Reviewed Elsewhere

Samurai William. Giles Milton. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002. 415 pp. $23.20. "His name was William Adams and he would go on to serve as the model for both Jonathan Swift's Gulliver . . . and James Clavell's Blackthorne in the highly inaccurate but hugely popular Shogun. . . . Adams lived two lives. In England, he learned to build and pilot ships and helped Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada. In Japan . . . he became a samurai and built ships for the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. . . . Milton tells a good yarn though entirely from a European point of view." Danyll Wills. Far Eastern Economic Review, Nov 7, 2002: 58. Addams, Jane "Jean Bethke Elshtain has helped place Jane Addams in the central position [End Page 171] she deserves in American history. . . . Elshtain expertly guides us through the arc of Addams's life. . . . Elshtain accomplishes this feat by organizing her thoughtful biography around the democratic and literary themes so important to Addams." Daphne Spain. TLS, May 24, 2002: 5-6. "Elshtain gives us an engaging analysis of Addams' social and political philosophy, highlighting her fit with Elshtain's own concerns: the primacy of the individual, the legitimate demands of the community and the importance of civil institutions—educational, religious and voluntary—in arbitrating conflicts between individuals and communities. Elshtain's interest in Addams also derives from her self-identification as a feminist and her belief that Addams deserves greater recognition as a thinker and public intellectual." Kathryn Kish Sklar. Women's Review of Books 19.9 (June 2002): 16-20. Andréas-salomé, Lou Françoise Giroud likes to write portraits of women (Marie Curie, Alma Mahler, Jenny Marx, Cosima Wagner). She does not really like them (it is obvious with Alma Mahler). As for Lou Andréas-Salomé, she is intrigued: did she suffer from sexual atrophy, as pronounced Nietzsche, or was she a sexless Messalina, according to H. F. Peters's formula? Giroud launches a tentative explanation of her own. Jo[siane] S[avigneau]. Le Monde des Livres, July 26, 2002: 4. Augustine While Jerphagnon is publishing in the Pléiade collection the third volume of St. Augustine's works, Jean-Louis Chrétien analyzes in the 23 chapters of his book (the title of every one of these being a simple verb: question, listen, eat, drink, translate, read, ask, pardon, etc.) the acts through which St Augustine thought and represented the relationship between man and God. The master words seem to be "confess" (in its three senses), and "listen." P[atrick] K[échichian]. Le Monde des Livres, July 12, 2002: 9. Baker, Chet "Baker's career, in unrelenting detail, an unvarying chronicle of gigs, drugs and women, with the occasional prison interlude, provides a fascinating [End Page 172] insight into a flawed life of perhaps the most conspicuous victim of drugs among jazz musicians." Stuart Nicholson. TLS, Aug, 23, 2002: 9. Balanchine, George. See Stravinsky, Igor. Balzac, Honoré De "What a pleasure to read Gastho Gilbert's jaunty and irreverent account of Balzac! A People's-eye peek into the women in his life! Uncluttered with the paraphernalia of academe! No irritating index or bibliography! Just the gossip and the glamor! Isn't this a sure way to win readers? A colloquial style, dotted with exclamation points and question marks! . . . This may be the first serious, albeit non-scholarly, biography of Balzac that is fun to read. . . . Gastho's book is a pleasant introduction to Balzac for new readers." Gretchen Rous Besser. French Review 76.1 (Oct. 2002): 124-25. Bandler, Faith Bandler's "silken qualities make it harder to re-create a complex life spent at the barricades of human rights, but Lake's generous, steady account—forsaking any trumpet-blowing—matches her subject well. Lake portrays three key forces: a rigorous but filled-with-love upbringing, Bandler's postwar politicization and a strong creative urge. . . . Lake gives a solid reading of those early struggles but becomes less biographer and more historian; we're drawn to crucial events but denied the telling insights into Bandler's motivations and growth." Tony Maniaty. Weekend Australian, Aug...