January 2011

American Heritage’s debut on CD-ROM mentioned in “Letter From the Editor,” American Heritage: The Civil War—The Complete Multimedia Experience , is available from Byron Preiss Multimedia and Simon & Schuster Interactive (two CD-ROMs, for Windows or Macintosh. For all its period music, appearances by the Civil War historians James M. McPherson and Douglas Brinkley, and instructive strategy game, the package has its grounding in the work of our late editor Bruce Catton, whose classic history batted out on sheets of yellow typescript now joins the computer age.

In between his visits to America—recalled with such feeling in our pages—the English military historian John Keegan has written a number of esteemed books on armed conflicts, including his History of Warfare (Knopf, 480 pages).

Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism , which provides the background for much of his conversation with Nicholas Lemann, is published by the Free Press (724 pages).

a film by George Belcher, Somers Documentary Film Project, 55 minutes .

edited by Mike Tromes, Henry Holt, 358 pages .

An Encyclopedia, edited by Anne Cipriano Venzon, Garland Publishing, 830 pages .

by Tom Bernardin, self-published, 254 pages .

Library of America, 1,199 pages .

Library of America, 1,076 pages .

When a critic called his fictional hero Philip Marlowe an amoral “zombie” in 1949, Raymond Chandler wrote him: “Marlowe is a more honorable man than you or I. … I’ve seen dozens like him in all essentials except the few colorful qualities he needed to be in a book. (A few even had those.)” Slightly darker than the deadpan Hollywood dramas they inspired, Chandler’s crime novels and stories cast a leery but romantic eye over Los Angeles’s rich enclaves and the surrounding desert towns.

The Advocate Brass Band, George Foreman, director,

Gazebo Records .

by Randy Johnson, Jim Secreto, and Teddy Varndell, Hardy Marks Publications, 169 pages .

A burly and wholly American folk art draws a passionate tribute in this extraordinarily handsome book of the painted banners that throughout this century have drawn the prurient to see MAJOR DEBERT TINIEST MAN, SWEET MARIE 643 LBS, ALLIGATOR GIRL, TURKEY BOY, EEKA AND THE GIANT SNAKES, DICKIE THE PENGUIN BOY , and 5 LEGGED COW . The earliest examples here date from around 1910, and this highly succinct art form, which learned to do its job efficiently at about the time of the First World War, has evidently not felt the need of evolution.

The trouble was, he couldn’t say no to anyone. Badgered by magazine editors, book publishers, theater producers, political agitators, and college presidents to contribute his talents to their interests, Miguel Covarrubias said yes to all, forgetting that there were limits to even his energies. In time his careless acquiescences would prove ruinous, but until then he enjoyed enormous success as anthropologist, author, painter, muralist, stage designer, and—most especially—caricaturist.