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Biography 23.3 (2000) 583-638



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Reviewed Elsewhere

Contributing editors William Bruneau, Brian Cassity, Michael Fassiotto, Corey Hollis, Noel Kent, Gabriel Merle, Barbara Bennett Peterson, Forrest R. Pitts, William Scherer, and Paula Willoquet-Maricondi provided the excerpts for this issue.

Publications reviewed include Albion, American Quarterly, Film Quarterly, French Review, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The Historian, Journal of Asian Studies, Los Angeles Times Book Review (LATBR), Le Monde des Livres, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), The New Yorker, Opera News, Pacific Historical Review, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, Science, Sight and Sound, Der Tagesspiegel (elec. ed), Times Literary Supplement (TLS), Washington Post National Weekly Edition (WP), and The Women's Review of Books.

Addams, Jane
A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams. Gioia Dilibarto. New York: Lisa Drew/Scribner, 1999. 266 pp. $26.00.

"Gioia Diliberto's readable account of Jane Addams' first forty years reminds us that we should know more about this astonishing woman than we do. . . . [Diliberto] offers us an account of Addams' personal struggle to separate from her family, to overcome her physical disabilities and find meaningful work. The result is the story of a Victorian girl who makes good. Inspiring and well-written, A Useful Woman brings a sympathetic version of Jane Addams to life. But it leaves us with large, unanswered questions about her historical significance. . . . We still very badly need a study of Jane Addams that will place her life in its social, political, economic and cultural context--tell us how this Gilded Age elitist was transformed into the modern steward of the nation's conscience.

Kathryn Kish Sklar. Women's Review of Books 17.4 (Jan. 2000): 14-15.

Adorno, Theodor, and Walter Benjamin
The Complete Correspondence 1928-1940. Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Ed. Henry Lonits. Tr. Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. 383 pp. $39.95.

"The extensive correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin--now happily available in English as 'The Complete Correspondence 1928-1940'--reveals their tortured philosophical friendship."

James Miller. NYTBR, Feb. 20, 2000: 22-23. [End Page 583]

Albers, Anni
Anni Albers. Ed. Nicholas Fox Weber and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi. New York: Guggenheim Museum/Abrams, 1999. 181 pp. $60.00.

"Her [Albers'] tactile masterpieces and later experiments with printmaking are beautifully presented in 'Anni Albers,' by Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, an independent curator. Weber's is the best of a handful of essays as succinct as the works they illuminate."

Hilarie M. Sheets. NYTBR, Feb. 20, 2000: 20.

Allen, Woody
The Unruly Life of Woody Allen: A Biography. Marion Meade. New York: Scribner, 2000. 384 pp. $26.00.

"Meade, who has previously written biographies of Buster Keaton and Dorothy Parker, does a good job of integrating Allen's various business connections with the managers and movie executives who ended up making him, through various quirks of fate and loyalty, the model of the contemporary independent filmmaker; of describing the process by which he developed his cinematic abilities; and of crediting the collaborators who helped him. For critical perspective she relies primarily on the opinions of a handful of reviewers, all of them well worth hearing from: John Simon, Stanley Kauffman, Penelope Gilliat, Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby. In other words, although the book lacks the kind of serious and considered assessment of Allen's work that, whatever his moral failings, it deserves, the lack is not so much a failure as a comment on what kind of book it is."

Mim Udovitch. NYTBR, Mar. 5, 2000: 13.

Arnim, Achim von. See Brentano, Bettine.

Astor, Bronwen
Bronwen Astor: Her Life and Times. Peter Stanford. London: HarperCollins, 2000. 365 pp. £19.99.

The biography of top fifties fashion model and wife of Lord Astor, Bronwen Astor. "In Peter Stanford's well-written biography, Bronwen is portrayed as a woman as good as she is beautiful, serious, trusting, and deeply religious, but she also comes over as lacking in imagination. . . . Stanford's respectful biography is conscientious and thorough. . . ."

Selina Hastings. TLS, Mar. 24, 2000: 31.

Bashkirtseff, Marie...

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