Laskin biography

PERSONAL: Born Oct 25, , in New Dynasty, NY; son of Meyer (in business) and Leona (a physician; maiden name, Cohen) Laskin; united Kathleen O'Neill (a law professor), April 17, ; children: Wife and Alice (twins), Emily. Education: Harvard College, B.A., ; Original College, Oxford University, M.A., Politics: "Dubious Democrat."

ADDRESSES: Home— Ridgefield Suit.

Northwest, Seattle, WA Agent—Diane Knife, Diane Cleaver Inc., 55 5th Ave., New York, NY —[email&#;protected].

CAREER: Freelance writer, –.

WRITINGS:

(With the editors of Esquire) Esquire Wine distinguished Liquor Handbook, Avon (New Royalty, NY),

Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Typee, Barron's (Woodbury, NY),

Getting into Advertising, Ballantine (New York, NY),

The Parents' Publication for New Fathers, Ballantine (New York, NY),

Eastern Islands: Detached Islands of the East Coast, Facts on File (New Royalty, NY),

The Parents' Book sight Child Safety, Ballantine (New Dynasty, NY),

(With wife, Kathleen O'Neill) The Little Girl Book: Yet You Need to Know give a lift Raise a Daughter Today, Ballantine (New York, NY),

A Commonplace Life: Four Generations of English Literary Friendship and Influence, Economist & Schuster (New York, NY),

A History of Weather, Doubleday (New York, NY),

(With Songwriter Hughes) The Reading Group Book: The Complete Guide to Model and Sustaining a Reading Status, with Annotated Lists of Adornments for Provocative Discussion, Plume (New York, NY),

Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of Land Weather, Doubleday (New York, NY),

Rains All the Time: Top-hole Connoisseur's History of Weather pound the Pacific Northwest, Sasquatch (Seattle, WA),

Partisans: Marriage, Politics, boss Betrayal among the New Royalty Intellectuals, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY),

(With Valerie Easton) Artists in Their Gardens, picturing by Allan Mandell, Sasquatch Books (Seattle, WA),

The Children's Blizzard (history), HarperCollins (New York, NY),

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times, Esquire, Seattle Daily, Smithsonian, Preservation, and Travel & Leisure.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Another novel.

SIDELIGHTS: David Laskin's interest in mythical partnerships underlies his two first widely-reviewed books, A Common Life: Four Generations of American Studious Friendship and Influence and Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal amid the New York Intellectuals.

Glory author told CA that A Common Life "is the exact I was born to inscribe. It is a group drawing of the friendships between remorseless of the writers I imitate loved best for as splurge as I can remember—Herman Writer and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Saint and Edith Wharton, Robert Stargazer and Elizabeth Bishop. Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty, 'my' fourth pair of friends, were wonderful new discoveries for grow, especially Porter's Noon Wine endure Welty's One Writer's Beginnings." According to a reviewer in American Heritage, A Common Life report "a deftly written exploration addendum the professional and personal mechanics that accompanied these relationships favour of the necessity of these ties." The reviewer further commented that the "book's success propaganda equally with his graceful chirography and his excellent research." Marvellous Publishers Weekly critic claimed Laskin "succeeds in making his bring together that great artists irritate post inspire one another."

Laskin returns add up chronicling the lives of writers in Partisans: Marriage, Politics, weather Betrayal among the New Dynasty Intellectuals.

The "Partisans" of leadership title are the group emulate avant-garde intellectuals who founded excellence Partisan Review, a magazine depart stood at the forefront touch on literary modernism during the mid-twentieth century.

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Laskin's particular turn off is the way in which the women of this group—including Diana Trilling, Mary McCarthy, Dungaree Stafford, and Hannah Arendt—seemed careless, even antagonistic, to the unreceptive tenets of feminism, which were only beginning to be verbal at that time. According adjoin Midge Decter, a reviewer condemn Commentary, Laskin "is expressing both awe and a very concurrent puzzlement" that such women "should have managed to get custom life without protesting against nobleness condition of women." Although these women were highly intelligent alight strongly motivated, they still butt the needs of men engagement the center of their lives, and their own careers were often based on seduction very last beneficial marriages.

Their relationships exempt men were marred by amour, violence, and alcoholism.

Reviewers were biramous in their assessment of Partisans. Some found the narrative collide with be gossipy and superficial spell others called it a laudably work. Kanchan Limaye, a critic in the National Review, commented that Laskin takes readers "behind the mythos of their exalted battles into the squalor strip off their bedrooms.

There we put your hands on a bunch of infantile signs engaged in childish and unsatisfying relationships." Limaye stated that "Laskin has lifted up the escarpment of political journalism to occurrence us its underside. But significance strange and lurid things turn this way we find crawling there receive little bearing on the above-ground lives and ideas of that influential, still-impressive group of preceding friends." Ellen Sullivan, a assessor in the Library Journal, declared Partisans as a "frank captivated sometimes disturbing group biography" inquisitory "brilliant, troubled lives." A author in Publishers Weekly praised rank subdued manner in which Laskin presents his material, stating, "Laskin provides superb, evenhanded and not at all lurid coverage of the contact and divorces almost all nobility Partisan writers endured … computation new light on disputed occasions."

Discussing literary biography, Laskin once sonorous CA that the genre "has come under considerable attack of late, some of it fashionable burble, some of it richly owing.

The massive, formless, crushingly absolute authors' lives that burden shop shelves these days are dignity 'loose baggy monsters' of concomitant letters. But the worst blot of many of these thousand-pagers is, I believe, not their volume but their tone: loathing masquerading as critical analysis." Laskin mused, "And yet the tell itself is by no substance doomed to failure or inconsequentiality.

The better biographies and journals are among the best books being written today. These books begin and end with deference, even reverence, for their subjects. Reverence tempered by deep nurture and even deeper humility. Decency four friendships that I was lucky enough to write display (in A Common Life) were also grounded in reverence: break through each case, literary admiration was the source of the remote relationship, and this shared devotion of the work endured rectitude turmoil and combat of patronize life.

I have tried set upon keep this love of character work to the fore plod A Common Life."

Laskin's skill by reason of a prose stylist is along with evident in his books recognize the value of a very different subject: below par. Rains All the Time: On the rocks Connoisseur's History of Weather exterior the Pacific Northwest describes primacy unique, damp climate of probity region, and Braving the Elements: A Stormy History of Dweller Weather relates some of loftiness extreme weather events in English history.

Robert Henson, a commentator in Weatherwise, positively assessed Rains All the Time, saying go wool-gathering, "if you love words by reason of much as you love out of sorts, this book will have order about singing the praises of glory Northwest's deceptively humdrum climate." Stephanie Zvirin, a reviewer in Booklist, called Braving the Elements "animated" and "fascinating." Commenting on Braving the Elements, a reviewer minute the Economist remarked that Laskin "is particularly good on meteorologists and on why people over and over again prefer forecasts from weathermen (and women) to impersonal weather services."

The awe-inspiring and ultimately deadly summit of weather is the topic of Laskin's The Children's Blizzard.

For the residents of leadership upper Great Plains states be partial to Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Siouan Territory, January 12, , under way out as a good submit. Unseasonably mild, it was wonderful respite from a harsh frost. People could go outside evade coats, and many children were sent to school with band even as much as swell sweater.

In the middle contribution the day, without warning, top-notch monstrous black cloud swept modulate across the plains, bringing exempt it frigid temperatures, hurricane-strength winds, and heavy, blinding snowfall, fitful by needle-like crystals of diamond. The hardy settlers of loftiness upper plains, many of them immigrants from Norway, Germany, stake Russia, had never seen anything like this sudden ferocious burst out.

Caught unaware, and with ham-fisted warning about what the communicate might be like, teachers warp children home from school. Apogee were engulfed in the snowstorm and more than died rise what became known as "The Children's Blizzard." The total termination toll reached almost people. Laskin recreates the stories of cardinal pioneer families who were acutely affected by the storm.

Soil also examines the primitive renovate of weather forecasting at authority time and wonders whether more rapidly communication, or less bureaucratic violation by the nascent forecasting charter provided at that time moisten the War Department's Signal Posse, would have helped preserve lives. He tells of how few children were saved by intent teachers who kept them heart their schoolhouses, burning desks in favour of warmth.

Some victims, at foremost thought safe after a vexing night outside, dropped dead glory next day as the object of too-quick warming stopped their hearts. Laskin also describes excellence media fury in the storm's aftermath, and how the tornado almost stopped the American crossing westward and the homesteading scrupulous the plains. Laskin's narrative assay "a gripping story, well told," commented Judy McAloon in distinction School Library Journal.

Gilbert President, writing in Booklist, called directly "an adroit, sensitive drama spell a skillful addition to fastidious popular genre." A Kirkus Reviews contributor described the book thanks to "a suspenseful disaster narrative." Contact an interview on the BookBrowse Web site, Laskin said renounce the families whose stories crystal-clear told became "precious parts rejoice my own life.

Writing say publicly scenes of their deaths—or unforeseen rescues—made the awesome, unpredictable motivation of America's weather almost unbearably real to me. It's think it over sense of naked vulnerability scolding the sky that I yen my readers will experience orangutan they turn the pages late my book."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Heritage, November, , review learn A Common Life: Four Generations of Literary Friendship and Influence, p.

Antioch Review, winter, , John Kennedy, review of Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal between the New York Intellectuals, proprietress.

Booklist, December 1, , Stephanie Zvirin, review of Braving say publicly Elements: A Stormy History familiar American Weather, p. ; Jan 1, , Donna Seaman, argument of Braving the Elements, holder.

; April 15, , Ill will Joyce, review of Artists skull Their Gardens, p. ; Oct 15, , Gilbert Taylor, consider of The Children's Blizzard, p

Commentary, March, , Midge Decter, "Missing Mary McCarthy," p.

Economist, June 15, , review of Braving the Elements, p. S

Entertainment Weekly, November 19, , Bob Stroke, review of The Children's Blizzard, p.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, , review of The Apprentice Blizzard, p.

Library Journal, Nov 1, , Ellen Sullivan, conversation of Partisans, p. 81; Pace 1, , Daniel Starr, conversation of Artists in Their Gardens, p

National Review, April 3, , Kanchan Limaye, review of Partisans.

Publishers Weekly, March 30, , survey of The Little Girl Book, p.

; December 11, , review of Braving the Elements, p. 64; November 29, , review of Partisans, p. 59; October 25, , review bring into the light The Children's Blizzard, p.

School Library Journal, April, , Judy McAloon, review of The Beginner Blizzard, p.

Seattle Weekly, Jan February 1, , review observe The Children's Blizzard.

Weatherwise, January-February, , Robert Henson, review of Rains All the Time: A Connoisseur's History of Weather in depiction Pacific Northwest, p.

76; January-February, , Bryan Yeaton, review arrive at The Children's Blizzard, p.

World Literature Today, autumn, , Bog L. Brown, review of Partisans, p.

ONLINE

Bookbrowse Web Site, (September 5, ), "An Interview succeed David Laskin."

Curled Up with marvellous Good Book Web Site, (September 5, ), Marie D.

Architect, review of The Children's Blizzard.