If you celebrate Christmas you may have a few people left on your list. Since my shopping is complete, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions to those of you who don’t yet have things under control.
These are all books, since I’m assuming that your family and friends read. They are not new—you can find recommendations for new books everywhere else. These are tried and true, but some are a bit obscure. I’ve pointed out who might be most interested.
For those who closely follow current events:
The perfect gift for him or her is “The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope. Although Trollope wrote this novel in the 1870s, he nailed the behavior that resulted in the 2008 financial disaster.
He foresaw Bernie Madoff in a character he named Augustus Melmotte. He described London’s upper classes indulging in global investments with the same inadequate understanding of finance that we saw our Wall Street leaders display. In the novel they persuade one another to buy stock in a company proposing to build a railroad between points in America and Mexico. The reader realizes that railroad is unlikely to be built, given the behavior of the American managers. But the shares rise in price (at least for awhile) as the characters sell to one another. The characters throw parties and spend money as felon Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco, did—and as some Wall Street types perhaps secretly still do. The book was made into a television movie on Masterpiece Theatre. So if your gift recipient would rather watch a movie than read, you have a back-up.
For the real estate brokers, lawyers or developers in your life:
One of my favorite books of all time is “Measuring America” by Andro Linklater. Its main purpose is to tell the story of how the land west of the Ohio River was surveyed. But Linklater also tells the story of land ownership itself, comparing the ease of buying and selling land in New England to the difficulty that presented in the South. Anyone with an interest in property and conveying it will find this book fascinating.
For newcomers to the neighborhood:
“Beacon Hill, The Life and Times of a Neighborhood” by Moying Li-Marcus and “Beacon Hill: A Living Portrait” by Barbara Moore and Gail Weesner are books written by neighborhood authors. Li’s book was sponsored by the Beacon Hill Civic Association and mainly documents the 20th century, a period that is often neglected in Boston, whose inhabitants sometimes seem more interested in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is for sale at the civic association’s offices at 74 Joy Street, which will be open today and tomorrow, but then will close for the holidays on December 24.
Moore and Weesner’s book chronicles Beacon Hill’s history and shows the interiors of many houses on the Hill that you and your gift recipient probably have not seen. Moore and Weesner’s book is available at Blackstone’s on Charles Street.
For neighborhood history buffs:
“Boston Adventure” by Jean Stafford tells the story of a daughter of immigrants who becomes the companion of a Beacon Hill dowager. The class struggles the protagonist faces are more subtle than the clichés. The novel was published in 1944, just recent enough to make the descriptions of Beacon Hill look only slightly different from today. Stafford herself is fascinating, not just for her talent, but for the men she mostly unsuccessfully married—poet Robert Lowell, photographer Oliver Jensen and journalist and New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling.
For little kids:
“The Day the Goose got Loose” or “The Train to Glasgow” or any other book written in rhythm and rhyme—in “The Train to Glasgow” it’s cumulative rhyme, a wonderful device for little ones. The illustrations in these books are dense and first-rate, perfect for looking and pointing out details.
These books above will also work for Kwanzaa or Hanukkah next year or any other holiday you celebrate. Whatever holiday it is, may it be happy.