NONFICTION
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, by Robert Gottlieb, $25
You know the celebrities who star in sex tapes to help launch their careers? Or the ones we talk endlessly about whenever they scandalize the nation with a “wardrobe malfunction” or with grainy photos of coke being snorted?
They look shy next to the French stage icon Sarah Bernhardt. Adored by both the public and critics alike, Bernhardt was France’s leading actress throughout the late 19th century.
A brief rundown of her most flagrant habits must include: wearing a stuffed bat on her head; traveling around Europe and the Americas with an animal menagerie that included a cheetah, a lion cub, an alligator and seven chameleons; transforming Paris’ premier theater into a military hospital during the Franco-Prussian War; a “lifelong habit of automatically sleeping with her leading men” and probably also Victor Hugo, the Prince of Wales and Emperor Louis-Napoleon; and a fondness for snoozing in a coffin she kept with her.
Bernhardt began life as “an unwanted and unloved child” who never knew her father and was treated with scorn by her mother. As an adult, she devoted herself to earning the admiration and affection of her country and the world. Her arrival in American cities, from New York to Denver to Grand Rapids, often received breathless coverage by the press.
“Sarah,” part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series, is a smart and sprightly biography. Robert Gott lieb shows how Bernhardt nurtured celebrity with her outlandish style and exaggerated, even made-up, stories about herself.
There was also her tremendous talent. Her most famous role was Hamlet. True to her own character, Bernhardt gave the audience the opposite of a conflicted, languishing prince. Her Hamlet is determined. “All his philosophizing and temporary hesitation does not alter the basis of his character,” she said. “His resolution swerves, but immediately returns to the channel he has marked for it. I know this view is heterodox, but I maintain it. It is just as well to have a decided opinion of one’s own, and adhere to it.”
NONFICTION
Stalling for Time: My Life As an FBI Hostage Negotiator, by Gary Noesner, $26
Desperate, unhinged or downright sociopathic: These are the words that best describe the types of people Gary Noesner regularly encountered during his 23 years as an FBI hostage negotiator.
Noesner crisscrossed the United States and the globe as one of the bureau’s foremost experts on how to save lives using words instead of force. His memoir, “Stalling for Time,” shows this work is practically an art form.
His accounts of dealing with right-wing militias, prison rioters, terrorist hijackers and even jealous ex-husbands show that negotiators must be masters of persuasion, pillars of unflappability and skilled improvisers who can make split-second decisions in perilous situations.
In addition to detailing some of Noesner’s most challenging cases, the book explains the basic principles that inform his approach to negotiation. “Most hostage takers do not begin their day planning to kill someone and then die in a hail of bullets,” he writes. “They are usually focused on getting their demands met.”
The most in-depth and absorbing section is devoted to the 1993 siege near Waco, Texas, at the Branch Davidian religious compound headed by David Koresh. Noesner’s anecdotes about the long hours he and fellow negotiators spent on the phone with Koresh and his lieutenants are riveting, and his depiction of the destructive rift between the FBI’s tactical and negotiating teams helps explain why this operation largely was a failure.
