InfoTrac Web: Gen'l Reference Ctr (Magazine Index).

                                                                              
   Source:  Publishers Weekly, August 28, 2000 v247 i35 p73.
                                                                              
    Title:  Personality and Power.(Review)_(book review)
                                                                              
 Subjects:  Books - Reviews
   People:  Lahr, John
            Foucault, Michel
            Gordon, Colin
            Bayoumi, Moustafa
            Rubin, Andrew
Nmd Works:  Show and Tell (Book) - Reviews
                   Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954--1984 V. III (Book)
                     - Reviews
                   The Edward Said Reader (Book) - Reviews
                                                                              
Electronic Collection:  A64994220
                   RN:  A64994220
                                                                              

Full Text COPYRIGHT 2000 Cahners Publishing Company

In the eight short years that he has written celebrity profiles for the New
Yorker, the highly respected and award-winning John Lahr (Notes on a Cowardly
Lion, etc.) has turned out some masterful work. Included for the first time in
a single volume, Show and Tell, are 15 pieces--on such luminaries as Frank
Sinatra, Woody Allen, Roseanne and David Mamet, as well as two biographical
explorations of his parents, Bert and Mildred Lahr. With an incredible
ear--his ability to find the rhythm and grit of just the right words is
exemplary--Lahr establishes a unique connection with his subjects. (Overlook,
$27.95 320p ISBN 1-58567-062-6; Oct.)

Avid students of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (Madness and
Civilization, etc.) will welcome the weighty and complex Power: Essential
Works of Foucault 1954--1984 V. III, edited by Colin Gordon with series editor
Paul Rabinow (the other two volumes are Ethics and Aesthetics, Method, and
Epistemology). Based on Dits et ecrits, the first complete collection of
Foucault's published lectures, articles and interviews, which was released by
his French publisher in 1994, many of these pieces are available here in
English for the first time. The central theme of the third volume is the broad
territory of political thought, addressing such issues as truth, social
medicine, psychiatry and punishment. (New Press, $30 544p ISBN 1-56584-257-X;
Oct.)

Edward Said's career as a literary critic and as a supporter of Palestinian
independence has brought him both notoriety and respect. Now those who want to
form their own opinion of the scholar (but who don't wish to collect all his
weighty volumes) can find a worthwhile overview of his accomplishments in The
Edward Said Reader, edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. From his 1966
Harvard dissertation (Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography) to his
recent memoir (Out of Place), the excerpts in this first-rate collection trace
the development of Said's theories about colonialism, Middle Eastern politics
and literary creation. In doing so, the editors go a long way toward proving
their assertion that Said evinces "the clear vision and moral energy to turn
catastrophe into ethical challenge and scholarship into intellectual
obligation." (Vintage, $15 paper 320p ISBN 0-375-70936-3; Sept.)
                                                                              
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