Recent links of note:
“ ‘The Longest Day’ Review: On the Beaches of Normandy”
Winston Groom, The Wall Street Journal
Yesterday marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy. As we remember the heroic actions of Allied service-members on that fateful day, refer to Winston Groom’s appraisal of The Longest Day, the Irish-born war correspondent Cornelius Ryan’s account of the invasion, recently reprinted by Library of America. Ryan’s book, originally published in 1969 after years spent collecting personal accounts of the day, is unique for its synthesis of broad military narrative and gripping first-hand vignettes. Says Groom: “Not only does it hold up after 60 years, it should be required reading in every high school and college in America for the next 50 years.”
“Naomi Wolf’s Career of Blunders Continues in ‘Outrages’ ”
Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
Literary corners of the internet were abuzz two weeks ago, when a BBC interview clip surfaced in which Naomi Wolf discovered on live radio that a primary thesis of her new book is factually incorrect. Wolf was on BBC’s Free Thinking program to promote Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, but her interviewer, the historian Matthew Sweet, promptly disproved her central assertion that “several dozen” men were executed in nineteenth-century Britain for participating in homosexual relationships. In fact, the men Wolf listed were actually granted clemency and only minimal prison sentences. What’s more, their crimes were likely not consensual relationships, as Wolf suggests, but rather acts of abuse by men against young boys. This public moment of on-air anagnorisis was received by most as only the latest evidence that Wolf’s authorial career rests primarily on propaganda and fake history. Parul Sehgal’s takedown appeared Wednesday in The New York Times.
“Music for a While”
Jay Nordlinger, National Review Online
Jay Nordlinger, music critic of The New Criterion, announces to readers his new music podcast, “Music for a While.” We are, needless to say, thrilled to embark on this new initiative with Jay, which will give him the chance to “talk shop” alongside actual tracks of the music discussed. You can listen to the first episode here.
From our pages:
“True crime and a real literary mystery”
Katrina Gulliver