Nonfiction Reviews Continued (1/2/2006)
-- Publishers Weekly, 1/2/2006
Boxed and starred reviews indicate books of outstanding quality.
Boxed, unstarred reviews indicate books of special interest.
Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska
Michael D'Orso. Bloomsbury, $23.95 (336p) ISBN 1-58234-623-2
Eight miles above the Arctic Circle, there's a village with no roads leading to it, but a high school basketball tradition that lights up winter's darkness and a team of native Alaskan boys who know "no quit." D'Orso (coauthor of Like No Other Time with Tom Daschle) follows the Fort Yukon Eagles through their 2005 season to the state championship, shifting between a mesmerizing narrative and the thoughts of the players, their coach and their fans. What emerges is more than a sports story; it's a striking portrait of a community consisting of a traditional culture bombarded with modernity, where alcoholism, domestic violence and school dropout rates run wild. One player compares Fort Yukon to a bucket of crabs: "If one crab gets a claw-hold on the edge... and starts to pull itself out, the others will reach up and grab it and pull it back down." Among D'Orso's unusual characters are the woman who built a public library in her home, the families who adopt abandoned children, and, of course, the boys for whom "hard" has an entirely different meaning (e.g., regularly trudging through "icy darkness" to board flights to Fairbanks for games). With a ghostlike presence, D'Orso lends a voice to a place that deserves to be known. (Mar.)
No End in Sight: My Life as a Blind Iditarod Racer
Rachel Scdoris and Rick Steber. St. Martin's, $22.95 (288p) ISBN 0-312-35273-5
Twenty-year-old Scdoris, afflicted with a rare eye disorder that makes her 20-200 vision impervious to correction, recounts her journey to Alaska's famous sled dog race in this slow but straightforward memoir written with family friend Steber. Born with congenital achromatopsia, Scdoris spent her childhood struggling to gain independence, even though crossing a busy street was a life-or-death challenge. During her childhood in Oregon, Scdoris's father introduced her to his love of sled dog racing, a livelihood he temporarily abandoned in order to move closer to urban areas where state programs for the blind were readily available. Scdoris expends equal amounts of time on the details of racing and the trials of being a blind teenager in a school where she endured merciless teasing on a daily basis. While negotiating those difficulties, she also had to stand up to resentment and disbelief in the racing community (many seasoned racers believed a young girl with a disability had no place in the sport). Yet Scdoris pursued her love of racing and ends the memoir intending to race the Iditarod in 2006. Her inspiring life story is unfortunately dulled by a lackluster presentation. 22 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)
The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule
Joanna Kavenna. Viking, $24.95 (294p) ISBN 0-670-03473-8
The fourth-century B.C. Greek explorer Pytheas claimed to have sailed six days from Scotland and discovered a land he named Thule. From Pytheas's brief, oft-disputed account of a land of short winter days where the sea turned into a viscous mass sprang an entire mythology of a magical, northern realm hidden beyond the edges of civilization. Kavenna's discursive book takes a thoughtful stroll through the different myths of Thule, examining how it became symbolic of everything from the Victorians' lost Arcadia to a polluted fantasy of racial purity for the proto-Nazi Thule Society. Kavenna, who's written for the Guardian and other British papers, follows the mark of Thule from the beer halls of Munich to the imagined Thules of the Shetland Islands, Iceland, Greenland and beyond. While frequently rhapsodic in regard to the epic landscapes, Kavenna resists the urge to attach too much import to her travels, not forcing the mythological on the everyday (unlike many Thule hunters, including fantasist Richard Burton). Although Kavenna's voyages don't solve the mystery as such, they provide fodder for a bracing account of humankind's dream of exploration and of the explorers "determined to discover, to shade in the blanks on the maps." (Feb. 6)
Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother
Sonia Nazario. Random, $26.95 (336p) ISBN 1-4000-6205-5
Soon to be turned into an HBO dramatic series, Nazario's account of a 17-year-old boy's harrowing attempt to find his mother in America won two Pulitzer Prizes when it first came out in the Los Angeles Times. Greatly expanded with fresh research, the story also makes a gripping book, one that viscerally conveys the experience of illegal immigration from Central America. Enrique's mother, Lourdes, left him in Honduras when he was five years old because she could barely afford to feed him and his sister, much less send them to school. Her plan was to sneak into the United States for a few years, work hard, send and save money, then move back to Honduras to be with her children. But 12 years later, she was still living in the U.S. and wiring money home. That's when Enrique became one of the thousands of children and teens who try to enter the U.S. illegally each year. Riding on the tops of freight trains through Mexico, these young migrants are preyed upon by gangsters and corrupt government officials. Many of them are mutilated by the journey; some go crazy. The breadth and depth of Nazario's research into this phenomenon is astounding, and she has crafted her findings into a story that is at once moving and polemical. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb. 28)
Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance
R. Danielle Egan, Katherine Frank and Merri Lisa Johnson. Thunder's Mouth, $15.95 paper (272p) ISBN 1-56025-721-0
The editors of this anthology—all academics who have worked as exotic dancers— start out slowly and save their best for last. In other words, readers should skip the long-winded introduction and head straight for the entertaining account of how Miss Mary Ann and her co-workers at San Francisco's Lusty Lady formed the Exotic Dancer's Alliance: the descriptions of the lawyers hired by the club's management in an attempt to bust the union are priceless. Jamie Berger's description of his peep-show going (and the guilt induced by his politically correct upbringing) is also a don't-miss read in the section called "Flirtation," which explores club life from the patron's perspective. Respect for dancers and the customers who understand what they are—and aren't—buying when they enter a club or peep show booth is evident throughout. But conspicuous by their absence are the voices of owners and managers; derogatory comments about management in several of the essays go unanswered. That's a shame, as the editors have otherwise done a remarkable job offering real-life pictures of an industry that is usually sensationalized, misunderstood or misrepresented. (Feb.)
Housethinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live
Winifred Gallagher. HarperCollins, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-06-053869-4
Tapping into the American consumer's burgeoning interest in home design, cultural critic Gallagher (Pride of Place) takes on the single-family home in her latest cultural inquiry. Chapters are themed by room, beginning with the entry and living room and moving through to the basement, garage and garden; each ends with anecdotes describing how Gallagher's own family has changed its home with her new-found knowledge. Equal parts architecture, history, sociology and psychology, Gallagher's book easily makes academic discussions relevant to the general reader. The text is liberally peppered with pop culture references, though at times these appear humorously off-mark, as when she cites MTV Cribs (a hip-hop version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) as a "popular children's show." Gallagher is not an unbiased observer — she makes a clear argument for her own preference for traditional notions of comfort and craft. Avant-garde architects and designers are often derided for their emphasis on novelty and art over homeyness and practicality. Because of this, Gallagher's text often feels like an etiquette book evoking a romantic nostalgia for propriety. She is at her most engaging when discussing notions of prestige and social hierarchy—issues particularly relevant in an age of proliferating McMansions and Martha Stewart–inspired interest in the hallmarks of good taste. (Feb. 7)
Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids
Maia Szalavitz. Riverhead, $25.95 (320p) ISBN 1-59448-910-6
This important book takes the troubled-teens industry to task, exposing the "extremely harsh, perhaps even brutal tactics [companies use to] keep [kids] in line." For $2,000 a month and more, a program will take an oppositional teen to a lockdown facility or a wilderness boot camp for however long it takes to break him or her. Parents pay more than an Ivy League tuition for their children to undergo some "out-of-line" punishments (use of "stress positions," brainwashing, etc.), and, says Szalavitz, there's no evidence that these facilities cure anything. Indeed, many teens suffer post-traumatic stress disorders for years; some actually die in these facilities. Szalavitz, a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Stats.org, has written a courageous—if horrifying—study of the tough-love industry, focusing on four key players: Straight Incorporated, North Star Expeditions, the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and the KIDS program. These hugely profitable businesses are largely unregulated by legal, medical or ethical codes, avoiding accountability for failure by blaming the victim. With a useful appendix discussing when and how to get responsible help for a troubled teen, this book, filled with first-person accounts, should be required reading in Parenting 101. (Feb.)
The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception
Debora L. Spar. Harvard Business School, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 1-59139-620-4
Among the troubling aspects of new reproductive technologies is the takeover of reproduction by the marketplace. This probing study accepts the free market process while casting a discerning and skeptical eye at its pitfalls. Harvard business prof Spar (The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels) explores many aspects of the high-tech commodification of procreation: the fabulous revenues commercial fertility clinics earn from couples' desperate desire for children and the ensuing conflicts between medical ethics and the profit motive; the premiums paid for sperm and eggs from genetically desirable donors; the possible exploitation of poor, nonwhite and Third World surrogate mothers paid to gestate the spawn of wealthy Westerners; the fine line between modern adoption practices and outright baby selling; and the new entrepreneurial paradigm of maternity, in which the official "mother" simply finances the assemblage of sperm, purchased egg and hired womb and lays contractual claim to the finished infant. Spar considers most of these developments inevitable and not undesirable (they provide kids to parents who want them), but calls for government regulation to curb excesses and protect the interests of all involved. Her sanguinity will not satisfy all critics, but she offers a lucid, nuanced guide to this brave new world. (Feb. 14)
Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the American Legacy
Bruce Bartlett. Doubleday, $26 (320p) ISBN 0-385-51827-7
Liberal commentators gripe so frequently about the current administration that it's become easy to tune them out, but when Bartlett, a former member of the Reagan White House, says George W. Bush has betrayed the conservative movement, his conservative credentials command attention. Bartlett's attack boils down to one key premise: Bush is a shallow opportunist who has cast aside the principles of the "Reagan Revolution" for short-term political gains that may wind up hurting the American economy as badly as, if not worse than, Nixon's did. As part of a simple, point-by-point critique of Bush's "finger-in-the-wind" approach to economic leadership, Bartlett singles out the Medicare prescription drug bill of 2003— "the worst piece of legislation ever enacted"—as a particularly egregious example of the increases in government spending that will, he says, make tax hikes inevitable. Bush has further weakened the Republican Party by failing to establish a successor who can run in the next election, Bartlett says. If the Reaganites want to restore the party's tradition of fiscal conservatism and small government, he worries, let alone keep the Democrats out of the White House, they will have their work cut out for them. (Feb.)
Europe at the Crossroads: Will the EU Ever Be Able to Compete with the United States as an Economic Power?
Guillermo de la Dehesa. McGraw-Hill, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 0-07-145959-6
With its extensive annotated tables, graphs, summaries of EU studies and a wrapup of the most recent Lisbon Summit, this volume is a treasure trove of data for Europolicy wonks. And it doesn't neglect the technical details behind the numbers, which cover leisure, income, productivity, education and technology research and development. Topics include European demographic trends, the economic and fiscal effects of pension plans, the relative productivity of labor and capital and comparisons of the EU to the United States and the separate countries against each other. A key focus is the two labor markets within Europe: the protected insiders, usually older European men, and the unprotected outsiders, usually immigrants, women and youth. Discussion is mostly limited to the pan-European level so the book can touch only superficially on major issues such as immigration policy and intraunion regulation and trade policy. One serious defect is the book's rambling structure; it has neither clear questions nor strong conclusions. The author is deeply attached to the European social model, but seems vaguely gloomy about its ability to support vibrant economic growth or to extend its coverage to all European residents. Few of the statistics cover periods since 2002 and the many tables list countries in differing and apparently random order making table to table comparisons laborious. (Feb.)
Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst: A True Story of Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market
Dan Reingold with Jennifer Reingold. Collins, $25.95 (368p) ISBN 0-06-074769-2
When retired telecommunications analyst Dan Reingold decided to write an account of what he'd seen while working for powerful Wall Street investment banks, he turned to his niece, a journalist at Fast Company and the author of Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Anderson, for help. Together, they've created a solid structure for his recollections of life in the trenches, but because he's one of the good guys, Reingold doesn't have much to confess. Beyond detailing every step in his upward career mobility, Reingold does little but gripe about people like his main competitor, Jack Grubman, who spent years flaunting insider connections with executives who would float him advance info on major corporate deals. (Grubman is currently a defendant in several securities fraud cases.) Reingold does suggest that insider influence is so pervasive in the financial market that investors should avoid individual stocks completely, and he has a number of recommendations for industry-wide reform, but in the end, his story is basically that he worked in the same industry as a bunch of bad eggs. While the personal material is never less than engaging, it doesn't fundamentally alter our understanding of the recent market scandals. (Feb.)
Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era
Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts. Chronicle, $24.95 paper (192p) ISBN 0-8118-4548-6
Mellow memories emerge in this consummate, tightly edited look back at an exuberant way of life in San Francisco's Fillmore District during the 1940s and '50s, when dozens of blues, R&B and jazz joints flourished amid businesses run by African-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Filipino-Americans. "The entire neighborhood was a giant multicultural party throbbing with excitement and music," remembers former Fillmore Auditorium manager Pepin. Art professor Watts and TV producer Pepin faced a difficult task when they set out to document the Fillmore's musical heyday. Few photos were known, and 1960s redevelopment left vacant lots. During a 15-year period, they explored city files and tracked former residents, and the resulting oral accounts by musicians and clubgoers make these pages an evocative echo of the past. Interviews led to photographic treasure troves, and although some pictures had "aged badly," Watts repaired damaged images with digital restorations. Researching newspapers, books and magazines, the authors stockpiled a mountain of memorabilia—including a map of neighborhood landmarks, 200 b&w archival photographs, ads, clippings, handbills and posters—presented here in a 9 1/4 x 7 3/4" format. The enthusiasm of the era bubbles forth, and fold-out endpapers of long-ago logos and signs provide a nostalgic closing coda. (Feb.)
Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute
Edited by George Stevens Jr. Knopf, $35 (736p) ISBN 1-4000-4054-X
This superb collection of interviews from AFI seminars, edited by Stevens (who is a writer, director and producer, and founder of the AFI), lets cinema masters tell their stories. Stevens opens each chapter with a succinct, entertaining description of the artist and his or her work, followed by a fascinating q&a. He has edited the material with grace and clarity, allowing the personality of each subject—as well as an inside look at the industry—to emerge. Though most of the personalities are directors, including silent-film pioneer Harold Lloyd, Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, other craftspeople provide important insights into filmmaking. Cinematographer James Wong Howe gives pointers on lighting and framing, while writer Ernest Lehman describes the challenges of adapting stage musicals to films. The prolific Hal Wallis, producer of films as diverse as Casablanca and Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii, uses the movie Beckett to illustrate a project's development from inception to distribution. The volume also includes thoughts from foreign directors Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and Satyajit Ray, giving their views on moviemaking outside the U.S. As invaluable as the book is for film historians and future filmmakers, it'll also delight anyone fascinated by movies and their makers. (Feb.)
The Chocolate Connoisseur: For Everyone with a Passion for Chocolate
Chloé Doutre-Roussel. Penguin/ Tarcher, $18.95 (224p) ISBN 1-58542-488-9
The chocolate buyer for the London department store Fortnum & Mason has taken it upon herself to educate the world about life beyond Snickers bars; the difference between "candy" and true ("artisanal") chocolate, and then between chocolate and chocolates (bonbons); and how to learn to love the good stuff, en route to becoming a chocolate connoisseur oneself, as skilled as any wine or cheese taster. Her approach is that of an unabashed and evangelical snob, a bracing combination of Mary Poppins and Miss Manners. Along the way, Doutre-Roussel skewers some sacred cows—Belgian chocolates, Godiva—and lists with approval a dozen brands most people have never heard of, with, fortunately, mail-order and online sources to find them and instructions on how to savor them when found. This is a beautiful little book, chockfull of charming pictures, maps, charts and graphs, sidebars and boxes of advice, lore and even a few recipes. Paired with a few choco-gourmet samples, it would make a scrumptious Valentine's gift for nearly anyone. (Feb.)
Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh
Edited by Catharine H. Roehrig, with Renee Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller. Yale Univ., $65 (356p) ISBN 0-300-11139-8
Apart from the cunning and beautiful Cleopatra, little is known about Egypt's women rulers. The editors of this glorious exhibition catalogue seek to illuminate the life of one of these women. Drawing on archeological discoveries of the remains of her rule, Roehrig, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and her coauthors offer a magnificent portrait of this remarkable woman and all aspects of Eyptian life in the 18th Dynasty, from religion and politics to art and jewelry. In 1473 B.C., Hatshepsut ascended the throne as co-regent with her husband, Thutmose II. After his death, she became ruler of Egypt, taking the name "King of Upper and Lower Egypt." She consolidated the country culturally and led military campaigns against Nubia and Kush. Hatshepsut's innovative construction projects included processional roads and 100-foot-high obelisks. Abandoning the traditional closed-off temple structure, her temple in Deir el-Bahri in Thebes was opened to the light with colonnades. Soon after her death, Hatshepsut's successor erased almost every trace of her reign, but this beautiful book draws on the remains with 386 illustrations—226 of them in color—to offer a splendid testimony to the life of this oft-forgotten Egyptian ruler. (Jan.)
Correction: The author of Crunchy Cons (reviewed Dec. 19) is Rod Dreher.
