Sukey's Favorite

People of the Century:
One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years
Simon & Schuster Audio, $25
4.5 hours
ISBN 0671788523

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Lists of the best -- and worst -- of practically everything always catch our attention; now, at the end of one century and the beginning of another, they're bigger and better than ever. The editors of Time magazine, in conjunction with CBS News, have put together their own mega-list, People of the Century: One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years, narrated by Dan Rather with Brian Dennehy, Olympia Dukakis, Victor Garber, and Lynne Thigpen (that's a list in itself!). You may disagree with some, be delighted with others, and, as we did on a long car ride, try to anticipate the names in a category before Dan Rather intones them. Many people are named and put in historical context, many others are profiled. It's the pairing of the profilees with the profilers that makes this such an outstanding audio: Elie Wiesel on Hitler, Salman Rushdie on Gandhi, Robert Hughes on Picasso, Hank Aaron on Jackie Robinson, George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali, Lee Iacoca on Henry Ford, to mention only a few.

History and Heroes

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Celebrate this momentous turn of the calendar with some audio-assisted reflection on history and heroes, and some sound advice for the soul.

Call for a quiet revolution

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a disarmingly humble man whose message is finding resonance with a wide range of people. Now, with the future in mind, he has followed his best-selling The Art of Happiness with Ethics for the New Millennium, a thoughtful meditation on a viable morality for this confusing, fast-paced world. A spiritual revolution is necessary, a radical shift in thought based on love and compassion. It's not simple or easy; it takes work to become an ethical person, it takes persistence and sincerity, but the reward may be peace and happiness -- a better chance for a better world. The Dalai Lama's words are gently, yet fervently, read by B.D. Wong.


Only a girl

Irene Gut Opdyke was 17, training to be a nurse, when the Nazis invaded her native Poland. Separated from her close-knit, Catholic family and thrown into the maelstrom and horror of war, she lost everything she knew and loved, but found extraordinary courage, outrage at injustice, and real compassion (that rare quality the Dalai Lama asks us to embrace). In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer, written with Jennifer Armstrong and narrated by Hope Davis, is her memoir -- spellbinding, exciting, and heartbreaking in its detailed description of how this young woman saved the lives of 12 Jews and helped many others. Opdyke survived indignities, degradation, and looming death from both the Germans and the Soviets. She was "just a girl" whom no one thought capable of much, but then no one knew the depth of her conviction and the strength of her empathy. Now a grandmother and longtime American citizen, she shares her story as a monument to hope and heroism for this century and the next.


Man with a mission

John Glenn is an all-American hero, a 20th century icon, and a man who gives currency to the ideals of duty, obligation, and public service. His new memoir, John Glenn, which he reads, gives that image a colorful reality. Born in a small, patriotic Ohio town in 1921, shaped by the Depression and the New Deal, Glenn grew up with the belief that the opportunity to join in America's quests and explorations was not only a sacred challenge, but a joyous adventure. "Everything that came after that," he says, "just seemed to follow naturally." What did follow is part of our proud legacy: Glenn became a highly decorated fighter pilot in WWII and again in Korea; he flew the first U.S. manned orbital mission in 1962; served in the Senate for 24 years; and then, last year at age 77, returned to space to become the world's oldest astronaut. His is an exemplary life, where family and American values are lived rather than hyperbolized.


American history through Churchill's eyes

Sir Winston Churchill, great statesman and historian, rejoiced in his American ancestry and had an enduring fascination with American history. Now, for the first time, the sections on the United States have been taken from Churchill's renowned four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and crafted into The Great Republic: A History of America by his grandson, Winston S. Churchill, who reads this skillful audio presentation. Churchill's language is elegant, his perspective -- from colonial times to the end of the 19th century -- sweepingly eloquent. But it's his personal observations of America during the first half of this century, made in the essays and articles included here, that are most revelatory.


History for the people, by the people

Howard Zinn can be called an alternative historian, one who looks at history through the eyes of the exploited, the oppressed, the conquered, rather than looking at it as the "collective memory of states." He asks us not to accept atrocities as the necessary price for progress, but to look for and learn from those fugitive moments of compassion so often buried in a bloody past. This audio presentation, ably read by Matt Damon, with a preface and afterword by the author, offers "Highlights from the Twentieth Century" from Zinn's A People's History of the United States. This is history at its most provocative. You may not agree with Zinn's viewpoint, but I think you will agree that his exposition is compelling, riveting, and uncommonly informative.


Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.

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