When is an oral history of five Los Angeles families not a book about Hollywood?

Maria Rusell will talk about her review of Gene Stein's new book, West of Eden.

What's really fun in this book is being able to see how all of those 20th century

California fortunes really came from somewhere else.

What good are critics?

The Times Chief Movie Critic, A.O. Scott, will join us to talk about his first book,

Better Living Through Criticism.

How do you tell somebody who can't listen to the song right now?

What it's like to hear the song?

How do you convey what is happening in a movie?

What the quality of an actor's performance is?

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Maria Rusell is here now to talk about her review on the cover this week of the Gene Stein's

West of Eden, an American place.

Maria, thanks for being here.

Hi.

So everyone here probably knows Maria Rusell as our children's books editor, but she is also

a critic of fully fledged grown up literature.

Tell us a little bit about this book.

Well, this book is an oral history, which is such an interesting genre, just a collection

of edited and curated interviews.

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