Ted Widmer
Rock ’n’ Roll History
ARK OF THE LIBERTIES: AMERICA AND THE WORLD
By Ted Widmer
Hill and Wang, 355 pages, $25
Ted Widmer has carved out the kind of heroically peripatetic career in entertainment, politics and scholarship that gives young men hope and older men heartburn. Widmer? If the name doesn’t yet ring a bell, that could be because he’s had more than the average 44-year-old’s share of names.
Connoisseurs of high-concept mid-’90s glam metal know him as Lord Rockingham, dandy guitarist of the Upper Crust, a Boston band known for performing AC/DC-style anthems in powdered wigs and associated ancien régime regalia. (Their tongue-in-jowl celebrations of aristocracy include "Let them Eat Rock" and "Friend of a Friend of the Working Class. read more »
Our Critic's Tip Sheet on Current Reading: Kerry as a Kid; Scratch ‘n’ Sniff; and High/Low Heaven
Self-indulgence, that famous boomer trait, is stamped all over Geoffrey Douglas' The Classmates (Hyperion, $23.95), a brooding memoir of the St. Paul's School class of 1962—the class that brought us John Kerry and therefore, roughly four years ago, began to think of itself as somehow significant: One of their own was very possibly on the verge of being elected president. I'll spare you Mr. Douglas' personal problems, which he writes about in detail, and the travails of other obscure boys from '62—the ones who suddenly had to measure their ordinary selves against a classmate who was "almost president"—and concentrate on the young John Kerry, who was, to put it delicately, not popular with his peers. read more »
