For the past twenty-five years, no one has been better atrevealing secrets than Oprah Winfrey. On what is arguably the mostinflu?ential show in television history, she has gotten herguests—often the biggest celebrities in the world—to bare theirlove lives, explore their painful pasts, admit theirtransgressions, reveal their pleasures, and explore their demons.In turn, Oprah has repeatedly allowed her audience to share in herown life story, opening up about the sexual abuse in her past anddiscussing her romantic relationships, her weight problems, herspiritual beliefs, her charitable donations, and her strongly heldviews on the state of the world. After a quarter of a century of the Oprah-ization of America, canthere be any more secrets left to reveal? Yes. Because Oprah has met her match. Kitty Kelley has, over the same period of time, fear?lessly andrelentlessly investigated and written about the world’s mostrevered icons: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, NancyReagan,
More a biography of Mozart's music than a study of the man himself, Sadie's final opus—he died this year after publishing some 30 books—should delight musicologists but puzzle general readers. Not only is the music Sadie's primary interest, he does not believe it reveals anything, necessarily, about its composer. Indeed, he reminds readers not to impose contemporary values on Mozart's era. "Romantic eyes," for example, might see certain minor-key compositions as expressions of Mozart's grief over his mother's death, but Sadie argues that there's "no real reason to imagine that he used his music as [a] vehicle for the expression of his own personal feelings." Likewise, modern critics expect to see a certain type of progress in Mozart's oeuvre, with subsequent works building and elaborating former ones, in ways alien to Mozart on his contemporaries. Sadie is deft at situating various styles of musical composition in their cultural context: preferences for serious vs. comic opera, shorter vs. longer works, e
A remarkable memoir of small-unit leadership and the coming ofage of a young soldier in combat in Vietnam.' "Using a lean style and a sense of pacing drawn from the tautestof novels, McDonough has produced a gripping account of his firstcommand, a U.S. platoon taking part in the 'strategic hamlet'program. . . . Rather than present a potpourri of combat yarns. . .McDonough has focused a seasoned storyteller’s eye on the details,people, and incidents that best communicate a visceral feel ofcommand under fire. . . . For the author’s honesty and literarycraftsmanship, Platoon Leader seems destined to be read for a longtime by second lieutenants trying to prepare for the future,veterans trying to remember the past, and civilians trying tounderstand what the profession of arms is all about.”–ArmyTimes