CANR
WORK TITLE: THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT OLIVETTI
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.merylesecrest.com/
CITY: Washington
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 291
http://knopfdoubleday.com/author/27553/meryle-secrest/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 23, 1930, in Bath, England; immigrated to Canada, 1948; immigrated to the United States, 1953; naturalized U.S. citizen, 1957; daughter of Albert Edward and Olive Edith May Doman; married David Waight Secrest (a journalist), September 23, 1953 (divorced, 1965); married Thomas Gattrell Beveridge (a singer and composer), November 23, 1975; children: (first marriage) Cary Doman, Martin Adams, Gillian Anne.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Hamilton News, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, women’s editor, 1949-50; Bristol Evening Post, Bristol, England, reporter, 1950-51; affiliated with F&R Lazarus & Co., 1953-55; Columbus Citizen, Columbus, OH, food editor, 1955-57; Washington Post, Washington, DC, feature writer, 1961-69, cultural reporter, 1969-72, editor and art critic, 1972-75; freelance writer, 1975—; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, professor of English, 2002—.
AVOCATIONS:“European travel, foreign languages, painting, environmental problems (including air, water, and soil pollution and the acute problem of noise in twentieth-century America).”
AWARDS:“Most Promising Young Writer” citation, Canadian Women’s Press Club, 1950, for “An Interview with Barbara Ann Scott”; Woman of the Year citation, Hamilton Press Club, 1951; American Library Award, 1974, for Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks; Pulitzer Prize nomination, 1981, for Being Bernard Berenson; Guggenheim fellowship, 1981-82; George Freedly Memorial Award, American Library Association, 1988, for Stephen Sondheim: A Life; National Humanities Medal, 2006.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals.
SIDELIGHTS
Meryle Secrest has painted compelling biographical portraits of a number of prominent personalities in the world of twentieth-century arts, according to reviewers. In books such as Salvador Dali, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, and the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Being Bernard Berenson, Secrest has earned the praise of critics for her thorough research and engaging style.
“Biography seems to be the natural outgrowth of my journalistic experience,” Secrest once told CA, “and skills acquired as a researcher and interviewer are particularly valuable in unearthing documentary information.” Because of her many years of journalistic training and experience, she attaches particular importance to interviews as a source of information about her chosen subject. “Flawed though the human memory is,” she noted, “and biased as the reminiscence may be, colored by circumstance and prejudice, it is still a potentially rich source of information that can be obtained by no other means.”
Her first book, Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks, was most influenced by her experience as a reporter. “I began,” she recalled to CA, “with the intention of reporting anything and everything that could be discovered about the personality and with the determination to keep my personality in the background. I completed the manuscript and realized that the biography simply didn’t work. So I threw it away as a source and completely rewrote the book, taking another year to do it, and recast it in the form which seemed much more sympathetic to my own assets as a writer. I eliminated extraneous detail and concentrated on developing and illustrating my own point of view about Romaine Brooks.” Although the book was only mildly successful, it was well reviewed by critics in both England and the United States, which encouraged Secrest to leave journalism and devote herself to writing biography.
When tackling the wealth of information that was available on Bernard Berenson, a noted authenticator of Italian art, Secrest found it necessary to eliminate detail. “A ridiculous amount of material exists, documenting almost every aspect of his life except his childhood and business dealings,” she told CA. “So the challenge to present a coherent picture continues. I find myself unalterably opposed to the current vogue for biography which I find unreadable—and if I can’t read it, why should I write it?” In the view of many critics, Secrest met her challenge in Being Bernard Berenson. Robert Hughes noted in the New York Review of Books that Secrest’s narrative “is the liveliest evocation of this strangely conflict-ridden man that has yet been written, a portrait with the unmistakable ring of psychological truth.”
The art historian Kenneth Clark provided Secrest with his insight and reminiscence for her biography of Berenson; she was so taken with Clark’s personality that she made him the subject of her third biography. Kenneth Clark: A Biography, which some reviewers noted was approached by its author as an act of hero-worship, was problematic for Secrest when Clark, who was still alive at the time of its writing, protested about certain details and forced Secrest to rewrite much of the book. The critical opinion that followed was mixed. “This is not a book that does full justice to Kenneth Clark’s distinction,” commented John Gross in the New York Times, “but neither … does it trivialize him. Or if it does, it is only because humanizing someone usually involves a degree of trivializing as well, and Miss Secrest does undoubtedly succeed in making Clark seem more human than he did before.”
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein have also been the subjects of Secrest’s energetic interest. Her Frank Lloyd Wright was the first biography of the man to be compiled with access to the complete microfiche Wright archives. In the New York Review of Books, Martin Filler judged it “likely to remain the most satisfactory treatment of Wright’s life until a definitive multi-volume study appears.”
Secrest reached a wide audience with biographies of Broadway composers. For Stephen Sondheim: A Life, she conducted marathon interview sessions with her subject, and the result is a volume that, in the words of an Economist reviewer, “is informative and perceptive rather than a plodding ‘and-then-he-wrote’ chronology or fannish piece of unvarnished adulation.” The book covers Sondheim’s personal and professional life with frankness, beginning with the musician’s frosty relationship with his mother. The product of a broken and abusive home, the teenage musical prodigy bonded with the great Broadway lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who served as mentor and father figure to Sondheim. With his first big success, West Side Story, Sondheim became known as a lyricist who could produce audience-pleasing hits, which soon included Gypsy and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Such commercial success was eventually eclipsed by a more serious Sondheim who, in collaboration with director Harold Prince, revolutionized the musical theater with such “dark” fare as Company, Follies, and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Secrest presents a full picture of her subject—by turns “telling, closed, demanding, arrogant, overly sensitive, mean, repressed, awkward—and brilliant, charming and companionable,” wrote James Morris in the Wilson Quarterly. In doing so she shows that the composer-lyricist is not so far removed from some of his darker characters, such as Company‘s Bobby, a middle-aged man who cannot commit to a relationship, or Georges Seurat of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, a painter who places his work above normal human interaction.
Sondheim’s story includes a discussion of his homosexuality, and this was the first time Sondheim had publicly spoken about that aspect of his life. Patrick Smith, writing in Opera News, commended Secrest, whose “ability to draw a character is evident not only in her delineation of Sondheim and his mother but in the host of others that surges through the book. … She handles Sondheim’s coming to terms with his homosexuality with a restraint and dignity not often found in such biographies.” Offering similar praise, Advocate contributor Robert Plunket said the author “does an excellent job of illuminating her subject’s personality. He comes across as a classic homosexual type and a very honorable if old-fashioned one.” Linda Barnhart summed it up in Notes by asserting that Secrest has produced, “for the immediate future, … the definitive biography of Sondheim.”
In Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers Secrest recounts the life and career of the composer who collaborated first with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then with Oscar Hammerstein II to create such theatrical classics as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I. As Secrest makes clear, the wholesome cheer typified by Maria, who sang in The Sound of Music of “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” hardly reflected the life of that show’s composer. Rodgers was notoriously misanthropic, lived out a dysfunctional marriage with a wife described as his equal in meanness, and had no qualms about unceremoniously dumping his first partner when Hart fell on hard personal times. “According to Broadway apocrypha,” noted American Theatre contributor Peter Ritter, “Hart, sliding toward terminal alcoholism, arrived at the 1943 premier of A Connecticut Yankee only to find that Rodgers had barred him from the theatre.”
But Secrest also asserts that Rodgers had another side to him, defending him against the charge that he had “the soul of a banker,” as London Sunday Telegraph contributor John Gross put it. “Such a view, she claims, is superficial; she points out how sensitive he could be on occasion.” Noting that “greater artists than Richard Rodgers have been worse characters,” Gross concluded that after closing Somewhere for Me, “absorbing as it is, you’re glad to get back to the songs and quite glad to forget about the man who composed them.” This reaction demonstrates Secrest’s success at showing her subjects’ humanity and true characters.
While Secrest has written primarily of artists, musicians, and composers, her Duveen: A Life in Art has as its subject an art dealer. Joseph Duveen, who later became Lord Duveen of Millbank, was a prominent, influential, and charismatic dealer in fine art. The author draws on previously closed archives about Duveen stored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a major resource. Yet critics were somewhat disappointed with the result, especially regarding the author’s account of Duveen’s professional relationship with Bernard Berenson, the art expert who received kickbacks from Duveen for authenticating certain artworks. According to Isabelle Anscombe in Apollo, Secrest “fails to examine the nature of [Berenson’s] relationship with Duveen.” Anscombe added that the author “lacks any real curiosity about what drove Joe Duveen’s desire to be the greatest art dealer of his time.” However, Peter Daily concluded in his Art in America review that “Secrest’s intelligent and absorbing treatment is as close to a definitive biography as Duveen is likely to receive. Its principal shortcoming is that … it vastly overestimates Duveen’s impact on American collectors and collections.”
After completing Duveen, Secrest turned her lens on herself, reflecting on her work as a biographer in the memoir Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject. She then returned to artists, her favorite subject matter, with Modigliani: A Life. Writing the volume “took about three-and-a-half to four years,” Secrest told online Art in America interviewer Brian Boucher. “This, I can say, has to be the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted. First of all, he died 90 years ago. … Not only do you have no witnesses; you don’t even have grandchildren of witnesses. But I was sure I was going to find some letters. And practically speaking, there were none. So you do what journalists do—you write around the person, and there’s lots of stories about him.” In doing so, Secrest discovered that “witnesses have been constructing a false persona for 90 years, and it’s gained the status of fact.” Thus, Modigliani attempts to reveal the man behind the myth, and it presents an overlooked artist who spent his life hiding his struggles with tuberculosis. He was not, as most biographers have indicated, an alcoholic womanizer. In fact, Secrest asserts that, initially, Modigliani drank to conceal the symptoms of his illness.
“The credibility of Secrest’s portrayal depends on how much porosity you permit in the distinction between facts and atmospherics,” Maureen Mullarkey complained in the Weekly Standard. “This book is significant less for what it tells about Modigliani than as a primer in the devolution of rules of evidence. Facts are few.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor was also ambivalent, stating: “Sorting through the detritus of the artist’s short life, the author ultimately connects those events in great detail, but sometimes a bit too meticulously. The myths were more fun.” However, Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, remarked: “With a keen nose for canards and unprecedented access to primary materials,” Secrest presents an “astute and gripping biography.” Assessing Modigliani in Maclean’s, Joanne Latimer wrote that the artist’s “life story is given a sympathetic revision in Secrest’s evocative new biography.” Latimer acknowledged that Secrest’s claim that Modigliani drank to hide his tuberculosis seems outlandish, but added that the author “backs up her theory with compelling research and builds credibility with every page.” As New Yorker contributor Peter Schjeldahl pointed out, Secrest “puts art at the center of a tale that, in most versions, is a parade of comic or appalling oft-told anecdotes—some of which she scrupulously debunks, without unduly bleaching the color from a bohemian’s bohemian.”
In her work, Secrest strives to balance the necessary abundant factual information about her subjects’ lives and work with insights into the personalities of her subjects and those around them. “If I have any criticism of biography in [the United States], it’s that it’s too much inclined to a very objective, scholarly approach,” she once told John F. Baker for an interview in Publishers Weekly. “That way you get just a huge collection of facts, but somehow the personality of the subject seems to slip away. And there is no such thing as a definitive biography.”
Secrest’s following biography, Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography, focuses on the life of the influential Italian fashion designer. Secrest noted that Schiap, as she was called, left behind no correspondence or diaries, and her odd autobiography was not necessarily a credible source of information. Discussing Sciaparelli’s secretiveness and her tendency to fabricate details about her life, Secrest told Wall Street Journal Online contributor Brenda Cronin: “She calls her memoir Shocking, but it’s not.” However, Secrest gathered information about Schiaparelli from her friends and other sources. Schiap was raised in Rome and married a con man who posed as a psychic. They had a daughter, Gogo, who had health problems after contracting polio. Despite her difficulties, Schiap and Gogo moved to Paris in 1922. She quickly became friends with the city’s artists, including Dalí. Secrest describes the quirky clothing Schiaparelli made, including an eye-catching lobster dress and cheeky trompe l’oeil sweaters. The 1930s were the designer’s heyday. During this time, she and Coco Chanel were harsh competitors. In 1954, Schiaparelli released her memoir, and she died in 1973.
“This biography paints a compelling picture of a shrewd businesswoman gussying up her product as art, and making a killing. Schiap proves as persuasive today as she was 80 years ago. She seems to have Secrest entirely convinced,” wrote Alexandra Fury in a review for the London Independent Online. Alexandra Harris declared in her review for the London Guardian Online: “Schiaparelli’s life story, engagingly told here by the American biographer Meryle Secrest … appears as improbable and fascinating as her clothes.” Booklist writer Donna Seaman remarked: “Richly illustrated and endlessly intriguing, Secrest’s biography illuminates … the oft-besieged couturier’s inexhaustible tenacity and dazzling creativity.” “Secrest ably chronicles Schiap’s career and social life, mining others’ memoirs and reflections to fashion a colorful portrait of her ‘famously difficult’ subject—but Schiap keeps the secrets of her heart,” opined a Kirkus Reviews critic.
In 2019, Secrest released The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World’s First Desktop Computer. In this volume, she profiles the Olivetti company, an Italian firm best known for its typewriters, that were used by literary greats, including Cormac McCarthy and Gunter Grass. The company’s founder was Camilo Olivetti, who passed the company off to his son, Adriano, in 1933. Adriano, like his father, was politically active and held leftist convictions. He even collaborated with Princess Marie Jose Charlotte of Italy on a plan to overthrow Benito Mussolini. Adriano survived World War II and went on to lead Olivetti in an expansion of its electronics department. The company created a mainframe computer that rivaled that of IBM, which threatened the American company. Secrest suggests that Adriano had considered selling the technology to China and Russia, making him a target of the CIA. Adriano and his chief technologist both died under suspicious circumstances, leading Secrest to question whether they may have been assassinated by the CIA. A Kirkus Reviews critic remarked: “That much of the author’s argument proceeds by inference and suggestion doesn’t diminish its plausibility.” The same critic described The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti as “a competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly called it a “fascinating account” and asserted: “Secrest offers a riveting look at an ambitious and inventive family deserving wider attention.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Secrest, Meryle, Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject, Knopf (New York, NY), 2007.
PERIODICALS
Advocate, May 12, 1998, Robert Plunket, review of Stephen Sondheim: A Life, p. 79.
American Record Guide, March-April, 1999, Richard Traubner, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 333.
American Theatre, December, 2001, Peter Ritter, review of Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers, p. 70.
Apollo, January, 2005, Isabelle Anscombe, “Duveen: A Life in Art: Meryle Secrest’s Biography of Joseph Duveen Lamentably Pulls Its Punches,” p. 66.
Art in America, June-July, 2005, Peter Dailey, “The Dealer King,” review of Duveen, p. 67.
Booklist, May 1, 1998, Ray Olson, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 1476; September 15, 2001, Jack Helbig, review of Somewhere for Me, p. 163; May 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject, p. 67; March 15, 2011, Donna Seaman, review of Modigliani: A Life, p. 12; September 1, 2014, Donna Seaman, review of Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography, p. 24.
Choice, March, 1999, R.D. Johnson, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 1276.
Economist, September 12, 1998, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. S14.
Entertainment Weekly, June 18, 1999, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 71.
Guardian (London, England), September 4, 1998, “An American in London,” p. T16.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1998, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 567; September 15, 2001, review of Somewhere for Me, p. 1344; December 15, 2010, review of Modigliani; August 1, 2014, review of Elsa Schiaparelli; September 15, 2019, review of The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World’s First Desktop Computer.
Library Journal, May 15, 1998, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 87; November 1, 2001, Bruce Schueneman, review of Somewhere for Me, p. 95; June 15, 2007, Morris Hounion, review of Shoot the Widow, p. 72.
Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2001, Merle Rubin, review of Somewhere for Me p. E3.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 14, 1999, Don Shirley, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 2.
Maclean’s, April 4, 2011, Joanne Latimer, review of Modigliani, p. 61.
New Yorker, August 24, 1998, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 154; March 7, 2011, Peter Schjeldahl, “Long Faces,” review of Modigliani, p. 80; December 8, 2014, Halford Macy, review of Elsa Schiaparelli, p. 89.
New York Review of Books, December 20, 1979, Robert Hughes, review of Being Bernard Berenson, pp. 19-29; January 13, 1994, Martin Filler, review of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, pp. 28-33.
New York Times, January 8, 1985, John Gross, review of Kenneth Clark: A Biography, p. 23; July 21, 1998, Mel Gussow, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. B7.
New York Times Book Review, July 19, 1998, Benedict Nightingale, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 7.
Notes, June, 1999, Linda Barnhart, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 946.
Opera News, October, 1998, Patrick Smith, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 82.
Publishers Weekly, January 11, 1985, John F. Baker, interview with Meryle Secrest, pp. 73-74; May 4 1998, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 193; October 1, 2001, review of Somewhere for Me, p. 45; April 23, 2007, James Atlas, review of Shoot the Widow, p. 38; August 25, 2014, review of Elsa Schiaparelli, p. 96; August 5, 2019, review of The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti, p. 55.
Spectator, November 15, 2014, Nicky Haslam, “Shock and Awe,” review of Elsa Schiaparelli, p. 49.
Sunday Telegraph (London, England), December 9, 2001, John Gross, “An Unmusical Soul.”
Times (London, England), March 3, 1980; September 5 1998, Roger Watkins, “Sorrow Full,” p. 19.
Times Literary Supplement, October 9, 1998, Rupert Christiansen, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 23.
Wall Street Journal, June 5, 1998, Terry Teachout, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. W12.
Washington Post, August 1 1999, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 10.
Weekly Standard, April 11, 2011, Maureen Mullarkey, “Modern Martyr: The Brief, Bohemian Transit of Amedeo Modigliani,” review of Modigliani.
Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 1998, James Morris, review of Stephen Sondheim, p. 103.
ONLINE
Art in America, http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/ (February 28, 2011), Brian Boucher, author interview.
Canoe, http://www.canoe.ca/ (August 23, 1998), Yvonne Crittenden, review of Stephen Sondheim.
Guardian Online, http://www.theguardian.com/ (January 24, 2015), Alexandra Harris, review of Elsa Schiaparelli.
Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (November 7, 2014), Alexander Fury, review of Elsa Schiaparelli.
Meryle Secrest, http://www.merylesecrest.com (March 5, 2015).
Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/ (October 14, 2014), Brenda Cronin, author interview.
MERYLE SECREST was born and educated in Bath, England, and lives in Washington, DC. She is the author of twelve biographies and was awarded the 2006 Presidential National Humanities Medal.
Meryle Secrest
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Meryle Secrest is an American biographer, primarily of American artists and art collectors.
Contents
1
Biography
2
Awards and recognition
3
Books
4
References
5
External links
Biography[edit]
Secrest was born in Bath, England, and educated at the City of Bath Girls School, a city-run grammar school strong in the arts and Humanities.[1][2] Her family emigrated to Canada, where she began her career as a journalist. She worked as women's editor for the Hamilton News in Ontario, Canada; shortly thereafter she was named "Most Promising Young Writer" by the Canadian Women's Press Club. After marrying an American, in 1964 she began writing for The Washington Post,[1] doing profile interviews of notable personalities from Leonard Bernstein to Anaïs Nin.
In 1975 she left the Post to write books full-time. Since then she has written a number of biographies; her subjects have included Frank Lloyd Wright, Lord Duveen, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Salvador Dalí, Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson, Romaine Brooks, Richard Rodgers, and Amedeo Modigliani. She has also published an autobiography entitled Shoot the Widow.
She now lives in Washington, D.C.[3]
Awards and recognition[edit]
Secrest's Being Bernard Berenson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980[4] and for the American Book Awards in 1981. In 1999 she received the George Freedley Memorial Award of the American Library Association for her outstanding contribution to the literature of the theatre. In 2006, she received the Presidential National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush at the White House for illuminating the lives of great architects, artists and scholars of the 20th century.[5]
Books[edit]
Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks, 1974. OCLC 969614
Being Bernard Berenson, 1979. OCLC 4549289
Kenneth Clark: A Biography, 1984. OCLC 11113241
Salvador Dalí, 1986.
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, 1992. OCLC 26613089
Leonard Bernstein: A Life, 1994.
Stephen Sondheim: A Life, 1998.
Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers, 2001. OCLC 849259450
Duveen: A Life in Art, 2004.
Shoot the Widow: Adventurers of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject, 2007
Modigliani: A Life, 2011
Elsa Schiaparelli, 2014
The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World’s First Desktop Computer, 2019
QUOTED: "That much of the author's argument proceeds by inference and suggestion doesn't diminish its plausibility."
"a competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory."
Secrest, Meryle THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT OLIVETTI Knopf (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 11, 5 ISBN: 978-0-451-49365-1
Prolific biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli, 2014, etc.) delves into a remote corner of Cold War history.
Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) was a man of parts: an intellectual, a devotee of careful planning, a socialist at a time in Italy during which the capitalist economy was controlled by "a tiny elite group of allies who held key minority positions in each others' companies." His evolution was not without its checkered elements; he went along with Mussolini's fascist government for a time, as an expedient, while other family members took an active role in the resistance and helped smuggle Jews out of the country. Yet a socialist he was, with a vision of a postwar nation that did not quite square with that of the American government--in particular, CIA director Allen Dulles, who favored "a double agent ready for action, not an ambitious, left-leaning industrialist who wanted to impose upon American policy his plan for a new Italy, ad nauseam." Olivetti soon went on to take his firm, renowned for its typewriters, into the realm of electronics, developing a mainframe computer, "the first fully transistorized one in the world," that threatened the near monopoly IBM enjoyed on such machines. (Later, Olivetti developed a portable calculator so closely emulated by HP that the Italian company launched and won a copyright suit.) Word came that Olivetti wasn't reluctant to sell the technology to Russia and China, among other potential customers, and not long after, Olivetti was dead, the victim of a heart attack when presumed in the prime of health. A year and a half later, his chief technologist and designer died in a suspicious car crash. Did American intelligence do these dirty deeds? It's not outside the realm of possibility; after all, Secrest writes, the Russians likely assassinated two American scientists involved in missile guidance systems. That much of the author's argument proceeds by inference and suggestion doesn't diminish its plausibility.
A competently written story that limns the complex spy-vs.-spy calculus of a time still fresh in memory.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Secrest, Meryle: THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT OLIVETTI." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A599964419/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a51e9ec7. Accessed 9 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A599964419
QUOTED: "fascinating account."
"Secrest offers a riveting look at an ambitious and inventive family deserving wider attention."
The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer
Meryle Secrest. Knopf, $30 (304p) ISBN 978-0-451-49365-1
Biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli) reveals a little-known slice of computer history in her fascinating account of the Italian typewriter company Olivetti, which created the first desktop computer. The company's story largely centers on its three leaders: first, Camillo Olivetti; then his son, Adriano; and finally Adrianos son, Roberto. Each led a fascinating life: Camillo was an inventor and Socialist politician, and Adriano, named company director in 1933, plotted to oust Mussolini during WWII with the future queen of Italy, Princess Marie Jose Charlotte. Following the war, Adriano founded a literary journal and his own socialist political party, all while steering Olivetti toward ever-greater success and renown. (Gunter Grass, Cormac McCarthy, and Gore Vidal all used its typewriters.) Roberto, meanwhile, inaugurated Olivetti's electronics division, which began developing the Programma 101, the first desktop computer, in 1962, two years after Adrianos fatal heart attack. From here, the story takes a dark and bizarre turn, as Secrest speculates he may in fact have been murdered, perhaps by the CIA to prevent him transferring technology to the Soviets and Chinese. Whether one buys into this conspiracy theory, Secrest offers a riveting look at an ambitious and inventive family deserving wider attention. (Nov.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer." Publishers Weekly, 5 Aug. 2019, p. 55. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596104168/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=20e120a3. Accessed 9 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A596104168