Review
From the book jacket: In each of the three sections of Michael
Cunningham's bold new novel we encounter the same
group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young
woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at
the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings
confront the alienating realities of the new machine age.
"The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first
century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as
it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating
bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part,
"Like Beauty," evokes a New York 150 years into the future,...
Beyond the Book
Walter Whitman (1819-1892) was born in Long
Island, New York where his father worked as a carpenter and farmer. He was
educated in Brooklyn until the age of 12, after which he left school to work as
an office boy, and soon after as a printer's assistant. During the next few
years he contributed articles to newspapers (including some of the earliest
coverage of baseball games) and taught in various schools. In 1838 he founded,
and was the first editor of, the Huntington based
Long Islander newspaper (which
still exists today). He continued to educate himself by attending the opera,
theatre and through copious reading, and also found time to edit a couple of
other newspapers including the
Brooklyn Eagle, from which he was...
