Book Review: "Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life"

[Louisiana1976]

You'll have no idea how much you missed her until you get the chance to read snippets of her again.

How sorely we miss and need Molly Ivins these days hits you like a four-by-four when you crack the pages of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life. This new biography is written by a former researcher who worked for Ivins in the 1990s (W. Michael Smith) and a Texas journalist (Bill Minutaglio) who had access to all papers she packed away over the years, from shopping lists to personal letters.

And a packrat she was, to our benefit.

What emerges from this thoughtful biography is a very complicated woman, part self-constructed "personality," part tortured soul, pure brilliant iconoclast. What becomes most apparent is how flat-out unlikely it was that we ever heard from her at all. Raised as she was in a socially conservative, upper middle class family in Houston, Ivins attended all the finest private schools, went on an exchange to France (she was fluent in French) and eventually graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts -- not the biography you'd expect from someone with the perfect eye for viewing hypocrisy and the fiery down-home language to name it. Remember, we're talking about the woman who once quipped about a Texas Congressman, "If his IQ slips any lower we'll have to water him twice a day."

Ah, Molly. There will never be another like her.

snip

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/13/813655/-Book-Review:-Molly-Ivins:-A-Rebel-Life

[Jim__]

1. I have to read that!

[Electric Monk]

2. +1