Dancing on Water is both a personal coming-of-age story and a sweeping look at ballet life in Russia and the United States during the golden age of dance. Elena Tchernichova takes us from her childhood during the siege of Leningrad to her mother's alcoholism and suicide, and from her adoption by Kirov ballerina Tatiana Vecheslova, who entered her into the state ballet school, to her career in the American Ballet Theatre. <br />As a student and young dancer with the Kirov, she witnessed the company's achievements as a citadel of classic ballet, home to legendary names--Shelest, Nureyev, Dudinskaya, Baryshnikov--but also a hotbed of intrigue and ambition run amok. As ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre from 1978 to 1990, Elena was called "the most important behind-the-scenes force for change in ballet today," by Vogue magazine. She coached stars and corps de ballet alike, and helped mold the careers of some of the great dancers of the age, including Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Gregory, Natalia Makarova, and Alexander Godunov. Dancing on Water is a tour de force, exploring the highest levels of the world of dance.
It was a bold and brutal crime--robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti, and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist. <p></p>Tejada's close-up view of the case allows readers to see those involved as individual personalities. She also paints a fascinating portrait of a bygone era: Providence gangsters and Boston Brahmins; nighttime raids and midnight bombings; and immigration, unionism, draft dodging, and violent anarchism in the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. In many ways this is as much a cultural history as a true-crime mystery or courtroom drama. Because the case played out against a background of domestic terrorism, in a time that echoes our own, we have a new appreciation of the potential connection between fear and the erosion of civil liberties and miscarriages of justice. <br />
Publishers Weekly,Breton effectively profiles 42 19th- and 20th-century women from around the world who broke with traditional subservient roles as housewives and mothers and became dynamic environmental activists. A few of her subjects worked behind the scenes, such as Harriet Hemenway, a founder of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and Katharine Ordway, preserver of tallgrass prairies. Most, however, have been outspoken and highly visible: Lois Gibbs mobilized the Love Canal Homeowners' Association; Cathy Hinds fought for the cleanup of a toxic-waste dump site in Maine; Michiko Ishimuri crusaded for the victims of methyl mercury near Minamata Bay in Japan; Hazel Henderson, an authority on global economics and human development issues, was labeled by corporate CEOs the "most dangerous woman in America." Somesuch as Judi Bari, crippled by a car bomb while fighting to save the California redwood forests, and Dai Qing, imprisoned for her opposition to the Three Gorges Dam in Chinahave risked their lives. Breton, a former vice-president of the National Audubon Society, has created stirring portraits that describe the ecological problems that motivated these women, show how they challenged male-dominated power structures and emphasize the special insights they brought as women to the issues. They are inspirations for anyone bucking the odds to protect the environment. Photos. Editors, Scott Brassart and John Weingartner. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved