinner will be on Friday, November 14th. To reserve tables, please contact ann[dot]griffith[at]yale[dot]edu.
Martin Rubin on Cecil Rhodes
From the Washington Times (9/7/2008):
LEGACY: CECIL RHODES, THE RHODES TRUST AND RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS
By Philip Ziegler
Yale University Press, $45, 400 pages, illus.
REVIEWED BY MARTIN RUBIN
You never know what your most enduring legacy will be. Cecil Rhodes, a megalomaniac if ever there was one, thought that giving his name to a country - Rhodesia - would be his most lasting memorial. "They can't take a country's name away," he is said to have pronounced shortly before his death at the beginning of the 20th century. Rhodes was not known for being naive: Had he not vanquished his rivals so that most of South Africa's vast mining wealth was under his control, all the while having a spectacular political career that saw him prime minister of the Cape Colony when he was in his early 30s and substantially expanding the pink of the British Empire on the maps of the world? But we who lived in that century when countries' names fell like ninepins know better. They could and did take the name of his country away: Zambia and Zimbabwe are there to mock his naivete in this one sphere at least.
But a man like Rhodes was determined to have a legacy one way or another and he was bound to get one. He knew that his heart was diseased and that it would kill him before long. He had no descendants or loved ones to provide for, so his enormous fortune would give him another means to leave his mark on this earth: The scholarships that bear his name. . . .
For Martin's full review, click here or visit www.washingtontimes.com.
Mitch Kapor on U.S. Tech Leadership
Andy Sherman writes (8/28/08):
Saw an interview with Mitch Kapor entitled "Does the US need a CTO?" in the Sept./Oct. issue of Technology Review magazine. The link is below:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21247/?nlid=1304
Mitch Garner Blogs from Beijing
Mitch Garner is blogging for Road Runners of America on his experiences at the Beijing Olympics--click here and look for his "Blog from Beijing" installments, or visit www.rrca.org/news.
Martin Rubin on Doris Lessing's 'Alfred & Emily'
Reimagined Lives
By MARTIN RUBIN
Wall Street Journal August 9, 2008
Alfred & Emily
By Doris Lessing
Harper, 274 pages, $25.95
"The hoopla surrounding last year's Nobel Prize in Literature was such an ordeal, and so distracting, that it has caused Doris Lessing to stop writing---or so she has claimed. She has even declared 'Alfred & Emily' to be her last book. If it is, she will have finished out her long career in good form. She has never displayed her potent imagination to better effect, or her gift for probing realism.
"'Alfred & Emily' is, in part, a daughter's memoir: Ms. Lessing, now 88, unflinchingly shows how the lives of her parents, both of British birth, were shattered by World War I. But the book is also Ms. Lessing's effort to imagine, in fictional form, what her parents' lives might have been like had the war never occurred and had they never married. . . ."
Click here for Martin's full review, or visit www.wsj.com.
Martin Rubin on 'Daphne' by Justine Picardie
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'Daphne,' by Justine Picardie
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By Martin Rubin
Special to the (L.A.) Times
August 5 2008
"JUSTINE PICARDIE'S 'Daphne,' which focuses on Daphne du Maurier's life in crisis as she turns 50 and prepares to celebrate her silver wedding anniversary, is an engrossing and absorbing read. And as if her ability to bring to life so convincingly the eponymous heroine were not enough, Picardie's novel touches on several other worlds guaranteed to draw crowds. For who can resist the Brontes (Du Maurier is writing a biography of Charlotte, Anne and Emily's brother Branwell)? Or the Du Maurier legacy (her father, Gerald, was the leading matinee idol of his day; her grandfather, George, was the creator of Svengali in his classic novel 'Trilby')? Or Du Maurier's connections to J.M. Barrie's 'lost boys' who inspired 'Peter Pan' (her first cousins) and the British royal family (her husband is Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Browning, treasurer to Prince Philip)? All this---and much more---adds up to a delicious and piquant stew of interlocking worlds and desperate people, told with considerable panache and much psychological insight. . . ."
Click here for the complete text of Martin's review or visit www.latimes.com.