Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Sunday December 12, 2010
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THREE BOOKS ABOUT HIPSTERS
ISBN NA
Reviewed by Stephen Lowman
Calling someone a hipster has become a shorthand way of dismissing them as obsessed with appearing cool. Their affinity for tight jeans, shaggy hair and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is easily mocked, but the principal criticism is that they're frauds.
Hipsters, the thinking goes, love an indie band until it becomes popular. They care about art but don't have the talent to create it. They spend a lot of money to look broke. Is that all there is? The following books unpack the hipster aesthetic and ponder the consequences of this particular urban species.
1. "WHAT WAS THE HIPSTER?: A Sociological Investigation," edited by Mark Greif, et al. (n (plus sign) 1; paperback, $10). The heart of this slim volume is the transcript of a panel discussion about hipsters organized by n (plus sign) 1 magazine and held in the spring of 2009 in New York City. Hipsters' origins, motivations and fondness for mustaches are mulled over. But it gets headier. Participants connect hipsters to post-colonialism, the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, and the U.S. debt held by China. While the book can sometimes feel like an overreach, its delightfulness comes from the seriousness with which it takes its subject.
2. "HIPSTER CHRISTIANITY: When Church and Cool Collide," by Brett McCracken (BakerBooks; paperback, $15.99). Brett McCracken, a young guy who admits to having hipster tendencies, isn't a curmudgeon. But he believes that Christian hipsters at "wannabe hip churches" led by pastors with spiky hair who talk about the latest episode of "Mad Men" in their sermons are increasingly getting their inspiration from pop culture rather than scripture, shifting the emphasis from God to consumption and image. He spends a good deal of the book telling readers how to identify Christian hipsters and declares that Washington, D.C., is the third most popular city for them.
3. "STUFF HIPSTERS HATE: A Field Guide to the Passionate Opinions of the Indifferent," by Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz (Ulysses Press; paperback, $14.95). "Hipsters are largely negative creatures who gain power and authority by putting things (e.g., music, living situations, apparel, you) down," write the authors. In short essays, the authors tell us what hipsters hate, including: bras, television, being conventionally attractive, knowing their bank balance, making the first move sexually, and when their friends go to law school. The horror!
Stephen Lowman can be reached at lowmans(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE WITNESS HOUSE: Nazis and Holocaust Survivors Sharing a Villa During the Nuremberg Trials
Christiane Kohl
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell
ISBN 978-1590513798
243 pages
$14.95
Reviewed by Sarah Halzack
In 1945, a private home in small-town Germany became a temporary residence for one of the most disparate groups of house guests in history: a mix of former Nazi Party officials and Holocaust survivors.
The visitors had been called as witnesses -- some for the defense, some for the prosecution -- in the Nuremberg Trials, the military tribunals in which members of the Nazi party were tried for war crimes. Allied forces had provided the house as safe lodging.
In "The Witness House" journalist Christiane Kohl gives a richly detailed and deeply researched account of the diverse list of people who stayed at the villa and what life was like for them inside. "The Witness House was obviously a place of opposites: pain and joy, laughter and tears, bitterness and arrogance in close proximity," she writes. Still, the atmosphere there was remarkably civil, largely thanks to the house's affable manager, Countess Ingeborg Kalnoky, who had a knack for steering conversations into neutral territory. Nevertheless, the witness house was not without outbursts or scandals -- a shouting match, a suicide attempt and forbidden romances are all part of this fascinating story.
Kohl weaves anecdotes of what happened at the villa with facts about each person's biography and testimony at Nuremberg. Among the many characters she introduces are Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and confidant; Eugene Kogon, a prisoner at Buchenwald who saw the atrocities of death camps first hand; and Gisa Punzengruber, whose husband carried out cruel medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners (she testified for the prosecution). Each had a vastly different experience under Hitler's rule, and their stories add up to a 360-degree view of this critical time in history.
Sarah Halzack can be reached at halzacks(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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