Rubin on Russia
And from the LA Times back in March:
'Magical Chorus' by Solomon Volkov
The Russian musicologist surveys Russian culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn.
By Martin Rubin, Special to The Times, March 7, 2008
"As its subtitle suggests, this engaging book, translated from its author's mother tongue, Russian, into clear, elegant English, is sweeping in its scope.
"Clearly someone unafraid of biting off a lot, Solomon Volkov has done justice to his subject. Readers of his passionate study, 'Shostakovich and Stalin,' will not be surprised at the enormously high level of engagement he brings to this latest enterprise. The good news for them is that, four years on, he has shed some of the hothouse, insiderish manner that at times rendered the earlier book somewhat inaccessible to those less informed than he is about all things Russian. 'The Magical Chorus' is an ideal guide, clear but still subtle and nuanced, to the rich complexity of Russian culture, its splendors, controversies, achievements and tragedies throughout the 20th century...."
For the full review, click here or visit www.latimes.com.
Martin Rubin: No on Coe
By and large the Martin Rubin reviews we've excerpted on this site are favorable reviews, but this one, not so much:
Bookmarks
By MARTIN RUBIN
Wall Street Journal April 4, 2008
THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS
By Jonathan Coe
(Knopf, 240 pages, $23.95)
Rosamond, who as a child was evacuated from wartime London to the countryside, is now a dying woman "recording a family history by describing a handful of photographs, for the benefit of a young, blind relative....To Mr. Coe's credit, he does capture the voice and spirit of his female characters and the intensity of their experience. But the heavy hand of determinism guides the story, imputing order to tragic and seemingly chaotic events. The air of doom and inevitability -- together with the novel's apparent message that misfortunes have a way of recurring across generations -- makes 'The Rain Before It Falls' profoundly depressing and not especially persuasive to anyone with even the vestige of a belief in free will. If tragedy is easy and comedy is hard, here's hoping that Mr. Coe is hard at work on his next book."
For the full review, click here or visit www.wsj.com.
NYC Class Lunch Fri. April 11
Jim Kaplan, Bill Primps and Bob Shapiro write: "The Yale Class of 1971 table at the Yale Club, will be held in the Tap Room on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 12:30 pm. Please contact Jim through his secretary Lisa Mastropolo by email, lmastropolo at herzfeld-rubin dot com, or by phone, 212-471-3229 to let us know if you will be attending by April 9."
Catherine Ross Invitation
Catherine Ross writes:
To all the members of the Class of '71:
My husband, Jon Rieder (Yale Ph.D. '78), has a new book out on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I am writing to invite you to an event at Barnes and Noble, Broadway and 82nd on Friday April 4, the 40th annniversary of Dr. King's death. The book has already been mentioned twice on MSNBC this week, and in yesterday's Washington Post-- so you can get in on the ground floor of the latest "must know" for the cognoscenti. Click the thumbnail below to see the invitation.
There will also be events in Atlanta (April 1), Washington DC (April 6) and Cambridge MA (April 25), so if you or your friends will be in those places on those dates let me know and I will send you the formal invitation.
In the meantime, hope to see you on April 4-- and please spread the word to interested friends and acquaintances.
all the best, Catherine
Catherine J. Ross
Professor of Law
George Washington University Law School
Meyer Gift
Roz Milstein Meyer and her husband Jerry are profiled in the March-April issue of Medicine@Yale, the Medical School's newsletter, on the occasion of their recent gift for melanoma research:
"Couple with a cause:
"$10 million gift will drive research, trials of new skin cancer treatments
"Roz Milstein and Jerry Meyer met in October 1971 in the Cross Campus Library at Yale. He was a fourth-year medical student. She was starting a doctorate in clinical psychology. Both were interested in community issues, and in making society a better place. . . .
"'We talked for five hours and found we shared a tremendous amount,' Jerome H. Meyer, M.D., recalls."
"After marrying the following May, he began a residency in psychiatry and went on to practice in the city as a psychoanalyst. She finished her training and became a practicing psychologist, working with individuals and couples. . . . Now the Meyers are turning their attention to health care and medical research. With a gift of $10 million to the School of Medicine, they are helping to expand the school's research and treatment programs in melanoma, an often fatal skin cancer that has affected family members on both sides.
'Melanoma is one of the fastest growing and most deadly forms of cancer, and there are few options for people with advanced melanoma,' says Roslyn Milstein Meyer, Ph.D. 'We'd like to see new treatments — effective treatments — developed, as well as new understanding of how cancer works.'"
For the full article, click here or visit www.medicineatyale.org.
Protter Talk Apr. 3
Philip Protter, who teaches operations research at Cornell, will give the annual Bullitt Lecture at the University of Louisville on April 3. The topic is "Mathematics meets Wall Street: How high finance became safer and more dangerous at the same time." For a cute (yes, cute!) poster on the event, click here or visit:
http://www.math.louisville.edu/Bullitt/
Meantime, Philip's wife, Diane Rubenstein, of the Cornell government department, has a new book out entitled This is not a President: Sense, Nonsense, and the American Political Imaginary — details at:
http://falcon.arts.cornell.edu/Govt/faculty/Rubenstein.html.
Rubin on Stegner Bio
Stegner's wild West: Wallace Stegner
---reviewed by Martin Rubin; Sunday, February 24, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
Wallace Stegner and the American West
By Philip L. Fradkin
Knopf; 369 pages; $27.50
"Author of many books on the American West, western editor of Audubon magazine and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Philip L. Fradkin has a resume that seems to suit him perfectly to write the life of that most Western of literary figures, Wallace Stegner. And after reading 'Wallace Stegner and the American West,' it is clear that this is an ideal match between biographer and subject.
"As Fradkin writes in his introduction to the book, 'I am ... intrigued by the whole man - or as close as I can get to him - set against the passing backdrops of his life. This is a book about a man and the physical landscapes he inhabited and how they influenced him. Within that framework it is also the story of a quintessential westerner who eventually could not deal with the wrenching changes that are a constant of the American West.' . . .
"Because his life spanned much of the 20th century, Stegner had the difficult task of establishing Western literature against a series of dominant critical schools that looked elsewhere. The New York intellectuals, Southern agrarians and New Critics were prominent within the academy and in the broader culture, but Stegner went his own way in both spheres, establishing his influential writing program at Stanford and creating his incomparable novels and landmark nonfiction, evocations and explications of the ethos of the American West."
For the full review, click here or visit www.sfgate.com.
Weise Award
Congratulations to Steve Weise, who's recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Business Law Section of the California State Bar.
The Section's profile of Steve notes:
"Steve is a nationally recognized expert in all areas of commercial law. He is a member of the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and was the American Bar Association's Advisor to the Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 Drafting Committee. He is the ABA's representative to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group on Secured Transactions. In addition to his expertise under the UCC, he is an expert in contract law in general (including electronic contracting) and is a leading national guru in opinion letters."
To read more about this wonderful recognition for our classmate, click on the link below:
Play GoCrossCampus
Matthew O. Brimer, Yale '09, invites us all to play a Yale-alumni-team version of his company's online computer game GoCrossCampus. Click on the thumbnail image below to see the invitation.
GoCrossCampus is profiled today (March 21) in the New York Times: "The game, a riff on classic territorial-conquest board games like Risk, may be the next Internet phenomenon to emerge from the computers of college students...GXC teams, made up of hundreds and sometimes thousands of players, play on behalf of real-world dorms or schools---even presidential candidates---by jostling for hegemony on maps of their campus or locale and conducting their campaigns as much in the real world as online."
A Google product manager who is an advisor to the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute "views it as similar to software like Google Calendar and Google Docs--tools that enhance real-world collaboration. 'Rather than isolating us in an online world, it enhances our interactions in the real world,'" the article says.
For the complete Times piece, click here.
To visit the Yale Alumni Tournament signup page (complete with current team standings!), click here or visit www.gocrosscampus.com.
NYC Class Lunch Fri. Mar. 14
The Class of 1971 table at the NYC Yale Club will be held in the Tap Room on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 12:30 pm--classmates who want to attend and haven't RSVP'd already should call Jim Kaplan at 212-471-3229.