Brothers - Hardcover

Into the crowded garage of close relationship photo books comes a Cadillac. And wouldn't you know, its subjects are all male. The editors of Esquire have freighted it with Pulitzer Prize winners, plenty of the magazine's high-powered contributors, some high-rolling TV scribes, and a Kennedy, all writing about their own fraternal relations--well, of course; Frank McCourt's account, for instance, of his and his three male sibs' tumultuous interactions is of a piece with Angela's Ashes (1996) and 'Tis. Besides the essays, there are brief remarks from members of other brotherly groups, most including one or more famous names but a few made up of regular guys, like the six-year-old twins and the four generations of brothers in the same family. The pictures are Esquire-style male portraits, with the camera pointed directly or up at the subjects, except for the boom shot down at Jesse Jackson's sons. No doubt about it, this is a handsome hunk of a book. Ray Olson