California Literary Review

Web Site:

http://www.davidlida.com

Books on Amazon:

First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century
Travel Advisory : Stories
Las llaves de la ciudad/ The keys of the city: Un Mosaico De Mexico/ a Mosaic of Mexico

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran by Haleh Esfandiari
  Posted on 12 Nov 2009 in Iran, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Her jail term of one hundred and five days was the culmination of an eight-month ordeal. In December of 2006, she returned to Tehran to visit her ailing mother. On her way to the airport for her trip back, a staged robbery, perpetrated by state secret police, detained her passage. She was not allowed to leave Iran. In the subsequent months, repeated interrogations by a secret policeman did not produce the information that he was seeking, so ultimately she was sent to prison.

• Nina Simone: The Biography by David Brun-Lambert
  Posted on 05 Aug 2009 in African American, Biography, Music, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  The granddaughter of slaves on both parents’ sides of the family, Simone’s stardom coincided with the civil rights struggle in the U.S. If it is necessary to find a defining moment in her life, it may have come even earlier than the Curtis Institute rejection. At her first public concert, at age ten in Tryon’s Town Hall, her parents were asked to give up their seats to a white couple. The child protested out loud until her father and mother were allowed to stay in their places.

• Satchmo: The Wonderful World and Art of Louis Armstrong by Steven Brower
  Posted on 12 May 2009 in African American, Art, Biography, Music, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  For someone who radiated pure joy, his beginnings were Deep South Dickensian. Born in New Orleans in August 4, 1901, his unwed mother was a sometime prostitute and his absent father worked in a turpentine factory. As an unsupervised child, he worked unloading boats and selling newspapers on the sidewalk. Evenings, he would stand outside nightclubs and listen to the great trumpet players of the day, including Buddy Bolden and King Oliver, who would later become his mentor.

• A Saint on Death Row by Thomas Cahill
  Posted on 27 Apr 2009 in African American, Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, True Crime
  

  Dominique’s worst luck was to have been born in Houston, Texas, the principal city of Harris County. Since 1976, Texas has executed more than four times as many prisoners as any other state, and beginning with George W. Bush’s term as governor, it became the death penalty capital of the country. Harris County has committed more people to death than any other in Texas – they’re slap-happy about vengeance.

• Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
  Posted on 02 Apr 2009 in African American, Non-Fiction Reviews, True Crime
  

  When confronted with Cotton in a police lineup, Thompson had nary a shred of doubt that he was the man who had violated her. He went to trial and, after conviction, to jail. The only problem was that Cotton was innocent. As DNA evidence would prove eleven years later, Thompson had in fact been raped by a man named Bobby Poole, who served time for other offenses in the same jail as Cotton.

• Falling off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization by Alex Perry
  Posted on 16 Feb 2009 in China, Economics, India, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Perry describes a world without a middle class, a world in which, according to 2006 statistics, one percent of the world’s adults own forty percent of all global assets. The richest ten percent own eighty-five percent, while the poorest half own less than one percent.

• Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan
  Posted on 06 Jan 2009 in Biography, Food, Italy, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  If we are what we eat, then Marcella Hazan, the author of what are often recognized as the best six Italian cookbooks ever published in English, has been writing her autobiography since 1973. That is the year when The Classic Italian Cookbook, her first effort, saw the light of day. Thirty-five years later, with increasingly sophisticated recipe books, restaurants and food industries in the United States, it is hard to remember how groundbreaking Hazan’s work has been.

• Hollywood Lives: George C. Scott and Tony Curtis
  Posted on 14 Dec 2008 in Biography, Movies, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  At the airport, customs agents discovered a bag of marijuana and a handgun inside his baggage. After surrendering to the authorities, Curtis writes that he thought, “Whatever happens, it won’t be as bad as my childhood.” At age 50 – after he had been a movie star for a quarter of a century – he got to the door of the hospital room where his mother was dying from heart disease. He heard her calling his name, but could not bring himself to go inside.