Monday, November 02, 2009

Coffee With a canine: Julie Fenster & Kipper

Today's featured duo at Coffee With a Canine: Julie Fenster & Kipper, a purehearted mixed-breed.

Fenster, on how she and Kipper were united:
I found her at the S.P.C.A. She was just standing in a cage, emaciated, because she was too upset by her incarceration to eat. Later, I saw her official chart, across which the veterinarian had written “BEHAVIOR PROBLEM” in the thickest penmanship I’ve ever seen. I’ll bet he broke the pen.

She did have some strange tendencies. They were hard to miss during our first weeks together. She ate a sofa. She considered pillows dangerous ordnance, to be heroically defused and dismantled. I won’t tell you what she thought Persian rugs were for. And she would run away whenever she detected any chance of escape. But one great day, she came back of her own volition. That was when...[read on]
Julie M. Fenster is the author of the critically acclaimed The Case of Abraham Lincoln and co-author with Douglas Brinkley of the New York Times bestseller Parish Priest. Her books include the award-winning Ether Day and Race of the Century.

Read about her new book, FDR's Shadow: Louis Howe, The Force That Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Among the early praise for the book:
"Louis Howe's remarkable career as the political savant behind Franklin D. Roosevelt's rise to power is one of the greatly underappreciated American stories of the last century. Julie M. Fenster's concise new biography of Howe, based on freshly released material, is a welcome corrective -- a whale of a story told with intelligence and grace."
--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, and author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
Visit Julie M. Fenster's website.

Read--Coffee With a Canine: Julie Fenster & Kipper.

--Marshal Zeringue