The Buzz Board
Picks from the Inner Circle
Joanne Lipman
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Joanne Lipman founded and was Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and Web site. Previously, Lipman was a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal. Lipman joined the Journal in 1983 as a reporter, and during her career there created and was Editor in Chief of Weekend Journal, created Personal Journal, and served as a Page One editor. Former Editor of Conde Nast Portfolio |
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 You’ll feel a lot better about the future of diplomacy when you check out Global21online.org. Created and run by Yale students, Global21 oversees The Globalist, a network of international-affairs magazines that has expanded to universities in eight countries including China, Israel, Turkey and South Africa. The far-flung student journalists (full disclosure: including my daughter) gather online to discuss everything from politics (a forum on Afghanistan) to pop culture (“Where were you when Michael Jackson died?”). The conversation is way more civil than what we hear from grownups—a welcome sign for us all. |
R.J. Cutler
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A producer and director of non-fiction films and television, R.J. Cutler most recently directed and produced The September Issue about legendary Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. He began his career producing The War Room, the Oscar-nominated documentary about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign for the presidency directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Director of The September Issue |
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 Anish Kapoor's exhibition of new sculptures at London's Royal Academy is the Muhammad Ali of museum shows. Loquacious, giddy, explosive, seductive, aggressive and poetic, it is indeed The Greatest. Thrilling audiences of all ages through December 11, this Kapoor is not to be missed. |
Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney is a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. In 2003, he was awarded a Discovery/The Nation Prize by the 92nd Street Y and The Nation for his poetry. Co-founder of Guernica |
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I like Media Matters for America, although they take everything so literally. When President Obama's team teased Fox News for its imaginative use of facts, commentators repeated ad nauseam Rupert Murdoch's claim that Fox News' ratings went "through the roof." Wasn't it ironic that this light teasing from the White House actually helped Fox News? Along comes Media Matters armed with their Nielsen reports. "In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar," writes buzzkill Eric Boehlert on Media Matters' Web site. "Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined." I wish Media Matters would lighten up. I'll keep reading them just to see if they do. |
John Lithgow
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John Lithgow is an Emmy and Tony award-winning actor, known for his roles in Footloose, Shrek and on the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. He is currently guest-starring as a serial killer in season 4 of Dexter . He will appear in the Off-Broadway show Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, which starts previews in January. Actor |
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The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. He’s a wonderful Irish novelist but even more well-known as an Irish playwright. It’s an incredibly heartfelt story. You know those Irish—they write. Anybody who takes my recommendation will thank me for it. |
Dustin Hoffman
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Dustin Hoffman is an Academy Award winning film, television, and theater actor. He rose to stardom after his breakout role as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Actor |
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 I’d recommend Circle Mirror Transformation, which I just saw at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater on 42nd Street. It takes place in an acting class. I come from that world and it was accurate. It’s a wonderful and intimate space with only about 80 seats. |
James Carroll
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James Carroll's recent book is Practicing Catholic, a story of American belief. He is a columnist for the Boston Globe and Distinguished-Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University. His other books include An American Requiem, which won the National Book Award, House of War, winner of the PEN-Galbraith Award, and Constantine's Sword, now an acclaimed documentary. Boston Globe columnist and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University |
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I recommend A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. This doorstop of a book has the lightness of pure oxygen. It begins with an essay (by Toby Lester) about the first map on which the word “America” appears. More than a thousand pages later, the book concludes with prints (by Kara Walker) acknowledging Barack Obama’s election, one of which includes the line, “The new and revised edition of the American narrative.” This exquisite volume, offers something more—a revised edition of the American imagination. Hemingway, Bellow, and Louisa May Alcott are here, but so is bebop, the atom bomb, and Superman. Marcus and Sollors track the progression (not always progress) from the discovery of a place to the invention of an idea to a highly nuanced literature that keeps the place alive and the idea new. This book belongs on everybody’s best table. |
Chef |
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 Vinegars are my current obsession in the kitchen; not your common household variety mind you...I’ve been using a great, artisanal honey vinegar from France, with a natural sweetness and a very discreet acidity. I can drink it by the spoonful, and it’s great now that we are getting heavily into our pickling season. Another really interesting one is Blis Solera Elixr sherry vinegar, which has been cask-aged in barrels which originally had whiskey in them, followed by maple syrup followed by the vinegar—it’s off the charts! Very little effort needed with products like these. |
Barbie Latza Nadeau
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Barbie Latza Nadeau has reported from Italy for Newsweek Magazine since 1997. She also writes for CNN Traveller, Budget Travel Magazine and Frommer's. Newsweek correspondent, Rome |
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Forget the hype about French black truffles. If you really want gastronomic ecstasy, start sniffing around for Italian white truffles—truly the diamond of tubers. I highly recommend a truffle holiday as a fab niche travel experience. It is now the height of the white truffle season in Italy, where trained dogs are rooting around the base of oak trees. (Truffle-hunting pigs were replaced years ago since they can’t be trained not to eat the treasures.) White truffles, which are never cooked, are value at around $1,000 a pound, but worth every penny. |
Alec Baldwin
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Alec Baldwin is a film, television, and theater actor. He currently appears on NBC’s 30 Rock in the role of Jack Donaghy, for which he won two Golden Globe awards and two Emmy awards. Actor |
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Read Frank Bruni’s book Born Round. It’s a fun book. I liked his ending up doing something he never thought he would do. I feel the same way, like Frank was working in the Rome bureau of The New York Times and he went on to become the food critic of the Times, and I always imagined I was going to be doing something other than what I ended up doing. |
Fran Drescher
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Fran Drescher is an Emmy award nominated actress known for her role in The Nanny. Actress |
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I would really recommend that every woman read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. It’s a fantastic concept, it says that no matter how high women get on the food chain in the corporate world, because they are women living in a man’s world, they don’t invest their money in the way that men might. Many of them put most of their money on their back and on their face because regardless of how educated they are or how successful they are or how much money they make, their true value in our society is if they look like a million bucks. |
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