Nonfiction: Nonfiction Reviews, 6/5/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 6/5/2006

If she could be a fly on the wall at a pivotal moment in American history, Mary Beth Norton would have witnessed the Salem witch trials. These were driven not by greed or, as Arthur Miller would have it, by adultery, she writes, but by Massachusetts colonists' overwhelming fears about the frontier war with the Wabanaki Indians. Gathered by Hollinshead, former president of Oxford University Press and publisher of the military history journal MHQ, the best pieces in this uniformly perceptive and provocative volume dispel popular myths and serve up familiar events and heroes from fresh vantage points. According to Joseph Ellis, George Washington spent most of his first term trying to find a just solution to the Native American sovereignty problem and bribed a Creek chief to achieve his goals. Geoffrey Ward wonders if FDR's physicians gave him the lowdown on his failing health before he decided to run for a fourth term, and William Leuchtenburg reimagines the tongue-lashing LBJ gave fellow "good ole boy" George Wallace before the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Personal essays on the Scopes "monkey" trial, the day Lincoln was shot and the flourishing Indian metropolis of Cahokia (in present-day Illinois) circa 1030 round out this tantalizing collection. B&w illus. (Oct. 3)

As a teenager in a Parisian expatriate's bookstore, James Atlas found Gwendolyn Brooks's Selected Poems and realized that "poetry could emerge out of the geography of your own experience." Jacquelyn Mitchard named a baby after the struggling heroine of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged "jarred" Nelson Demille into "thinking outside the box"; Michael Stern was transported to unknown worlds by the Sears catalogue; while Sen. Joe Lieberman, an observant Jew, was molded by the Bible. In this uneven collection of often predictable musings about their favorite books by a catchall of writers (including PW's editor, Sara Nelson), one of the few standouts is by Frank McCourt, who tastes a line from Shakespeare's Henry VIII when he's a 10-year-old typhoid patient and remembers "it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words." Unfortunately, by stuffing 71 writers into a slim volume, bookseller Coady and editor Johannessen all but ensure prosaic snippets of random thoughts rather than developed essays. The format also allows for repetition (J.D. Salinger; Harper Lee) and self-promotion (Carol Higgins Clark's inspiration was her famous mother; Anita Diamant showboats about her own novel The Red Tent in a piece about Virginia Woolf). (Oct.)

Barkan, a Princeton professor of comparative literature, spent a year in Rome working on a book on the Roman Renaissance practice of exhuming ancient sculpture (Unearthing the Past). In true academic manner, Barkan recounts his year through critiques of the art and society surrounding him, from the contemporary literature that graced the bookshelf in his fifth-floor apartment and the recording of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni that was his first serious introduction to the Italian language, to the buildings along his daily jaunts. As Barkan reads into Rome, Rome "reads" him and the same art that he studies acts as a key to uncover his own layers of self. In a simplistic example, Barkan's study of the eternal fascination with Spinaro, a bronze sculpture of a youth continually represented in Roman art, illuminates his own attraction to an equally striking young man. This weighty read feels like a multicourse meal served too quickly; one is left feeling overfull from not being able to savor one course before the subsequent one arrives. Yet Barkan's critical prowess is enviable, and the overarching theme of art's universal and everlasting power to represent life is satisfying to anyone dedicated to art or its study. (Oct.)

Novelist Healy was a raging, brawling drunk until, on a whim, he adopted a Doberman pinscher puppy he named Martin. He nursed Martin through illness and wounds; Martin in turn stood guard over him while he lay passed out in fields. Their bond, and the slight but persistent duty of caring for Martin enabled Healy to very fitfully begin to recover from his alcoholism and propensity to violence and gently nudged him toward an understanding of himself and God. Healy embeds the story in a memoir of his life in the slums of Glasgow, his relationship with his parents, his conflicted attitude toward the church and his many loves, from a youthful encounter with a whore with a heart of gold to a mature affair with a boss who fired him after he makes clear that Martin is more important to him than she is. "It was not right that a man should need a dog as much as I had needed him," Healy acknowledges, but he makes no apologies that "for whatever reason, my best pal possessed four legs instead of two." In Healy's heartfelt prose, this eccentric friendship becomes the core of a moving meditation on the mysterious nature of redemption. (Oct.)

University of Washington paleontologist Ward (Rare Earth) clearly sets forth the premise of his provocative book: "changing atmospheric oxygen levels over the last 600 million years have caused significant evolutionary change in animals." He argues that, for extended periods, there was less than half the amount of oxygen present today in the atmosphere, and a need to develop respiratory systems to deal effectively with ambient oxygen levels has been the dominant factor in creating species diversity, extinctions and basic animal body plans. Ward takes readers on a tour from the Cambrian through the Permian to the Jurassic, examining the dominant life forms in each period and arguing that oxygen availability, or lack thereof, is responsible for the evolution of endothermy, egg shells, live births and most of the major extinctions in Earth's history. He also claims that dinosaurs were successful for so long because they were able to make use of primitive air sacs (that became fine-tuned in modern birds), thus enabling them to outcompete all others in their oxygen-depleted environment. Ward's ideas deserve careful scrutiny and are likely to be discussed broadly, although his often awkward writing gets in the way of his message. Illus. (Oct. 11)

In what is certainly one of the more substantial of the many commemorative tomes that will be published as Jamestown, Va., turns 400, Kelso, head archeologist at the Jamestown Rediscovery Project, describes the process of unearthing America's oldest permanent English settlement and the new light his findings shed on it. Like most archeologists, Kelso rejoices when he finds garbage heaps: Jamestown's trash pits hold evidence of glass making, and recovered armor confirms the existence of a military barracks. Butchered skeletons of dogs and rats testify that, during months of starvation, colonists ate whatever they could find. Kelso's team also excavated an elaborate row house, a grander building than historians thought the earliest colonists had built. The most intriguing chapter examines several grave sites: among the surprising skeletal discoveries are the remains of a young man who apparently died of a gunshot wound in his leg. The shot suggests some heretofore unknown "political intrigue" in Jamestown's earliest years. At times, Kelso could have gone further in sketching the day-to-day life his artifacts reveal. Nonetheless, this slim book will join the ranks of James Deetz's In Small Things Forgotten and Ivor Noel Hume's Martin's Hundred, archeological studies that find a broad readership among colonial American history buffs. 150 color and b&w illus. (Sept.)

Marcus plumbs the depth and breadth of American exceptionalism through his unique lens of cultural criticism, forging often astounding links between people, places, works of art and miscellaneous phenomena, as he has in most of his previous nine books. The independent scholar posits that the United States of America is a cultural construction, grounded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Without those bedrocks, Marcus believes, the nation would be "little more than a collection of buildings and people who have no special reason to speak to each other, and nothing to say." Marcus builds his own erudite vision upon John Winthrop's 1630 speech "A Modell of Christian Charity," Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865, Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 exhortation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the later novels of Philip Roth, the films of David Lynch and the music of David Thomas with his band Pere Ubu. More than most books, Marcus's latest tour de force is quite likely to divide readers into two camps: those who find it brilliant and those who find it baffling. (Sept.)

Stone (1907–1989), the man behind I.F. Stone's Weekly and a congenital prober behind official facades, remains enormously relevant today, in an era of too much journalistic acquiescence. MacPherson (Long Time Passing) hasn't written a conventional biography——as her subject left no private papers—but has woven in a study of the press (especially establishmentarian Walter Lippmann) and "Stone's running commentary on twentieth-century America." A child of Jewish immigrants, Stone (born Isador Feinstein) was, according to a friend, driven by insecurity and curiosity. A newspaperman for decades, he became "an eclectic craftsman," with a reformist and intellectual bent; even at 19 he quit a job to chase the Sacco and Vanzetti execution. "Izzy," as he was called, emerges as a challenging, complex fellow, an ebullient workaholic adored by his wife. Columnist and reporter, on the left but a self-described nonconformist, Stone issued sound judgments on the Holocaust and the Cold War, yet, the author allows, could be too willing to give the Spanish Loyalists and the Soviets the benefit of the doubt. Near the end of his life, Stone taught himself ancient Greek and wrote The Trial of Socrates, a hit. But his legacy was earned by a willingness to read documents in depth and apply his eclectic, passionate intelligence—and MacPherson brings all this to life in this terrific and timely book. (Sept.)

Carton has written an absorbing and inspiring, though not wholly innovative, biography of abolitionist firebrand John Brown. A historian of American culture, Carton (The Marble Faun: Hawthorne's Transformations) centers this portrait on Brown's ceaseless efforts to end slavery. From the earliest days, Brown's abolitionism was grounded in Christianity: for him, the biblical call to love thy neighbor trumped any argument a proslavery theologian could make. As for what Brown accomplished in the climactic 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry, Carton quotes, and seems to share, the assessment of Brown's contemporary Wendell Phillips that Brown "loosened the roots of the slave system" and can be credited with ending slavery in Virginia. Carton usefully sets Brown's abolitionism against the backdrop of a larger American story—the increased radicalism of black abolitionists beginning in the 1840s; the Compromise of 1850 (which admitted California to the union as a free state while passing the Fugitive Slave Act); and ongoing debates about whether slavery should be legal in western territories. Like Brown's other recent biographer, David Reynolds (John Brown, Abolitionist), Carton writes with great admiration for his subject. His Brown is a hero who set the nation on a road to justice that we are traveling still. B&w photos. (Sept. 6)

Kagan, currently resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is emerging as a leading voice among national security analysts. In this important work, his focus is the post-Vietnam development of America's armed forces—not merely in policy contexts, as his book title modestly states, but also in structure and mentality. With unusual clarity and understanding, Kagan describes the individual and collective dynamics of the four armed services in the two decades after Vietnam, when the military saw a series of definable threats demanding specific responses. This period also ushered in a wider concept of military "transformation," as the nation sought a post-Soviet grand strategy and a number of senior leaders argued that the world was moving to an information age. To meet the challenge, they believed, militaries must implement a "revolution in military affairs." The balance of Kagan's work analyzes the result of this transformation: the development of technologically focused "network-centric warfare" (NCW). But with Afghanistan and Iraq standing grimly in the background, Kagan warns that, in practice, NCW reinforces the concept of war as "killing people and blowing things up" at the expense of the political objectives that separate war from murder. (Sept.)

In a follow-up to his Murder in Mississippi, Ball provides an account of the 2005 trial and conviction of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, who in 1964 orchestrated the murders of three civil rights workers—Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner—in Neshoba County, Miss. Ball, a Vermont Law School professor, clearly articulates his view of the trial as "a prism through which to gauge the nature of change in a city, a county, and a state that have resisted change using... violence and even murder—for hundreds of years." Ball also has a point of view, and throughout his harrowing description of the degradations blacks routinely suffered in pre–Civil Rights movement Mississippi, he displays a deep sense of outrage and anger over the brutal, state-empowered racism. According to Ball, the changes that allowed Killen to be brought to justice were varied and included media efforts, particularly the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning and local community groups seeking a South African–style reconciliation between blacks and whites. The insights into the evolving Southern culture make this worthwhile reading, and Ball's guarded optimism about the future is encouraging. With Killen's conviction, he writes, "[T]here is at last the beginning of racial reconciliation." 28 b&w photos. (Sept. 8)

At the conclusion of a bloody war in 1923, Greece and Turkey agreed to a "population exchange" that sent over a million Turkish Orthodox Christians to Greece and nearly half a million Greek Muslims to Turkey. The result, argues this absorbing study, was a humanitarian nightmare that sheds light on the conundrums of religion, ethnicity and identity in the modern age. Drawing on archival research and (sometimes rambling) oral histories from aging survivors, journalist Clark recounts the political wranglings between two countries intent on ridding themselves of potentially troublesome minorities and consolidating a shaky sense of national unity. The author surveys the traumatic exoduses and revisits the cosmopolitan Ottoman communities—where Christians and Muslims had coexisted for centuries—that were torn apart by the expulsions. The story abounds with ironies, as Turkish-speaking Christians are uprooted and shipped overseas to assume an unfamiliar but supposedly truer Greek nationality, crossing paths along the way with Greek-speaking Muslims reluctantly on their way to take over the Christians' vacated Turkish homes. Clark contends that the mass expulsions were a model for similar, sometimes de facto, transfers after WWII in Europe, India and Palestine; his gripping, sensitive history highlights the costs of such expedient policies. 14 b&w photos, 3 maps. (Sept.)

Schaffer was working on the manuscript to his first legal thriller (Misdemeanor Man) when his father, Flip, called with an insistent invitation to a one-week baking seminar at a New York culinary institute. He doesn't look forward to the experience, as the two have never been comfortable together since the father abandoned his mentally unstable wife and left the kids behind. But Flip was dying of cancer, so Schaffer agreed to make one last effort at settling their differences. The bickering between them can be playful, but there's an emotional rawness to their conversations, and the memories they churn up, that confuses more than it heals. "I forgave. But I hate him, still," Schaffer admits. The baking class is not just a sharply focused backdrop but a buffer from the most painful revelations about the suffering Schaffer endured in adolescence—unfortunately, the class ends halfway through the memoir, and the last sections deal with his father's final days at home. The disruption to the narrative momentum is jarring, but Schaffer's dark humor holds the two stories together. (Sept.)

A core tenet of the intelligent design movement is that some organisms are simply too elaborate and complicated to have evolved by chance. Arthur, a professor of zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, aims to render this strain of creationism unnecessary by "explaining, in a way that is accessible to a general readership, how the rise of complex creatures can be explained in terms of natural processes." Creatures of Accident makes this case through a series of easily intelligible, chatty chapters, offering a way of understanding the emergence of animals (the most complex life form) without resorting to either the relativist idea that all life is essentially the same (with animals being, as Stephen Jay Gould once put it, "a mere epiphenomenon") or the teleological view that if animals are uniquely complex, then some intelligent designer must have made them so. Drawing ideas and examples from the large (zoology) to the small (cellular biology), Arthur popularizes recent breakthroughs in the field of evolutionary development—the trendily dubbed "evo-devo"—to make the paradoxical case that complexity can, in fact, happen quite simply. (Sept.)

Food columnist Carballo's devotion to both her Cuban homeland and the magnificent food of her childhood are evident in this memoir with recipes. She grew up in prerevolutionary Cuba in the 1950s with divorced parents—her father, a philandering fortune-teller, instilled in his daughter a passion for food. "My dad loved every kind of food and always encouraged me to sample right along with him," Carballo writes. "He took pleasure in every bite. It was a joyful experience, and since then I have always associated food with being cosseted, with being happy." This anecdote is followed by a recipe for Roast Duck El Pacifico. Each vignette is a mere tidbit, a taste of Carballo's life, covering her family's eccentric friends, her years in an American convent boarding school, her early romances, right up to her escape to the U.S. after Castro came to power. The stories are not as consistently fulfilling as the recipes; the ones she doesn't tell are quite interesting: "Little did I know that my mother was on a mission to the Sierra Maestra carrying medicines and small arms" is virtually all she writes about her mother's astonishing work. The memoir is a treat, although more substantial fare would have been nice. (Aug.)

Americans don't often go crazy about swimmers, but when young Michael Phelps took eight medals—six gold and two bronze—at the 2004 Athens Olympics, people got excited. Before long, Phelps's ads for Speedo and his other sponsors were plastering billboards around the globe. To understand Phelps's phenomenal rise, McMullen, a sportswriter for the Baltimore Sun, has assembled a month-by-month retelling of Phelps's career in 2004. Occasionally, McMullen reports a spat between Phelps and his trainer, or what Phelps ate after a race, but he has little insight into Phelps's personality or interests. Instead, McMullen explores side issues—the Munich 1972 Olympics, doping scandals, nutritional supplements, 9/11—which, granted, are usually more interesting than racing times. McMullen's writing style ("The coach took a knee and placed his mouth a foot from Michael's left ear") suggests a normally terse sports writer trying to pad out his prose. For more of Phelps's story, readers might look to his memoir, Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface. (Aug.)

In the long list of books about wine, few have focused exclusively on the story of its trade—the business of getting the fermented product from vineyard to consumer. Pellechia (Garlic, Wine and Olive Oil), a New York City wine merchant and former vintner, seeks to address the subject with his ambitious historical survey. The oldest archeological evidence of wine making dates to about 6000 B.C., from a site in what is now the country of Georgia. Wine was traded in Hammurabi's Mesopotamia and in pharaonic Egypt, and its production expanded exponentially in tandem with the Greco-Roman empires. After the fall of Rome, the Christian church sanctioned wine making and its trade, and with the coming of the Renaissance and the early modern period, the business progressed in step with other improvements in transportation, politics and commerce. Pellechia has done his research, packing a lot into a short book about a large subject, and while his exposition and style are workmanlike, his effort and enthusiasm come through. The story comes to fuller life the closer it gets to the present day; maps and parenthetical observations offer additional touches of color. (Aug.)

The prize for the worst-behaved British royal couple goes not to Charles and Di but to George IV and Caroline, whose escapades heated up the early 19th-century scandal sheets and incited riots not long after the French monarchs were beheaded. When he married his first cousin Caroline, George was already vilified in the press for his unlawful marriage to a Catholic, his womanizing, financial extravagance, obesity and egotism. Caroline—poorly educated, magnanimous and reckless—became the darling of the people and the press, an advantage she exploited when her hubby cut her out of his will days after their daughter Charlotte's birth. The couple separated in 1797, barely two years after their wedding, but the escalating discord turned political after George restricted Caroline's access to Charlotte and she retaliated by championing the opposition Whigs. In 1820, George had Caroline tried for adultery to strip her of her title and gain a divorce. As this well-researched, competently written but uninspired account by a London journalist relates, the brouhaha spurred political reforms, and the queen triumphed at court but was still barred from George's coronation a few months later and died shortly thereafter. Illus. (Aug. 7)

Dooley makes his living in Australia writing television comedy scripts, but his real passion is bird-watching—in fact, he'll frequently "twitch," dropping whatever he's doing to travel hundreds of miles for a brief glimpse of a recently sighted rare species. In 2002, he set out to break the record for the most birds spotted throughout the Australian territories in a single year. The effort to track down more than 700 species takes him from a sooty owl sitting on a tree branch in the early hours of New Year's Day to a blue-faced parrot finch climbing a blade of grass on Christmas Eve. Stories about frustrated efforts to spot various birds show a winning humor, but without any pictures of birds or their habitats, all the locations start to blur together. The amiable, conversational tone keeps the story from getting dull, and the Aussie cultural references are easily deciphered, but Dooley's accomplishment in the end feels anticlimactic. (Aug. )

Bain (You Are a Dog: Life through the Eyes of Man's Best Friend) animates the interior world of the average house cat by having a cat (identified only by the royal "we") describe its life, pleasures and habits. It lives with "Laps"(i.e., people), in this particular case, two parents and a boy and girl, known respectively as Scratch, Mom, Fly and Kittengirl. Along with the cloying cuteness comes information that cat owners don't need a book to tell them: for instance, that cats love to drink from a running faucet, that "daytime is the perfect time of day to sleep." From the overly simplistic, the writing can veer to ridiculous attempts at the sublime: the purr "is the sound of the universe. The universe may be said to purr, and when we purr, we are in harmonious synchronization with the universe." This book could work for older children and young adults; most grown-ups will find it as unsophisticated as a true cat fancier finds—dare we say it?—a dog. 20 line drawings. (Aug. 29)

Many of Lowndes's potential readers may "shy" away from her relentlessly perky, exclamatory tone and use of terms like Shys (for shy folks) and Sures (for extroverts). Which is too bad, because much of her advice is sensible and based on desensitization techniques, or graduated exposure, therapists use in treating shyness and social phobia. The book is a mixture of confessional by a formerly shy author (How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You) and no-nonsense guide. Lowndes cites scientific findings, such as that shy people feel continually judged by others at public events, which they remember as more negative than they were. Lowndes advises writing down one's immediate impressions after a social event. "If you later remember anything negative..., go back and check your notes. If that embarrassing or disappointing moment isn't in your notes, forget it. It didn't happen." She also offers useful advice, such as how to tolerate holding eye contact with strangers. Chapter titles like "How to Handle a Past Bummer" seem meant to appeal to younger readers, but the tone clashes with Lowndes's sometimes dated personal stories. Her great eureka–"I'm not shy anymore" moment takes place in the Playboy Club, where she dons bunny ears. (Aug.)

Fletcher adopts the same approach to the world of CSI that she previously used with success in What Cops Know. Excerpts from more than 80 interviews with experts at various stages of the criminal justice process, including some well-known names, such as Dr. Henry Lee and Blue Blood's Ed Conlon, acquaint the uninitiated reader with the vast differences between television and reality. Ultra–high tech isn't always necessary for crime solving, Fletcher shows; qualified forensic scientists can make a big difference in the search for justice even in small communities with limited resources. Many of those she spoke with express chagrin that the popular fiction TV series has given the public a false impression of the resources available to the average police force and the pace at which the analyses of DNA or trace evidence occur. One especially well-crafted section contrasts the efforts to identify 9/11 victims with a small Midwestern town's search for the killer of a young girl. Some of the entries are a little skimpy, but readers will be drawn in to the longer excerpts and the basics of how crime scene evidence is examined. (Aug.)

Afghanistan only uncovers itself with intimacy, and intimacy takes time," writes Chayes, a skilled but increasingly frustrated journalist, whose determination "to grasp the underlying pattern" during and after the toppling of the Taliban in late 2001 chafes against her editors' post-9/11 comfort zone. With keen sympathy for Afghanistan's indomitable people, Chayes eventually swaps NPR and its four-and-a-half-minute slots for an NGO, becoming "field director" of Afghans for Civil Society, spearheaded by Qayum Karzai, the president's brother. ACS's humanitarian work, which includes rebuilding a bombed-out village, brings Chayes into direct conflict with the warlords with whom U.S. policy remains disastrously entangled. This is the point of her engrossing narrative, which begins in Pakistan, inside the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance pushing northward to Kandahar, and is framed by the 2005 murder of police chief Zabit Akrem, a key ally in the fight against Kandahar's corrupt warlord-governor. Throughout, Chayes relies on exceptional access and a felicitous prose style, though she sacrifices some momentum to cover several centuries of Afghanistan's turbulent past in an account that adds little to those by Ahmed Rashid and others. However, her hands-on experience as a deeply immersed reporter and activist gives her lucid analysis and prescriptions a practical scope and persuasive authority. (Aug. 21)

Until recently, one could be forgiven for thinking that the present Congress is essentially an arm of the Bush administration, according to Mann and Ornstein, nationally renowned congressional scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, respectively. Their book argues persuasively that relentless partisanship and a disregard for institutional procedures have led Congress to be more dysfunctional than at any time in recent memory. Looking back to the arbitrary and sometimes authoritarian leadership of Democratic speaker Jim Wright and the Abscam scandals of the 1980s, the authors demonstrate how they presage the much worse abuses of power committed by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. In outlining more than 200 years of congressional history, Mann and Ornstein sometimes allow just a sentence or two to explain the policies and philosophies of an important politician or even an entire party, even as they catalogue deviations from obscure points of procedure in extensive detail. Their book may be useful and enjoyable to the specialist, though recent conservative pushback on issues from the Harriet Miers nomination to warrantless wiretapping and immigration will make some wish the authors had had the opportunity to add a postscript. (Aug.)

Heston was as much a bellwether in real-life politics as he was in Hollywood biblical epics, according to this intriguing biographical study. Historian Raymond surveys Heston's political life from his days as a civil rights marcher, Lyndon Johnson supporter and Screen Actors Guild president to his later turn as a Republican stalwart and National Rifle Association president. She analyzes this trajectory not as a rightward trek but as rooted in bedrock ideals—individualism, equal opportunity, moral responsibility—through shifting ideological tides. Throughout, she pegs Heston as a "visceral neoconservative" unwittingly in tune with neocon intellectuals like Irving Kristol (but without the Trotskyist past). In blockbusters from The Ten Commandments to Planet of the Apes, his resonant baritone, craggily handsome face and muscular, seminude physique glamorized an image of conservative masculinity that would color his offscreen political crusades. Raymond's film commentary is stiffly didactic ("Moses demonstrates his moral brand of individualism when he halts construction to save a slave woman") and her indulgent attitude—she sees no inconsistency between Heston's early union activism and his later stumping for right-to-work laws—can seem obtuse. Still, her well-researched, if somewhat smitten, profile sheds light on conservatism as a mass cultural phenomenon through one of its iconic luminaries. Photos. (Aug.)

This moving narrative recounts Wilson's attempt to trace her Dakota heritage, sparked by her usually reticent mother's story of having been left for two years at a mission boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Though her own family stories have been forgotten or repressed, Wilson relies on carefully researched historical accounts and her own imagination to depict how her Native American ancestors survived the Dakota War of 1862. Rosalie, the wife of a French-Canadian and a mother of seven, exemplifies the anguish of her family members forced to defend themselves from Dakota relatives bent on killing whites and their "half-blood" children. When the conflict ended, upwards of two thousand Dakota people, mainly women and children, gave themselves over to the U.S. government, marching over 150 miles through Minnesota to reach a camp where more than 130 would perish from exposure to cold and disease. In the most moving passages, Wilson returns to participate in a commemorative march in her ancestors' footsteps. Though she can get mired in explaining various familial ties, Wilson convincingly asserts that "our daily lives are only the tip of the mountain that rises above hundreds of years of generations whose experience, acknowledged or not, has everything to do with the people we become." 18 b&w photos. (Aug. 1)

This massive catalogue of the International Center of Photography's 2006 exhibition of contemporary African photography gives a thought-provoking introduction to how African artists have engaged with the international art world while sustaining their uniquely African points of view, whether they live at home or abroad. With artists hailing from South Africa to Morocco, the exhibit is a visceral reminder of the vastness and variety of a continent that colonial history has misunderstood and objectified, according to exhibit curator Enwezor. His introductory essay, although difficult reading for those unfamiliar with academic art-speak, provides an indispensable guide to this work, giving a context for what otherwise might overwhelm or mystify. He challenges assumptions of "Afro-pessimism" propounded by literature and the media that "focus on the exotic potentials of both man and animal," equating colonial photographer and African with hunter and game. In contrast, these artists wrench the image of Africa back from "the touristic gaze" to create a humanized, individualized iconography, while claiming their places within the international art community. From Randa Shaath's documentation of Cairo's precariously thriving rooftop community of artists to Kay Hassan's spooky portraits made from Polaroid negatives discarded by self-employed street photographers, this collection reveals an Africa looking with "fined-tuned alertness" at a rapidly changing world. (July)

Correction: The author of Lost Cosmonaut (Reviews, May 22) is Daniel Kalder.

Lifestyle

Food & Entertaining

Zuckerman, pastry chef at New York's famed Chanterelle restaurant, combines aesthetics and science in this appetizing look at the hows and whys of baking. Providing detailed instruction throughout, she guides the cook through the process of creating the dessert while explaining the chemical reactions taking place when ingredients interact. Zuckerman details the intricacies of tart making, offering a variety of standard recipes such as hazelnut, sweet and flaky. Her selections of cakes are enticing, with her Goat Cheesecake Enrobed in Hazelnut Brittle bordering on the sublime. Throughout, she elucidates the basics—e.g., why some cookie recipes require additional baking soda and how an acid aids in the foaming of egg whites. Zuckerman also offers a wealth of cookie recipes and a mouth-watering array of custards, puddings, crèmes and mousses. Soufflé-making techniques are explained so simply that even the baking novice will feel empowered to make an attempt. Zuckerman also devotes sections to ice creams and frozen desserts, roasted fruits and edible garnishes. Highly recommended for all skill levels, this collection is a must-have for anyone who cooks. 70 photos. (Sept.)

Mirroring the magazine on which it is based, this collection of 1,200 recipes is accessible, applicable to most home cooks' lives and a pleasure to cook from. Editor-in-chief Fairchild, who started at the magazine in 1978, sums up the classic Bon Appétit recipe as "a sophisticated twist on a beloved classic, and it's easy to make"—qualities illustrated in such dishes as Upscale Macaroni and Cheese, which uses blue cheese, red peppers and celery, and a lighter Chicken Paprikás, which omits sour cream in the sauce but uses both hot and sweet Hungarian paprikas. There's a nice range of dishes, from American to Chinese, Latin American to French, and the introductions to the recipes helpfully offer serving recommendations, notes on ingredients and possible substitutions. Refreshingly, recipes for suggested sides appear alongside recipes for main courses (e.g., Pan-Seared Chicken with Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes). Novice cooks will feel comfortable using the book; "Notes from the Test Kitchen" detail all manner of culinary tools, key pantry items, cooking terminology and techniques like rolling out pie dough. Although the book's approach is more plebeian than, say, that of The Gourmet Cookbook, fans of Bon Appétit will relish this invigorating compilation of greatest hits. 32 pages of color photos, 59 illus. (Sept.)

Kaufelt is the current proprietor of the 65-year-old New York City institution known as Murray's Cheese, a Greenwich Village shop of great renown and pungent aromas. (Thorpe oversees its wholesale department.) In this expertly handled and instructive catalogue, the authors include vital information for each of the 300-plus entries; there are mentions of milk type (denoted with icons of a goat, cow, sheep or water buffalo); country of origin; whether the cheese is raw or pasteurized; and the type (semisoft, firm, etc.). The authors wax poetic and multisyllabic on cheeses familiar and obscure, bloomy and blue. To wit, the entry on La Serena cheese begins, "Deep in Extremadura, where Merino sheep forage on slate and granite soil, La Serena is a testament to creative seasonal cheesemaking." And of Shropshire blue: "It's as if staid Stilton had a more flamboyant twin." The authors include a glossary and a series of lists and indexes that cover such territory as what cheeses to serve before a meal, top 10 "Most Intimidating Cheeses" (#9: Stinking Bishop), beer and wine pairings, and "Cheeses to Eat Before You Die." Readers whose town lacks a decent cheese shop might find their mouths watering in frustration, but taken as literature, it would be semihard to find a finer book of prose poetry. (Sept.)

With this satisfying cookbook, Botsacos, the head chef at Manhattan's Molyvos restaurant, translates Greek food for a New World setting without losing authenticity. As is often the case at Greek tables, small dishes dominate: the book begins with mezede plates such as classic Melitzanosalata and a delightful Greek Fava Beans with Arugula, Spring Onions, and Capers; then there are chapters for savory pies (which Botsacos proclaims are "the ultimate finger food"), appetizers—a section that is hard to distinguish from mezedes, but equally full of tempting options—and soups and salads. Restaurant favorites like Aglaia's Moussaka and Chicken Magiritsa are included, though Botsacos gets to stretch his wings a little and adds more unusual recipes such as the Warm Manouri Salad with Baby Beets and Pickled Pearl Onions or Pork Spareribs Marinated in Ouzo and Greek Spices. Much of Botsacos's mix of modern-ancient flavors is quite accessible for those willing to put in the preparation time often required. Still, they are likely to find the effort worthwhile, and if they do not reach quite the culinary heights Botsacos does at Molyvos, his clear guidelines should at least help them bring some fresh Greek flavors to their tables. Color photos not seen by PW. (Oct. 10)

This husband-and-wife team (both doctors run the Eide Neurolearning Clinic in Edmonds, Wash.) offer this informative but clinical aid to labeling and dealing with various "brain-based learning challenges." Each of the 11 chapters focuses on "a single type of learning system and the challenges that affect it"—"Overlooking the Obvious: Visual Problems in Children"; "Getting It All Together: Attention Problems in Children"; "Making the Right Connections: Autism and Autism-like Disorders." After discussing the brain processes that underlie each learning system, the Eides offer steps that can be taken to help children whose processes fall into each category. In-depth case histories might have put a human face on a book that is supposed to be aimed at parents and teachers as well as educated child-care professionals, but as it stands, the college –textbook–like tone renders it most suitable as a solid reference tool. (Aug.)

Warburton, a Montessori preschool teacher, leads popular baby-signing workshops throughout New Zealand. Citing research revealing that signing provides a foundation for future language development, Warburton points out that signing babies begin using language earlier than nonsigners, score higher on intelligence tests and have larger vocabularies later in life. One of the primary benefits, however, is that this early method of communication alleviates frustration for both babies and parents, and when signing babies begin to verbalize, parents are more likely to easily decipher their first words. Signing babies, the author claims, also develop confidence and better self-esteem. Lest parents take signing too seriously, Warburton repeatedly reminds that learning to sign should be fun and offers age-appropriate guidelines, warning parents that babies under nine months are unlikely to sign back even though they may understand the gestures. The best way to use signing is to focus on words that are already part of a baby's world, like "milk" or "bath," the author explains. While some busy parents may argue that signing is the last thing they need on their cluttered agendas, others will be intrigued by Warburton's claims, which are shored up by parent testimonials. This compact guide includes a signing dictionary of more than 200 words, with illustrative photos demonstrating suggested signing gestures. (July)

This engagingly entertaining and instructive pregnancy guide is based on the conceit that most men are "twenty-first-century Cro-Magnons" at those times when an expectant father "stops, scratches his head, and mutters to his woman, 'I don't get it.' " What is immediately obvious about the book, however, is that it is actually a superb overview of the birthing experience and is a perfect companion to a classic like What to Expect When You're Expecting. But the Cro-Magnon conceit is what will make this a perennial gift book for expectant fathers, since even the most enlightened male might not initially be interested in learning about prenatal massages, amniocentesis and a wonderful range of easy meals to prepare for a tired spouse, all of which this book expertly details. Best of all, to serve as the reader's mentor and guide before and during childbirth, first-time authors Port and Ralston introduce a typical modern caveman named Gronk ("Role Models: John Belushi"), whose deer-in-the-headlights reactions to subjects such as sex during pregnancy are delightfully drawn by Kendall. (July)

October 3, 1951, 3:58 p.m., Polo Grounds, New York City: "Branca throws. There's a long drive. It's gonna be, I believe—the Giants win the pennant!" That's the way New York Giants' announcer Russ Hodges described what is arguably the greatest moment in American sports, the shot "heard round the world," as the Giants defeated the Dodgers to win the National League pennant. Prager, a senior special writer at the Wall Street Journal, has written a brilliant narrative not only about the most famous homerun in baseball history but also about the mystery that haunts it.

Americans love a conspiracy, be it the grassy-knoll variety or perhaps a more innocuous one, like the stealing of baseball signs. For that is at the crux of this book: did the Giants know what the Dodger pitchers were going to throw before they threw it? (It should be pointed out that there is no baseball rule prohibiting stealing the opposing team's signs.) Prager, who first broke this story for the Wall Street Journal in 2001, tells a tale worthy of a "Deep Throat." The sign heist was ingeniously simple—all that was involved was a telescope, a buzzer and an isolated bullpen catcher.

The baseball story is exciting, but Prager concentrates on what happened to the protagonists: Ralph Branca, the pitcher, forever branded a loser; Bobby Thomson, the phlegmatic gentleman, equally haunted by his heroics. We see the change in Branca when he learns the truth years later from Sal Yvars and the bitterness it engendered toward Thomson, a God-fearing man uncomfortable with his legal cheating. Finally we see a reconciliation between old adversaries, who became business partners, lucratively exploiting their infamy, becoming friends along the way.

Although Prager does have a tendency to overpsychoanalyze both ballplayers, he paints a marvelous portrait of New York City baseball in the tradition of The Boys of Summer and Summer of '49, bringing to life once again a genuine piece of Americana. $125,000 promotional budget; appearances by Thomson and Branca; 6-city author tour. (Sept. 12)