LET’S START the new year with a bit of this, that and the other thing:
Fans of Madison author David Maraniss will be pleased to learn that his latest book, “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World,” is now available for pre-order on amazon.com as well as Simon & Schuster’s Web site, simonsays.com.
….UW-Madison graduate and former WKOW-TV/Channel 27 reporter Steve Levitan recently contributed an essay on the Hollywood writers’ strike to deadlinehollywooddaily.com, Los Angeles journalist Nikki Finke’s Web site that is must reading for those in show business. The piece by Levitan, co-creator of the new Kelsey Grammer sitcom “Back to You,” is part of a series of essays titled “Why We Write” that Finke has solicited from the striking writers. In his piece, Levitan touches on his time at UW-Madison (“the Harvard of America’s Dairyland”), and at Channel 27.
….Last week in the New York Times, reviewer William Grimes loved “My Family and Other Saints,” the new “enchanting memoir” by UW-Madison professor of cultural anthropology Kirin Narayan.