Sukey's Favorite

To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian
By Stephen Ambrose
Simon & Schuster Audio, $26
4.5 hours, ISBN 0743529219

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Stephen Ambrose began his career as a professor, military historian and biographer and wrote more than 30 books. But it was in the last dozen years of his life that he became a best-selling author, fueling our national fascination with WWII and bringing its heroes, generals and GI's alike, back into fashion. He described himself as a storyteller, and the stories he gave us, of Lewis and Clark, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the boys who flew B-24s over Germany, among many others, spoke to regular readers and made American history vital and appealing to a huge audience. To To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, completed just before he died in October, is a collection of essays that celebrate the sweep of American history without shying away from its tragic errors and from the ironies that plague political reality. As promised in the subtitle, Ambrose really does make these reflections personal, weaving in his own reactions to the history he lived through and doing it with disarming candor. As always, Ambrose wears his scholarship lightly; you learn as you are entertained, as you listen to wonderful stories told by a master storyteller. Ambrose reads the introduction to this farewell book, and Jeffrey DeMunn continues with the essays.

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REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

She's got it all . . . and she just may not survive it. I Don't Know How She Does It is the title of Allison Pearson's wickedly witty, hip, right-on novel, and it's also the constant refrain of those who know the inimitable Kate Reddy. Two words—Working Mother—explain it all. Kate is an attractive, smart, super-savvy, super-stressed, mega-multitasking, one-line-slinging WM who makes incessant "must remember" lists. She's a successful hedge fund manager who handles multiple multi-million-dollar transactions and a boardroom full of chauvinistic males with aplomb, and the mother of two small children who can't quite be handled the same way. Kate loves her job, loves her children, loves her husband—and there's the rub, the dilemma for 21st century working women. You'll root for Kate all the way, as she navigates the minefields of career and family. Does she find the secret formula to make both work? Tune in. Or as Kate might say, Must remember: listen to Emma Fielding's topnotch reading of topnotch debut novel, sell off Japanese holdings, pick up cleaning, order birthday cake.


Maeve Binchy's Dubliners

There's comfort food and there's comfort listening, and a Maeve Binchy novel can make you just as happy and content as a warming bowl of savory soup on a cold day. Quentins, her latest well-told tale, read in a suitably soft, beguiling brogue by Jennifer Wiltsie, has all the qualities Binchy fans look for and love. The intertwined stories—of love, heartbreak, disappointment and triumph—center on Quentins, a Dublin restaurant that has changed with a changing Ireland, becoming more cosmopolitan and confident over the years. You'll meet its customers, staff and proprietors, finding new characters—including the lovely, young Ella Brady, who falls for a charming scoundrel but ends up with a real Prince Charming—and some of the wonderful characters you've met before in Tara Road and Scarlet Feather. The mix is more than satisfying.


Sorry, wrong number

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