It’s Monday, but I got to talk to the creator and author behind the popular food blog The Wednesday Chef, Luisa Weiss, last week. She’s also the author of the best-selling memoir, My Berlin Kitchen which came out late last year, and as you may have guessed, she lives in Berlin.
Posts in category Book reviews
Are German Parents as Superior as French Parents?
The Wall Street Journal published another provocative piece on one certain “ethnic” parenting style superior than the American one. I put ethnic in quotes as I refer first to the Tiger parenting style written and described by Amy Chua early last year. Chua talked about the hardline, rather Spartan style which Chinese parents in particular use to raise their children in her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” She ceded that other ethnicities may adopt this same style, but in Chua’s essay for the Wall Street Journal, she uses the term Chinese mothers to describe the implementers of this take-no-prisoner approach.
Chua posits that the soft approach of Western parents is for wusses. But this month, Pamela Druckerman maintains in this Wall Street Journal excerpt from her book, “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting” that French parents can also take a firm stance, and it’s the Americans who are getting run over by their kids.
Druckerman refers to a few anecdotes that seemed familiar. And as her comparisons continued between French and American parenting styles, some of the themes and observations were familiar ones that I have made during my own recent repatriation from Germany to the US. READ MORE »
Mark Twain in Berlin: Back a book!
Mark Twain traveled the world and wrote about it in several of his books. When I went to Hawaii, I learned that Twain had long ago beat me to it, back when the Hawaiian Islands were still better known as the Sandwich Islands. I also knew he had been to Europe and Germany, but I didn’t really know about his time in Berlin, along with his family.
Recently I wrote a review of a book about the Berlin Wall produced by Eva Schweitzer’s Berlinica publishing house. Now Dr. Schweitzer has announced a new book about an interesting but little known topic: Mark Twain in Berlin in the early 1890s. In an unusual twist for publishing, she is inviting potential readers to help fund the book, with an intended publication date of June 2012.
But first, let’s look at a bit of obscure history concerning America’s most famous humorist author. READ MORE »
Book Review: The Berlin Wall Today
The Berlin Wall Today: Remnants, Ruins, Remembrances
by Eva C. Schweitzer (photographer), Michael Cramer (foreword)
Publisher: Berlinica
It’s amazing how quickly the massive, 100-mile-long Berlin Wall disappeared after it was first breached on the night of November 9, 1989. By the time of official German reunification in 1990, most of the Wall that had stood for 28 years had simply vanished! A little over two decades later, even less of the Wall remains. If you want to find its traces, you need a guide like The Berlin Wall Today.
But this book is much more than a mere guide for would-be Wall explorers. It is also a history book of the best kind: short and to the point. Through words and pictures it gives the reader a better understanding of the Wall – past, present and future. (The future includes plans to expand the marking of significant Wall landmarks.)
Michael Cramer’s introduction offers a good summary of the Berlin Wall’s past and the struggle to preserve even a few bits and pieces for future generations. READ MORE »
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