Grand unified books thread

[Queequeg]

Anyone know a good recent book on HIV-AIDS?  I want something that covers the Robert Rayford infection because I find that a gay prostitute died of it in middle America in 1969 really interesting and strange.  And the Band Played On is supposed to be great, though, and it was the primary influence on The Emperor of All Maladies, which was amazing. 

[Sheilbh]

This is probably not at all what you're looking for but Thom Gunn's 1992 'The Man With Night Sweats' is an outstanding collection of poems many of which deal with the AIDS epidemic and the aftermath.

Gunn's probably my favourite modernish poet. He was associated with the movement and the return of form to English poetry. Then he moved to San Francisco and worked for a while under Yvor Winters who was an extremely rigorous formalist. But then he joined the counter-culture and took a lot of drugs (I think Edmund White said he was the only poet who could write a half-decent quatrain on LSD) and more of his poems became about gay life in San Francisco. So he ended up a poet who happened to be gay and a formalist who happened to often write in free verse. Which, I think, is partly why he's so great. He sometimes writes in terza rima, but also about the social etiquette of a sauna.

It's also why he wrote a volume that is kind-of about AIDS. There are AIDS elegies throughout and hints in other poems. Though they're not as worthy as lots of other literary responses to AIDS are. And I think in putting them in a 'miscellany' Gunn is quite deliberate.

His sort-of follow up in early 2000s, Boss Cupid, is also very good and again as you'd expect from a promiscuous gay man who survived 80s San Francisco, often touch on AIDS. Here's 'Still Life' from The Man With Night Sweats:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-sunday-poem-no-35-thom-gunn-1111476.html
I'd add I have huge issues with Mark Doty. Also I think that reading's a bit over-reverential. Isn't there a dark sexual humour in the image and especially the last line?

[jimmy olsen]

My Amazon splurge has arrived.   It contains:

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
The Thirty Years' War: Europe's Tragedy, by Peter Wilson
The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Milller, by Carlo Ginzburg
Sexual Revolution in Bolshevik Russia by Gregory Carleton
(And a CD of Schubert's last three piano sonatas, performed by Alfred Brendel).

The first three all recommended to me here on Languish.

I'd be interested in the review of the 2nd book there.

[Gups]

I'm really enjoying Jenkins' Gladstone. It made me want to do a bit more reading on that era. Somehow that's lead me into reading Tim Blaning's 'Pursuit of Glory' which, so far, seems excellent and Hobsbawm's 'Age of Revolutions' which again is great with some really striking points. I think they're a good read together because they both have different perspectives and offer a bit more context when you're hopping from one to the other.

Edit: Also of quite niche interest, but I enjoyed this piece on Harold MacMillan's reading habits:
http://www.cercles.com/n11/catterall.pdf

I much prefer Jenkins' Gladstone to his Churchill, much more nuanced. His collection of mini-biogs of various Chancellors of the Exchequer is well worth seeking out.

Blanning's book is very good. YOu might also like (if you haven't read it already) NAM Rodger's brilliant "Command of the Ocean".

[Gups]

My Amazon splurge has arrived.   It contains:

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
The Thirty Years' War: Europe's Tragedy, by Peter Wilson
The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Milller, by Carlo Ginzburg
Sexual Revolution in Bolshevik Russia by Gregory Carleton
(And a CD of Schubert's last three piano sonatas, performed by Alfred Brendel).

The first three all recommended to me here on Languish.

I'd be interested in the review of the 2nd book there.

It's really dense - reammed full of facts and people and quite difficult to follow. I have up after 200 pages but may try it again when I have a lot of spare reading time.

[Maladict]

Dante's Purgatorio is really great, I like it even better than Inferno.

[Capetan Mihali]

Anyone know a good recent book on HIV-AIDS?  I want something that covers the Robert Rayford infection because I find that a gay prostitute died of it in middle America in 1969 really interesting and strange.  And the Band Played On is supposed to be great, though, and it was the primary influence on The Emperor of All Maladies, which was amazing.

That's totally dubious at this point.  He personally denied ever being a hustler -- it was an idea the doctors came up with that took hold, especially after revisiting the file in light of GRID/AIDS.  And I would hardly call the black ghetto of St. Louis in 1969 "middle America," at least in the sense we're familiar with. 

I can't deny that the Robert Rayford story (and the pre-history of AIDS in general) is fascinating, but it's shrouded in mystery that derives from both a real lack of information and from the way the white medical establishment of the period dealt with an impoverished black teenager with a venereal disease (chlamydia IIRC).  I've read a fair amount about it from online sources, but the most enlightening things were, in fact, the ones that made the story more obscure.

[Syt]

It's really dense - reammed full of facts and people and quite difficult to follow. I have up after 200 pages but may try it again when I have a lot of spare reading time.

I have to agree. I found the book best when it was discussing the underlying politics and processes of the war, which it does rather extensively The long campaign descriptions are a lot of "Army 1 goes to Place 2, gets cut of by Army 3 who was seeking Army 4 while Army 5 moves to Place 6 shortly after Army 4 left for Place 2 trying to catch Army 1" etc. In short - very confusing and hard to follow.

Still, it's probably the best book you will find about the Thirty Years War.

[Capetan Mihali]

It's really dense - reammed full of facts and people and quite difficult to follow. I have up after 200 pages but may try it again when I have a lot of spare reading time.

I have to agree. I found the book best when it was discussing the underlying politics and processes of the war, which it does rather extensively

I'm at this point in the book and enjoying it.  There are at least 100-200 pages before you even reach 1618.  But since I knew next to nothing about the HRE, it's very helpful, but yeah, dense and complicated.  Although given how dense and complicated the workings of the HRE appear to have been, it may be unavoidable

[Queequeg]

Anyone know a good recent book on HIV-AIDS?  I want something that covers the Robert Rayford infection because I find that a gay prostitute died of it in middle America in 1969 really interesting and strange.  And the Band Played On is supposed to be great, though, and it was the primary influence on The Emperor of All Maladies, which was amazing.

That's totally dubious at this point.  He personally denied ever being a hustler -- it was an idea the doctors came up with that took hold, especially after revisiting the file in light of GRID/AIDS.  And I would hardly call the black ghetto of St. Louis in 1969 "middle America," at least in the sense we're familiar with. 

I can't deny that the Robert Rayford story (and the pre-history of AIDS in general) is fascinating, but it's shrouded in mystery that derives from both a real lack of information and from the way the white medical establishment of the period dealt with an impoverished black teenager with a venereal disease (chlamydia IIRC).  I've read a fair amount about it from online sources, but the most enlightening things were, in fact, the ones that made the story more obscure.

1) He died of AIDS in the late 60s and had a host of other STDs. What reason would there be to not suspect he was having regular gay sex? Or that he was a gay prostitute? The doctors suspected it at the time, a decade before GRID was on the radar.
2) I get that black ghettos of St. Louis aren't 50s "middle America" but it's still, you know, a thousand miles from ports where you'd suspect to see the first cases of a disease with Central African origin. Worth remembering that Gaetan Dugas was a flight attendant and that the NYC Bicentennial celebration brought people in from every corner of the globe. Rayford suggests there was already some background level of the disease among Haitian or African immigrants even in the middle of America.

[The Brain]

It's really dense - reammed full of facts and people and quite difficult to follow. I have up after 200 pages but may try it again when I have a lot of spare reading time.

I have to agree. I found the book best when it was discussing the underlying politics and processes of the war, which it does rather extensively The long campaign descriptions are a lot of "Army 1 goes to Place 2, gets cut of by Army 3 who was seeking Army 4 while Army 5 moves to Place 6 shortly after Army 4 left for Place 2 trying to catch Army 1" etc. In short - very confusing and hard to follow.

Still, it's probably the best book you will find about the Thirty Years War.

Yeah. The part I liked best was the background to the war. Once the war started things got less interesting.

[Syt]

The political bits that show up throughout the book are still pretty good, though (e.g. Sweden's financial machinations, Spain's sending of troops up north, France's stance etc.).

[CountDeMoney]

Long-lost story from Tennessee Williams discovered
By Christian DuChateau, CNN

CNN) -- After it spent decades buried in library archives, a newly discovered story from playwright Tennessee Williams was published this month.

The story, titled "Crazy Night," appears in the new issue of The Strand mystery magazine released March 25, and coincides with the 70-year anniversary of Williams' classic play "The Glass Menagerie."

Andrew F. Gulli, managing editor of The Strand, recently uncovered the 14-page manuscript at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center. Gulli says he was researching the Mississippi-born writer when he came across what he describes as a "treasure trove" of Williams' personal papers and documents.

Williams is one of America's best-known and most revered playwrights. During the peak of his career in the 1940s and '50s, he was praised by critics and scorned by social conservatives for tackling taboo subjects of the time, including rape, incest and homosexuality.

Many of his plays were turned into hit movies featuring Hollywood stars such as Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. Williams twice won the Pulitzer Prize and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Williams died in 1983.

Gulli was initially skeptical that the story had never before been published, but several experts, including an agent for Williams' literary estate, said they'd never heard of it.

"I thought it was captivating," Gulli says. "It's raw but has a fresh voice and shows a great deal of maturity for his age."

Williams, who was born in 1911, wrote "Crazy Night" in his early 20s, years before his Broadway success with plays such as "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

In the semi-autobiographical story, a troubled college freshman faces flunking out of school on the last night of spring term. It explores themes of love and deceit and includes a thinly veiled reference to Williams' romance with one of his college classmates.

"To me, it's a great highlight to find something new from somebody I grew up revering," Gulli says.

Gulli has a knack for finding long-lost works. In the last five years, he's discovered previously unpublished stories and essays from authors including Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, H.G. Wells and Mark Twain. But Gulli says he has a soft spot for Williams.

"To me he's as relevant today as he was when his works were first published," Gulli said.

Indeed, many of Williams plays are still performed today. "The Glass Menagerie" first premiered in New York on March 31, 1945, and a revival recently wrapped a successful run on Broadway.

[jimmy olsen]

Gulli has a knack for finding long-lost works. In the last five years, he's discovered previously unpublished stories and essays from authors including Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, H.G. Wells and Mark Twain. But Gulli says he has a soft spot for Williams.

How convenient, how sure are we that he's not the author.

[mongers]

Gulli has a knack for finding long-lost works. In the last five years, he's discovered previously unpublished stories and essays from authors including Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, H.G. Wells and Mark Twain. But Gulli says he has a soft spot for Williams.

How convenient, how sure are we that he's not the author.

He's an immortal, living multiple lives throughout history ?