The Provocation of Imagination, A Trilogy of Book Reviews
The books reviewed:
Produced By Irving Thalberg, Theory of Studio-Era Filmmaking by Ana Salzberg
Beyond the Looking Glass, Narcissism and Female Stardom in Studio-Era Hollywood by Ana Salzberg
UnMasking the Mask, Insights from Physical Theatre and Life by Arne Zaslove
Excerpt:
“I know [Arne] Zaslove as the historically imbued practitioner,[yet] came to their work through Ana Salzberg,…[through] the cultural window she opened that shed …welcomed inquiry into the imagination and collaborative impulse of those that made plays and movies such a force in tempering the American as well as the audience’s identity. Her work also gilded, unexpectedly, anecdotal dimensions onto the practical implications… of Zaslove’s work.”
Hourglass
In 1967, Madeline Ferrara Rita, a recent law school graduate and the granddaughter of Southern Italian immigrants, is struggling to make a choice about where and how to practice law.
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To A High Court
To A High Court, The Tumult and Choices that Led to United States of America v. SCRAP
In fall, 1971, five law students, Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP) confronted the nation’s Railroads’ power and government’s failure. It was a time of tumult. They sued, and in 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of SCRAP. A “lesson for holding government accountable could not be more current.” Rosa DeLauro, Member of Congress.
Giamatti: Fearless
Find out more about Neil’s newest book, Fearless: A. Bartlett Giamatti and the Battle for Fairness in America
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Still in Prelude
Inside the Edge of War
In early January 1936, Westly Giovanni-Blair, a Parson’s educated tailor and owner of a men and women’s fashion shop in New Haven, meets Seattle-born Georgetown law professor Richard Bartlett Burton, in a picturesque trattoria on the wave-dashed coast of Fascist controlled Italy. Each is on a personal quest: Can Westly discern in Wales, then Italy the truth behind the missing 18th century portrait that may reveal her family’s ancestral roots? Will she ever find the artist’s family, her family, as her Italian immigrant grandmother implored? Barr has his own imperatives: Who was it that ordered the assassination of his father near his family home in Seattle? Who is trying to stop his appointment by President Roosevelt to a high government position? And get him dismissed from the Georgetown faculty?
White or Black or Shackleton Gray
Excerpt:
“There are moments, sometimes seconds or minutes in duration, when the risk of being outdoors in the cold or the water or on the ice is no longer diminished by gear, clothing, the learned rules of safety, or even the proximity of colleagues. It is when the white clarity of preparation confronts the black reality of nature’s deadly unpredictability, where judgment, physicality, and luck meld together to form the intuitive response to save your limb or life or your journey’s purpose. You’re in the gray.”
Unbowed and Unquestioned Politically II
Excerpt:
“The United States Senate Banking Committee hearings conducted by Ferdinand Pecora yielded disclosures about more than the self‐serving, unethical conduct of the nation’s largest banks and most prominent bank officers. The hearings, perhaps with an intention not originally conceived, also disclosed conduct by Wall Street law firms in the precise business documentation and transactions that deceived existing and prospective stockholders, and the pubic generally, to the bankers’ and the lawyers’ benefit.”
Unbowed and Unquestioned Politically
Excerpt:
“The bared, sordid underbelly of men at City Bank, Chase, and JP Morgan that Pecora’s questioning revealed was permanently solidified into the face that still haunts any predictability or prospect of an ethical-driven normalcy. The current apprehension of what such men are capable of doing, only randomly uncovered to no ones surprise and rarely rectified to even less surprise, remains fairly constant in America….Numerous, unexceptional examples of wrongdoing and bold daring to test the limited resources of even the most responsible government official, are reported daily. ‘Too big to fail”…. will continue until the complete rationale [for such conduct] is questioned and exposed. Ferdinand Pecora sought to examine that rationale in 1933…”
Absent in Body, Present in Spirit: The Tech Trilogy
Short fiction by NTP
Excerpt:
In the early months of 2013, the novelist Mary McCarthy was approached by three colleagues in literature, each concerned in distinct ways by the problematic evolution of their reputation, and how and in what form it might endure into this Century: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Mary Magdalene. Each invited a third person to aid in the dialogue: Dashiell Hammett, David Lean, and Frances Cabrini.
Irreverence, A Book Review
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson
Excerpt:
If there was an enigmatic element in Lawrence’s temperament, it may be found in his imagination under pressure, his intuitive skill at melding geographical and military thinking, and the decisiveness of his choices in giving his imagination life. He saw the moment. They were accurate and monumental choices.
Experience and Family
New Haven, Family, Travel, and Washington, DC
Lawyer
SCRAP, Justice Department, Presidential Committee, and Private Practice
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Teacher
Yale and Georgetown
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Books
Explore Neil’s books here!
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Articles and talks
Writing and Speaking Over Time
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Thinking and Doing Theatre and Movies
The ‘Skit,’ Dancing, Music, Dan Lauria, and The New York Film Academy
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On the Edge of America
Excerpt:
“The tide was coming in. It was late February. The beach eroded around and beneath you. A simple misstep off the slimy rocks or embedded jumble of jagged-edged timber or getting caught in the sinewy, bulbous sea grass and you ‘d be sucked easily into the fearsome undercurrent. The rough pounding and spreading burst of cold surf along the Straits of Juan de Fuca were relentless.”
Work in Law and Teaching
Neil has crafted written legal arguments and broader litigation strategies or presented oral argument in more than thirty-five cases in federal court litigation…
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Implicit Danger
Excerpt:
“As the sun rose but not confidently, Anne detected distant rain and I yelled out a sudden increase in velocity and decrease in depth. It was plain the variables in tides and wind, current and weather retained their ill-defined meanness if miscalculated. The boom still able to swing unexpectedly into your head and the boat, gliding at top speed of five knots, still leaning precariously on its leeward side as the black water swirls and foams and whips by you, a hundred feet or more of it below, still able to swallow you in moments.”
The Lawyer, A Book Review
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life by Melvin I. Urofsky
Excerpt:
A specter is haunting the nation. Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Algernon Cowperwood; the financier, the titan, “perfectly calm, deadly cold,” selling stock he did not own. As the banker, he was entrusted with other people’s money. “[L]ike a spider in a spangled net, every thread of which he knew, had laid, had tested, he surrounded and entangled himself in a splendid, glittering network of connections, and he was watching the details.”
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