Remembrance: Eddie Albert, Character Actor, Dies at 99

Eddie Albert, a film and television actor known for his evocative portrayals of characters who ranged from the avuncular to the befuddled to the monomaniacal, died on Thursday at his home near Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 99.

By MARGALIT FOX
New York Times
Published: May 28, 2005

Down Came the Rain : My Journey Through Postpartum Depression

Down Came the Rain : My Journey Through Postpartum Depression
by Brooke Shields

In this compelling memoir, Brooke Shields talks candidly about her experience with postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, and provides millions of women with an inspiring example of recovery.

When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter, Rowan Francis, into the world, something unexpected followed-a crippling depression. Now, for the first time ever, in Down Came the Rain, Brooke talks about the trials, tribulations, and finally the triumphs that occurred before, during, and after the birth of her daughter.

In what is sure to strike a chord with the millions of women who suffer from depression after childbirth, America’s sweetheart Brooke Shields shares how she, too, battled this debilitating condition that is widely misunderstood, despite the fact that it affects many new mothers. She discusses the illness in the context of her life, including her struggle to get pregnant, the high expectations she had for herself and that others placed on her as a new mom, and the role of her husband, friends, and family as she struggled to attain her maternal footing in the midst of a disabling depression. And, ultimately, Brooke shares how she found a way out through talk therapy, medication, and time.

Exhibiting an informed voice and a self-deprecating sense of humor, this first memoir from a woman who has grown up before the eyes of the world is certain to attract the attention and empathy of many new mothers and fans alike.

Finding Time (Four Years) for Proust

On the third Thursday of every month, a group of Marcel Proust worshipers convenes in the reading room of the Mercantile Library on East 47th Street to savor another nibble of the four million words of “In Search of Lost Time” (“À la Recherche du Temps Perdu”), the French writer’s meditation on time.

By LILY KOPPEL
New York Times
Published: May 24, 2005

Them : A Memoir of Parents

Them : A Memoir of Parents
by Francine du Plessix Gray

Them: A Portrait of Parents is a beautifully written homage to the extraordinary lives of two fascinating, irrepressible people who were larger than life emblems of a bygone age. Written with honesty and grace by the person who knew them best, this generational saga is a survivor’s story. Tatiana and Alexander survived the Russian Revolution, the fall of France, and New York’s factory of fame. Their daughter, Francine, survived them.

Tatiana du Plessix, the wife of a French diplomat, was a beautiful, sophisticated “white Russian” who had been the muse of the famous Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Alexander Liberman, the ambitious son of a prominent Russian Jew, was a gifted magazine editor and aspiring artist. As part of the progressive artistic Russian émigré community living in Paris in the 1930s, the two were destined to meet. They began a passionate affair, and the year after Paris was occupied in World War II they fled to New York with Tatiana’s young daughter, Francine.

There they determinedly rose to the top of high society, holding court to a Who’s Who list of the midcentury’s intellectuals and entertainers. Flamboyant and outrageous, bold and brilliant, they were irresistible to friends like Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dalí, and the publishing tycoon Condé Nast. But to those who knew them well they were also highly neurotic, narcissistic, and glacially self-promoting, prone to cut out of their lives, with surgical precision, close friends who were no longer of use to them.