Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Soldier-Humanitarian and a Friend

Shake HandsIn 2005 while an editorial executive with Carroll & Graf Publishers of the Avalon Publishing Group, I brought out the U.S. edition of Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s brave book, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. In it he gives an anguished account of the period when, as a member of the Canadian armed forces he served as commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. He saved the lives of approximately 30,000 civilians even while 800,000 people died in the genocide. When I acquired U.S. publication rights from Random House Canada, it had already been a huge bestseller up there, where Dallaire was a public figure. He was not yet well known in the States, but publication of the book here coincided with release of the movie, “Hotel Rwanda,” in which Nick Nolte played a Hollywood version of the general. The movie portrayal, though very inaccurate, elevated Dallaire’s notoriety, and enabled us to generate major reviews and book him on shows like Charlie Rose, and many NPR programs. Many U.S. publishers had declined to publish the book here, including Random House in in New York, but when the book came out here–with an added Introduction by Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning, The Problem From Hell: American and the Age of Genocide–it became a Washington Post bestseller and sold very well around the country. It is still very much in print today, from the Basic Books imprint of the Perseus Book Group, which bought Avalon in 2007.

Dallaire had returned home to Canada from the Rwandan mission a nearly broken man, suicidal and afflicted with severe PTSD. Yet he rebuilt his life and psyche and has gone on to do very important work in conflict resolution. I accompanied him to several of the NY interviews in 2005, sitting in the back of taxicabs and in green rooms with him. We became friends. Despite everything he’d endured, he showed a good sense of humor with an often merry glint in his eyes. I mentioned this to him, and he said, “A commander without a sense of humor will not be respected by his troops.” He’s a soldier-humanitarian and an extremely kind and sensitive man, rather Gandhi-like. From the position he holds now as a Canadian Senator he has moved on in his life to advocate for the end of the practice of armies conscripting child soldiers. Yesterday, Huffington Post Canada reported on a new project of his, The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldier Initiative, and an accompanying documentary called “Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children,” drawn from the activism that led to his second book, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers, published  in 2011.

According to Huffington Post Canada’s Ryan Maloney, the movie “captures the innovative way Dallaire’s group is attempting to end this scourge of humanity, not just through research and training, but by staring down and shaming the commanders who put kids on the battlefield in the first place. Dallaire says the use of children in Rwanda was prevalent. He recounts watching packs of ‘wild-eyed, drugged-up’ kids use machetes to slaughter with reckless abandon. ‘It was interesting that the adults always seemed to be more in the back,’ he says.”

The article continues, “Where other programs focus on convincing kids to put down their weapons, the Initiative appeals to militia leaders directly and attempts to convince them it is disadvantageous, from a purely tactical side, to use a child in war. ‘That’s something that nobody else is attempting to do on this issue globally,” says Shelly Whitman, executive director of the Initiative. A key part of that process involves sending Dallaire to challenge these men on a personal level, often by appealing to their very manhood. ‘When another military leader sits down… and says (he) has no respect for you because you use kids, it’s a very macho thing,’ [director of the documentary Patrick] Reed says. Dallaire is confident that speaking with militia leaders directly will ultimately reduce the use of kids as instruments of war. He says his group has already been given the mandate to train the Sierra Leone army and police, as well as write curriculum for the primary school system to show children how to avoid recruitment.”

I’ll be eager to watch “Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children” when I can find it. Meantime, below is a trailer for it. The company that made the new film, White Pine Pictures, also made a powerful documentary based on Dallaire’s first book, also called “Shake Hands with the Devil.” I commend this brave and sensitive man to your attention. His important work could lead us to a better world.

Oval Office Meeting of Jack Hoffman–Young Cancer Patient & Football Star–with President Obama

obama-jack-hoffman-football-nebraska-oval-office Jack Hoffman, the boy shown here meeting with President Obama, is being treated for brain cancer. The ball he’s holding had been autographed by the president and given to young Jack. He recently was befriended by the University of Nebraska football team, who in the video below is shown on the day he took the field with his player friends. He was handed the ball in a scrimmage and given a chance to run for a touchdown. I’ve watched the minute-long video twice and reached for a tissue both times. Thanks to TPM for their report on Jack this morning.

#FridayReads, April 26, “A Double Death on the Black Isle” by A.D. Scott

10214614 I love Scotland and have visited near the region where this novel takes place, so I found it enjoyable. However, it should have had a better line edit and copyedit. There were plot threads hinted at that weren’t resolved and characters who ought to have had more development. Annoyingly, there were a lot of typos and proofing errors in this title, published by Atria, at Simon & Schuster. C’mon publishing colleagues, you can do better than this!

Author Gilbert King, a Deserving Pulitzer Prize Winner, Takes it All in Stride

Devil in the GroveGilbert King, whom I happen to know as a publishing acquaintance, got some welcome and unexpected news last week. His book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category. King didn’t know that his publisher HarperCollins had submitted his book for consideration of the prize. A NY Times story published tonight profiles the unpretentious King, who was on a golf course in Florida when he got the news from a friend’s text: “Dude. Pulitzer.”

With refreshing modesty, King, whose book was published in March 2012, told the Times reporter William Grimes, “‘I’m sure people who write the big, critically acclaimed books know if they’re in the running. . . . But I’d just gotten a notice from my publisher that the book had been remaindered.’” The book tells a story of a too-little known incident of racial injustice, when in 1949 four black men were falsely accused of raping a white woman. The villain of the tale is the local sheriff in Groveland, Florida, Willis McCall, who King told Grimes compares unfavorably even with another notorious lawman: “’He made Bull Connor look like Barney Fife,’ the author said, “referring to the notorious commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights era. ‘Connor used dogs and fire hoses. McCall actually killed people,’” including one of the accused in this case.

King faced a daunting research challenge. While he did have the FBI case files to draw on, he also really needed to see records of the case housed at the NAACP, as Thurgood Marshall, then with the civil rights organization, had defended the accused. Though the organization had never shared such case files, even with eminent academics–because of attorney-client privilege–King persuaded them in this instance by insisting he was only interested in this one case, and none of their other historic cases. It sounds like a remarkable book, one with a terrible miscarriage of justice at the heart of the story that it seeks to redress, just the sort of book I have always enjoyed acquiring and championing as an editor for publishing houses.

I couldn’t be happier for Gilbert King, whose two books have “enjoyed only modest sales.” Grimes writes that King “is undecided what the next project might be. When the Pulitzer news came, ‘I was sort of lying low.’” I hope his next book, whatever he writes about, and whenever he publishes it, will gain recognition from the start. With the Pulitzer in his back pocket, it’s a good bet it will.

Discovering Marc Berger’s Album “Ride,” Richly Evoking the American West

Berger posterI heard a great musical act last Tuesday at one of my favorite NYC venues, the Living Room**. That night I discovered singer and songwriter Marc Berger who’s assembled a tight acoustic band to create a roots-rich concept album called “Ride,” which takes its inspiration from the American West. As Berger writes on his website, “Clouds that forever stampede the endless sky, shadows gliding over canyon walls–the West is a vast expanse of magic and mystery. American artists from John Ford to Frederick Remington to A.B. Guthrie have used film, canvas and the printed page to convey the essence of its unique landscape and mythology.” To those associations, I would add the 1962 Kirk Douglas film, “Lonely Are the Brave,” where he plays a latter day cowboy unable to conform to modern society. The movie was based on  Brave Cowboy, a novel by legendary iconoclast of the American West, Edward Abbey. Relatedly, Kirk Douglas also played the lead role in the 1952 adaptation of Guthrie’s novel, The Big Sky. Adding to the association with the movies is journalist Glenn Frankel’s new book, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, on John Ford’s 1956 film with John Wayne. Now, Berger has written songs and created a sound that reflects the West of yore, and the West of today, exemplified by the lyrics of the title song, “Ride:

Used to be silent/Used to be open/Used to be romance in a life on the plains/Now it’s Exxons and K-Marts/Best Westerns, McDonald’s/And my cattle graze on the big missile range
Ride, ride/Get along little doggies/Ride, ride/So gold in the sun/Yippy-aye boys/Here the dinner bell ringin’/Get along little doggies/For day’s about done

Though I had never heard these songs, I instantly liked them, and the way Berger and his band presented them. The musicians on stage with Berger were his co-creator, Mike Ricciardi (a steady presence on drums, especially with the soft brushes; he also took landscape photos in Momument Valley for the handsome CD package, graphics that are viewable here); Deni Bonet (on violin and accordion, continually interjecting tasty textures); Rich DePaolo (playing lead guitar on a plugged in acoustic, as rich a contributor as any Stratocaster axe-wielder); Rob Meador (on mandolin); and Jeff Eyrich (upright bass). Berger’s deep voice brings an appropriately weathered sound to his songs, sometimes talking the lyrics, other times belting them out, often in the same song. His harmonica and guitar added another layer to the rich mix. They performed with great energy and care for the material. I was really impressed and look forward to hearing these songs many times over the weeks and months to come. Below are pictures I took of their performance and two videos from Berger’s excellent website, which has many resources devoted to the project. Please click here to see all photos.

** The Living Room is unfortunately facing the loss of its longtime comfortable home at 154 Ludlow Street sometime this summer. Its management is in search of a new venue, and conducting a fundraising drive to help finance the move. I urge you to consider supporting them with a contribution at any level. To do so, please visit their website.

A Favorite Film, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” With One of the Movies’ Greatest Laughs

CastI’ve seen “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” many times, yet couldn’t resist watching it again when TCM aired the 1948 film this past Sunday night. It’s a great movie based on the mysterious B. Traven’s 1935 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Its scenes unfold inexorably like the movements of a symphony. Walter Huston (Howard), Bogart (Fred C. Dobbs) and the too-little seen Tim Holt (Curtin) form the amazing core of a powerful cast. Howard is the moral center of the movie, possessing shaman-like wisdom and healing powers. As played by Huston, he also displays one of the most prodigious laughs I’ve ever seen or heard in the movies. At the film’s climax, as it becomes clear that all their dreams of wealth have gone up in dust, he gives vent to a laugh that seems to mock all human vanity and grandiosity, at which point Curtin also sees the cosmic humor in their dashed dreams, and he joins Howard in laughing at the outcome of their quest for riches. I just love their expressions and so took pictures of my TV at that point, with the rest of those photos, and other relevant images, at the bottom of this post.

Walter’s son John Huston, years later seen on-screen as character Noah Cross in “Chinatown” wrote the screenplay of “Treasure” and directed the film, winning an Oscar for each of those, while Walter won the statue for Best Supporting Actor.

Two more great movies with Walter Huston in leading roles are “American Madness” (1932), directed by Frank Capra, where he plays a Depression-era bank president preventing a run on his bank. The film celebrates the welfare of ‘the little people,’ not dissimilar to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I also love “Gabriel Over the White House” (1933), directed by Gregory LaCava, who also worked with W.C. Fields, where Huston plays the president of the United States. At the outset, his President Hammond is unconcerned about the plight of the masses suffering in the Depression, and (in an evocation of the pleas of the real Bonus Army that FDR faced) he’s planning to crush the protests of the veterans massing outside the White House. However, after sustaining a providential blow to the head in a car accident, he turns over a new leaf and offers succor and hope to the desperate vets. Please click here to see all photos.

Album Covers as Art, or How Jazz LPs Changed Our World

IMG_0442Thursday night my wife and I greatly enjoyed the reception and opening for the new exhibit, “Jazz. Covers. Politics–Album Art in an Age of Activism.” We had been invited by Elisa Pritzker, artist and art curator, who assisted Nathan Cummings Foundation and Romare Bearden Foundation staff in mounting and hanging the show. They’ve assembled over 150 album covers as examples of social activism from America’s civil rights struggle, the opposition to the Vietnam War, and the campaign to end apartheid, among many other historic milestones shown.Brochure cover

The musicians and albums on display constitute a veritable hall of fame of jazz recordings, including Max Roach’s “We Insist!,” the signature piece for the whole exhibit, that used for its cover a news photograph of three African-American activists sitting in at a segregated southern lunch counter, as they and the white-uniformed counterman, all eye the camera challengingly; Nina Simone’s “Emergency Ward!,” with its backdrop of war headlines from daily newspapers; and Duke Ellington’s “Liberian Suite,” with its red masks, and his “Afro-Eurasian Eclipse,” with a tableau showing dozens of faces from the human family. The artists whose work is found on these covers are equally important, from Jacob Lawrence’s painting decorating a Jelly Roll Morton LP to several Romare Bearden works, on Wynton Marsalis, Billie Holiday, and Ricky Ford covers. There’s so much more on these walls: Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew,” Paul Robeson’s “Songs of Free Men,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” and dozens more.

The spacious quarters of the Nathan Cummings offices on Tenth Avenue were ingeniously used to hang the album covers, as each time we turned a corner there was something new and splendid to see and read about, with insightful text alongside the images. In addition, a room was set aside for a listening booth where we sampled the music from the albums on display, and another room was reserved for a video about the album covers, musicians, and artists. The exhibit can be seen Monday-Friday, by appointment via email to exhibits@nathancummings.org. It will be up through August 23, so if you’re in NYC I urge you to make plans to see it. As an indication of the wealth of material on display, here are some pictures I took during our tour of the exhibit last week. Click here to see all photos

Francine & David Wheeler–Good Parents Fighting for a Safer America–Give Weekly White House Address

Wheeler-funeral-300x222Readers of this blog may recall earlier posts in which I explained that in the mid-2000s I was a colleague for several years at Avalon Publishing Group with David Wheeler, whose 6-year old son Ben was a first-grade student at Sandy Hook Elementary School, one of the twenty children murdered in Newtown, CT, last Dec. 14. With heavy heart but much pride and encouragement I’ve watched over the past four months as David and his wife Francine, along with other Sandy Hook parents, have become activists for new laws that will diminish the likelihood of other similar tragedies occuring in the future. They and the other parents have met several times with President Obama and this week Francine was invited to deliver the administration’s weekly address. This would be the only time that someone other than the president or vice-president gave the weekly address. Last night NPR reported that Francine wrote the address with the help of David, and together they recorded it in the WH library.  The Wheeler’s have vowed that their son’s life and death will have import and meaning, and they are working with great dedication to ensure this. I admire them and their older son Nate, and share their grief for Ben.

This morning the White House emailed this message from President Obama, explaining why he asked the Wheelers to take his place today.
WH email To lend your voice to this effort, here’s the fact page the president mentions in his email.
Here is the White House video of Francine’s talk: