Nonfiction

In contributing to a series that aims to publish short, readable books that illuminate long, unreadable ones, historian Strachan (The First World War) takes on the Prussian masterwork On War and emerges victorious, but at great cost. Only the first third of the book can be described as a biography, and that's the most accessible part. Clausewitz (1780–1831) rose to major general and fought Napoleon, but never reached the highest command. Appointed head of Prussia's Military Academy in 1818, he spent the rest of his life writing and rewriting his massive work, which remained unfinished and was published posthumously. Few outside the country paid attention until Prussia's astonishing victory over France in 1870. (The first English translation was in 1873). Readers who know Clausewitz's maxim that "war is politics carried on by other means" will yearn for more insights, and the author provides a few. Though generals often proclaim wars must end in absolute victory, Clausewitz asserted that in the real world annihilating the enemy is rarely possible and often a bad idea. Strachan works hard at defining what Clausewitz meant, comparing various writings, discussing precise meanings of German words, filling in textual gaps and quarreling with other interpretations. Scholars may approve, but even dedicated military buffs will find it hard going. (July)

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941
Ian Kershaw. Penguin Press, $35 (656p) ISBN 978-1-59420-123-3

Tracing the thought processes behind crucial turning points in WWII's most crucial 19 months, Kershaw, the author of a major biography of Hitler and professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield, reminds us that nothing in that titanic struggle was predetermined. Events might have run a very different course had Great Britain decided to negotiate peace with Hitler in June 1940, or if Japan had attacked the Soviet Union from the east as Germany invaded from the west in June 1941. Kershaw shows that Germany's war on two fronts and Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, though ultimately disastrous for those countries, were the results of chains of reasoning based on political and military goals, however despicable. Though the author makes deep, intelligent use of archival materials, he provides little new information. Rather, his analysis focuses on the structure of decision making and its consequences. Kershaw depicts Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union as severely hampered by one man giving the orders, getting input only from subordinates too fearful to say anything he didn't want to hear. The slower democratic process enabled many voices to be heard and better informed judgments to be made by Churchill and Roosevelt. This subtext adds a note of hope to a text depicting one of humanity's darkest periods. (June)

Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside
Bridget Kinsella. Harmony, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-307-33836-5

When things go very wrong, fleeing the scene of the disaster is a time-honored response. But in this memoir cum social history, PW's West Coast editor Kinsella puts a new spin on an old story. When her husband of nine years announces that he is gay, she feels stripped of identity and purpose and heads west, seeking to start afresh. Launching a new career as a literary agent, she makes an unlikely friend: Rory Mehan, a convicted murderer doing life without parole at a maximum-security prison in northern California. But Rory is also a novelist, philosopher and doorway to a world Kinsella reveals in this book—one populated by the girlfriends, spouses and children of incarcerated men. The story is strongest when she turns the focus on these women and children. But there are also particularly poignant passages when Kinsella details her own struggle to come to terms with the fact that, at 40, she will most likely never have the children she had so desperately wanted. What becomes a romantic relationship with Rory raises core questions for her—a good Catholic girl and one-time honor student—about values and identity. Kinsella, though, seems less willing to go as deep as Rory or the women she profiles do in revealing those issues but still presents a powerful story. (June 12)

Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
Mike Dash. Crown, $24.95 (448p) ISBN 978-1-4000-5471-8

The sole police officer to be executed in U.S. history, NYPD lieutenant Charles Becker died in the electric chair in 1915 for the murder of a lowlife gambler who pimped his own wife. Set apart from other, mostly Irish, New York policemen by his German ancestry and "markedly intelligent," Becker bribed his way in 1894 onto a force infected by Tammany Hall and worked undercover patrolling the crime-riddled midtown Manhattan district called Satan's Circus, the city's center of entertainment and vice. Acquitted in 1896 of charges of falsely arresting a woman for prostitution, a charge testified to by novelist Stephen Crane, Becker went on to commit graft, perjury and theft, but by 1911 he headed his own vice squad and by 1912 he had built up a vast extortion racket. Gambler Herman Rosenthal, one of Becker's victims, exposed him to the media and the DA, and when Rosenthal was shot to death, Becker became the notorious prime suspect although some doubted his guilt. Peopled by mobsters and crooked cops and politicians, and chronicling the early years of the NYPD as well as Becker's ruin and comeuppance, this engrossing, well-researched history by the author of Batavia's Graveyard immerses readers in the corrupt hurly-burly that was old New York. Map. (June)

Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them
Bridget Stutchbury. Walker, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-8027-1609-1

Stutchbury, an avid bird researcher and biology professor at York University in Toronto, paints a complex picture of the current condition of songbirds and their habitats. The bad news is that songbird populations are decreasing alarmingly due to industrialization and development. In their tropical winter homes, habitat is shrinking and farmers routinely apply fatal amounts of pesticides. In songbirds' North American breeding grounds, invasive cowbirds sneak into their nests and replace songbird eggs with their own, house cats kill millions every year and logging threatens the birds' boreal forest homes. During their long, always treacherous migrations, they encounter many 21st-century perils: city lights that distract from guiding stars, and perilous radio towers and wind turbines. Songbirds control insects and helping plant propagation through pollination and seed spreading in many ecosystems. As they diminish in number, fragile environments may be "shaken to the core." The good news is that we can help the birds survive, by buying shade-grown coffee and turning out city lights at night, among other ways. Stutchbury's affection for the birds is contagious, and her humorous descriptions of their habits may inspire readers to listen for a cardinal's "cheer, cheer, birdy-birdy-birdy" or a barn owl's "WHO cooks for YOU?" (June)

The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You
Mark Buchanan. Bloomsbury, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59691-013-3

Buchanan (Ubiquity: The Science of History) reaches out to the audience for pop social science like The Tipping Point and Freakonomics with the concept of "social physics," a scientific model for the patterns that emerge from the interactions among large groups of people. Though his observations that people excel at imitating the successful behavior of others and will often form collective bonds over such fundamental pretenses as shared ethnic heritage aren't startling, Buchanan leans on his background in theoretical physics and treats these ideas as "a quantum revolution in the social sciences." His presentation is muted by a tendency to talk around the subject, recapping prior discussions and promising future developments instead of establishing a clear, compelling thread. Though the real-life scenarios he uses to illustrate his theories—such as the unexpected revival of Times Square or the outbreak of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia—are engaging, some sections draw upon computer simulations of arbitrary behavior that illustrate his thesis but don't command equal interest. This is a great idea for a magazine article, but awkward at book length. (June)

Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick
Jenny Uglow. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.50 (480p) ISBN 978-0-374-11236-3

In this perceptive biography, Uglow (A Little History of British Gardening), an editor at the British publisher Chatto & Windus, chronicles the life of the wood engraver acclaimed for exquisite little vignettes of the Northumbrian countryside and its people. Thomas Bewick (1753– 1828) remained most of his life in his beloved Northumberland, where he was much in demand for bookplates, trade cards, playbills, business cards, leaflets and broadsides decorated with charming images of farmers, fishermen, peddlers, barnyards, moors, trees and streams. A naturalist as well as an artist, he rose to national fame with illustrations for three books, A General History of Quadrupeds, A History of British Birds and an edition of Aesop's Fables. Despite his celebrity, Bewick was "a plain, no-nonsense man" who cherished his family, loved fishing and tramping about the countryside and occasionally dabbled in politics. Uglow fleshes out what might have been a prosaic biography with a wealth of fascinating information about the world in which Bewick lived and worked—including descriptions of Northumberland and its people, and accounts of contemporaneous politics and religious thought. Her charming book, copiously illustrated with Bewick's wood engravings, includes extensive notes and a list of Bewick's workshop apprentices. 2 maps. (June)

Golfing on the Roof of the World: In Pursuit of Gross National Happiness
Rick Lipsey. Bloomsbury, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-59691-050-8

Lipsey, a Sports Illustrated reporter and coauthor of In Every Kid There Lurks a Tiger, knows the Zen-like secret to the success of every good golf book: keep golf out of it. Thusly, the great pleasures residing within this joyful work come not from any great insight into the nuances of the sport itself (although he does write on golf with fluidity and vision) but from its setting and the relationships detailed therein. A vacation in Bhutan resulted in a fascinating job offer: to be the golf pro at the country's Royal Thimphu Golf Club for three months. Lipsey (with wife and infant) end up in one of the world's most unusual places: a Buddhist kingdom on the roof of the world where mountaineering is banned and the king has established a policy of "Gross National Happiness," in part to save his people from the steadily approaching tides of modernization. Granted, Lipsey's time in Bhutan is spent in high style (working at the royal golf course and being treated as a minor celebrity), but if his loving descriptions of the generous people and gorgeous landscapes are only exaggerated by half, he still does the country proud. As for golf, Lipsey is enough of a realist to remember that it can be reduced to "underpaid and overworked people sweating bullets day by day so that wealthy men can have emerald green manicured oases on which they whack little white balls into holes." (June)

Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die
Jim Gorant. Houghton Mifflin, $24 (240p) ISBN 978-0-618-61298-7

All true obsessives, whatever their object of adoration, love making lists. It's a way of trying to organize (or at least make sense of) the sprawling, life-controlling nature of their obsession. Sports Illustrated editor Gorant, being the kind of self-described "idiot" who has spent far too much of his life watching televised sports (any kind, "the more obscure, in some ways, the better") took his particular list and made it into a book. If Gorant's genial account of attending the 10 ultimate sporting events seems at times like little more than an excuse to get out of the office and make random alcohol-based friendships with assorted strangers, so much the better. As an exercise in vicarious frivolous fandom, Gorant's year-plus-long odyssey—he starts at the Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl in February 2005 and ends with Fenway Park's Opening Day on April 11, 2006—is serenely satisfying reading in the manner of a lengthy magazine article. Gorant's selection trends toward the obvious (a Packers game at Lambeau, the Masters, the Daytona 500) and the decision to include only one non-American event (Wimbledon) comes off as a little lazy. All that to the side, Gorant brings a fresh and appreciative eye to each event, whether it's the days spent lazing around an RV at the Daytona 500 with a self-described "family" of NASCAR fans or discovering how a relaxed afternoon game at Wrigley "could be all the romance a man needs." (June)

Barefoot Runner: The Life of Marathon Champion Abebe Bikila
Paul Rambali. Serpent's Tail, $20 paper (316p) ISBN 978-1-85242-904-1

Abebe Bikila, a soldier in the imperial guard of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, wasn't just the first African athlete to win a gold medal in Olympic competition. He won the marathon in the 1960 games while running barefoot, then defied odds to win again in Tokyo four years later. Between the two victories, however, he nearly faced execution after being used as a pawn by leaders of an unsuccessful coup against Selassie. His life has all the makings of a compelling story—and despite being billed as a biography, Rambali's account takes a highly novelistic approach, imagining the inner thoughts of Bikila (1932–1973) and other figures in every scene. The technique is suspect, given the failure to cite documentation for such speculation when all the major players have been dead for decades. Furthermore, key historical details are inexplicably bypassed; when a German philanthropist donates hundreds of running shoes to Ethiopia's athletic program, for example, the name of the shoe company is never mentioned. Rambali also falls short as a dramatist, awkwardly juxtaposing Bikila's career against the personal turmoil of his trainer, Onni Niskanen, and the declining years of Selassie's reign. (June)

Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy
Daniel Altman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-374-13532-4

Altman's overview of the world's economic workings is useful and informative, though surprisingly dutiful considering the author's promise of a "whirlwind tour." Moving briskly between topics—pegged to an hour-by-hour timeline gimmick—he discusses many concepts: exchange rates, trade deficits, international deals, currency markets, corruption, financial derivatives, technological innovation, the importance of oil. While addressing the outsized role of the U.S., Altman offers valuable glimpses of key foreign economies and leaves us with a solid understanding of how they fit into "the world trading system." "If you want to cope with connectedness," journalist Altman writes, "you have to be as connected as you can—in other words, you have to pay attention to what's happening in the rest of the world." Granted, anyone who's already paying attention will find much of the book's information somewhat remedial. And Altman's attitude toward globalization is so studiously evenhanded and argument-free that the reader may long for the glossy zeal of an advocate like Thomas Friedman or a detractor like Lou Dobbs. Still, as global macroeconomic primers go, this is a quick read that reminds us that we're all in this together—and that many of us have an awful lot to learn to keep up with the global economy. (May 1)

The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars
Robert D. Hormats. Times, $27.50 (384p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8253-1

Exploring the idea that the need to pay for wars often drives financial innovation, Goldman, Sachs & Co. managing director Hormats traces the fiscal decisions made in American wars from the revolution to today's war on terror. Customs duties often fall off with hostilities, he observes, leading to increased reliance on excise and other consumption taxes. These cut civilian demand, freeing up resources for war, but may be unduly burdensome on the poor, who also do most of the dying. Taxes on businesses and the rich are more popular, he notes, but don't reduce consumption and may discourage energetic investment in war industries. Printing money is easy, but stimulates demand and inflation. Borrowing requires faith in the ability of the government to prosecute the war and its willingness to honor the debt afterwards. If broad-based, debt can cement support for the war, but if not, it can create a class of creditors with excessive political power. Hormats shows that, despite their differences, each treasury secretary seems to pick up where his predecessor left off, refining the old ideas and adding new wrinkles. Moving from history to current events, the author strongly criticizes the Bush administration for failing to adhere to the principles that have paid for 230 years of American liberty. (May 1)

Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
Cullen Murphy. Houghton Mifflin, $23 (272p) ISBN 978-0-618-74222-6

Lurid images of America as a new Roman Empire—either striding the globe or tottering toward collapse, or both—are fashionable among pundits of all stripes these days. Vanity Fair editor Murphy (The World According to Eve) gives the trope a more restrained and thoughtful reading. He allows that, with its robust democracy, dynamic economy and technological wizardry, America is a far cry from Rome's static slave society. But he sees a number of parallels: like Rome, America is a vast, multicultural state, burdened with an expensive and overstretched military, uneasy about its porous borders, with a messianic sense of global mission and a solipsistic tendency to misunderstand and belittle foreign cultures. Some of the links Murphy draws, like his comparison of barbarian invaders of the late Empire to foreign corporations buying up American assets, are purely metaphorical. But others, especially his likening of the corrupt Roman patronage system to America's mania for privatizing government services—a "deflection of public purpose by private interest"—are specific and compelling. Murphy wears his erudition lightly and delivers a lucid, pithy and perceptive study in comparative history, with some sharp points. (May 10)

Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement
Zaki Chebab. Nation, $25.95 (244p) ISBN 978-1-56025-968-8

In this compelling and sober portrayal, Chebab, an intrepid Palestinian journalist (who was nearly blown up in 2002), explains how the highly organized and notoriously militant Islamic group Hamas was elected to head the Palestinian government in January 2006, to the surprise of much of the world. Having tracked Palestinian resistance for decades, Chebab gained extraordinary access to key players in Hamas, like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual leader until his 2004 assassination, and political leader Dr. Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi, also assassinated that year. Along the way, he details the group's history, from the dawn of the first intifada in 1987 to the present day, and looks to the political and economic dilemmas that hang over the group's future. Most fascinating are hidden figures Chebab brings to light: like Yehia Ayyash, "the Engineer," who introduced the suicide bomb into Hamas's deadly repertoire; suicide-bomb hopefuls who claim that "martyrdom is like a dream"; and proud mothers like Umm Nidal, who has three (of six) sons who have died as suicide bombers. The book is likely to be recognized as among the most definitive and important accounts of this divisive organization, whose goal remains to "reclaim the whole of Palestine as it had been before 1948... and to dismantle the [Israeli] settlements." (May)

On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World
Jason Burke. St. Martin's, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-36622-3

A veteran foreign correspondent, Burke takes his readers on a whistle-stop tour of modern Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Algeria, Thailand and places in between. Burke, whose previous book, Al-Qaeda, incisively cut through some of the errant conventional wisdom about that terrorist organization, began his Mideastern journeys as a volunteer in the Kurdish peshmerga after the first Gulf War. Many of his escapades read like scenes cut from Full Metal Jacket—a fact he self-consciously acknowledges many times. Though Burke doesn't always have the strongest grasp on the intricacies of local politics and theologies—and freely admits it, unlike many commentators—his conversations with all kinds of ordinary people illuminate the struggles that define their existence and sometimes metastasize into intolerant ideologies. His conclusion is hopeful, if tinged with warning: "[D]espite the best efforts of men like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and al-Zarqawi, despite the incompetent, corrupt, sclerotic dynastic rulers still clinging to power everywhere... the ordinary people of the Islamic world... whose voices were so often drowned out by shouting and gunfire... had not been won over by the radicals." Nonetheless, as Burke argues, the war in Iraq has clearly not helped matters. (May)

Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond
Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. Hyperion, $14.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-4013-0335-8

Over the past five years, youth groups, religious organizations, politicians and individuals have responded to the crisis in Sudan in increased numbers. This book is a guide for these already involved, as well as those who are interested in taking action, or speaking out against the mass killings that continue to occur in the country's Darfur region. Coauthored by Cheadle, actor and star of the film Hotel Rwanda, and Prendergast, senior adviser of the International Crisis Group, the book is a pastiche of practical information, instructions, memoir and history. As a handbook for budding activists, it's informative and, at times, inspiring. The combination of charts, lists and first-person accounts create a simple and reasonable path to action. But as a source for information about the conflict in Sudan, the book falters. The history is neither clear nor succinct, and there is not much of it. Furthermore, although Cheadle and Prendergast's personal anecdotes are entertaining, they overshadow the few anecdotes about the Sudanese living through the crisis. The book's most interesting moment, besides the useful advice on how to get involved, is its delving into the government's excuses for inaction. (May 1)

If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear
Melinda Henneberger. Simon & Schuster, $25 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7432-7896-6

Puzzled by why traditionally Democrat women switched camps and voted for George Bush in the 2004 election, Henneberger, a contributing editor at Newsweek, set out to identify divisive issues among women. Traveling around the country, she talked with a random sample of 234 ordinary women in 20 states—both blue and red. The result is a compelling and surprising look at what most sways women's votes. In 2006, 51% of voters were female; yet, with the exception of professionals trying to juggle motherhood and careers, average women are not asked their opinions on what they consider to be pivotal issues—abortion, religion and gay marriage, among others. While many profess to be Democrats at heart, numerous women switched sides during the presidential election because of just a single issue, even when they agreed with the Democrats on everything else. Even extremely anti-Bush Katrina victims say they won't hold Bush's ineffectiveness against his party, and they will vote for the candidate who supports their belief on the most critical matters. With political campaigning beginning earlier than ever and elections won by the narrowest of margins, politicians on both sides would do well to heed Henneberger's message that for the average woman, all issues are not created equal; candidates would do well to listen to the voices she recounts. (May)

The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture
Brink Lindsey. Collins, $26.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-074766-4

More than any other cause, economic prosperity transformed the United States after World War II into a nation unlike any other in recorded history, posits Lindsey of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Although Lindsey (Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism) acknowledges that millions of Americans live below the poverty line, he argues that mass prosperity changed the equation in many areas, including gender relations, race relations, labor-management relations, parent-child dynamics and organized religion. The result was the rise of a politically liberal counterculture, a politically conservative backlash, the labeling of blue states and red states, and a multitude of other political phenomenon. Although the book offers details about political campaigning, drug use, and the rise of rock and roll music among other events that made headlines from the 1950s into the 21st century, the details often overwhelm Lindsey's hypothesis. Ultimately, the book reads more like a college freshman survey course textbook than a compelling narrative. (May)

Comrades! A History of World Communism
Robert Service. Harvard Univ., $35 (624p) ISBN 978-0-674-02530-1

In this incisive study, Service (A History of Modern Russia) surveys the varieties of communist ideologies (from Marx to Marcuse) and regimes (the Soviet Union getting the lion's share of attention) and finds a coherent pattern, which he forthrightly labels totalitarianism. Communism's hallmarks, he argues, include violent dictatorships, rigid, all-encompassing states that shackle civil society, persecute religion and stifle individual freedom. Communist systems impose dowdy fashions and stagnant economies staffed by listless workers. Rather than historical vagaries, Service contends, these are necessary features of communism, rooted in Marxist-Leninist doctrine and essential to regimes that needed suffocating repression to keep a lid on popular discontent. Service's critique is overwhelmingly negative, with scathing portraits of Communist leaders, intellectuals and fellow travelers like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, whom he calls "Stalin's admiring slugs." Yet he manages to be fair; he calmly exposes crimes of Communist regimes, nods at their achievements (especially those of local Communist administrations in India and Western Europe) and smiles at the poetic neocommunism of Mexico's Subcommandante Marcos. In his fluent narrative style, Service covers a lot of ground, sometimes too cursorily; the book could use more statistics, especially on the performance of Communist economies. Still, though bound to be controversial, his is an engaging and useful introduction to a world-shaking movement. 24 b&w photos. (May)

Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship
John Baldwin and Ron Powers. Crown, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-307-23655-5

Thriller writer Baldwin (The Eleventh Plague et al.) joins forces with the prolific Powers (coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers et al.) to come up with a fast-reading Civil War true adventure saga centered a on young CSA navy lieutenant. The 24-year-old Conway Whittle, an ancestor of Baldwin's, was assigned as first lieutenant and executive officer on the Confederate raider Shenandoah late in the war. The ship sailed from London disguised as a merchant vessel and underwent a memorable cruise round the globe, attacking and destroying Yankee merchant ships and whalers. Whittle and company kept up their daring sea raids until August of 1865, when they learned that the war had ended five months earlier. The ship returned to England, having flown the last Confederate flag at sea in defiance of the U.S. Baldwin and Powers recount their tale in a lively, evocative style and may be forgiven for being overly fond of their hero. Whittle, they say, "was as good a man as history seems able to produce: a warrior of courage inconceivable to most people; a naval officer of surpassing calm and intelligence; a seeker after Christian redemption; a steadfast lover; a student of human nature; a gentle soul; a custodian of virtue." (May)

The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn: A Lakota History
Joseph M. Marshall III. Viking, $24.95 (246p) ISBN 978-0-670-03853-4

America's westward expansion in the 19th century was far from a foregone conclusion to the thousands of indigenous peoples, whose ancient way of life lay in its path. Historian Marshall (The Journey of Crazy Horse; The Lakota Way), who was born on South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux Reservation and has long chronicled the traditions and perspective of the Great Plains tribes, explains the context and the painful aftermath of this major turning point in his people's history. His careful description of the Greasy Grass Fight of 1876 (or the Battle of the Little Bighorn) overturns the popular misconception that the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors' victory over the U.S. Seventh Cavalry was a "fluke" or, worse still, "a massacre." Yet he also registers the enormity of the change that followed—including forced settlement, assimilation and dependency—when Crazy Horse surrendered his rifle to a U.S. Army officer less than a year later. Chapters alternately emphasizing strategy, weaponry, beliefs, lifestyle and other areas lend a fractured quality and some redundancy to the narrative. But Marshall's thoughtful reflections and rich detail (much of it drawn from the oral stories of unidentified Lakota elders) also immerse the reader in the experience of a once free people wrestling with an uncertain destiny. (May)

Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings
David Pitts. Carroll & Graf, $26.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-78671-989-1

Freelance journalist Pitts thoroughly documents the long, intimate association of JFK and Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings. The son of a Pittsburgh physician, Billings first met JFK in the early 1930s at Choate, where they systematically set about violating every campus rule possible. Although Lem was gay, their relationship was evidently always platonic and continued through WWII and after, as Billings pursued a career in advertising while also devoting much energy to advancing Kennedy's political career. Lem became an adored member of the extended Kennedy clan and loomed large in the lives of the children of the martyred Jack and Bobby. Billings also became a much-sought-after source, courted by dozens of Kennedy biographers until his death in 1981—a devotee to the end and somehow incomplete as an individual separate from Jack. Gore Vidal, no friend of Lem's, belittled him, saying, "He's the guy who carries the coat.... He's the guy who runs errands.... To Jack, Lem was a kind of idiot friend." But Pitt, in a well-done first book, insists JFK had "absolute trust in Lem" though their friendship remained an enigma to others. (May)

Sea Venture: The Ship That Rescued Jamestown and Established the English Presence in the New World
Kieran Doherty. St. Martin's, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-35453-4

In 1609, the two-year-old English settlement in Jamestown was struggling to survive, having been decimated by hostile Native Americans, disease, political mismanagement and lack of food. Early in the summer, a fleet of nine ships and over 600 hopeful settlers left England to bring supplies and new life to the beleaguered colony. The flagship, Sea Venture, never made it to Jamestown: swept off course by a hurricane, it landed in Bermuda. Doherty, an author of biographies for young adults, vividly recreates the journey of the Sea Venture, the survival of its passengers and the eventual rebuilding of two new ships (Patience and Deliverance) from the Sea Venture's timbers. A year and a half after leaving England, the Sea Venture's passengers landed at the Virginia settlement only to find it on the verge of extinction. The ship's leaders refashioned the charter of the settlement, strove to establish new relationships with the Native Americans and restored the colony's agricultural fortunes, assuring the English a foothold in the New World. The most famous account of this shipwreck is Shakespeare's The Tempest, but Doherty's fast-paced and colorful blow-by-blow account is a swashbuckling tale of adventure in the age of exploration. 8 pages of b&w photos. (May)

Retained by the People: The "Silent" Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have
Daniel Farber. Basic, $26.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-465-02298-4

Farber, a constitutional law professor at the UC-Berkeley law school (Desperately Seeking Certainty), challenges the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence regarding "fundamental rights," arguing that rather than relying on the Constitution's due process clause, these rights—which touch on many controversial issues like abortion, consensual sex, gay marriage and the right to die—would better be supported by the Ninth Amendment. That amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Farber deals with the tricky question of what rights are fundamental (he concludes there is a right to terminate unwanted medical intervention but not a right to assisted suicide) and the legal basis for such rights. He also makes lucid and convincing criticisms of particular Supreme Court approaches in abortion rights, for instance. This is potentially an important book that offers a new approach to how courts should interpret the Constitution when balancing fundamental individual rights against government incursions, an approach Farber believes will hold up better to challenges than a due-process approach. Farber writes well for the general public and succeeds in building a case that will resonate with both liberals and populist-conservatives. (May)

Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home
Pamela Stone. Univ. of California, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-520-24435-1

Opting out," "off-ramping" and "following the mommy track" are all popular terms to describe professional women who leave their jobs to be stay-at-home moms. But do they describe the truth of the matter? Stone, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, set out to answer this question after discovering that there was no research on the matter; perceptions of these women were shaped almost exclusively by the media. Stone conducted in-depth interviews with 54 women: white women who had been highly successful professionals and were married to men who could support them while they stayed at home—i.e., women who had a "choice." What Stone found was fascinating and surprising: women quit because of work, not family, and only as a last resort: "They have been unsuccessful in their efforts to find flexibility or... because they found themselves marginalized and stigmatized, negatively reinforced for trying to hold onto their careers after becoming mothers." These women were abandoning "all-or-nothing" workplaces where the demands were so unrelenting that, as one mutual fund trader put it, "there were days when I couldn't get up from my desk to go to the bathroom." Stone's revealing study adds an important counterpoint to Leslie Bennetts's forthcoming The Feminine Mistake. (May)

Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle
Victoria Colligan and Beth Schoenfeldt with Amy Swift. St. Martin's, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-312-35954-6

You can do it! That's the message Colligan and Schoenfeldt, cofounders of the online networking and offline support system Women Who Launch, reinforce with this at-home version of their program. Emphasizing a more holistic approach than most business self-help titles, they take issue with some of the big tenets of M.B.A. programs, such as the need to start with business plans. Rather than step-by-step planning and checklists, they encourage would-be entrepreneurs to daydream as a way to define goals, whether it's a new business venture, changing course within a corporation or even a revitalized personal life. Along the way, they debunk commonly held misperceptions about glass ceilings and the mommy track, citing Labor Department statistics and their own extensive surveys. Offering exercises, questionnaires and additional resource lists scattered among success stories of women who have followed their advice, Colligan and Schoenfeldt urge readers to take action. Though the book appears to be written to promote membership in the authors' network, their enthusiasm for self-improvement will excite even nonjoiners into making positive changes. (May)

At Large and at Small
Anne Fadiman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $21 (192p) ISBN 978-0-374-10662-1

Fadiman, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall, makes a bold claim: "I believe the survival of the familiar essay is worth fighting for." The "familiar essays" that Fadiman champions and writes are in the mold of the early 19th century, rather than critical or personal works as we've come to know them. Her essays combine a personal perspective with a far-reaching curiosity about the world, resulting in pieces that are neither so objective the reader can't see the writer behind them nor too self-absorbed. And spending some time with Fadiman is a pure delight. She loves the natural world and taxonomies of all kinds, as well as ice cream and coffee. Her love of the romantic age goes beyond the stylistic, and she prefers Coleridge and Lamb over Wordsworth and Southey. The collection rolls good-naturedly through its subjects until the final piece—an account of a whitewater rafting trip that went tragically awry, a harrowing reminder of the stakes on which all endeavors rest. This collection is a perfectly faceted little gem. Essayists, of both the critical and personal sort, could do worse than to follow Fadiman into the realm of the familiar. (May)

Before, Between, and Beyond: Three Decades of Dance Writing
Sally Banes, forewords by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola, edited and with an intro. by Andrea Harris. Univ. of Wisconsin, $70 (376p) ISBN 978-0-299-22150-8; paper $29.95 ISBN 978-0-299-22154-6

Veteran dance critic and scholar Banes (Terpsichore in Sneakers) is best known for her postmodern take on modern dance and women onstage. This new collection of essays showcases the best of her 30 years in the field, starting with her first-ever published piece (on the dance company Pilobolus) and ending with her most recent work (on George Balanchine's 1942 choreography for elephants in Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus). The essays in between cover Alvin Ailey, Jerome Robbins, Meredith Monk and even Madonna and disco dancing. Clear, incisive and personable, Banes is in fine form in all these pieces (some published for the first time). She brings a historical perspective to her observations, then links them to the larger worlds of politics, economics, religion and sexuality. That she's able to express such sophisticated ideas in plain, even conversational, English results in what feels like a witty and exuberant postperformance conversation in a small West Village cafe over a steaming cups of espresso. This collection—tragically Banes's last due to an incapacitating stroke—will make a welcome addition to any dance and performing arts library. (May 25)

International Lonely Guy
Harland Miller with contributions by Ed Ruscha, Sophie Fiennes, Gordon Burn, and Jarvis Cocker. Rizzoli, $45 (144p) ISBN 978-0-8478-2928-6

This lavishly illustrated but unsatisfying volume features a series of paintings in which writer and artist Miller uses the cover design of the old Penguin Classics as impetus for word play with book titles. In each work the artist begins with the familiar Penguin cover, then paints in invented titles as well as coffee stains, tattered edges and other signs of use. Some of his titles refer to the works of famous authors, such as Ernest Hemingway, who is represented by such titles as 61 with a Bullet. In the "bad weather pictures," Miller plays on cities in northern England, where he grew up. One book, Plan B, was inspired by a friend's suicide. Sometimes he reproduces inscriptions found in used books, and he also depicts a few back-cover mug shots that simulate author photos. The text, which includes a discursive essay by the artist and rambling interviews with Ed Ruscha et al., sheds some light on the genesis of these paintings, but for the most part the text is too irrelevant and the self-referential titles are not clever enough to relieve the monotony of a large number of paintings all based on the same design. (May)

The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England
Adrian Tinniswood. Riverhead, $29.95 (592p) ISBN 978-1-59448-948-8

Drawing on a vast correspondence of more than 30,000 letters, British historian Tinniswood (By Permission of Heaven) tells the story of a remarkable elite English family in the 17th century. The Verneys' lives intersected with many historic events, such as the spread of empire: in 1634, for example, a dissolute and disobedient son was sent by his parents to the new English colony, Virginia. (He didn't last long, and returned home only to be packed off to the navy.) Civil war and religious reform sometimes divided the family, but Tinniswood is equally interested in narrating their private dramas: a scandalous out-of-wedlock pregnancy, coming-of-age conflicts between fathers and sons and arguments about whether one should marry for love or money. Although Tinniswood isn't afraid to reveal the less likable qualities of his protagonists, such as the men's sexual liberties, readers will find themselves genuinely enjoying the Verneys. While careful not to suggest that the Verneys were protofeminists, Tinniswood notes that the family often produced "powerful matriarchs" who were extremely capable. Throughout, Tinniswood ably explains the basics of 17th-century English politics, so that even readers unfamiliar with English history will be able to enjoy this absorbing family history. Map. (May)

The Enigma Woman: The Death Sentence of Nellie May Madison
Kathleen A. Cairns. Univ. of Nebraska, $25.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8032-1141-4

Nellie Madison might have been the first woman executed in California: in 1934, though she claimed innocence, she was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting her husband, Eric Madison, and sentenced to hang. After hiring a new lawyer for her appeal, though, Madison confessed to the crime, describing a marriage filled with emotional and physical abuse and an attempt by Eric to blackmail her after she found him in bed with a much younger woman. Her claim of abuse was supported by similar testimony by one of Eric's ex-wives. Eventually, her sentence was commuted and she was paroled after nine years in prison. Cairns (Front-Page Women Journalists, 1920–1950) wants not to exonerate Madison but to explore the complexity of a woman who she says was reduced to a caricature by the media of the time. Madison did not fit the traditional role of homemaker and mother. Having eloped at the age of 13, she had married several times, was familiar with guns and refused to speak publicly about the crime. Nellie was pegged by the media as a femme fatale, a character out of a noir tale. The author has done considerable research in this well-written true crime chronicle, but what happened in Nellie's bedroom in 1934 still remains an enigma. 15 photos. (May)

It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News
Drew Curtis. Gotham, $20 (288p) ISBN 978-1-592-40219-5

The editorial principle behind Curtis's Web Site Fark.com is remarkably simple: readers submit news stories with their own wacky headlines, inviting snarky commentary from other readers. Here, he steps back to examine why "Mass Media" keeps churning out the sort of inane stories that are "supposed to look like news" that make the site so wildly popular. The critique is familiar—see Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, among others—but Curtis delivers it with richly sarcastic humor. A section on hysteria over unlikely disasters, for example, punctures alarmist stories with one-line synopses like "Oh my God, there's bacteria on everything." Other chapters explore fake news trends, such as "Equal Time for Nutjobs," which explains how 9/11 conspiracy theories manage to get public airing, or the proliferation of nonevents that are little more than publicity stunts. But the anger behind his criticisms of media companies for producing such nonsense is defused by the acknowledgment that readers actually want to be titillated. Unfortunately, the pleasure of reading Fark.com online, where you can always add your own two cents to the conversation, doesn't always translate to the printed page; old user comments aren't so much comic relief as tacked-on disruption. (June)

Failure: An Autobiography
Joshua Gidding. Cyan (IPG, dist.), $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-9057-3621-8

With an eye-catching title and an introductory chapter in which academic and freelance writer Gidding (The Old Girl) promises "a case study, written by the case itself" in failure, this seems at first to be something more than a typical autobiography. But what Gidding actually delivers is an unrelentingly depressing account of his many self-proclaimed failures, each given its own excruciatingly detailed chapter, beginning with "The Failure of My Childhood," in which he bemoans his failure "to have an 'authentic childhood' " growing up in "privileged" Pacific Palisades, Calif. His other self-flagellations include admitting shame at not being admitted into Harvard; arguing that he never published a second novel because the writing and selling was "all too easy"; and halfheartedly claiming that his current "academic mediocrity" is really the stance of an "anti-academic academic." The only bright light in his story is his loving wife, Diane, who puts up with Gidding even as she is dying of cancer. But Gidding's confessional turns from tedious to annoying after he admits to being a "virtual adulterer" during her illness by flirting with an old girlfriend through instant messages, and then blames his actions on the "sexual possibilities" of the Internet. (May)

Salvador Dalí: The Construction of the Image 1925–1930
Fèlix Fanés. Yale Univ., $55 (242p) ISBN 978-0-300-09179-3

The period between Salvador Dalí's (1904–1989) first solo exhibition in Barcelona and his collaboration with Luis Buñuel on the film L'Âge d'or was essential for the artist's aesthetic and political evolution. Internationally renowned Dalí scholar Fanés focuses on these five formative years (1925–1930) in his meticulously researched and lucidly written study of the intellectual, artistic and historical circumstances that shaped the artist's early career. Organized chronologically, the book begins with Dalí's neoclassical roots and culminates with his embrace of modernist architecture and increasing antagonism toward his native Catalan culture. Of particular interest are Fanés's analyses of Dalí's varied influences, including Vermeer, Picasso, Miró, de Chirico and poet Paul Eluard. An appendix of previously unpublished and obscure Dalí texts rounds out this comprehensive work. Those in search of a biographically driven portrait should look elsewhere, however; one of Fanés explicit aims is to avoid a psychological, anecdotal approach to a figure whose personality and self-constructed image at times overwhelmed his oeuvre. Fanés's book will be invaluable to Dalí scholars, art and cultural historians of the period. The general reader will also find it significant and highly readable. Numerous beautiful images, some rare, illustrate this impressive and important contribution. 30 color, 110 b&w illus. (Apr.)