Marguerite Holloway, who will give a slide show presentation at the State Museum on Thursday, is the author of the new book, The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel Jr.
Here's an excerpt from a review in Slate:
"Randel, who was born in Albany in 1787, grew up during “a surveying boom,” when a large portion of prominent American males—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and later, Lincoln—served in the profession at some point. “His was the era of laying lines on the land,” Holloway declares. It was “a culture and a period in which reason and measured action were prized and dominion over the natural world—through exploration, experiment, science, cartography, and infrastructure—was celebrated.” Beginning in about 1804, Randel was hired to assist New York State surveyor-general Simeon Dewitt in his plan to grid upstate New York. Dewitt was influenced by the earlier plan to grid the entire United States, outlined in the 1785 “Ordinance for Ascertaining the Mode of Disposing of Lands in the Western Territory”—the reason why flyover country looks like a waffle iron."
Read more in Slate.
Read about Holloway's visit:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/holloway_marguerite13.html
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Disorderly Story of the Orderly NYC Street Grid
Monday, April 8, 2013
James Salter Profiled in next week's New Yorker
James Salter, who visited us on April 4th, is profiled at length in the forthcoming April 15th issue ofNew Yorker:
The Last Book
James Salter is a revered writer. Can he become a famous one?
by Nick Paumgarten April 15, 2013http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/15/130415fa_fact_paumgarten Read More......
Marguerite Holloway Interviewed in the TU
Marguerite Holloway, who visits us on Thursday, is interviewed in the Times Union about her new book on Albany native and mad genius of the 19th century, John Randel, Jr. The book's title is The Measure of Manhattan.
"Randel's a window into an incredible era in American history.... He's also a fascinating character. He has this precise and careful mathematic rigor, but he's also mercurial and passionate, even irrational — getting involved in all sorts of lawsuits and losing tons of money."
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Manhattan-matrix-4410267.php#ixzz2PtXy0OcF
More about her visit this coming Thursday: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/holloway_marguerite13.html
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Central Park Five in the Schenectady Gazette
"Sarah Burns learned about the case in 2003 while working as an intern for Jonathan Moore, one of the attorneys representing the five young men wrongfully convicted of the jogger’s rape and assault. Burns wrote her undergraduate thesis on the case, and followed it with a book titled “The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding.” But the project wasn’t over.... “I couldn’t let go of this story,” Burns said. “I was so curious about it.”
More in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.net/standard/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=SCH/2013/04/04&ID=Ar03301&Section=Life_and_Arts
More about the event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#central Read More......
Rave Review for James Salter on NPR
Alan Cheuse reviews All That Is by James Salter who visits Albany today:
"Reading this novel — and rereading it as I've been doing in preparation for this review — I found myself in a state that Salter's work, as with the finest writers we know, often induces. The writing is not breathtaking, but breath-enhancing. One seems to draw in more oxygen; the pulse races as when viewing some gloriously rugged and fast-paced adventure movie, or when, in a dream, you get caught up in some fabulous situation that you never imagined you had the power to invent. It's not furious action that excites in these pages, however, but rather Salter's clarity, precision and genius at concision. His emotion-packed sentences, often employing sharp and resonant metaphors, reveal the inner sensations and the truth of ordinary human experience as it plays out over time. Often writing only sentence fragments, Salter zeroes in on the absolutely correct details to evoke mood and place — "Night," we hear about a residence in upstate New York, "with the great river silent. Night with bits of rain. The entire house creaked in winter, and in the summer it felt like Bombay."
More: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/03/175355818/real-writing-real-life-in-salters-all-that-is?sc=emaf
More about Salter's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/salter_james13.html
Picture: Salter in the cockpit of an Army fighter plane in the 1940s.
Monday, April 1, 2013
When Publishing Was a More Genteel Pursuit.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/55753-a-different-kind-of-intimacy-pw-talks-with-james-salter.html
Read more about Salter's upcoming visit here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/salter_james13.html Read More......
Longer Chinua Achebe Interview on YouTube
available on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKDupjm2fU8&feature=youtu.be
The giant of world literature and Hudson Valley resident passed away on March 21, 2013. Read More......