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The Atlantic and Plum are pleased to announce their first reading list – Bookmark 2007. This year’s reading list selections are listed at the top right section of this page. We encourage people to discuss these books in the comments section in the blog posts below.
This summer, The Atlantic and Plum hosted a series of events in Nantucket celebrating books and ideas. To learn more about these events, visit our Events page. To learn more about Bookmark 2007, visit our About page.Permalink ::Video Highlights from Bookmark on the BeachAs the sun set at Jetties Beach on August 26, Plum and The Atlantic hosted Bookmark on the Beach, the final event of our Bookmark 2007 partnership.
The evening, which attracted more than 300 guests, began with a discussion on the power of words with Pulitzer Prize winning author Debby Applegate, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, musician Josh Ritter, and Atlantic literary editor Ben Schwarz.
Next up was a debate between author Christopher Hitchens and AtlanticAssociate Editor Ross Douthat, moderated by Paul Holdengraber, the Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library.
Music by Josh Ritter followed as everyone in attendance discussed the debate over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.
To view a video featuring highlights of the Bookmark on the Beach festival, click here.
Permalink ::Photos from Bookmark on the BeachOn August 26, The Atlantic and Plum held their first Bookmark on the Beach Festival. Some photos from the event are featured below.
God—Is He or Isn’t He?: A Civilized Debate
Making Words Sing: An Author, An Editor, A Poet and A Lyricist
More photos after the jump.
Continue reading Photos from Bookmark on the Beach...
Permalink ::Bookmark on the MorningNoon&Night ShowTo preview the upcoming Bookmark on the Beach event, Plum's MorningNoon&Night Show interviewed a number of the participants from August 26 event.
To view the video of these interviews, click on the pictures below.
Christopher Hitchens
The Atlantic's Ben Schwarz
Paul Holdengraber
The Atlantic's Ross Douthat
Permalink ::Josh Ritter on the MorningNoon&Night ShowAs part of the Bookmark on the Beach festivities, Josh Ritter performed on Plum's MorningNoon&Night Show on the morning of August 26.
To watch the video of this performance, click on the photo below.
Permalink ::An evening at the GrahamsEarlier this summer, Nantucket residents Stephen and Cathy Graham opened their home to Bookmark guests for a discussion of Thomas Mallon's novel Fellow Travelers. The event was a smashing success.
Listen to what some of the guests had to say here.
Permalink ::Josh Ritter to perform August 26thAmerican singer-songwriter Josh Ritter will perform at Bookmark on the Beach on August 26th. Get a taste of Josh's music here.
Permalink ::Bookmark on the Beach: Christopher Hitchens debate promo
Permalink ::Join us for Bookmark on the Beach
Click on the image to view a larger versionPermalink ::Bookmark at Bennett Hall: Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed by James Bennet
Photo: Liz Huberman
Plum and The Atlantic Monthly have teamed up to bring some amazing authors to Nantucket for Bookmark 2007. On Sunday, August 5, we sat down with Jeffrey Goldberg at Bennett Hall to discuss his powerful novel Prisoner, a book that takes us into the heart of an Israeli prison accounting Goldberg's interaction with a Palestinian insurgent being held there."Israel was not a complicated subject for me as a kid," he said during his session in front of a live audience.
"I wasn't happy about being assigned to this prison," Goldberg stated, but, he continues, "I saw two positives to being there. One positive, I was an incipient reporter in this place, I'll make use of this and meet some of these guys and see what they're about. Two: By talking to these people, maybe I could, in some small way, soften some hearts and the way people feel about the conflict [between Israelis and Palestinians]."
Goldberg's life-changing experience began in the early 90s, as the conflicts in Israel and the Gaza Strip began to escalate. "These things change quickly," he said, "Unfortunately for us, they're changing in a negative way."
To view clips on this interview, click on the photo.
To learn about our August 26 Bookmark on the Beach event in Nantucket, visit our Events page.
Permalink ::Jon Frankel on the book that matters mostWhat book does HBO's Jon Frankel treasure? Find out here.
Permalink ::Ken Adelman on the book that matters mostAmerican diplomat Ken Adelman's selection for the book that matters most is a time-enduring tragedy. Click here to find out what it is.
Permalink ::Shashi Tharoor on the book that matters mostThe book that matters most to acclaimed author Shashi Tharoor? His answer may strike you as unorthodox. Click here to see the clip.
Permalink ::Kenny Leon on the book that matters mostKenny Leon, acclaimed director, reveals the book that matters most to him. The book, he promises, reinforces "everything you need to know about life." Click here to find out what it is.
Permalink ::Nancy Gibbs on the book that matters mostThe book that matters most to Nancy Gibbs, an editor at Time is part of a series that she says has created "an entire generation of readers." Click here to find out what it is.
Permalink ::Amory Lovins on the books that matters mostSuccessful CEO and researcher Amory Lovins' pick for the book that matters most to him reveals his commitment to his field. Click here to find out what it is.
Permalink ::Arlen Specter on the book that matters mostWhich book is most important to this longtime Pennsylvania Senator? Click here to find out.
Permalink ::Anna Deavere Smith reveals the book that matters most to herEarlier this summer, when Plum asked renowned actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith to tell us the book that mattered most to her, she named one of our very own Bookmark 2007 authors and expressed excitement about an upcoming interview she was set to have with him. Watch here.
Permalink ::Jim Lehrer on the book that matters mostWhich controversial 20th century novel matters most to acclaimed news anchor and author Jim Lehrer? Click here to find out.
Permalink ::From The Atlantic Online: Cullen Murphy, the author of Are We Rome?, talks about the American empire's parallels with the ancient republic and how we can learn from Caesar's mistakes.As the Romans Did
Imagine a small agrarian republic that gradually grows into the world’s greatest military and cultural superpower. Over time, as public power is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of wealthy private citizens, that ruling elite falls increasingly out of touch with the world beyond its borders. Those borders, porous and steadily expanding, become ever more difficult to manage and defend. Faltering under the growing burden of policing them, the military is forced to recruit considerable mercenary support to handle conflicts that might arise, as well as those already under way. Eventually, losing its grip on power both internally and externally, the superpower enters a state of accelerating decline, ultimately fading into a shadow of its former glory.
Sound familiar? This describes the predicament the Roman Empire faced toward the end of the third century C.E.—one with obvious and disturbing parallels to the situation that confronts the United States today. Such resonances have brought the analogy between Rome and America to the minds of more than one commentator, including, most recently, the author and editor Cullen Murphy. In his new book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, Murphy takes a closer look at the oft-made comparison between the Roman Empire and the United States, leading the reader on an entertaining jaunt through precincts ancient and modern as he sets out to test the analogy’s validity and relevance.
Permalink ::From The Atlantic Online: Christopher Hitchens on his beef with religion, his faith in mankind, and his new bestselling book, God Is Not GreatTranscending God
It’s an image that could make the most hardened cynic smile: a miniature Christopher Hitchens, fair-haired and apple-cheeked, trotting across a meadow in ankle-strap sandals. It’s a gentle season in a gentle era. Britain has won the war, the ruins have been repaired—the Dartmoor ponies are grazing, the grass is lush and verdant. Nine-year-old Christopher is excelling at school and has a special fondness for Bible studies. By all appearances, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
On this particular outing, Christopher’s religion instructor, a kindly old widow, is using the natural surroundings to demonstrate God’s love for humankind. In His infinite kindness, she explains, He made the grass green, a color that would please and soothe the human eye. “I simply knew,” Hitchens would later write, “almost as if I had privileged access to a higher authority, that my teacher had managed to get everything wrong in just two sentences.” In the green fields of England, an atheist is born.
Continue reading From The Atlantic Online: Christopher Hitchens on his beef with religion, his faith in mankind, and his new bestselling book, God Is Not Great...
Permalink ::Excerpts from an episode of Books & Ideas featuring Walter Isaacson
From the Plum Original Series Books & Ideas, excerpts from an episode featuring Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of a recently published biography of Albert Einstein. In this episode, he happily discusses many details of the brilliant scientist's life.
Permalink ::Excerpts from an episode of Books & Ideas featuring Christopher HitchensFrom the Plum Original Series Books & Ideas, excerpts from an episode featuring Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken author who shares his controversial opinions regarding God and religion.
Permalink ::Cullen Murphy on Plum's MorningNoon&Night Show
Dan Honan interviews Cullen Murphy about his book Are We Rome? on the Nantucket Bookmark 2007 morning show.
Permalink ::Nat Philbrick on Plum's MorningNoon&Night Show
Author Nat Philbrick talks to Dan Honan on Plum’s MorningNoon&Night Show about his book Mayflower for Bookmark 2007.
Permalink ::Scott Stossel on Plum’s MorningNoon&Night Show
The Atlantic’s managing editor Scott Stossel discusses his book Sarge with Plum’s Kate Brosnan as part of the Bookmark 2007 morning show.
Permalink ::Corby Kummer talks on Plum’s MorningNoon&Night Show
The Atlantic’s food critic & writer Corby Kummer talks to Plum’s Kate Brosnan for the Bookmark 2007 morning show.
Permalink ::On Chesil Beach, the film
It is 2007. An American bookseller and filmmaker spends the day with McEwan in London. Directed by Doug Biro ("Herbie Hancock: Possibilities") and shot over four days in England and the United States, the 30-minute film includes interviews with McEwan in London, on-location footage from Chesil Beach, an original soundtrack, commentary from peers and critics, and more. By film's end, a press kerfuffle has been averted, Kafka has come up in conversation twice, and the natural balance of England's beaches has been restored.
Get a glimpse of the film here.
Continue reading On Chesil Beach, the film...
Permalink ::Walter Isaacson on Books & Ideas
From the Plum Original Series Books & Ideas, Walter Isaacson talks to Jage Toba about Einstein.Permalink ::A Tribute to David Halberstam
Nantucket lost a friend and neighbor, David Halberstam. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author spent many summers on the island. Join Plum as we revisit some conversations we had with him over the last few years.Permalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: Thomas Mallon on the mystery surrounding the Kennedy assassinationA Single Bullet Thomas Mallon talks about JFK conspiracy theories and a new book that places the blame squarely on Lee Harvey Oswald.
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot dead. The president was assassinated by the vice president, the KGB, the Mafia, the Cubans, or the Secret Service, depending on who one asks. According to the federal Warren Commission, however, the lone gunman was a 24-year-old radical amed Lee Harvey Oswald.
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: Thomas Mallon on the mystery surrounding the Kennedy assassination...
Permalink ::Bookmark 2007 Kick-Off EventOn Saturday, July 14, from 8 to 10 a.m., the Plum MorningNoon&Night Show in Nantucket will host the launch of Bookmark 2007. Nantucket residents and visitors are invited to gather at Straight Wharf, where the show is taped, to celebrate the launch and to purchase their summer must-read books. Atlantic editors, literary talent, and other special guests will describe the Bookmark 2007 program, discuss the book list, announce the summer's events, and generally build excitement about books and ideas in the Nantucket community.
Special guests include:
Corby Kummer, Senior Editor of The Atlantic and author of The Pleasures of Slow Food and The Joy of Coffee
Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome?
Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower
Tom Scott, Chairman and CEO of Plum
Scott Stossel, Managing Editor of The AtlanticPermalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: Christopher Hitchens reviews On Chesil BeachThink of England Ian McEwan’s new novella evokes his homeland’s natural beauty and the straitened sexual manners of the early 1960s.
A recent article in the London Sunday Times made the matter-of-fact statement that Ian McEwan had emerged in Britain as “our national writer.” I at once understood the justice of this opinion, but without at first being able to say what commanded my assent. A reading of McEwan’s latest novella allows one to be fractionally less vague. The “national” character of this literary fragment is to be found in its simultaneous evocations of time and place, which allow the reader—at any rate the reader of a certain age who is of English provenance—to locate himself with satisfaction in an identifiable geography at a given date.
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: Christopher Hitchens reviews On Chesil Beach...
Permalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: Thomas Mallon on his novel BandboxJazz, Flappers, and Magazines (an interview) Thomas Mallon talks about his new novel "Bandbox"--a madcap caper through the zany publishing world of 1920s New York.
The year is 1928, and a once "sclerotic" men's fashion magazine called Bandbox is in the throes of an unexpected renaissance. At the top of the masthead sits the colossal figure of Jehoshaphat "Joe" Harris, a headstrong, explosive personality whose recent success with Bandbox has brought glory to a waning career. But everything he has achieved could be in jeopardy: his star editor, Jimmy Gordon, has decamped to a rival publication and is doing his utmost to run his old boss out of town. As Harris tries to hang on to his hard-won subscribers and precious ad pages, all kinds of adventures ensue.
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: Thomas Mallon on his novel Bandbox...
Permalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: “The Power and the Profits: Part II,” by David HalberstamIn February 1976, The Atlantic published an article by David Halberstam, entitled “The Power and the Profits: Part II," which explored how three presidents influenced and were influenced by TV, how TV made Vietnam into an electronic war, and how TV dealt with Watergate.
Read the full text here.
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: “The Power and the Profits: Part II,” by David Halberstam...
Permalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: “CBS: The Power and the Profits,” by David HalberstamIn January 1976, The Atlantic published the first half of Halberstam’s piece, “CBS: The Power and the Profits” William Paley, CBS, and the story of how TV became both a shaper and creator of politics.
CBS: The Power and the Profits
In the fall of 1974, in his seventy-fourth year, William S. Paley, a lion in winter pretending it was Indian summer, took time off from running one of the world's great commercial empires to attend the funeral of a younger colleague. Bill Paley liked less and less going to funerals, but in this case the deceased was Hubbell Robinson, and Hub had been in programming. Above all else, programming was close to Paley's heart, the part of broadcasting he loved most. That Hubbell Robinson's second tour of duty at CBS had not ended entirely happily (very few major careers at CBS end happily) was forgotten. (Some ten years earlier Hub had been outlining a program schedule with Jim Aubrey when Aubrey had said, "Hub, you're through." Hub, a gentle soul by comparison with most CBS executives, mistakenly thought Aubrey meant he was through only with that day's planning session.)
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: “CBS: The Power and the Profits,” by David Halberstam...
Permalink ::From the pages of The Atlantic: “How the Economy Went Haywire,” by David HalberstamIn September 1972, The Atlantic published Halberstam’s piece, “How the Economy Went Haywire.”
How the Economy Went Haywire When the bill came due for the Vietnam War, someone had to pay it, and keep paying.In 1954 General Matthew Ridgway, Army Chief of Staff, had carefully programmed exactly what would be needed to fight the Viet Minh and to help the French in Indochina. The cost for one year would be an estimated $3.5 billion. President Eisenhower thereupon called in his economic advisers and Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey. "George, what would all this do to the budget?" he asked. Humphrey thought for a few moments and then gave a quick answer: "It'll mean a deficit, Mr. President." In a way, thought one man present at the meeting, any idea of intervening in Indochina died at that moment.
Continue reading From the pages of The Atlantic: “How the Economy Went Haywire,” by David Halberstam...
Permalink ::Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community in War by Nathaniel PhilbrickNamed one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times, and a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History, Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower tells the story of—as The Atlantic’s brief review last summer put it—“the Pilgrims’ turbulent first fifty years in the New World, and how they set the stage for subsequent American history.” Mayflower presents a riveting narrative tale, and Philbrick brings a bracing (and sometimes bloody) revisionism to one of the nation’s most jealously guarded mythical episodes. “History is at its most potent when the lessons of yesterday flow naturally into today,” wrote Peter Preston in The Observer, in London. “Here, brilliantly constructed, is a river of resonance. We have warlords and constantly shifting alliances, treachery, bribery, bungling. We have religious extremism, racial hatred, military carnage and cover-ups. This could be Afghanistan or Iraq, as bloodily relevant as the latest roadside bomb. Instead, across four centuries, Nathaniel Philbrick offers us the New England of the Mayflower pilgrims, the benign myths that helped shape modern America and what really happened.” Mayflower is both an epic yarn and a touchstone for conversation about America’s origins.
Permalink ::Lolita by Vladimir NabokovIs it pornography? That’s the question that seems always to attend Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the “classic” selection for the inaugural Plum-Atlantic reading list. The Atlantic, for its part, has consistently answered that question with a resounding “No.” When Lolita arrived on American shores in the 1950s, Charles Rolo reviewed it for the magazine, writing “There is not a single obscene term in Lolita, and aficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity of a most original kind. For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material hundred-proof intellectual farce … It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.” Other writers who revisited the book in The Atlantic’s pages in later years were no less adulatory. In 1992 Martin Amis wrote of the book, “I have come to see it, with increasing awe, as exactly the kind of novel that its predecessors are pointing toward,” and “Lolita is perhaps the funniest novel in the language.” More recently Christopher Hitchens, writing about the book on the 50th anniversary of its publication, situated it alongside Joyce’s Ulysses and announced that even after multiple re-readings, the novel keeps its “promise of genius.” A masterpiece of literary craftsmanship, Lolita is an excellent jumping-off point for a discussion of the relationship between style and morality, aesthetics and ethics.
Permalink ::Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen MurphyAlready one of the more talked-about literary events of this year, Cullen Murphy’s book bracingly takes on the question that Americans have been anxiously asking for generations, with increasing urgency of late: Will the American Empire suffer the fate of the Roman Empire? And what does that mean? Eschewing facile comparisons and obvious analogies, Murphy mines history and current events in original ways to create jarring equivalencies between Rome and America, yielding penetrating insights. Is the American Empire fated to decline like Rome? Probably so, at least in some sense. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. “Like Rome,” Murphy writes, “America is in some ways inextinguishable. What we can’t know is which characteristics will be extinguished and which won’t. But we do have a say in the outcome.” Murphy, who for twenty years was The Atlantic’s managing editor, takes us on a brisk and entertaining tour of both Rome in the third century BCE and America at the dawn of the 21st century. This book is both fun and important: America’s future course depends in part on whether we can learn from Rome’s mistakes.
Permalink ::The Emperor's Children by Claire MessudIn a review that appeared in the September 2006 issue of The Atlantic, Elizabeth Judd deemed The Emperor’s Children an “excellent read” and “a cheeky exposé of the pundit class in all its privileged splendor.” “Claire Messud turns the grappling for ideological supremacy among two generations of intellectuals into a riveting comedy of manners,” Judd wrote. “Thirty-year-old Marina, the brainy, ravishing only child of a celebrated journalist, returns to her Upper West Side home to complete a possibly worthless book on the cultural implications of children’s fashion. There she falls for an iconoclastic editor who dismisses her beloved father as ‘a tiny, pointless man roaring behind a curtain.’ ” With The Emperor’s Children, Messud has evoked comparisons to Tom Wolfe, Edith Wharton, and Henry James. The book’s large social canvas, array of interesting characters, and penetrating psychological insights make this a Big Novel in the classic sense, one that has already been a conversation generator, among not only the chattering classes it depicts but also among discerning readers across the country.
To read Elizabeth Judd’s full review of this novel, click here.
Permalink ::On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwanRecently declared Britain’s “national writer” by The Times of London, Ian McEwan must also be counted on the short list of the world’s greatest writers of our time. In Chesil Beach, his new novella, McEwan tells the story of an ill-starred wedding night on England’s Dorset coast in 1962. In the very first line we learn that Florence and Edward, an aspiring concert musician and historian respectively, “were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” Never has so momentous, and cataclysmic, a tale been told around an incident of premature ejaculation. As lurid as that sounds—and McEwan’s description of the couple’s nonconsummation is almost forensic in its clinical detail—this is a beautifully told tale that, despite its brevity, brilliantly captures a moment in time; it touches on universal themes of innocence, desire, and fate, and on the enduring consequences of human decisions made in moments of duress.
Permalink ::Fellow Travelers by Thomas MallonDeemed “one of the most interesting American novelists at work” by John Updike, Thomas Mallon has for many years fused history and fiction in entertaining and provocative ways. In Fellow Travelers, set in Washington, D.C., at the height of the McCarthy era, he unspools a yarn that intertwines the Red Menace and the Lavender Scare. The affair between a debonair, WASPy State Department officer and an earnest young Senate aide—both closeted gay men—plays out against the government’s dogged effort to purge homosexuals from its ranks. Mallon weaves McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade, the young protagonist’s struggle to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholicism, and the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of the Cold War into a dense tapestry of events and ideas. Despite the darker overtones of the anti-gay and anti-Communist witch hunts, Fellow Travelers conveys a buoyant patriotic spirit—and the book provides an occasion for discussion about freedom, sexual identity, and the American Idea amidst the tensions of the Cold War.
Permalink ::All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. JonesSelected by literary editor Benjamin Schwarz as one of the best books of 2006, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, this book was reviewed as follows by The Atlantic in November 2006: “These stories—formal in tone, precise in style, intricately imagined, and arrestingly specific in their evocation of place and time—offer an intimate and impressively varied look at African American life in Washington, D.C., throughout the twentieth century.” Jones does for Washington what James Joyce did for Dublin, giving it a richness and vividness that is both literal and metaphoric. Though set in a range of times and specific places in our nation’s capital, the stories consistently explore the ways in which people negotiate between their own needs and the demands of their families and their communities. All Aunt Hagar’s Children lends itself naturally to discussion not only of the enduring challenges of race in post–Civil War America, but also of the myriad complexities of life in an extended family.
Permalink ::God is Not Great by Christopher HitchensReligion, Christopher Hitchens writes, “is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” This controversial book, which reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, struck a resonant chord in American culture: predictably embraced in some quarters and attacked in others, it has been fiercely debated everywhere. With his usual writerly brio, Hitchens make a number of claims about religion, among them: that it calls for an unhealthy denial of human nature; that it incites violence, and servile deference to authority; that it suppresses free inquiry; and that it is scientifically inaccurate about the origins of the universe and the human race. Whether God Is Not Great infuriates you or affirms your (non)beliefs, it can hardly fail to engage you, and it provides an invigorating, if polemical, starting point for discussion.
Permalink ::The Best and the Brightest by David HalberstamA non-fiction classic, The Best and the Brightest is included on the Bookmark 2007 reading list as a tribute to the late David Halberstam, who was among the greatest journalists of his generation. After beginning his writing career as a newspaperman, eventually covering Vietnam for The New York Times, Halberstam went on to write more than 20 books, many of them top bestsellers. The Best and the Brightest is probably Halbertam’s most important book, and surely his best-known—and it is also the most germane to our present moment. “The Iliad of the American Empire and the Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul,” as The Boston Globe put it, The Best and the Brightest is the riveting, horrifying account of how America’s leaders dragged the nation into quagmire in Vietnam. The book’s relevance now is obvious—and it brings valuable historical perspective to contemporary debates about Iraq, the American empire, and the American soul.
Permalink ::Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth GilbertMany memoirs, and especially memoirs of personal growth and spiritual awakening, are cloying or saccharine. Elizabeth Gilbert’s is neither. An accomplished journalist (she has been nominated three times for a National Magazine Award) and writer of fiction, Gilbert comes across in this book as smart, funny, honest, and engaging—in short, as an excellent companion. No wonder Jennifer Egan, writing in The New York Times, declared, “If a more likable writer than Gilbert is currently in print, I haven’t found him or her.” Eat, Pray, Love tells how Gilbert, reeling and broken in the aftermath of a protracted divorce and a devastating love affair, sought self-understanding and renewal in a year’s journey through three disparate cultures: In Italy, she learns Italian and revels in fine food; in India, she meditates in an ashram; and in Bali, she reconnects with a healer she had met years before—or, as Gilbert describes the motivations for her trip, “I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.”
Permalink ::2007 Reading ListThe Atlantic and Plum are pleased to announce their first reading list–Bookmark 2007. This year’s reading list selections are:
Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam
God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
All Aunt Hagar’s Children, by Edward P. Jones
Fellow Travelers, by Thomas Mallon
The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Are We Rome?, by Cullen Murphy
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick
In the spirit of celebrating books and ideas, we encourage people to discuss these books in the comments section of each entry.This summer, The Atlantic and Plum will host a series of events in Nantucket celebrating books and ideas. The events will kick off with a public filming of The Morning Noon & Night Show focused on Bookmark 2007 at Plum’s Nantucket studio on Saturday, July 14, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. To learn more about this and other events, visit our Events page.
To learn more about Bookmark 2007, visit our About page.
Permalink ::The Atlantic and Plum Announce New Multiplatform Partnership To Celebrate Books and IdeasFor Immediate Release
Contact: Amy Thompson
202-266-7418
athompson@theatlantic.comContact: Graham Veysey
646-292-4233
gveysey@plumtv.comSummer Book Series on Nantucket Launches New Partnership this July
NEW YORK, June 29, 2007 – The Atlantic, a magazine celebrating its 150th anniversary, and Plum, the media network of America’s most influential destination communities, today announced a multiplatform partnership that celebrates books, ideas, and the spirit of community. The first installment, called BOOKMARK 2007, will be launched on Nantucket July 14 and run through the end of August.
At the core of BOOKMARK 2007 is a recommended reading list, compiled by Atlantic editors. The 10 books on the inaugural list are a diverse selection from among the best in recent fiction and non-fiction, along with two classic works and a local Nantucket recommendation. Though the books on the list vary widely in tone, style, and subject matter, they are all, in various ways, conversation-generators. Many of the books, including the classics, have been reviewed in the pages of the Atlantic.
Continue reading The Atlantic and Plum Announce New Multiplatform Partnership To Celebrate Books and Ideas...
Permalink ::
Click on the book title to show all entries.
Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert
The Best and The Brightest
By David Halberstam
God is Not Great
By Christopher Hitchens
All Aunt Hagar’s Children
By Edward P. Jones
Fellow Travelers
By Thomas Mallon
On Chesil Beach
By Ian McEwan
The Emperor’s Children
By Claire Messud
Are We Rome?
By Cullen Murphy
Lolita
By Vladimir Nabokov
Mayflower
By Nathaniel Philbrick