This Living Hand: And Other Essays Book

Preface xvii

The Bumstitch: Lament for a Forgotten Fruit 3

How I Escaped Death by Snakebite: and Lived to Write About Beethoven 7

The Ccurfew Ttolis The Knell of Ppparting Day: Remembering Mr. Atkinson 9

The Last Snows of Kilimanjaro: A Lament 13

A Ghostly Tour with Tr: The Badlands of North Dakota 16

Documenting The Intangible: The New York Public Library's Dance Collection 24

Heard Melodies are Sweet, But Those Unheard are Sweeter: A Low-Calorie Diet for the Musically Obese 28

Theodore Roosevelt The Polygon: Address at the National Portrait Gallery 32

The Line of Concern: An Interview with Nadine Gordimer 51

A Strangeness in the Sight: The Shadow World of Tom Bostelle 56

The Pen is Mightier Than The Smith Corona: Typing and the Murder of Style 64

Music V. Musicology: Sir Donald Francis Tovey, Counsel for the Defense 68

Land of Lost Content: South Africa Revisited in the Last Days of Apartheid 76

Theodore Roosevelt The Writer: Colloquium at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars 95

Telling Lives: A Biographer's Quest for Temps Perdu 126

The Idea of North: Glenn Gould's Search for Solitude 132

A Hundred and Forty-Four Merlins: Britain's Imperial War Museum 136

We Came to America: The Irrevocable Act of Emigration 142

The Portraitist's Shadow: Biography as an Art 150

The Anticapitalist Conspiracy: A Warning 162

Every Sliver of Inlay Had to Fit: The Early Artistry of Evelyn Waugh 169

The Pain of Falling Leaves: Capitol Hill Loses a Tree 175

An Old Man Ought to be Sad: The Logical Life of Mr. Justice Holmes 180

The Ivory and The Ebony: Pianists and the Romantic Imagination 185

Women in White: The Memoirs of Laure Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès 199

Undistinguished Americans: Short and Simple Annals of the Poor 210

Hunters of The Wild Guffaw: The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose 218

Which Way Does Sir Dress?: A Semicentennial Visit to Savile Row 229

The Rolling Tape Records, and Having Recorded, Rolls on: In support of Janet Malcolm in Masson v. New Yorker 237

From This Session Interdict: On the Eve of Another Presidential Inauguration 243

In Memoriam Christine Reagan: The President's Forgotten Daughter 247

This Living Hand: Ronald Reagan's Farewell Letter 251

Rock. Turf. Water. Lava. Sky.: Reykjavík in Retrospect 259

The Bill and Teddy Show: Mr. Clinton's Latest Presidential Performance 270

A Darwinian For Fun: The Evolutionary Education of Henry Adams 274

Pooh to You, Mr. Mayor: and Here's Fuzz in Your Eye, Mr. Prime Minister 284

A Certain Silliness: Ten Literati Choose the Century's Greatest English Novels 287

Bill Liar: Proceedings of an extraordinary meeting of the Ananias Club, 19 August 1998. Theodore Roosevelt, chairman. Agenda: Admission to membership of President William Jefferson Clinton 292

Here Comes Old Rushing Starlight: The Writing Life 296

Inside Jefferson's Cerebellum: The Library of Congress 300

Intellectual Integrity: The Novels of James Gould Cozzens 307

Sensitive Signage: Washington's Equal-Opportunity Airport 317

A Steady Hiss of Corn: The Letters of Ronald Reagan 320

Colonizing Outside of Cultivation: The Logical Fantasy of John Wyndham 326

Dot's and Dash's: Lynne Truss's Punctuation Primer 333

Leavings of a Life: Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911-2004 337

Lady of Letters: Living with Sylvia Jukes Morris 355

A Musical offering: Bach and Fredrick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment 365

Contrapuntal Combat: Beethoven's Great Fugue 370

Wood and Wool: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand 374

A Nation Full of Will: Kent School Connecticut Centennial Address, 2006 378

Nuages Gris: Colors in Music, Literature, and Art 387

The Other Side of Silence: Beethoven's Deafness 399

The African Obama: The Prepresidential Photographs of Pete Souza 413

As Much of a Monologue as Possible: Theodore Roosevelt at 150 417

Voice, Or Ventriloquism: Language and the Presidency 422

The Adventures of Sam Clemens: Or, the Autobiography of Mark Twain 429

Edison Illuminated: The "Life & Phenomenon" of an Inventor 435

The Ivo Pogorelich of Presidential Biography: Writing Dutch 442

Acknowledgments and Permissions 477

Illustration Credits 479

Index 481