#margalit fox

[nathanpenlington]

Books of the year 2022

I'm not sure where the year went, but here we are again at my books of the year list. 

Like my previous books of the year posts, date of publication is not relevant for this list. This year I had to reread about 70 Choose Your Own Adventure books for a project - they are still as smart, funny, and engaging as ever, but as my love for those is so well documented I haven't included any here. 

So, these are the best books to find me - for the first time - in 2022.

#1 - My favourite thing is monsters - Volume 1 - Emil Ferris (2017)

This book is truly incredible, but not an easy read. 

Drawn mostly with Bic ballpoint pen, it breaks the conventions of graphic novels in many ways. On the surface Monsters is a coming of age story set in 60's Chicago, but it is a multi-layered narrative that catalogues monsters in all forms - those in pulp comics, those responsible for the horrors of the holocaust, and monsters that enable brutal sexual exploitation and abuse.   

It's embedded with sadness, weighed with the heaviness of human struggle, but shot through with light and love. A genuinely important work. 

Volume 2 is forthcoming, I hope in 2023. If so, I can't see it not making next year's list.

#2 - Acting Class - Nick Drnaso (2022)

I loved Nick's previous books - Beverly, and Sabrina - but Acting Class, for me, surpasses both. In Acting Class, as you'd expect, a disparate group of strangers join an amateur acting class. But what the title doesn't give away is the David Lynch like sense of uncanny, an under the surface oddness, which makes the ongoing narrative full of tension. It's compelling in every way.

  #3 - The Labyrinth - Simon Stålenhag (2021)

All of Simon's other books have made my previous books of the year lists, The Labyrinth deserves its place on this year's list too. 

In short The Labyrinth is a brutal sci-fi graphic novel, in which guilt and redemption collide. The art and words work together to build a darker world, where everyday horror seeps into an alternate past future.

  #4 - The Confidence Men - Margalit Fox (2021)

During the 1st World War, two British officers conspired to escape a remote Turkish prisoner of war camp. What follows is a true story of an elaborately planned, long running con, involving seances, spirits, and sleight of hand trickery. It's an outstandingly researched and written book. Film rights have been optioned by Fox, which doesn't surprise me, but the detail in the writing is a joy.

  #5 - Magritte in 400 images - Julie Waseige (2021)

Rene Magritte has been one of my favourite artists since discovering his work as a teenager, tucked away in the tiny Abergele library  in a book on surrealist painters.

This book covers a huge amount of his output, in chronological order. It's interesting to track his obsessions and motifs as they recur and develop. Magritte's use of the ordinary made strange creates a quiet unease, at odds with the more fleshy surrealism of someone like Dali. Magritte's work often playfully explores aspects of illusion and unreality, an area I'm constantly drawn to.  And the best children's book we've read this last year? My oldest daughter is now 6, she's learnt to read using the Biff, Chip and Kipper series (created by Roderick Hunt and illustrated by Alex Brychta in 1986). The illustrations are full of incidental details that are brilliant asides to a world bigger than the story. Creating compelling stories using a limited vocabulary is a constraint greater in challenge than anything used by George Perec.

  My daughter's favourite books have been the Pizazz series by Sophy Henn.

Imagine a girl who is a reluctant super-hero, embarrassed by her super-power (glitter jazz hands anyone?), always wearing her too long cape (chosen by her mum), having to save the world before school, and still forced to do homework. We read them all in a month, thanks to the well stocked Hackney library. Pizazz is funny, smart, and identifiable.

[avadaniels]

— Margalit Fox, "The Séances"

[pixnflixnwrites]

Saul Leiter Self-portrait, 1950 "Trained first as a rabbi and then as a painter, Leiter the photographer spent the last 60 years being cyclically forgotten and rediscovered." - Margalit Fox, from his 2013 @nytimes obituary

[guywithbotheyes]

“who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and Miss Piggy.”

-Margalit Fox, NYTimes

[filmnoiress]

favourite books you read this year? least favourite?

this got so long lol

favourites:

the blood of gods by conn iggulden: this author is very hit or miss for me but thankfully this was a hit! conn iggulden is never better than when he's writing about a sickly little guy <3 he takes historical liberties but he explains where and why in his author's note so i don't really have a problem with it

the facemaker by lindsay fitzharris: lindsay's back and covering even more fascinating surgical history! this time the story of dr harold gillies' groundbreaking work in wwi

the escape artists by neal bascomb: world war i! prison break! really well written! what more could i want!

also augustus by anthony everitt, agent josephine by damien lewis, the race for timbuktu by frank t kryza, moscow nights by nigel cliff, tommy douglas by vincent lam

romantic outlaws by charlotte gordon! such an incredible book i couldn't put it down. mary wollstonecraft and mary shelley were both such fascinating women. every single man in their lives was a demon

rick mcintyre's alpha wolves of yellowstone series: ahh what an incredible series. dynastic drama romance betrayal tragedy family grrm WISHES he could write anything as good as this saga. every single book made me cryyy😭favourites were probably the first two but they're all great

bonfire the chestnut gentleman by susan raby-dunne: i thought this was a really charming book told from the pov of a horse in the first world war, the horse basically has the voice of a stuffy old english gentleman which was so cute

no man's land by wendy moore: such a good book about a military hospital from the first world war (shocker) run entirely by women

through a window and in the shadow of man by jane goodall: i's jane goodall's chimps it's my entire life of course i was going to love these

armadale by wilkie collins: WOOO my man wilkie off the SHITS this book is WILD you know you're in for a wild ride when 35 pages in there are five characters with the exact same name

the confidence men by margalit fox: absolutely bonkers true story of two first world war pows who escape a turkish prison camp by pretending to b psychics. insane

shadow of a doubt by diane negra: really liked this analysis of the movie! i didn't agree with all of her arguments but

crossing hitler by benjamin carter hett: great biography of hans litten makes a great companion piece to babylon berlin

last train to memphis by peter guralnick: this really was an excellent first half of a biography. elvis' life moved so quickly and he became a star so young that it's kind of no wonder he basically lost his mind later on and it's only amazing he held it together as long as he did

dust by arthur slade: this one was for a younger audience but i think it holds up for adults! horror set on the canadian plains during the great depression! what more could i want!

the troop by nick cutter: this was sooo disgusting gooey wet body horror <3 loved it

edit: something wicked this way comes by ray bradbury how could i have forgotten this one! what a great companion piece to carnivale!

as many liars by douglas smith: absolutely insane true story of how the pc party of manitoba installed puppet candidates in several ridings to split the ndp vote in the 1995 provincial election! literally insane that i had never heard of this before. remember you can never trust the conservative party!

carnivale and the american grotesque: wonderful collection of essays about the show, great companion piece, you can really tell the authors love the show

the time traveller's guide to regency britain by ian mortimer: ahh what a lovely informative book. it really felt like the author was taking your hand and leading you on a guided tour of regency britain

wounded by emily mayhew: actually the last book i read that i loved this year, i'm doing this out of order, but yes i loved this! each chapter focuses on a different person on the journey of the wounded in the first world war at least for the british, starting at the front and ending in the hospital

flowers for algernon by daniel keyes: saving this book for last because no book has affected me like this yet. book of the year for me

least favourites:

the sleepwalkers and children of wrath by paul grossman: i was just so disappointed in these because i found both of these really well written in the beginning but by the third act they just go completely off the rails :( novels set in the weimar republic be good challenge

the great stink by clare clark: idk where to put this one. i really didn't think this was a good book and i didn't like how it was written but then there was a twist literally on the very last page that gagged me completely so idk.

the man who walked backward by ben montgomery: ugh i had so many problems with this book and its subject don't get me started. actually do the title and intro make it seem like our subject is a sort of quirky but lovable idiosyncratic person who took a different approach to surviving the great depression and it made all the difference :) when the book makes clear he literally just decided to abandon his wife and kids-as the sole breadwinner of the family-in the middle of the great depression to go walk around backwards??? we read about his wife sending him letters on the road begging him to send money back to his family but he never did and his response was always to chide her for not thinking of his expenses and how hard he's working...but he was looking for advertising for his reverse walking stunt the entire time so clearly he was hoping for money from this. you couldn't have sent any back to your family? then it turns out he might have been smuggling drugs the entire time???

the devil's playground by craig russell: mr russell i loved your last book what is this. this wasn't scary, the characters were flat, iou could see the twist coming a mile away (compare that to the devil aspect when i had NO idea it was coming), and such a waste of a great setting (1920s hollywood silent horror film set!!!)

1794 by niklas natt och dag: listen i remember how gross and indulgent and misanthropic the first book was. but this book is so ridiculously over the top about it (like that female character who literally exists just to be tortured b the author). and at least the first book was about a compelling case and had Thee character in cecil winge. no one is comparing in this one. such a disappointing sequel

the wasteland b w. scott poole: ugh. this book has such an awesome premise (exploring how wwi influenced horror cinema!) but it's so bad. the author has the weirdest gaps in his research, each chapter is supposed to be about its own subject but they all blend together, and as much as he reiterates his thesis statement on literally every single page he never actually delves into what that statement means or is clear on what the thesis is! are you saying the first world war influenced horror films just in the decades immediately following it or all horror to come? but actually i'm not too mad at this book bc reading it was frustrating but it also just became a very productive exercise on what not to do. i absolutely could have done better

the house of whispers by laura purcell: another disappointing follow up to the silent companions from purcell. this wasn't scar, there was no dread, it was so slow, so many random aspects that never came together, unlikable characters. smh

shadows on the mountain by erin hunter: me when i read a book by the warrior cats lady and she does her weird warrior cats thing: :O no one @ me ik this is for kids i just wanted to read a novel about apes :( there's no need to add all this weird mythology literally the animal behaviour is mythology enough

[meta-squash]

Squash’s Book Roundup of 2022

This year I read 68 books. My original goal was to match what I read in 2019, which was 60, but I surpassed it with quite a bit of time to spare.

Books Read In 2022:

-The Man Who Would Be King and other stories by Rudyard Kipling -Futz by Rochelle Owens -The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht -Funeral Rites by Jean Genet -The Grip of It by Jac Jemc -Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche -Hashish, Wine, Opium by Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier -The Blacks: a clown show by Jean Genet -One, No One, One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello -Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi -The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Three-Line Novels (Illustrated) by Felix Feneon, Illustrated by Joanna Neborsky -Black Box Thrillers: Four Novels (They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, No Pockets in a Shroud, I Should Have Stayed Home) by Horace McCoy -The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustave Flaubert -The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco -Illusions by Richard Bach -Mole People by Jennifer Toth -The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann -Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse -Equus by Peter Shaffer (reread) -Ghosty Men by Franz Lidz -A Happy Death by Albert Camus -Six Miles to Roadside Business by Michael Doane -Envy by Yury Olesha -The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West -Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche -The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox -The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs -Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry -Camino Real by Tennessee Williams (reread) -The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams -Comemadre by Roque Larraquy -The Zoo Story by Edward Albee -The Bridge by Hart Crane -A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty -The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel -The Law In Shambles by Thomas Geoghegan -The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzche -The Maids and Deathwatch by Jean Genet -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -The Screens by Jean Genet -Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread) -The Quarry by Friedrich Durrenmatt -A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud (reread) -Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula -Pere Ubu by Alfred Jarry -Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson -Loot by Joe Orton -Julia And The Bazooka and other stories by Anna Kavan -The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda by Ishmael Reed -If You Were There: Missing People and the Marks They Leave Behind by Francisco Garcia -Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters -Indelicacy by Amina Cain -Withdrawn Traces by Sara Hawys Roberts (an unfortunate but necessary reread) -Sarah by JT LeRoy (reread) -How Lucky by Will Leitch -Gyo by Junji Ito (reread) -Joe Gould’s Teeth by Jill Lepore -Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau -Bakkai by Anne Carson -Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh -Moby Dick by Herman Melville -The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector -In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (reread from childhood) -Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren -The Medium is the Massage by Malcolm McLuhan

~Superlatives And Thoughts~

Fiction books read: 48 Non-fiction books read: 20

Favorite book: This is so hard! I almost want to three-way tie it between Under The Volcano, The Quick & The Dead, and The Man With The Golden Arm, but I’m not going to. I think my favorite is Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. It’s an absolutely beautiful book with such intense descriptions. The way that it illustrates the vastly different emotional and mental states of its three main characters reminded me of another favorite, Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. Lowry is amazing at leaving narrative breadcrumbs, letting the reader find their way through the emotional tangle he’s recording. The way he writes the erratic, confused, crumbling inner monologue of the main character as he grows more and more ill was my favorite part.

Least favorite book: I’d say Withdrawn Traces, but it’s a reread, so I think I’ll have to go with Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. I dedicated a whole long post to it already, so I’ll just say that the concept of the book is great. I loved the whole idea of it. But the execution was awful. It’s like the exact opposite of Under The Volcano. The characters didn’t feel like real people, which would have been fine if the book was one written in that kind of surreal or artistic style where characters aren’t expected to speak like everyday people. But the narrative style as well as much of the dialogue was attempting realism, so the lack of realistic humanity of the characters was a big problem. The book didn’t ever give the reader the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to infer or empathize or figure things out for themselves. Every character’s emotion and reaction was fully explained as it happened, rather than leaving the reader some breathing space to watch characters act or talk and slowly understand what’s going on between them. Points for unique idea and queer literature about actual adults, but massive deduction for the poor execution.

Unexpected/surprising book: The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox. This is the first book about archaeology I’ve ever read. I picked it up as I was shelving at work, read the inner flap to make sure it was going to the right spot, and then ended up reading the whole thing. It was a fascinating look at the decades-long attempt to crack the ancient Linear B script, the challenges faced by people who tried and the various theories about its origin and what kind of a language/script it was. The book was really engaging, the author was clearly very passionate and emotional about her subjects and it made the whole thing both fascinating and fun to read. And I learned a bunch of new things about history and linguistics and archaeology!

Most fun book: How Lucky by Will Leitch. It was literally just a Fun Book. The main character is a quadriplegic man who witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping. Because he a wheelchair user and also can’t talk except through typing with one hand, his attempts to figure out and relay to police what he’s seen are hindered, even with the help of his aid and his best friend. But he’s determined to find out what happened and save the victim of the kidnapping. It’s just a fun book, an adventure, the narrative voice is energetic and good-natured and it doesn’t go deeply into symbolism or philosophy or anything.

Book that taught me the most: Destruction Was My Beatrice by Jed Rasula. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but I love Dadaism, so this book was absolutely for me. I had a basic knowledge of the Dadaist art movement before, but I learned so much, and gained a few new favorite artists as well as a lot of general knowledge about the Dada movement and its offshoots and members and context and all sorts of cool stuff.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I annotated my copy like crazy. I never had to read it in school, but I had a blast finally reading it now. There’s just so much going on in it, symbolically and narratively. I think I almost consider it the first Modernist novel, because it felt more Modernist than Romantic to me. I had to do so much googling while reading it because there are so many obscure biblical references that are clear symbolism, and my bible knowledge is severely lacking. This book gave me a lot of thoughts about narrative and the construction of the story, the mechanic of a narrator that’s not supposed to be omniscient but still kind of is, and so many other things. I really love Moby Dick, and I kind of already want to reread it.

Other thoughts/Books I want to mention but don’t have superlatives for: Funeral Rites was the best book by Jean Genet, which I was not expecting compared to how much I loved his other works. It would be hard for me to describe exactly why I liked this one so much to people who don’t know his style and his weird literary tics, because it really is a compounding of all those weird passions and ideals and personal symbols he had, but I really loved it. Reading The Grip Of It by Jac Jemc taught me that House Of Leaves has ruined me for any other horror novel that is specifically environmental. It wasn’t a bad book, just nothing can surpass House Of Leaves for horror novels about buildings. The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was absolutely beautiful. I went in expecting a Maltese Falcon-type noir and instead I got a novel that was basically poetry about characters who were flawed and fucked up and sad but totally lovable. Plus it takes place only a few blocks from my workplace! The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann was amazing and I totally love his style. I think out of all the stories in that book my favorite was probably The Blue Yonder, the piece about the murderer with a sort of split personality. Scintillant Orange with all its biblical references and weird modernization of bible stories was a blast too. The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams was amazing and one of my favorites this year. It’s sort of surreal, a deliberately weird novel about three weird girls without mothers. I loved the way Williams plays with her characters like a cat with a mouse, introducing them just to mess with them and then tossing them away -- but always with some sort of odd symbolic intent. All the adult characters talk and act more like teens and all the teenage characters talk and act like adults. It’s a really interesting exploration of the ways to process grief and change and growing up, all with the weirdest characters. Joe Gould’s Teeth was an amazing book, totally fascinating. One of our regulars at work suggested it to me, and he was totally right in saying it was a really cool book. It’s a biography of Joe Gould, a New York author who was acquaintances with EE Cummings and Ezra Pound, among others, who said he was writing an “oral history of our time.” Lepore investigates his life, the (non)existence of said oral history, and Gould’s obsession with a Harlem artist that affected his views of race, culture, and what he said he wanted to write. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh was so good, although I only read it because 3 out of my other 5 coworkers had read it and they convinced me to. I had read a bunch of negative reviews of Moshfegh’s other book, so I went in a bit skeptical, but I ended up really enjoying McGlue. The whole time I read it, it did feel a bit like I was reading Les Miserables fanfiction, partly from the literary style and partly just from the traits of the main character. But I did really enjoy it, and the ending was really lovely. In terms of literature that’s extremely unique in style, The Hour Of The Star by Clarice Lispector is probably top of the list this year. Her writing is amazing and so bizarre. It’s almost childlike but also so observant and philosophical, and the intellectual and metaphorical leaps she makes are so fascinating. I read her short piece The Egg And The Chicken a few months ago at the urging of my coworker, and thought it was so cool, and this little novel continues in that same vein of bizarre, charming, half-philosophical and half-mundane (but also totally not mundane at all) musings.

I'm still in the middle of reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (my lunch break book) and The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I'm not going to finish either by the end of the year, so I'm leaving them off the official list.

[whileiamdying]

Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to You, Possums) Is Dead at 89

Bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, Mr. Humphries’s creation was one of the longest-lived characters ever channeled by a single performer.

Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage in the one-person show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance” at the Music Box Theater on Broadway in 2004. Credit... Sara Krulwich

by Margalit Fox April 22, 2023Updated 12:35 p.m. ET

Oh, Possums, Dame Edna is no more.

To be unflinchingly precise, Barry Humphries, the Australian-born actor and comic who for almost seven decades brought that divine doyenne of divadom, Dame Edna Everage, to delirious, dotty, disdainful Dadaist life, died on Saturday in Sydney. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by the hospital where he had spent several days after undergoing hip surgery. In a tribute message posted on Twitter, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia praised Mr. Humphries as “a great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind.”

A stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and Miss Piggy, Dame Edna was not so much a character as a cultural phenomenon, a force of nature trafficking in wicked, sequined commentary on the nature of fame.

For generations after the day she first sprang to life on the Melbourne stage, Dame Edna reigned, bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, one of the longest-lived characters to be channeled by a single performer. She toured worldwide in a series of solo stage shows and was ubiquitous on television in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere.

A master improviser (many of Dame Edna’s most stinging barbs were ad-libbed) with a face like taffy, Mr. Humphries was widely esteemed as one of the world’s foremost theatrical clowns.

“I’ve only seen one man have power over an audience like that,” the theater critic John Lahr told him, after watching Dame Edna night after night in London. “My father.” Mr. Lahr’s father was the great stage and cinematic clown Bert Lahr.

Mr. Humphries conceived Edna in 1955 as Mrs. Norm Everage, typical Australian housewife. “Everage,” after all, is Australian for “average.”

Housewife, Superstar, National Treasure

But Edna soon became a case study in exorbitant amour propre, lampooning suburban pretensions, political correctness and the cult of celebrity, and acquiring a damehood along the way. A “housewife-superstar,” she called herself, upgrading the title in later years to “megastar” and, still later, to “gigastar.”

Mr. Humphries as Dame Edna, wearing a hat in the shape of the Sydney Opera House, in 1976. Credit... Wesley/Getty Images

In Britain, where Mr. Humphries had long made his home, Dame Edna was considered a national treasure, a paragon of performance art long before the term was coined.

In the United States, she starred in a three-episode series, “Dame Edna’s Hollywood,” a mock celebrity talk show broadcast on NBC in the early 1990s, and was a frequent guest on actual talk shows.

She performed several times on Broadway, winning Mr. Humphries a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards, for “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” his 1999 one-person show.

In her stage and TV shows, written largely by Mr. Humphries, Dame Edna typically made her entrance tottering down a grand staircase (Mr. Humphries was more than six feet tall) in a tsunami of sequins, her hair a bouffant violet cloud (she was “a natural wisteria,” she liked to say), her evening gown slit to the thigh to reveal Mr. Humphries’s surprisingly good legs, her body awash in jewels, her eyes agape behind sprawling rhinestone glasses (“face furniture,” she called them).

Addressing the audience, she delivered her signature greeting, “Hellooooo, Possums!”

By turns tender and astringent, Dame Edna called audience members “possums” often. She also called them other things, as when, leaning across the footlights, she would address a woman in the front row in a confiding, carrying voice: “I know, dear. I used to make my own clothes, too.”

Mr. Humphries with the English actress Joan Plowright at the Lyric Theater in London. Credit... Evening Standard/Getty Images

Performances concluded with Dame Edna flinging hundreds of gladioli into the crowd, no mean feat aerodynamically. “Wave your gladdies, Possums!” she exhorted audience members who caught them, and the evening would end, to music, with a mass valedictory swaying.

Between the “Hellooooo” and the gladdies, Dame Edna’s audiences were treated to a confessional monologue deliciously akin to finding oneself stranded in a hall of vanity mirrors.

There was commentary on her husband and children (“I made a decision: I put my family last”); her beauty regimen (“Good self-esteem is very important. I look in the mirror and say, ‘Edna, you are gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous’”); and the constellation of luminaries who routinely sought her counsel, among them Queen Elizabeth II and her family. (“I’ve had to change my telephone number several times to stop them ringing me.”)

Dame Edna’s TV shows were often graced by actual celebrity guests, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charlton Heston, Sean Connery, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall.

They came in for no less of a drubbing than the audience did, starting with the inaugural affront, the affixing of immense name tags to their lapels — for eclipsed by the light of gigastardom so close at hand, who among us would not be reduced to anonymity?

“Chuck,” Mr. Heston’s name tag read. Ms. Gabor received two: a “Zsa” for the right shoulder and a “Zsa” for the left.

A few pleasantries were exchanged before Dame Edna moved in for the kill.

“You’ve had nine hits this year,” she purred fawningly at the singer-songwriter Michael Bolton on one of her British TV shows. “On your website.”

Turning to the audience after delivering a particularly poisonous insult, she would ooze, “I mean that in the most caring way.”

Those guests who emerged relatively unscathed had the savvy to take Dame Edna at face value and interact with her as though she were real. The moment he donned those rhinestone glasses, Mr. Humphries often said, Dame Edna became real to him too, an entirely separate law unto herself.

‘I Wish I’d Thought of That’

“I’m, as it were, in the wings, and she’s onstage,” he explained in a 2015 interview with Australian television. “And every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think, ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’”

But the truly funny thing, Possums, is that when Mr. Humphries first brought Dame Edna to life, he intended her to last only a week or so. What was more, she was meant to have been played by the distinguished actress Zoe Caldwell.

Mr. Humphries created a string of other characters over the years, notably the boorish, bibulous Australian cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson. But it was Dame Edna, the outlandish aunt who engenders adoration and mortification in equal measure, who captivated the public utterly — despite the fact that in later years, her mortification-inducing lines sometimes landed her, and her creator, in trouble.

So fully did Mr. Humphries animate Edna that he was at continued pains to point out that he was neither a female impersonator in the conventional sense nor a cross-dresser in any sense.

“Mr. Humphries, do you ever have to take your children aside and explain to them why you like to wear women’s clothes?” an American interviewer once asked him.

“If I were an actor playing Hamlet,” he replied, “would I have to take my children aside and say I wasn’t really Danish?’”

By all accounts far more erudite than Dame Edna — he was an accomplished painter, bibliophile and art collector — Mr. Humphries, in a sustained act of self-protection, always spoke of her in the third person.

She did likewise. “My manager,” she disdainfully called him. (She also called Mr. Humphries “a money-grubbing little slug” and accused him of embezzling her fortune. He did, it must be said, cash a great many of her checks.)

But as dismissive of her creator as Dame Edna was, she rallied to his aid when he very likely needed her most: after years of alcoholism culminated in stays in psychiatric hospitals and at least one brush with the law.

Mr. Humphries at the Booth Theater on Broadway in 1999 in “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” for which he won a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards. Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

‘I Hated Her’

John Barry Humphries was born in Kew, a Melbourne suburb, on Feb. 17, 1934. His father, Eric, was a prosperous builder; his mother, Louisa, was a homemaker.

From his earliest childhood in Camberwell, a more exclusive suburb, he felt oppressed by the bourgeois conformism that enveloped his parents and their circle, and depressed by his mother’s cold suburban propriety.

Dame Edna was a response to those forces.

“I invented Edna because I hated her,” Mr. Humphries was quoted as saying in Mr. Lahr’s book “Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage With Barry Humphries” (1992). “I poured out my hatred of the standards of the little people of their generation.”

Dame Edna emerged when the young Mr. Humphries, under the sway of Dadaism, was performing with a repertory company based at the University of Melbourne; he had dropped out of the university two years before.

On long bus tours, he entertained his colleagues with the character of Mrs. Norm Everage — born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia, sometime in the 1930s — an ordinary housewife who had found sudden acclaim after winning a nationwide competition, the Lovely Mother Quest.

Unthinkable as it seems, Edna was dowdy then, given to mousy brown hair and pillbox hats. But she was already in full command of the arsenal of bourgeois bigotries that would be a hallmark of her later self.

For a revue by the company in December 1955, Mr. Humphries wrote a part for Edna, earmarked for Ms. Caldwell, an Australian contemporary. But when she proved too busy to oblige, he donned a dress and played it himself. After Edna proved a hit with Melbourne audiences, he performed the character elsewhere in the country.

By the end of the 1950s, hoping to make a career as a serious actor, Mr. Humphries had moved to London, where Edna met with little enthusiasm and was largely shelved. (She blamed Mr. Humphries ever after for her lack of early success there.)

Mr. Humphries played Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, in the original West End production of the musical “Oliver!” in 1960, and reprised the role when the show came to Broadway in 1963.

But though he worked steadily during the ’60s, he was also in the fierce grip of alcoholism. Stays in psychiatric hospitals, he later said, were of no avail.

His nadir came in 1970, when he awoke in a Melbourne gutter to find himself under arrest.

With a doctor’s help, Mr. Humphries became sober soon afterward; he did not take a drink for the rest of his life. He dusted off Dame Edna and, little by little, de-dowdified her. By the late ’70s, with celebrity culture in full throttle, she had given him international renown and unremitting employment.

Edna did not seduce every critic. Reviewing her first New York stage show, the Off Broadway production “Housewife! Superstar!!,” in The New York Times in 1977, Richard Eder called it “abysmal.”

Nor did Edna’s resolute lack of political correctness always stand her, or Mr. Humphries, in good stead. In February 2003, writing an advice column as Dame Edna in Vanity Fair, he replied to a reader’s query about whether to learn Spanish.

“Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to?” Dame Edna’s characteristically caustic response read. “The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English.”

A public furor ensued, led by the Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek, who appeared on the magazine’s cover that month. Vanity Fair discontinued Dame Edna’s column not long afterward.

In an interview with The Times in 2004, Mr. Humphries was unrepentant.

“The people I offended were minorities with no sense of humor, I fear,” he said. “When you have to explain the nature of satire to somebody, you’re fighting a losing battle.”

Mr. Humphries drew further ire after a 2016 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph in which he denounced political correctness as a “new puritanism.” In the same interview, he described people who transition from male to female as “mutilated” men, and Caitlyn Jenner in particular as “a publicity-seeking ratbag.”

Sailing Above the Fray

Dame Edna, for her part, appeared to sail imperviously through. She returned to Broadway in 2004 for the well-received show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance” and in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.

Mr. Humphries was back on Broadway as Dame Edna in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

As herself — it was she, and not Mr. Humphries, who was credited — Dame Edna played the recurring character Claire Otoms (the name is an anagram for “a sitcom role”), an outré lawyer, on the Fox TV series “Ally McBeal.”

Under his own name, Mr. Humphries appeared as the Great Goblin in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012); as the voice of Bruce, the great white shark, in “Finding Nemo” (2003); and in other pictures.

Mr. Humphries’s books include the memoirs “More Please” (1992) and “My Life as Me” (2002) and the novel “Women in the Background” (1995). He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 2007.

Dame Edna also wrote several books, among them “Dame Edna’s Bedside Companion” (1983) and the memoir “My Gorgeous Life” (1989).

Mr. Humphries’s first marriage, to Brenda Wright, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Rosalind Tong, and his third, to Diane Millstead. He had two daughters, Tessa and Emily, from his marriage to Ms. Tong, and two sons, Oscar and Rupert, from his marriage to Ms. Millstead.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that his survivors include his wife of 30 years, Lizzie Spender, the daughter of the British poet Stephen Spender, as well as his children and 10 grandchildren.

Mr. Humphries continued to perform until last year, when he toured Britain (as himself) with a one-man show, “The Man Behind the Mask.” He returned to Australia in December for Christmas.

Dame Edna’s husband, Norm, a chronic invalid “whose prostate,” she often lamented, “has been hanging over me for years,” died long ago. Her survivors include an adored son, Kenny, who designed all her gowns; a less adored son, Bruce; and a despised daughter, the wayward Valmai. (“She steals things. Puts them in her pantyhose. Particularly frozen chickens when she’s in a supermarket.”)

Another daughter, Lois, was abducted as an infant by a “rogue koala,” a subject Dame Edna could bring herself to discuss with interviewers only rarely.

Though the child was never seen again, to the end of her life Dame Edna never gave up hope she would be found.

“I’m looking,” she told NPR in 2015. “Every time I pass a eucalyptus tree I look up.”

Constant Meheut contributed reporting.

Margalit Fox is a former senior writer on the obituaries desk at The Times. She was previously an editor at the Book Review. She has written the send-offs of some of the best-known cultural figures of our era, including Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou and Seamus Heaney. More about Margalit Fox

[monkeyjaw]

The Year in Books and Graphic Novels 2022 and an analysis of 20 years of books and comics

January

1.      Temple Alley Summer – Kashiwaba Sachiko, illustrated by Miho Satake, translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa

2.      Dreams From My Father – Barack Obama, audiobook read by the author

3.      X-Men Grand Design Vol. 1 – Ed Piskor

4.      Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery – Rosalie Knecht

5.      All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team – Christina Soontornvat, illustrations by Karen Minot

6.      X-Men Grand Design Volume 2: Second Genesis – Ed Piskor

7.      Year of the Rabbit – Tian Veasna

February

1.      Deadly Class Volume 1: 1987 Reagan Youth – Chris Remender, Wes Craig

2.      The Eye of the World – Robert Jordan

3.      Pattern Master – Octavia E. Butler

4.      X-Men Grand Design Volume 3: X-Tinction – Ed Piskor

5.      The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History – Margalit Fox

6.      Deadly Class Volume 2: 1988 Kids of the Black Hole – Rick Remender, Wes Craig

March

1.      Once and Future Volume 1: The King is Undead – Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora

2.      Once and Future Volume 2: Old English – Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora

3.      Dragon Hoops – Gene Luen Yang

4.      Ringworld – Larry Niven

5.      Once and Future Volume 3: A Parliament of Magpies – Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora

6.      Princess Jellyfish Volume 8 – Akiko Higashimura

7.      Princess Jellyfish Volume 9 – Akiko Higashimura

8.      The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter – Elizabeth Moon

April

1.      Planetes Volume 1 – Makoto Yurimura

2.      The Library of the Unwritten – A.J. Hackwith

3.      Doom Patrol Volume 1: Crawling From the Wreckage – Grant Morrison, Richard Case

4.      ODY-C Volume 1: Off To Far Ithacaa – Matt Fraction, Christian Ward

5.      Conan of Cimmeria – Robert E Howard, Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter

6.      Doom Patrol Volume 2: The Painting That Ate Paris – Grant Morrison, Richard Case, John Nyberg

7.      Doom Patrol Volume 3: Down Paradise Way – Grant Morrison, Richard Case

May

1.      Doom Patrol Volume 4: Musclebound – Grant Morrison, Richard Case, Kelley Jones, Mark McKenna, John Nyberg

2.      Eragon – Christopher Paolini

3.      The Promised Neverland Vol 1 – Kaiu Shirai, Posaku Demizu

4.      Deadly Class Volume 3: 1988 Snake Pit – Rick Remender, Wes Craig

5.      Once and Future Volume 4: Monarchies in the U.K. – Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora

6.      The Dark is Rising – Susan Cooper

7.      The Forest – Thomas Ott

8.      The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K LeGuin

June

1.      Deadly Class Volume 4: 1988 Die For Me – Rick Remender, Wes Craig

2.      Arthurian Legends – Wace and Layamon

3.      Dune – Frank Herbert

4.      The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K LeGuin

5.      The Lost Years of Merlin – T.A. Barron

July

1.      The Secret To Super-Human Strength – Alison Bechdel

2.      The Promised Neverland Volume 2 – Kaiu Shirai, Posaku Demizu

3.      The New World – Ales Kot, Tradd Moore

4.      Super Sentai Himitsu Sentai Gorenger – Shotaro Ishinomori

5.      Spider-Gwen Volume 0: Most Wanted? – Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez

6.      The Deed of Paksenarrion: Divided Allegiance – Elizabeth Moon

7.      Ultimate Miles Morales Spider-Man Volume 1 – Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli, Chris Samnee

8.      Giant Days Volume 1 – John Allison, Lisa Treimann

9.      Giant Days Volume 2 – John Allison, Lisa Treimann, Max Sarin

August

1.      Lockwood & Co. Volume 1: The Screaming Staircase – Jonathan Stroud

2.      Ultimate Miles Morales Spider-Man Volume 2 – Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez, et al

3.      Ultimate Miles Morales Spider-Man Volume 3 – Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez, et al

4.      The Wheel of Time Book 2: The Great Hunt – Robert Jordan

5.      Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones

6.      A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle

7.      French Medieval Romances from the Lais of Marie of France – Translated by Eugene Mason

September

1.      Pyongyang – Guy Delisle

2.      Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold – Alisa Kwitney, Kent Williams, et al

3.      The Dead of Paksenarrion: Oath of Gold – Elizabeth Moon

4.      Brave Chef Brianna – Sam Sykes, Selina Espiritu

5.      Fledgling – Octavia E. Butler

6.      At Death’s Door – Jill Thompson

October

1.      We – Yevgeny Zamyatin, read by Toby Jones

2.      The Witch Boy – Molly Knox Ostertag

3.      20th Century Boys Vol. 7: The Truth  – Naoki Urasawa

4.      20th Century Boys Vol. 8: – Naoki Urasawa

5.      Isaac the Pirate Vol. 1: To Exotic Lands – Christophe Blaine

6.      Dungeon Zenith: Volume 4: Outside the Ramparts – Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Boulet

7.      The Wheel of Time Book 3: The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan

8.      20th Century Boys Volume 9: Rabbit Nabokov – Naoki Urasawa

9.      The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

10.  Isaac the Pirate Volume 2: The Capital – Christophe Blaine

11.  20th Century Boys Volume 10: The Faceless Boy - Naoki Urasawa

November

1.      Gotham Central Book 1: In the Line of Duty – Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka

2.      Komi Can’t Communicate Vol. 1 – Tomohito Oda

3.      The Promised Neverland Volume 3 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu

4.      Sleepless Volume 1 – Sarah Vaughn, Leila Del Duch

5.      R.U.R. – Karel Capek, translated by David Wyllie

6.      20th Century Boys Volume 11: List of Ingredients – Naoki Urasawa

7.      20th Century Boys Volume 12: Friend’s Face – Naoki Urasawa

8.      20th Century Boys Volume 13: Beginning of the End – Naoki Urasawa

9.      20th Century Boys Volume 14: The Boy and the Dream – Naoki Urasawa

10.  The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes – Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, Sam Ketih, Malcolm Jones III

11.  Dodger – Terry Pratchett

12.  The Promised Neverland Volume 4 – Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu

13.  20th Century Boys Volume 15: Expo Hurray – Naoki Urasawa

14.  20th Century Boys Volume 16: Beyond the Looking Glass – Naoki Urasawa

15.  20th Century Boys Volume 17: Cross-Counter – Naoki Urasawa

16.  20th Century Boys Volume 18: Everybody’s Song – Naoki Urasawa

17.  20th Century Boys Volume 19: The Man Who Came Back – Naoki Urasawa

18.  20th Century Boys Volume 20: Humanity in the Balance – Naoki Urasawa

19.  Thursday Next book 2: Lost in a Good Book – Jasper Fforde

20.  20th Century Boys Volume 21: Arrival of the Space Aliens – Naoki Urasawa

21.  20th Century Boys Volume 22: The Beginning of Justice

22.  The Promised Neverland Volume 5 – Kaiu Shira, Posuka Demizu

December

1.      Thrawn Ascension: Book 1: Chaos Rising – Timothy Zahn

2.      Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high - Kerry Patterson,

 Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

3.      Sandman Volume 2: The Doll’s House – Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III

4.      My Favorite Thing Is Monsters – Emil Ferris

5.      Please Don’t Step On My JNCO Jeans – Noah Van Sciver

6.      The Sandman Volume 3: Dream Country – Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Malcolm Jones III, Charles Vess

7.      Winterfair Gifts – Lois McMaster Bujold

8.      Sandman Book 4: Season of Mists – Neil Gaiman, Matt Wagner, George Pratt, Dick Giordano, Kelley Jones, P. Craig Russell

9.      Sandman Book 5: A Game of You – Neil Gaiman, Sean McManus, Bryan Talbot, Colleen Doran

 105 books and graphic novels in 2022! 34 novels (and 1 novella) and 70/71 graphic novels. I read one book twice for a book club. That’s 13 more than I read last year.

Now for totals from 2002 to 2022.

Totals:

2002 20

2003 86 – 7.16/month

2004 9

2005 84 – 7/month

2006 79 – 6.58/month

2007 58 – 4.83/month

2008 49 – 4.083/month

2009 51 – 4.25

2010 72 - 6

2011 60 - 5

2012 80 – 6.66

2013 50 – 4.16

2014 144 - 12

2015 92 – 7.66

2016 151 – 12.58

2017 138 – 11.5

2018 116 – 9.66

2019 96 - 8

2020 102 – 8.5

2021 92 – 7.66

2022 105 – 8.75

 Including the years that I have incomplete data for (2002 and 2004 I only have 3 months of data), I read 1734 books and graphic novels from 2002 to 2022, 86.7 per year. If we leave off 2002, and 2004, I read 85.25 per year and an average of 7.89 books per month. I’ll post the graphic novels and regular books break down shortly. 

[javierpenadea]

"Ann Turner Cook Dies at 95; Her Face Sold Baby Food by the Billions" by BY MARGALIT FOX via NYT Business https://ift.tt/0RD8vEZ

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Peter Schickele, Composer and Gleeful Sire of P.D.Q. Bach, Dies at 88 by Margalit Fox

By Margalit Fox He wrote more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works. But he was better known, and celebrated, as a musical parodist. Who can forget “The Concerto for Horn and Hardart?” Published: January 17, 2024 at 06:46PM from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/Qz8nft4 via IFTTT

[princessalmost]

Books Read in 2023

Before I say anything else, this list does not include ebooks, comics, or fanfiction. While those are all valid forms of reading and I love them all (never let anyone tell you that listening to an audiobook isn't really reading!), I just didn't happen to record them. Most of these are books I checked out from my local library. I love libraries, and encourage anyone who wants to read a book but is low on money or unsure how much they will actually like it to check if their library system has it. Libraries also provide far more than just books, like movies, magazines, music, online subscriptions, research tools, etc. In case you can't tell, I love libraries.

I know reading can be a challenge for some people, but I've never wanted to become someone who reads less than a book per year. Some of these books I loved, some I did not. Some books were by the same author, and I did not enjoy them all equally, but I DID enjoy them enough to read them through before returning them. Some I picked up because I read the author before or were recommended to me, and some I liked the title or cover. Regardless, I met my goal of averaging two books per month.

These books are listed in the order I completed them this year, so fiction and nonfiction are mixed together.

A Treacherous Curse, Deanna Raybourne

Tracers in the Dark, Andy Greenburg

Sully, Chelsey B. "Sully" Sullenburger III with Jeffrey Zaslow

The Shore Road Mystery, Franklin W. Dixon

The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman

All Things Wise and Wonderful, James Harriot

Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt

The Soviet Sisters, Anika Scott

The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman

Whose Body, Dorothy, L. Sayers

Run, Rose, Run, Dolly Parton and James Patterson

The Godmother, Barbie Latza Nadeau

The Bullet that Missed, Richard Osman

The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson

Brotherband: Return of the Temujai, John Flanagan

In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson

Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, Lydia Kang, M.D., and Nate Pedersen

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York, Tyler Anbinder

Finlay Donovan is Killing It, Elle Cosimano

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History, Margalit Fox

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Brandon Sanderson

Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead, Elle Cosimano

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun, Elle Cosimano

The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman

Murder Your Employer, Rupert Holmes

Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer, Margalit Fox

To finish, something a librarian told me once that stayed with me is this: Every book has it's reader, and every reader has their book. You don't have to like or dislike a book just because someone else does. Find your books, and just enjoy them like mad!

Happy New Year!

[fuojbe-beowgi]

"Carolyn Bryant Donham Dies at 88; Her Words Doomed Emmett Till" by Margalit Fox via NYT U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html?partner=IFTTT

[twebern]

Download The Confidence Men -- Margalit Fox

Download Or Read PDF The Confidence Men - Margalit Fox Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

  [*] Download PDF Here => The Confidence Men

[*] Read PDF Here => The Confidence Men

[electronicstarfishanchor2322]

Ann Turner Cook Dies at 95; Her Face Sold Baby Food by the Billions

By Margalit Fox Her likeness as an infant has graced the labels on Gerber products for more than 90 years, though for decades her identity was not disclosed. Published: June 3, 2022 at 05:00PM from Business via New York TimesNYT

[friendly-neighbourhood-librarian]

Talking Hands - Margalit Fox

An absolutely fascinating book on linguistics — I learned so much! There's so much I want to say that it's difficult to condense it all into a short summary, but I'll do my best...

At the center of the study of linguistics are several big questions: How do humans create language from scratch? What are the bare essentials that every language has in common? What can that tell us about the way our minds work? Short of locking two babies in a room and observing what kind of language they develop as they grow up (known as the Forbidden Experiment for obvious reasons), we'll never truly know the answers to these questions. But there have been naturally-arising situations and communities throughout the world, throughout history, that mimic the parameters of the Forbidden Experiment, and the few that linguists have been able to study have been gold mines of linguistic data.

One such community is Al-Sayyid, a remote desert town in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness due to a hereditary condition. Isolated as they were, outside of the influence of Israeli Sign Language, they created their own sign language which has been "spoken" by both the deaf and hearing members of the village for several generations. Journalist Margalit Fox accompanies a small team of sign language linguists to this miraculous town as they study the residents' unique language.

The book alternates between an account of Fox's observations of the village residents and the team's methods of data collection, and a more general history of linguistics, of sign language and deafness, and of sign language linguistics in specific, including some fascinating discoveries made thanks to studies that have been conducted relatively recently. I may be overusing the word 'fascinating' here, but I can't think of any better word — it really is incredibly fascinating! I learned so much about a topic I've never really thought about before and my mind was blown at least once per chapter!

[bigtickhk]

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox https://amzn.to/3pfB8FL

https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9781984853844