Second Drafts of History and Other Essays

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In his forty years as a working journalist and essayist for Time and other magazines, Lance Morrow has developed a sterling reputation as one of the most thoughtful and insightful of contemporary writers. Here is a selection of his best essays from recent years, drawn from Time, Civilization, his online writing, and other venues. In sparkling prose, he explores topics as varied as the joys of reading ("A Refuge for Insomniacs"), the grim reality of a visit to Sarajevo ("The Ruin of a Cat, The Ghost of a Dog"), ...

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Lance Morrow, twice winner of the National Magazine Award, has honed his craft in Time magazine and other venues for over forty years. With essays ranging on everything from the ... fall of communism to the genius of the cartoonist Chuck Jones, he has earned the reputation of one of America's most insightful writers. Here at last is a collection of his finest pieces of the past two decades. Morrow explores topics as varied as the joys of country life, "The Beauty of Weeds," and relates his encounters with ghosts that haunted his house in rural New York. This is a closely observed and nuanced look at American society and our globalized world from a writer at the top of his game. Read more Show Less

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More About This Book

Overview

In his forty years as a working journalist and essayist for Time and other magazines, Lance Morrow has developed a sterling reputation as one of the most thoughtful and insightful of contemporary writers. Here is a selection of his best essays from recent years, drawn from Time, Civilization, his online writing, and other venues. In sparkling prose, he explores topics as varied as the joys of reading ("A Refuge for Insomniacs"), the grim reality of a visit to Sarajevo ("The Ruin of a Cat, The Ghost of a Dog"), and the lighter side of his high-school education under the Jesuits ("Fifteen Cheers for Abstinence"). In other essays, he relates his encounters with the ghost that haunted his house in rural New York and offers a sparkling tribute to the wit and legacy of Bugs Bunny animator Chuck Jones. Here, too, are his closely observed examinations of our globalized world: a wry observation on why tourists eventually destroy every place they visit ("I Came, I Saw, I Ruined Everything") and the impassioned, controversial essay that he wrote for Time on the afternoon of September 11 that won him his second National Magazine Award. Second Drafts of History presents one of America's finest writers at the top of his game.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Covering the 1980s through the present, these finely honed, clear-eyed essays by Time magazine columnist Morrow are largely successful attempts to make sense of an increasingly splintered American consciousness. Loosely arranged by subject, these essays cover the gamut of human experience, seen through Morrow's practiced yet unjaundiced point of view. Whether offering a fact-laden piece on the AIDS epidemic or a personal meditation on the Jonesboro, Ark., school shootings, Morrow manages-without becoming sentimental-to evoke the spirit of a collective America, one comprising sometimes brave, sometimes cowardly individuals who, despite gaping differences of class, education, race and gender, will work together for the common good. Since Morrow is a weekly columnist, the news of the day is often the primary subject. His piece on covering the 9/11 attack is full of an anger that feels fresh years later: "A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage." Morrow is less generous to outsiders than he is to America. While his rhetoric is consistently well mannered, Morrow sometimes loses his compassion for the complicated world across the ocean or just across the border. Still, this is a fine collection from one of our most widely read columnists. Agent, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Journalist and essayist Morrow (Evil, 2003) gathers the work of four decades, most from the pages of Time. Morrow has a capacious mind and a light hand, good qualities for a generalist writing about pretty much whatever he wants in a mass-market publication. Some of the seven-dozen-plus pieces here seem a little pedestrian, to be sure, including the opener, a so-what meditation on sailing and the evanescence of human life; others go nowhere fast, as with a couple of rural cat-on-the-porch, corn-in-the-field reveries that no one does as well as Verlyn Klinkenborg. Still, all are readable, and many are memorable. There's a slyly subversive piece on the opening of the Nixon Library, for instance, with its mega-sized statues of the likes of Mao and de Gaulle: "Nixon," Morrow writes, "has always had a habit of dressing the set with giants, setting the delay timer, and then jumping into the picture himself." Exactly. Morrow is no easier on any of the other politicians who come into his crosshairs: "That has been one trouble with Reaganistic good feeling: a suspicion that it was based on camera angle." "At his worst moments on the stump, Bush is a sort of amateur terrorist of language, like an eleven-year-old Shi'ite picking up a Kalashnikov assault rifle for the first time and firing off words in wild bursts." "Nero gave the people circuses. Clinton is the circus." Against a vaguely dissatisfied take on politics and modern life, though, Morrow offers a humane and even hopeful vision: Remarking on the red state/blue state divide, for instance, he notes that "Americans have always been each other's evil twins," which ought to inspire a tiny bit more tolerance, and he closes by observing thatforgiveness may be one of the best tools we have for surviving our time, though it "is not an impulse that is in much favor."For fans of economical language and thoughtful journalism, a pleasure.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780465047505
  • Publisher: Basic Books
  • Publication date: 1/2/2006
  • Edition description: New Edition
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 336
  • Product dimensions: 6.25 (w) x 9.50 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Lance Morrow, twice winner of the National Magazine Award, is a longtime essayist for TIME magazine. He contributes essays and articles to other publications and is the author of eight books, including Evil: An Investigation and The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948. He lives in Chatham, New York.

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