Yardley was, and probably still is, a book reviewer and columnist for the WASHINGTON POST. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1981. OUT OF STEP is made up of a selection of over sixty of the weekly columns Yardley wrote between 1981 and 1989. Although most of these segments relate to then current events, Yardley carefully chose ones dealing with "larger issues that transcend topicality." To paraphrase an old adage," The proof of that is in the reading." Although the events and/or people who inspired the columns may be long forgotten, the conclusions drawn by Yardley are pertinent and durable.

I don't think that a better way could be found to whet the reader's appetite for the tasty tidbits found in this book than to discuss and quote from a few select columns.

April 18, 1983: "Books That Comfort"

Yardley takes as his starting point a letter to the editor from a reader who complained that GRAPES OF WRATH was required reading in her daughter's Northern Virginia High School. Her argument was that her daughter's love of reading was being destroyed by being forced to read such a dreary, depressing book as GRAPES OF WRATH and that it would be more appropriate to choose only books that uplift the spirit and gladden life. After a discussion in which he mentions a number of valid reasons for reading GRAPES OF WRATH including its social impact, Yardley comments that the letter writewr's criteria for selecting books would eliminate almost all of the world's great literature. For examples he mentions Shakespeare's Tragedies, most of Dickens' novels, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, The Greek Classics and on and on ad infinitum and would limit a student's exposure to reading to POLLYANNA, REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, and PARSON WEEM'S LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON,

He concludes with, "A child raised on nothing except good news and 'comforting ideas' will become an adult almost certainly incapable of meeting life on its own tough terms."

July 4, 1988: "The Age of Psychology"

In this column, Yardley takes on both the "expert witness" brand of hired courtroom psychologists and the media psychologists who dispense advice on a moments notice. Calling much of this type of instant analysis "psychobabble," he goes on to state that, "Were there no psychobabble and no psychologists to spout it, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey would go out of business overnight." He also comments that television newscasts would probably have to shut down if they were deprived of their five-second spots of instant in-depth analysis that "tells it like it is."

The real pity of this is, he states, that in our exposure to psychobabble we lose sight of the good that a competent psychoanalyst can do, in an appropriate environment, for troubled individuals and families.

These are but two of the sixty plus subjects that Yardley addresses. Each one is interesting, intelligent, and highly readable Yardley frequently risks being "out of step," not out of contrariness, but out of belief. all in all, this book belongs on every reader's must list.

I have loved this book since I was a teeny weeny little girl. I totally agree with everything that has been previously said about how good it is. It's accurate, it's a headlong read - you can hardly put it down once you get rolling. I had one of the original hardcovers (it was my aunt's), plus a falling-apart paperback which I just gotta replace. True, the movie does not do it justice although it is real, real good - I think this was Tyrone Power's role of a lifetime. The music is now considered a classic and the cinematography is utterly gorgeous (filmed in Mexico with all the mountains and flora and fauna, etc.). I told my daughter to bury me with a copy of this book... This is truly a movie they should absolutely re-make (and get it right) - anyway, more later!

This intriguing novel immediately propels the reader into the life of a young and courageous Spaniard who sacrifices everything he owns for a chance to find honor and treasure in the New World. Each adventure, from the escape from the Spanish Inquisition to the conquest of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), seems so real that you feel as if you were there alongside the characters, fighting for a common cause. This novel offers a vivid and accurate depiction of the Conquest of Mexico, the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition, and a comparison between the "pagan savages" of the New World and the supposedly superior and religious conquistadors. The excitement of battle is also intertwined with an enthralling, romantic story line.
Although this book would be fantastic with only its compelling story line and breathtaking adventure, it is enriched by a profound and universal philosophy that questions and defines such concepts as love, friendship, racism, and religion. Captain from Castile is an inspiring and enthralling novel that I would equally recommend as an adventure, a romance, a historical and cultural depiction, or a deeper, almost philosophical piece. I found it a book that was hard to put down, yet so absorbing that when I reached the final page, I wished that the book was longer so that I might remain in the story a few moments longer.

...you'll love this book! I have to agree with "No from Seattle." This is one of my five all-time favorites as well. I first read it about 35 years ago when I was a kid, and have re-read it probably 5-6 times since (it's pretty intense and not a once-a-year read). Its compelling characters, graphic and historically accurate account of the Inquisition and the Conquest, heroes and villains, tough hombres and scoundrels, are no less real to me now than they were 35 years ago. Pedro de Vargas has been my archetypical hero since my first read, and few others have matched or exceeded him in my mind. Cortez was every bit as complex in reality as he is portrayed in the book, and the Conquistadores' audacity and greed in believing that a few hundred men could conquer a martial civilazation was realistically and breathtakingly portrayed. The period in Tenochtitlan is portrayed in a detail rarely seen anywhere else, including in histories I've been inspired to read as a result of this book. The account of the Sad Night was grim, desperate, and exciting. The author's descriptions of the Aztecs, a tough warrior race with a strange mixture of brutality and beauty, gave me a much better sense of the high culture present in North America when the Europeans arrived. And of course we can't forget the romantic storyline - enough to satisfy any romance addict. Be warned - the movie doesn't really do the book justice: it only covers about the first half of the story, with a contrived ending, and Tyrone Power was a little too old and a little too wooden to play Pedro de Vargas with conviction. But don't let that stop you from reading this book! It has to be one of the all-time great adventure stories.

I read this book when a was a teenager, years and years ago, finding the hardcover from the original publication in a trove of an older siblings books. It made an indelible impression on me then, and, re-reading it, it still does. Pagentry, politics, emotional angst, it's all here. The book made such a vivid impression on me, that when I travelled to Italy years later, one of the most exciting experiences I had was to go to the Castel Saint'Angelo outside Rome. Not only is it the site where Tosca jumps to her death in the opera, but it's the setting for the very atmospheric scene in "Prince of Foxes" where Andrea goes to the secret audience with Borgia and is worried about being assasinated. That's how concrete that scene was. They don't write books like this anymore. For years, I was upset over the fact that I have thick thumbs, like Angela Borgia!
The movie that was made in the 1950s (Tyrone Power as Orsini, Orson Welles as Borgia and Wanda Hendrix as Camilla) does not do the book justice, for all that there are some nice scenes actually filmed on location in Italy. Oh, and Tyrone Power does look great in tights. Check him out in the wedding scene at the end.

More than just a story of a Renaissance Man, this is a tale of a young, talented but materialistic and opportunistic man who pulls himself out of poverty by selling himself to the highest bidder. There are many parallels to the challenges facing today's young men who live in our inner cities. After an encounter with Saint Lucia, the man questions his motivations and finally becomes a more mature and fulfilled individual, at peace with himself and his formidable artistic talents. Also, this book was made into a GREAT movie in the 1950's (I think). I think Virginia Mayo as Camilla, Rex Harrison as one of the Borgia brothers, and Cliff Montgomery as Zoppo/Andrea??

My father handed me his old worn copy of Prince of Foxes, without even a cover, and told me that I'd like it. Well, he was more than right. If you like action, intrigue, romance, and who doesn't, this is a great book. Believe me, order it now, you won't be sorry!

Although this book is out of print it is worth the search if you like family memoirs. I happened upon this little treasure when looking for Angela's Ashes at my favorite local library. What is particularly striking about Yardley's book is the candor with which he presents his parents and his family. Yardley, a book critic for the Washington Post, tells the story of his father who was a long-time headmaster of a private, all-girls school in Virginia.

I absolutely love Ring Lardner. Some of his classics such as "Alibi Ike" and "Champion" are included in this volume. Champion is a frightening portrait of a brutal, totally amoral heavyweight champ who makes Mike Tyson look like a choir boy. The character is absolutely chilling and stands in sharp contrast to the many humorous characters Lardner has created. The beauty of his more humorous creations is that they bring a chuckle but are not so outlandish as be unreal. What is funny is that we all probably know people who are just like those satirized by Lardner. My criticism of this collection is that it omits my favorite Lardner story: "Mr. & Mrs. Fixit." We all know people like those lampooned in that story and it's too bad it's missing. My suggestion is to buy a collection that omits the short novel "You Know Mw Al" and buy one with a larger selection of shorter stories and then buy "You Know Me Al" separately. However, if you do buy this, you will still most certainly get your money's worth.

I recognize the possibility that I enjoyed this book more than will others because I too am a crusty WASP, a book lover, and a baseball fan,
and, perhaps most importantly, as Jonathan Yardley says of himself, "I am a son of the Mid-Atlantic". But I suspect most readers will enjoy
the ride as Mr. Yardley takes us along on his journey, which wends from Yardley, PA where he searches for signs of some lingering family
connection, throughout the region that also includes Delaware, Washington, DC, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and
Maryland, where the book ends with his plaintive meditations on the soon to be departed Memorial Stadium, longtime home of his beloved
Baltimore Orioles.

It is the unfortunate nature of this disparate agglomeration of states that even at the end of the book they still seem totally random, rather than
resembling anything like a cohesive section of the country. But even if they don't cohere, they each seem interesting in their own way as
presented here.

GRADE : B+

Editor Jonathan Yardley notes that in 1920s Mencken "towered over the American scene as has no literary or journalistic figure before or since." That's a significant story, parts of which are found in these pages.

This volume covers the time from Mencken's apprenticeship to when he and George Nathan founded and edited the influential American Mercury magazine. During the last eight years of his life, Mencken wrote this memoir "as a personal curriculum vitae" and as a part of American literary history "for the use of resurrection men in the years to come."

Because of the stroke he suffered, the notes went unfinished. His will stipulated to a library in his native Baltimore that they remain sealed until 1980 or 35 years after his death. In 1991 the seals were broken and this book was published soon after.

Mencken and Nathan published and, in some cases, introduced to the world an impressive list of writers, including Dreiser, Cather, Pound, Fitzgerald, O'Neill, Anderson, Lewis, and Masters. These were some of the major writers of the period and are proof of Mencken's ability to discover and promote literary talent. The occasionally trying encounters with Dreiser, Fitzgerald, and Lewis prove that the curmudgeon of American letters also had a certain amount of patience and compassion for those whose work he believed in.

Even after all this time, we still feel the impact of H. L. Mencken's arrival on the literary scene in the opening years of the 20th century. He wrote millions of words, and has been the subject of many biographies. Despite all the ink spilled by and about him, the fragmentary nature of his autobiographical works still strikes one as a tragedy. He began keeping a diary from the mid-Thirties, when he was over fifty, and his career-ending stroke cut this autobiography off just before he started writing about his glory years of the Twenties.

It's a pity, certainly, but editor Jonathan Yardley has done a splendid job editing the manuscript down to this book. Yardley succeeded in accomplishing his goal, to "let Mencken be Mencken" and to keep himself in the background. One approvingly contrasts this style of editing with David Cairns well-researched but fussily-footnoted _Memoirs of Hector Berlioz_.

So, we have Mencken's own account of the beginnings of his career, and his encounters with publishers, editors, poets, writers, and other notables of the 1910s. The only person who gets treated as an equal is his partner at _The Smart Set_ magazine, George Jean Nathan. Most everyone else has their weaknesses and strengths--if they have any strengths in his eyes--baldly and succinctly described. We meet the then up-and-coming Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, and Ezra Pound, to mention a few. Mencken gives us some flash-forwards every now and then--we see Pound as a raving brownshirt in the Thirties, demanding to be published in Mencken's magazine. Mencken prints the text of the withering reply he sent back.

Mencken's tone can be off-putting for a neutral reader. He frequently comes across as suaver-than-thou, unconned and unconnable. But most likely only people who already love Mencken will read this anyway, so they will enjoy themselves nonetheless. And he is very funny in some vignettes. Read the one where he and Nathan pretend to be interested in a tramp poet's tour of Greenwich Village.

There are two paragraphs early on in the book which may serve as the thesis statement for his whole life and career. In them, he describes how he was never attracted to religion or its secular imitations, nor ever considered himself a tool of the plutocracy. And indeed, a review of his output does show that he fell into his distinctively cynical style very early in his career, and never seemed to find cause to depart from it. In this biography he relates his activities and his reasons for them with very few emotional asides. Like a speakeasy gin-and-tonic, this is astringent stuff--but it hits the spot.

Frederick Exley was perhaps the quintessential one-book wonder, though he did write a few decent magazine articles along the way. A Fan's Notes is a terrific read and deserves the accolades it has received from Yardley and others. But Yardley is the wrong guy to write a biography of Exley. He is so obtusely literal and middle-brow that he does something I would have thought impossible: make Exley boring. Maybe Nick Tosches should have a crack at this subject. His hallucinatory method would be far more apt than Yardley's plodding fact-after-fact approach.

I'm divided on "Misfit." I'm relieved that the book isn't an 800 page hagiography, relentless detailing every awful event in Exley's life. What a candidate he would be for that kind of treatment, apparently! Yet in abandoning traditional biographic approaches like chronicling dates and places and keeping it freeform, Yardley goes up against some awesome competition for chronicling Exley's life: Exley himself, in A Fan's Notes, Pages from a Cold Island, and Last Notes from Home. I enjoyed this book but it seemed a little breezy, an homage to the elusive Exley rather than any definitive tackling of his "strange" life. A Fan's Notes still rules!

I find Yardley's -Washington Post- columns and book reviews entertaining, even when I don't agree with them; but -Misfit- suffers from something I don't find in his newspaper work, much less in Exley: numbers. Thus, themes are three-fold, Exley's marriages failed for these two reasons, these two contrasting incidents demonstrate first, this, second, that. This doesn't make Misfit a bad book, just too often a schematic one, unfortunate especially considering the rich, tangential schemelessness that was his subject's wont.Yardley faced what seems a real dilemma for a biographer: how to portray a subject known for autobiographical work? To parallell Ex's real life with his not always corresponding literary life, and to fill the numerous gaps, is how. But I'm not sure how someone unfamiliar with Exley would find it; excerpts from the oeuvre are revealing enough, but by my fan's assessment one needs to be immersed in Exley's voice for some time before his magic begins to rub off. I'm not sure Misfit accomplishes this, though as a fan I was more than happy to learn what was behind the literary mask.

I was delighted to finally find a biography of Ring Lardner. I had read all his stories, and the "You Know Me Al" articles. I was full of anticipation when I began reading Mr. Yardleys history of early baseball under the guise of a Biography of Ring Lardner. I realize that Ring Lardner wrote about baseball, but Mr. Yardley's coverage of this part of Ring Lardner's life is over done to put it mildly.

When I read a biography I expect to learn about the details of the individual's life, not baseball stories during the teens.

Mr. Yardley does cover some very limited events of Ring Lardner's life between his baseball history lessons. If I want to read a book on Baseball history, I would find a book on that subject. While some may find the stories entertaining, I found them boring and over done.

If you are looking for a Biography of Ring Lardner's life do not buy this book. If you want a early history of Baseball you will be right at home. I rate this book in reality 5 yawns, the only way I could stay awake reading it was on a cross trainer at the gym and even then it was an effort.

Ring Lardner began his career as a sports journalist, writing mostly about BASEBALL. He had his first literary success with stories about a BASEBALL player. There is a good case to be made that BASEBALL events like the Black Sox Scandal greatly affected his world view. So guess what? Any biography of Ring Lardner is going to have a lot of stuff about BASEBALL in it! Kind of like a biography of George Patton might mention the army here and there.

Jonathan Yardley sets the stage with a 38 page section about baseball as Lardner knew it. If you're allergic to baseball you can skip this part. The other 362 pages of text mention baseball no more than is necessary to tell Ring's story. Mostly this is an affectionate, critically insightful, well written biography of a vastly influential and still funny American writer who is sadly neglected today. Includes a decent sampling of Ring's newspaper journalism and personal letters.

I read practically every column and review that Jonathan Yardley publishes in the Washington Post, and though I may be a faithful reader, I lack enthusiasm for the man or his prose. G-d knows I've tried warming up to him, but Yardley's pompousness is off-putting. As a prose stylist, his mastery of the English language earns him the two stars he gets by me. Where he fails is trying to present himself both as a reasonable "man of the people," as well as an elite individual to whom we should look up, with awe. The combination doesn't work.