360 SOUND: The Columbia Records Story

Nov 23, 2012 by Washington Post book reviewers

Sean Wilentz
Chronicle
ISBN 978-1452107561
336 pages
$49

Reviewed by Chris Richards

With all the books and CDs that used to live on our shelves ascending into the clouds, we still need something to put on our coffee tables, right?

That's one way to explain "360 Sound," a large, lovely, photo-crammed book celebrating a storied American record label's 125 years in a business that's recently turned perilous. Commissioned by Columbia, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has undertaken the tricky task of sprinting across 13 decades of music, technology and commerce, sharing precious page space with 300 gorgeous archival photos of Columbia signees who helped shape the arc of American song.

It's a story that starts with Thomas Edison and ends with Adele. Along the way, the oldest record label in the world became one of the most powerful, propelling the careers of Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Cash, Simon and Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey and Beyonce. With so much turf to cover, Wilentz does his best to resist textbook dryness. Instead, "360 Sound" ends up reading more like a moisturized Wikipedia page, recounting how Columbia adapted to changes in format - the radio, the jukebox, the LP, the CD - only to crash on the rocks of digital file-sharing.

It's a trajectory that was impossible to imagine in the 1880s, when the Columbia Phonograph Co. opened for business in Washington at 627 E Street NW, taking its name from the District. In the 1890s, the company relocated to Manhattan, where it scored some of its first commercial successes with recorded marches by John Philip Sousa. One guy who wasn't pleased about it: John Philip Sousa, who warned against "the menace of mechanical music," predicting that performing musicians would lose income to these inanimate new recordings. Artists and labels have squabbled ever since.

In 1948, Columbia introduced the 12-inch, 33-rpm album, a sleek black platter that could hold up to 22 1/2 minutes of sound on each side. Responsible for some of the book's many sidebars, music critic Dave Marsh parachutes in to point out that the format shift benefited Broadway before the Beatles. "These cast albums can be seen as the first 'concept albums,' 10 years before 'Sgt. Pepper's,' 25 before 'Thriller,'" he writes.

The book's star power is in the photos. There is an image of Bob Dylan jamming with Johnny Cash, portraits of Beyonce looking Beyoncelicious, and snapshots of Miles Davis wolfing cigarettes in the iconic Columbia studios - photos so intimate that you might cough.

Also impressive are the vintage advertisements sprinkled throughout. In one, a bearded guy in a chambray shirt stares us down beneath a prophetic tag?line: "This man puts more thoughts, more ideas and images into one song than most people put into an album." It's an ad for Springsteen's debut disc, "Greetings from Asbury Park."

With the pictures doing a lot of the the talking for the talent, Wilentz's text offers a slightly more thorough examination of Columbia's executives, including Clive Davis before he founded his Arista Records empire and Tommy Mottola, who oversaw some of Columbia's fattest days. The most interesting in the lot is John Hammond, a jazz and blues advocate who considered his support of black artists in the 1930s to be an act of "social protest." (Decades later, he signed Dylan, who initially flopped and was nicknamed "Hammond's Folly.")

Wilentz renders these men efficiently, but he never really captures the identity of the label itself. He writes of its "mystique of tradition, sophistication and elevated taste," but in the end, Columbia feels more like a business that tried to touch any corner of popular music that might generate dollars.

Between 2002 and 2003, the label took a historic dive, losing $132 million. Wilentz soberly closes things out with a prescription worthy of an annual report: "Fulfilling its commitments to musical excellence as well as financial success will require unprecedented acuity and innovation in the digital era."

But on the adjacent page, there's an antidote to the anticlimax - a handsome photograph of Springsteen as he explores the aisles of an empty arena in Somewhereville, U.S.A. What's he looking for? Perhaps a spot on your coffee table.

Chris Richards is a music critic for The Washington Post. His email address is richardsc@washpost.com.

Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group

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INSTANT: The Story of Polaroid

Nov 23, 2012 by Washington Post book reviewers

Christopher Bonanos
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 978-1616890858
192 pages
$24.95

Reviewed by May-Ying Lam

Before young entrepreneurs wanted to be like Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs wanted to be like Edwin Land. Like Jobs, the Polaroid founder overflowed with brilliance, built a tech company with cult-like followers, held eloquent reveals of new products, and even dropped out of college. Christopher Bonanos' "Instant" tells the story of the forgotten genius who turned Polaroid into a cultural phenomenon.

Land and his team were the first to give photography the magic of instant gratification. The ease of use appealed to amateurs, but also was beloved by some big names. Polaroid created Type 55 film for legendary wilderness photographer Ansel Adams, so the camera would spit out not only a print but also a negative, allowing for a photo to be archived and reproduced. On the other side of the spectrum was Andy Warhol, who made thousands of harshly lit Polaroid portraits of unraveled celebrities. Robert Mapplethorpe shot unbridled erotica that would have had him in handcuffs if he had sent his film to a lab for development.

For all his brilliance, Land did not groom a strong successor to ensure the continuation of Polaroid's legacy. And the company failed to continue innovating ahead of the curve, missing the digital wave. Although the company suffered a bloody dismemberment in the 1990s, the name Polaroid still evokes a warm and fuzzy feeling.

May-Ying Lam can be reached at lamm@washpost.com.

Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group

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UNDERDOGS: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps

Nov 23, 2012 by Washington Post book reviewers

Aaron B O'Connell
Harvard Univ
ISBN 978-0674058279
381 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Bing West

For the past decade, the public has ranked the Marines as the most prestigious service by a wide margin. After serving one tour of duty in the Corps, you are considered a Marine for life and expected to conduct yourself accordingly. Why? Because the commandant of the Marine Corps says so, that's why, and once a Marine, always a Marine.

In his new book, Aaron B. O'Connell investigates how an organization averaging 180,000 active members has succeeded in attracting such intergenerational fealty and admiration. Covering the period from 1940 to 1965, "Underdogs" is a scholarly work based on a decade of research. An assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, O'Connell enlivens his academic framework with sharp anecdotes and assertive personalities. He reaches several conclusions about the Marine Corps, some old and some refreshingly new.

He begins by describing the old, well-known essence of the Marine image: heroism in combat. Every Marine is a rifleman, and you do only one thing with a rifle. There are no doctors or chaplains in the Corps, only shooters. They pay a cost for their aggressiveness. In World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marines absorbed proportionately heavier casualties than the U.S. Army and other units such as the Special Operations Command. In response, Marines forged a powerful self-identity that O'Connell calls a narrative of exceptionalism.While Army draftees in World War II and Korea saw themselves as citizens first and soldiers by necessity, the Marines held themselves apart from society. One advertising slogan summed up that attitude: "We don't promise you a rose garden."

The Marine motto was the "first to fight" - and mayhap to die. To cope with that loss of life and limb, they embraced an ethos that transcended any one life or any one time. O'Connell refers to this tradition as "the Marine belief in a timeless community of the living and the dead." That community's most famous members - like Smedley Butler, John Basilone, Chesty Puller and Jim Mattis - shared the trait of boldness in battle and defiance of death. Starting in boot camp, a Marine learned about a heritage two centuries in the making.

The tradition persists today. Last year, for instance, when a string of improvised explosive devices killed and maimed six Marines in southern Afghanistan, the company commander exhorted his men to remember the hardships borne by that same company in Korea, 61 years earlier. The next day, the Marines again attacked, some with waiting tourniquets strapped to their legs so they could staunch the bleeding when the next IED scythed through their ranks.

That Spartan code of the Marines is well-known; what O'Connell adds is a new insight. He argues that for several decades in the mid-20th century, the Marines were an organizational underdog, fighting for survival against the U.S. Army and the White House. The Marine Corps risked being disbanded after World War II. In the view of Army generals, there was no need for two land forces; the Marines should revert to their 18th-century mission as guards on board Navy ships. Both President Truman, who had proudly served in the U.S. Army, and President (and former Army General) Eisenhower saw merit in a small or nonexistent Marine Corps. In response, the Marines sought allies in the public and in Congress. O'Connell weaves a tale of intrigue, describing how the Corps survived the bureaucratic wars in Washington by engaging in guerrilla politics. They organized what was called the Chowder Society, an unofficial, clandestine cabal of officers that leaked budgetary and organizational plans from the Pentagon and the White House to the Congress; some of the officers' actions were so outrageous that a secretary of defense like Robert Gates would have sacked a bevy of Marine generals. But the generals successfully conducted a bureaucratic insurgency, never confirming their insubordination to the public. Knowing funding was tight, the Marines made a virtue of doing with less, a parsimony that won widespread approval on Capital Hill. The Marines also enlisted journalists and Hollywood to tell their stories. John Wayne, playing Sgt. Stryker in "Sands of Iwo Jima," received plenty of help from script-writing Marines.

The Marines' desperation, brought on by the realization that their service was the most likely to be eliminated, spurred innovation. After World War II, the Corps opposed the national strategy of tactical nuclear war and was determined to place infantry battalions on ships, ready to land at a moment's notice as a "force in readiness." In 1956, when England, France and Israel seized the Suez Canal, President Eisenhower sent a Marine battalion ashore the next day at Alexandria, to protect Americans and signal his anger at our allies. Two years later, as the Lebanese government tottered, Eisenhower sent 6,000 Marines ashore to stabilize the situation. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, 25,000 Marines were afloat in less than two weeks, poised to invade.

By 1965, the Marines had established themselves in the minds of the public and the Congress as the "can do" service, asking for little and delivering more. Gradually, the antagonism with the executive branch and inside the Pentagon waned. As the war in Vietnam escalated, political furor over the unpopular war overwhelmed any reservations inside the Pentagon about the Marines as a duplicative land army. Marines fought hard; that was reason enough to retain the underdog.

After Vietnam, American attitudes about war changed dramatically, because our volunteer military comprised only about 2 percent of our youths. The public, with few relatives involved, moved to the sidelines. War became a spectator sport, in which all-star teams were cheered. Our commandoes - the Special Operations Command - captured the public's imagination. The small SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden garnered more publicity than the 100,000 soldiers and Marines who toiled in Afghanistan.

Today's Marine Corps is no longer the underdog, scrapping for its existence. Marines are now part of an integrated military machine, where the four services perform all tasks jointly. Alongside the Army, the Marines are cutting back their numbers and funding as we pull out of the war in Afghanistan. O'Connell concludes that Marine Corps, even as its size diminishes, will retain "an ideology of elitism, superiority, and paranoia ... which shares some similarities with narratives of American exceptionalism (and keeps) the Marines forever on the attack."

Bing West served as a Marine in Vietnam. He is co-author, with Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer, of "Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Afghanistan War."

Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group

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Clifford the Big Red Dog hits the big 5-0

Scholastic

'Clifford Collection' will feature Norman Bridwell's first six stories.

Scholastic

'Clifford Collection' will feature Norman Bridwell's first six stories.

Scholastic is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Clifford the Big Red Dog, written and illustrated by Norman Bridwell,with a Clifford's Big Birthday app, a Monday party streamed live at scholastic.com/clifford, and Norman Bridwell's Clifford Collection, a reissue of the first six stories. Five facts about Clifford:

1. Bridwell, 84, says he happened to have a jar of red paint on his desk when he did the original painting and decided to "make him a little different."

2. The dog's original name was Tiny, but Bridwell's wife, Norma, thought that was silly and suggested the name of her imaginary childhood friend.

3. Bridwell's manuscript was rejected by nine other publishers before Scholastic bought it. Now, with more than 100 tiles, there are 126 million copies in print.

4. Emily Elizabeth, the little girl who loves Clifford, was named for Bridwell's infant daughter, who's now 51 and a preschool teacher near Boston.

5. The animated PBS TV series (but not the original books) are set on Birdwell Island, inspired by Bridwell's real home on Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

PHOTOS: 50 years of Clifford, the Big Red Dog

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Moehringer's novel cracks vault on robber Willie Sutton

Dan Loh for USA TODAY

J.R. Moehringer, author of the historical novel 'Sutton,' did a lot research on this Starbucks -- the site of a Mob shooting in 1957, when it was a barbershop.

Dan Loh for USA TODAY

J.R. Moehringer, author of the historical novel 'Sutton,' did a lot research on this Starbucks -- the site of a Mob shooting in 1957, when it was a barbershop.

NEW YORK -- The bloodstains are long gone. No historic plaque marks the spot where gangster Albert Anastasia, the boss of Murder Inc., was gunned down in a barber's chair in 1957.

But author J.R. Moehringer knows what happened here, in what's now just another Starbucks at the corner of 55th Street and Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan. But once, as he pictures it, "blood was splattered everywhere, bones and hair mixed up on the floor."

VIDEO: Author J.R. Moehringer talks 'Sutton'

Now, he says, "people are ordering their lattes, (annoyed) if they don't get their skim milk."

Moehringer learned about Anastasia's execution doing research for his historical novel, Sutton (Hyperion, $27.99, on sale Tuesday), about the legendary bank robber Willie Sutton.

In real life, Sutton, who died at 79 in 1980, was "one of handful of men to make the leap from public enemy to folk hero," Moehringer says, and "perhaps the most literate criminal in American history." (His FBI file noted that he "read classics.")

Sutton's connection to the 1957 shooting is complicated. And to Moehringer's surprise, the shooting also involves Moehringer's own mother. But first, a little background:

Moehringer, 47, is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Los Angeles Times and author of the best-selling 2005 memoir The Tender Bar, about growing up without a father but with a barroom full of father figures. Among the book's admirers was tennis star Andre Agassi, who got Moehringer to co-write his best-selling 2009 memoir, Open.

In 2008, at the height of the financial meltdown, Moehringer was seeking a subject for his next book. He got interested in banks as "the architects of the apocalypse" and says his anger at "unrepentant bankers" got him thinking about bank robbers.

That got him thinking about Sutton, an eighth-grade dropout who read Tennyson and Dante and stole an estimated $2 million from banks from the late 1920s to the early '50s. He escaped from three prisons, including New York's infamous Sing Sing, yet still spent nearly half his life in jail, which Moehringer says "gave him a lot of time to read."

Sutton, who was pardoned by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller on Christmas Eve 1969,

contended that he never carried a loaded gun. He was famous for saying, "No one gets hurt," and in retirement, he appeared in TV ads for a Connecticut bank, endorsing its credit cards. ("Now, when I say I'm Willie Sutton, people believe me!") He also wrote two memoirs, which, Moehringer notes, contradict each other.

One was titled Where the Money Was, which comes from Sutton's legendary quip. ("Why do you rob banks?" he was asked. "Because that's where the money is.") Sutton later said a reporter made up the quote, but as Moehringer says, "With Willie, you never know."

After a month of research, Moehringer realized the truth about Sutton's life was too elusive for a biography: "He was a trickster. Whatever he did, you'd end up with five versions of the truth to chose from."

So his book became a novel. Moehringer calls it "a deeply fictional work, set in a ruthlessly factual construct." He says he even hired a fact checker to help get the details right.

Nearly all of the novel's characters, including the rich Bess Endner, the love of Sutton's life and his first accomplice, are real people. But except in the case of court transcripts and other records, Moehringer invented their conversations. He says, "I blew air into the flames."

He also learned that it wasn't true that no one got hurt, as Sutton liked to say.

In 1952, five years after escaping from a Philadelphia prison, Sutton was spotted on a New York City subway by Arnie Schuster, a 24-year-old clothing salesman. He told police, who captured Sutton.

Three weeks later, Schuster was shot to death outside the Brooklyn home he shared with his parents. By all accounts, Moehringer says, "Arnie was a sweet, innocent kid."

Sutton was never directly implicated in Schuster's shooting, which Moehringer says remains one of "New York's biggest cold cases."

Later, Mob informant Joe Valachi said that Antastasia, who hated "squealers," ordered Schuster's killing. But that violated Mafia protocol against needlessly killing "civilians." And that, in turn, led to the Mob hit on Anastasia at the barbershop that's now a Starbucks.

A year into his work on the novel, Moehringer says he mentioned some of his research to his mother, Dorothy Moehringer, who, it turns out, knew all about Anastasia's murder.

"I was there," she told her surprised son.

Not exactly, but nearby. Seven years before Moehringer was born, Dorothy was a 19-year-old secretary at the offices of Columbia Records, around the corner from the barbershop.

One of her co-workers was in the barbershop when two gunmen entered. He escaped unharmed and ran back to work. Moehringer says his mother still vividly recalls "the terror in his eyes."

Moehringer's mother had never told him the story before.

"You think you choose the subjects of your books," he says. "But sometimes, in ways you don't know, the books choose you."

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We Sinners handles faith with graces

Hanna Pylväinen's debut novel We Sinners lacks so many traditional plot elements found in contemporary novels about religion. No pedophile priests. No hypocritical pastors. No overwrought preachers foaming about the Book of Revelation.

Rather, the moving story offers grace, insight and compassion. Pylväinen immerses the reader in the experience of growing up in a fundamentalist faith. Although the author is no longer a member of the Laestadian Lutheran Church, she was raised as a Laestadian, like the Rovaniemi family in We Sinners.

Founded in 19th-century Sweden by Lars Levi Laestadius, it is a strict branch which emphasizes forgiveness and forbids drinking, dancing and TV. Although We Sinners is about one faith, it explores how people, particularly children, feel when their religion sets them apart, whether they are Orthodox Jews, Mormons, evangelical Christians or Muslims.

Pylväinen tells the story of the Rovaniemis in 11 chapters, each from a different family member's perspective. The Finnish-American family live outside Detroit and, with nine children, money is tight. But the parents Warren and Pirjo provide them with books, musical instruments, and love. Their house is small, the van rusty and the siblings bicker. And yet the children share a tribal bond outsiders can't grasp.

There isn't a lot of drama. A daughter's classmates discover why she can't attend the school dance. The congregation choose the father to be minister. One brother marries a fellow believer and the other brother — who is gay — leaves the church.

Some children rebel and return. Others don't, but find themselves adrift in a world that sometimes feels shallow and lonely. A Chinese-American boyfriend — an only child — finds the kind of comfort with the Rovaniemis and their faith that his achievement-obsessed parents cannot give him. The final chapter illuminates the hope Laestadius offered to impoverished Finns in a cold, harsh world where alcohol provided the only warmth.

We Sinners is the rare mainstream novel that treats faith with respect and subtlety, conveying both its power and pull.

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Books: New and Noteworthy

'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K. Rowling comes out next week.

'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K. Rowling comes out next week.

We scope out the hottest books on sale the week of Sept. 23.

1. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (Little, Brown, $35, fiction, on sale Sept. 27)

What it's about: Behind the pretty facade of Pagford, England, lies a town torn apart by a council election, in Rowling's first novel aimed at adults.

The buzz: Perhaps the most anticipated book of the fall, as the world waits to see if Rowling, author of the blockbuster Harry Potter books for young readers, can deliver for a new audience.

2. Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young (Blue Rider Press, $30, non-fiction, on sale Sept. 25)

What it's about: The rocker looks back on his rich life and career, from Buffalo Springfield, to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, to Crazy Horse and solo efforts.

The buzz: Young is one of the most prominent musicians (along with Pete Townshend) to write his own story in a fall season crowded with memoirs by rockers.

3. Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy; foreword by Caroline Kennedy; selected and introduced by Ted Widmer (Hyperion, $40, non-fiction, on sale Sept. 25)

What it's about: Recordings of JFK grappling with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Space Race and other issues; included are two CDs with 2.5 hours of remastered audio.

The buzz: Follows Hyperion's publication a year ago of Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, which entered USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 3.

4. Love Anthony by Lisa Genova (Gallery, $26, fiction, on sale Sept. 25)

What it's about: In the latest novel by the author of Still Alice, a writer finds herself channeling the voice of her friend's son, an autistic boy named Anthony who died when he was 8.

The buzz: Love Anthony is an October Indie Next Pick , recommended by independent booksellers. "Anthony is unforgettable," says Kathleen Dixon of Islandtime Books & More, in Washington Island, Wis.

5. One Last Strike by Tony La Russa (William Morrow, $27.99, non-fiction, on sale Sept. 25)

What it's about: The now-retired manager tells the comeback story of how he led the St. Louis Cardinals to victory in the 2011 World Series.

The buzz: With the Cardinals again in contention for a wild card spot, La Russa's behind-the-scenes tale is perfectly timed for the baseball fan.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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