Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 7/17/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 7/17/2006

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment
Edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro. Norton, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 0-393-06073-X

When America's War Relocation Authority hired Dorothea Lange to photograph the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942, they put a few restrictions on her work. Barbed wire, watchtowers and armed soldiers were off limits, they declared. And no pictures of resistance, either. They wanted the roundup and sequestering of Japanese-Americans documented—but not too well. Working within these limits, Lange, who is best known for her photographs of migrant farmers during the Depression, nonetheless produced images whose content so opposed the federal objective of demonizing Japanese-Americans that the vast majority of the photographs were suppressed throughout WWII (97% of them have never been published at all). Editors Gordon and Okihiro set this first collection of Lange's internment work within technical, cultural and historical contexts. Gordon (The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction) discusses Lange's professional methods and the formation of her "democratic-populist" beliefs. Okihiro (Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II) traces the history of prejudice against Japanese Americans, with emphasis on internees' firsthand accounts. But the bulk of the book is given over to Lange's photographs. Several of these are as powerful as her most stirring work, and the final image—of a grandfather in the desolate Manzanar Center looking down in anguish at the grandson between his knees—is worth the price of the book alone. 104 photos, 2 maps. (Nov.)

Bond had always mistrusted short men," Ian Fleming wrote; "Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was short men who created all the trouble in the world." That may sound extreme, but science reporter Hall (Merchants of Immorality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension) marshals a broad, deep range of information in this fascinating study to show us how much size matters in the way society conceptualizes masculinity and how badly we treat those who do not "measure up." Hall includes data on developmental fetal growth; the anthropological studies of Franz Boas and G. Stanley Hall; and the science of the human growth hormone. His research turns up some gems—such as that contemporary ideals of the manly body, as embodied by toys such as G.I. Joe, are far bulkier then those promoted by the famous Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in 1950s comics. Carefully examining sociological studies on bullying, and the politically conservative backlash against those studies, Hall explains how a childhood "culture of cruelty" is reflected in the broader national political culture. His interpretations of complicated science are readily accessible, and his journalistic style will suit both popular and academic readers. (Nov.)

Sedaris's sidesplitting guide to throwing parties hopes to return readers to the times when the word "entertainment" was "charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back alley abortions." While her tongue is firmly in cheek, novice party-planners will actually find some helpful hints along the way as Sedaris offers instructions and real recipes. Her tips run the gamut from how to properly freeze meatballs (freeze them on a cookie sheet before putting them into a freezer bag so they won't stick together) and deal with the inebriated ("Better to cut them off rather than pretend it's not happening and then allow them to stay over and wet your bed"). She's a generous but crafty hostess ("A good trick is to fill your medicine cabinet with marbles. Nothing announces a nosey guest better than an avalanche of marbles hitting a porcelain sink"). Etiquette pointers include inappropriate introductions ("This is Barbara, she can't have children") and things to avoid saying to the grieving ("Did she smoke?" "Was he drinking?" "Where were you when this happened?"). Her advice is both practical and hilarious; her instructions on removing vomit stains ends with "or just toss it, chances are you've stained it before." Sedaris's first solo effort (after Wigfield with her Strangers with Candy co-stars, as well as several plays with her brother, David) is an outrageous and deadpan delight, greatly enhanced by her deliriously kitschy illustrations and photos. (Oct. 16)

With nowhere to go but down after the 1953 conquest of Mt. Everest, mountain climbing was reinvigorated by the group of young British daredevils celebrated in this gripping adventure saga. Journalist and mountain-climber Willis (Epic) profiles elder statesman Bonington and such climbing legends as the truculent working-class prodigy Don Whillan, the austere ex-seminarian Joe Tasker and the perpetually brooding Dougal Haston, "a beatnik's idea of a Romance poet." Their ethos of anti-establishment authenticity drove them to extreme climbs in which smaller teams working with minimal gear tackled harder routes under riskier conditions. Willis narrates almost step-by-step retracings of their ascents; they dodge falling rocks, freeze and hallucinate, dangle from fraying ropes and slip heart-stoppingly into crevasses. (Some of this detail, like the reconstructions of the last thoughts of men who died on the mountain, must be imagined rather than factual.) Less compelling are the many poetic evocations of the existential mystery of climbing—"a pilgrimage, an act of faith that arose from a sense of their own emptiness"—which add little to the standard "Because it's there." Fortunately, the spiritual musings don't obscure the bracing immediacy of Willis's story of life spent teetering on the edge of the abyss. Photos. (Oct. 1)

Fierce food turns eating into a form of an extreme sport," Weil declares, "in which we face our misgivings and dare to plunge into the unknown." In her exhaustive guide to anything and everything edible for those who dare to eat it, London journalist Weil covers it all and then some, from armadillo ("flavorsome as pork") to yuba (bean curd skin). Her descriptions are thorough, including taste, texture, preparation and history of each item: she even includes icons to note important points about each item, for example an icon of a bomb means "eating may cause pain/death" while a sad face indicates "revolting." In addition to the obviously disgusting (various bugs, live monkey brain, etc.), Weil introduces items that may not pop up on even the seasoned traveler's agenda, like foo-foo (a lump of starch in soup) or hakari (putrefied shark meat). There are times when Weil attempts to take up space with descriptions of more pedestrian fare such as coconut, but makes up for these lapses into the mundane when she describes with excruciating detail the experience of biting into a sheep's eyeball. Even if one might not plan on eating a big plate of muttonbird, this book is entertaining enough for the most jaded foodie to enjoy. (Oct.)

One of the fruits of publishers' recent obsession with the founding fathers is a spate of books on lesser-known revolutionary figures—and none could be more welcome than this engrossing biography of George Mason (1725–1792). Until the late 1760s, Mason devoted himself principally to his Virginia plantation, his family and his health. But when Britain levied taxes on stamps and tea, he became a leader in the nonimportation movement, and as the Revolution unfolded, he emerged as one of Virginia's most important politicians, helping to raise a militia and drafting the influential Virginia Declaration of Rights and a state constitution. This biography's greatest strength is Broadwater's treatment of the post-Revolutionary years, specifically his nuanced discussion of Mason's role at the constitutional convention. Broadwater, associate professor of history at Barton College in North Carolina, shows that Mason's leadership at the convention shaped the Constitution and spells out the many factors that led to Mason's final refusal to sign it. Especially fascinating is Broadwater's speculations about Mason's relations with George Washington—the two men were neighbors, but Broadwater finds hints that at times their social relationship was strained. Broadwater's prose is vigorous and his assessment of Mason judicious; this biography is a standout. 9 illus., 1 map. (Oct. 2)

The passion overshadows the minds in this breathless account of the decade-long love affair between Emilie du Châtelet, a rare 18th-century woman scientist who wrote an influential commentary on Newton's physics, and the notorious Enlightenment thinker Voltaire. There's plenty of action and romance in the story, set against a backdrop of haughty aristocrats, blasé adulteries and rancid court intrigues. Mme. du Châtelet and Voltaire fall madly in love, quarrel, take other lovers, split up, reconcile, renovate their chateau and again take other lovers. Meanwhile, their talks about (and inept experiments with) physics and philosophy, the author contends, spurred both to dizzying heights of creativity. Bodanis (E=mc2) adopts a mild feminist stance in styling du Châtelet as a brilliant intellect thwarted by male chauvinism. But Bodanis's frustratingly sketchy rendition of du Châtelet's work makes a weak case for the claim that she was a major scientific figure. With the science given short shrift, du Châtelet seems defined mainly by her relationships with men and is effortlessly upstaged by Voltaire as he alternately jousts with, flees from and kowtows to king and church. Bodanis's crowd-pleasing focus on lively domestic melodrama—complete with a vignette of du Châtelet "lounging naked with a handsome corsair's son"—belittles rather than enhances her intellectual stature. (Oct.)

Irène Némirovsky's brilliant 1940 novel Suite Française was a surprise bestseller earlier this year. Némirovsky published more than a dozen novels and several biographies in her short lifetime, achieving acclaim in her adopted country of France. But information about the life and career of the Russian-born Jewish novelist, who died in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 39, has been scarce. This short critical biography by Weiss, an expert on contemporary French literature, is a fine introduction to her work. Némirovsky attained literary stature in France in 1930 with the publication of David Golder, a satiric portrait of the Parisian Jewish business community. Weiss's analysis of the Jewish press's negative response to David Golder (they "reeled, as if struck by a bomb") is excellent. Némirovsky continued to have a fruitful literary career until her deportation to Auschwitz. Weiss offers a discussion of Némirovsky's 1939 conversion to Catholicism, which appears to have been sincere although at the same time she was exploring the personal meaning of Judaism in her life. At times Weiss relies too heavily on autobiographical readings of Némirovsky's novels, but such a tack is understandable given that we are in the early stages of scholarly work to be done, of which this is a fascinating and important beginning. (Oct.)

The doomed ship St. Louis—carrying German-Jewish refugees and refused permission to dock in Cuba and Florida in 1939—became a potent symbol of global indifference to the fate of European Jewry on the eve of the Holocaust. While 288 of the more than 900 passengers found sanctuary in Great Britain, 620 were forced to return to mainland Europe, and close to half of those passengers sent to Belgium, France and Holland were murdered during the Holocaust. Among the survivors, a Miami-area retired baker and Korean War veteran, Herbert Karliner, got through WWII posing as a Catholic and working as a hired hand for a pro-Vichy farmer near Lyon. Another, Hannelore Klein, who in her 70s confesses to still feeling like a displaced person, was 12 when she was sent to Holland, survived Auschwitz (her mother was gassed) and returned to Amsterdam to live with her grandparents, Theresienstadt survivors. Prodigiously researched and generously illustrated with photographs—most from the St. Louis and the Westerbork internment camp—this valuable contribution to Holocaust studies provides emotionally satisfying closure as the authors, staffers at D.C.'s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, track the passengers and give a human face to mass tragedy. (Oct. 20)

Brafman and Beckstrom, a pair of Stanford M.B.A.s who have applied their business know-how to promoting peace and economic development through decentralized networking, offer a breezy and entertaining look at how decentralization is changing many organizations. The title metaphor conveys the core concept: though a starfish and a spider have similar shapes, their internal structure is dramatically different—a decapitated spider inevitably dies, while a starfish can regenerate itself from a single amputated leg. In the same way, decentralized organizations, like the Internet, the Apache Indian tribe and Alcoholics Anonymous, are made up of many smaller units capable of operating, growing and multiplying independently of each other, making it very difficult for a rival force to control or defeat them. Despite familiar examples—eBay, Napster and the Toyota assembly line, for example—there are fresh insights, such as the authors' three techniques for combating a decentralized competitor (drive change in your competitors' ideology, force them to become centralized or decentralize yourself). The authors also analyze one of today's most worrisome "starfish" organizations—al-Qaeda—though that group undermines the authors' point that the power of leaderless groups helps to demonstrate the essential goodness and trustworthiness of human beings. (Oct. 5)

If evolution involves a competition for survival, then how can we explain altruism? Biologist Dugatkin (Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans) splendidly narrates a fast-paced tale of scientific breakthrough, genius and intellectual history as he examines the lives of seven scientists—from T.H. Huxley through Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson—whose groundbreaking work attempts to answer this question. Darwin's "bulldog," T.H. Huxley, believed altruism was rare, and that blood kinship provided the key to an evolutionary understanding of altruism. The Russian anarchist Prince Pyotr Kropotkin, on the other hand, believed altruism was widespread and unrelated to kinship. But the idea of the kinship link won out, and in the 1960s, William Hamilton developed a cost-benefit analysis to explain the genetic basis of altruism: "If a gene for altruism is to evolve, then the cost of altruism must somehow be balanced by compensating benefits to the altruist." Stephen Emlen of Cornell has found remarkable evidence of Hamilton's Rule in his studies of bee eaters in Kenya. The impact of Hamilton's Rule "on evolutionary biology has been as great as the impact of Newton's laws of motion on physics," says Dugatkin. This superb tale of scientific discovery is required reading for everyone interested in the nature of human morality. (Oct.)

Celebrated primatologist de Waal expands on his earlier work in Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals to argue that human traits of fairness, reciprocity and altruism develop through natural selection. Based on his 2004 Tanner Lectures at Princeton, this book argues that our morality grows out of the social instincts we share with bonobos, chimpanzees and apes. De Waal criticizes what he calls the "veneer theory," which holds that human ethics is simply an overlay masking our "selfish and brutish nature." De Waal draws on his own work with primates to illustrate the evolution of morality. For example, chimpanzees are more favorably disposed to others who have performed a service for them (such as grooming) and more likely to share their food with these individuals. In three appendixes, de Waal ranges briefly over anthropomorphism, apes and a theory of mind, and animal rights. The volume also includes responses to de Waal by Robert Wright, Christine M. Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher and Peter Singer. Although E.O. Wilson and Robert Wright have long contended that altruism is a product of evolution, de Waal demonstrates through his empirical work with primates the evolutionary basis for ethics. (Oct.)

How do humans develop their capacity to make moral decisions? Harvard biologist Hauser (Wild Minds) struggles to answer this and other questions in a study that is by turns fascinating and dull. Drawing on the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky, Hauser argues that humans have a universal moral grammar, an instinctive, unconscious tool kit for constructing moral systems. For example, although we might not be able to articulate immediately the moral principle underlying the ban on incest, our moral faculty instinctually declares that incest is disgusting and thus impermissible. Hauser's universal moral grammar builds on the 18th-century theories of moral sentiments devised by Adam Smith and others. Hauser also asserts that nurture is as important as nature: "our moral faculty is equipped with a universal set of rules, with each culture setting up particular exceptions to these rules." All societies accept the moral necessity of caring for infants, but Eskimos make the exception of permitting infanticide when resources are scarce. Readers unfamiliar with philosophy will be lost in Hauser's labyrinthine explanations of Kant, Hume and Rawls, and Hauser makes overly large claims for his theory's ability to guide us in making more moral, and more enforceable, laws. (Sept. 1)

The prodigal son of Bill Moyers, the exemplary broadcast journalist, wrecked a bright career at CNN and deserted his family in 1994, hitting bottom as a "thirty-five-year-old crack addict." The lurid appeal of his story hinges largely on Moyers's munificent, even saintly father, and the train-wreck spectacle of his son's fall from grace. Moyers conveys with black humor the rapturous allure of substance abuse: "cocaine owned me, body and soul," he writes. It lures him back even after stints in rehab, brushes with death and lucky breaks. As his habit skids out of control, Moyers dodges punishment with smug hauteur. He enjoys plum reporting assignments as a fortunate son and plays the role of "solid, sincere recovering alcoholic," while persisting in his unrepentant behavior. Moyers hits his stride in evocations of his muddled, though quasi-methodical, mindset: the vertiginous pull of addiction, the powerful delusions of denial and the double-edged sword of legacy, which proves a potent enabler. His father, who addresses him in heartfelt letters excerpted at length, looms throughout as both reproving shadow and divine light. Photos. (Sept.)

In spite of all the fine children's books he'd written and illustrated (Magic Thinks Big; Dance!), Cooper always knew, deep down, that he didn't really like children "in person." Parents were worse. Parents were people who used to have interesting lives, but now spent their waking hours discussing how tired they were. Adults without children dined in marvelously relaxing restaurants; parents ate in horribly plastic places featuring "mac and cheese." The very act of becoming a parent—that "miracle" of his wife giving birth to Zoë—was frightening; as he said, "I'd call 911 but we're already in a hospital." In loosely chronological essays, Cooper describes his experiences taking Zoë to the local cafe, to playgrounds, to the petting farm or to "baby night" at the movies. Before long, he started to relax. He learned to give her diaper a surreptitious sniff and not make a big deal of it. Rather than complain about Zoë's outfits, he learned just to change them after his wife left for work. While he always found something new to worry about, he also realized it didn't matter, since he was so totally besotted with this dear child. With a delicious sense of humor and remarkably graceful phrasing, Cooper's journal is a gift to all new parents—especially the guys. (Sept.)

Not unlike the AIDS pandemic itself, the odyssey of Haregewoin Teferra, who took in AIDS orphans, began in small stages and grew to irrevocably transform her life from that of "a nice neighborhood lady" to a figure of fame, infamy and ultimate restoration. In telling her story, journalist Greene who had adopted two Ethiopian children before meeting Teferra, juggles political history, medical reportage and personal memoir. While succinctly interspersing a history of Ethiopia, lucidly tracing the history of AIDS from its early manifestation as "slim disease" in the late 1970s to its appearance as a bizarrely aggressive [form] of Kaposi's sarcoma in the early 1980s, and following the complex path of medication (a super highway in the West, a trail in Africa), Greene rescues Teferra from undeserved oblivion as well as rescuing her from undeserved obloquy (false accusations of child selling). As with her previous books (Praying for Sheetrock; The Temple Bombing; Last Man Out), Greene takes a very close look at what appears to be the fringe of an important social event and illuminates the entire subject. Ethiopia is home to "the second-highest concentration of AIDS orphans in the world"; even as some of the orphans find happy endings in American homes, Greene keeps the urgency of the greater crisis before us in this moving, impassioned narrative. (Sept.)

A politically naïve French country girl when she entered the Sorbonne in 1928, Marokvia (Immortelles: Memoir of a Will-o'-the-Wisp), who today is almost 98 years old, soon fell in love with art student Abel; the two enjoyed the Parisian bohemian scene of the 1930s, without worrying much about world events. Even when Hitler took Austria in 1938, no one seemed too shocked—it "was as if we had begun to think he had the right to do what he was doing." Alas, Abel was German and by 1939, he decided to return to Stuttgart. Marokvia followed and the two married, each verifying that they came from four generations of Jew-free ancestry. While both hated the Nazis and refused to collaborate actively, neither felt able to do anything against the regime. Abel avoided the military by working for a propaganda ministry, traveling throughout the Reich sketching for various government publications, while Marokvia variously worked as a weaver, translator and subsistence farmer. They considered themselves innocent of Nazi atrocities, yet sullied by the passive sin of complicity. At times they contemplated suicide or murdering Hitler, but then went on with finding housing, food and work, like other citizens. Readers of last year's A Woman in Berlin will find the similarities (constant suspicion of neighbors, ignorance about Jews) and contrasts (Marokvia reports no rapes or prostitution) illuminating. (Sept.)

Here is a delightful collection of New York stories by veteran straphangers—both known and unknown—dedicated to that amazing underground network. Along with expected accounts of the unsavory run-ins with weirdoes and stink bombs during the usual subway commute (e.g., Daniels Parseliti's "Porno Man and I Versus the Feminist Avenger and Displaced Anger Man"), many of these authors offer poignant memories of riding the trains over the years, such as Jonathan Lethem's account of haunting the eponymous station in "Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn" as a white, liberal-middle-class kid immersed in a fringe area of crime and poverty. "Parnassus Underground" by Patrick Flynn recalls joyfully the meaty reading the author was able to accomplish during long workday commutes from the Bronx, before he moved and (to his literary despair) shortened his travel time. Robert Lanham's "Straphanger Doppelgänger" records the chilling encounter between two commuters of uncanny resemblance who have observed each other over a long period. Most gratifying are the historical details worked into many of the essays, such as the comparison between Russian and New York underground railroads as noted by Boris Fishman in "Metro Blues, or How I Came to America." This is a clever collection gathered by Cangro from her Web site, thesubwaychronicles.com. (Sept.)

In this slim and lyrical memoir, French writer Bouillier tells of the moment when he received a phone call in his Paris apartment in the fall of 1990 ("It was the day Michel Leiris died"). Bouillier was 30 years old and asleep in all his clothes, and it had been years since the unnamed woman on the other end of the line had left him "without a word... the way they abandon dogs when summer comes." Rather than calling to reconnect or explain, she called to invite him to a party, several weeks hence, at the artist Sophie Calle's apartment, where he was to serve as the "Mystery Guest." What Bouillier (his untranslated Rapport sur moi won the Prix de Flore in 2002) makes of this simple setup is pure Gallic magic— a mix of hapless obsession, sophisticated abstraction, unearned righteousness and hyperarticulate self-doubt—as he tries to guess the woman's motivations and get a hold of his own feelings. The book's four short parts (beautifully rendered by Stein)—phone call, preparation, party and aftermath—are small miracles of Montaigne-like self-exploration. Reading as Bouillier moves through the light and dark of love, through its forms of "maniacal sublimation" and through its mystery, is arresting. (Sept.)

Why, if life was improving so rapidly for so many people at the dawn of the 20th century, were the next hundred years full of brutal conflict? Ferguson (Colossus) has a relatively simple answer: ethnic unrest is prone to break out during periods of economic volatility—booms as well as busts. When they take place in or near areas of imperial decline or transition, the unrest is more likely to escalate into full-scale conflict. This compelling theory is applicable to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated against Bosnians, but the overwhelming majority of Ferguson's analysis is devoted to the two world wars and the fate of the Jews in Germany and eastern Europe. His richly informed analysis overturns many basic assumptions. For example, he argues that England's appeasement of Hitler in 1938 didn't lead to WWII, but was a misinformed response to a war that had started as early as 1935. But with Ferguson's claims about "the descent of the West" and the smaller wars in the latter half of the century tucked away into a comparatively brief epilogue, his thoughtful study falls short of its epic promise. (Sept. 25)

U.S. policymakers went to war in Vietnam and Iraq," writes Brigham, "with the expectation that a distinctively American story would emerge." In this brief and potent analysis of current American foreign policy, the Vassar College history and international relations professor bolsters his conclusions about the many similarities and decisive differences between these two military efforts with precise factual details and his ability to discern the vital trends underlying them. There are startling parallels here—many of Johnson's older Cold War advisers warned that Vietnam War costs would put the U.S. in "a serious financial crisis." But while Vietnam War critics took to the streets, Brigham observes that contemporary political dissent is "primarily through public opinion polls." Though a critic of the administration's Iraq policy, he's sensitive to nuance, noting that despite deep partisan differences, Congress gave both Lyndon Johnson and George Bush "broad presidential authority to use any means necessary" to act. He also gives serious consideration to the differences between a military composed of draftees and volunteers, speculating that today's returning veterans will denounce current policy and military actions. Brigham has produced a deftly written, well-argued polemic that's unlikely to sway staunch supporters of current policy, but may affect those in the center of the debate. (Sept.)

A full-blooded member of what he calls the "revisionist school" of Vietnam War historians, Moyar firmly believes that America's longest and most controversial overseas war was "a worthy but improperly executed enterprise." His fiercely argued book, which covers the early years of American involvement in the war, is an unabated salvo against what he calls the "orthodox school" that sees American involvement in the war as "wrongheaded and unjust." The main villains are former Vietnam War correspondents David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan; former U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge; and just about anyone else who had bad things to say about South Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem and good things to say about Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Though Moyar marshals many primary sources to buttress his political point of view, he undermines his argument by disparaging those he disagrees with (calling Sheehan and Halberstam, for example, "indignant," "vengeful," and "self-righteous"). He also showers praise on those who backed Diem, the autocratic leader who stifled the press and his political opponents. Revisionists will embrace the book; the orthodox will see it as more evidence of a vast, right-wing conspiracy. (Oct. 1)

In December 1865, the 39th Congress had urgent business, says Epps in this passionate account of Reconstruction politics. If the former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, ex-slaves would swell those states' congressional power, but without congressional protection, the freedmen would never be allowed to vote, and the Southern white elite would have disproportionate influence in the federal government. Epps follows every twist of Congress's response to this problem, and his energetic prose transforms potentially tedious congressional debates into riveting reading. He illuminates the fine points, such as the distinction in the 19th century between civil rights—relating to property and employment, which many thought blacks should have—and political rights, which some thought only educated men of wealth should have. Congressmen were not the only people energized by the conundrums of electoral representation. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton petitioned for women's suffrage on the same grounds as blacks. While Congress hammered out the 14th and 15th Amendments, white Southerners were putting in place the Jim Crow codes that would subvert those amendments until the 1960s. As constitutional scholar and novelist Epps (The Shad Treatment) notes in a rousing afterword, there are many corners in which they are not fully realized today. 7 pages of b&w illus. (Sept. 1)

That girls are overwhelmed by images of princesses, demure femininity and pink, pink, pink is no surprise. What is shocking, as Lamb (The Secret Lives of Girls) and Brown (Meeting at the Crossroads) so astutely demonstrate, is the downright bombardment girls receive, coming from all forms of media. Lamb and Brown, both psychologists, came to harsh conclusions after they surveyed girls; sat through hours of Rugrats and Kim Possible television programming; scoured stores such as Hot Topic and Claire's; watched Hilary Duff movies; listened to Eminem and Beyoncé; visited MySpace.com; and read Caldecott books. The idea of "girl power was snapped up by the media," and "what it sells is an image of being empowered," argue the authors. Girls are offered two choices by the marketers: they are "either for the boys or one of the boys." Even rebellion is being packaged, "the resistance, that edginess and irreverence that once gave girls a pathway out of the magic kingdom." The book is incredibly readable and rises above others in the genre by giving parents concrete tools to help battle stereotypes. Lamb and Brown include lists of books and movies with positive role models and talking points to help your daughter recognize how she is being manipulated. The authors aren't trying to deny anyone princesses or pink; they just want girls to be knowledgeable enough to choose what will truly interest them. (Sept.)

String theory—the hot topic in physics for the past 20 years—is a dead-end, says Smolin, one of the founders of Canada's Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics and himself a lapsed string theorist. In fact, he (and others) argue convincingly, string theory isn't even a fully formed theory—it's just a "conjecture." As Smolin reminds his readers, string theorists haven't been able to prove any of their exotic ideas, and he says there isn't much chance that they will in the foreseeable future. The discovery of "dark energy," which seems to be pushing the universe apart faster and faster, isn't explained by string theory and is proving troublesome for that theory's advocates. Smolin (The Life of the Cosmos) believes that physicists are making the mistake of searching for a theory that is "beautiful" and "elegant" instead of one that's actually backed up by experiments. He encourages physicists to investigate new alternatives and highlights several young physicists whose work he finds promising. This isn't easy reading, but it will appeal to dedicated science buffs interested in where physics may be headed in the next decade. 30 b&w illus. (Sept. 19)

Hodes reconstructs the intriguing and unusual life of Eunice Richardson Stone Connolly. a mill laborer in mid–19th-century New England who went South with her husband to seek their fortune; homesick, even as her husband fought for the Confederacy, she returned to New Hampshire, where she was reduced to working as a washerwoman. The only thing that brought an impoverished Eunice respectability was her white skin. But then she heard of her husband's death, and in 1869, mystifying some of her relatives, Connolly put that respectability at risk, too, marrying a well-to-do black sea captain from Grand Cayman Island and moving there with him. Hodes, a historian at NYU (White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South), relies on a rich cache of Connolly's letters, which are housed at Duke University. Unfortunately, the letters don't reveal how Connolly met her second husband or explain in depth why she decided to marry him. Hodes's prose, though sometimes a bit affected ("In place of fiction, I offer the craft of history, assisted by the art of speculation"), is lucid and her account is engaging, though for readers steeped in the subject not pathbreaking; what Hodes has to tell us about the 19th century—that race was socially constructed and complicated, for example—is nothing new. 47 b&w illus., 2 maps. (Sept.)

Modern bacteriology was born on the battlefields of WWI, where bacteria-rich trenches added to the toll of millions of soldiers killed. Not coincidentally, the search for anything that would significantly diminish the deadly power of disease largely occurred between the world wars, mostly in Germany. Gerhard Domagk and his colleagues at Bayer (a subsidiary of I.G. Farben) worked feverishly to identify which microscopic squiggles might render humankind forever safe from malaria and tuberculosis. The answer, discovered in 1932, turned out to be sulfa drugs, the precursors to modern antibiotics. Hager, a biographer of Linus Pauling, does a remarkable job of transforming material fit for a biology graduate seminar into highly entertaining reading. He knows that lay readers need plenty of personality and local color, and his story is rich with both. This yarn prefigures the modern rush for corporate pharma patents; it is testament to Hager's skill that the inherently unsexy process of finding the chemicals that might help conquer strep is as exciting as an account of the hunt for a Russian submarine. (Sept.)

Caldecott's latest antinuke book searingly debunks the claim that the impending "nuclear power renaissance," purported by some to be the only answer to global warming, is "clean and green." She covers all the bases, from the carbon emitted in the creation of nuclear power (higher than fossil fuels if the entire process from uranium mining to waste disposal is included) to the cost of nuclear plants (too high to be viable without large government subsidies) and the health risks and possibility of accidents and terrorists' access (more than we'd like to think). She also points out that, despite proponents' assurances, we still haven't found a safe place to store the waste materials for the necessary thousands of years, and that state-of-the-art nuclear plant technology is still full of unresolved problems. Caldecott's predictable alternative is also sensible: switch to wind and other benign renewables, turn down the thermostat, wear a sweater, use energy efficient lights and dry clothes on the clothesline. Detractors will complain that she is strident and incendiary, but those who believe that facts matter will want to read her frighteningly convincing argument. (Sept.)

In this comprehensive and insightful book, Edsall shows just how much angrier Democrats could be—not least of all at themselves—if only they knew the half of what was going on. A senior political reporter for the Washington Post, he knows the capitol's ins and outs as well as anyone, without the bedfellowism of some other Washington journalists. The book goes a long way to explain why Bush, who ran in 2000 as a "uniter, not a divider," proceeded with an aggressively right-wing strategy once in power. Beginning with the revelation to conservative thinkers in 2000 that the "center of the electorate had collapsed," Edsall assiduously details every aspect of their successful push to galvanize their base and emasculate their opponents. "Without pressure to accommodate the center," he adds, "Republicans in the majority have been, with little cost, relatively unresponsive to criticism." Hence, the administration managed to draw both working-class evangelicals (using classic "wedge issues" like race and outrage over gay rights and abortion) and wealthy K Street lobbyists with little consequence. But he also shows that the Democrats lack salable strategies and have lost "a decisive majority of white voters." With depth and journalistic clarity, Edsall illustrates exactly why, more than ever, Democrats need their own Karl Rove. (Sept.)

Forget the red state/blue state divide—the real fault line is between progressive metropolitan and suburban areas in every region and the conservative rural sea surrounding them, asserts this trenchant study of American politics. Drawing on demographic, polling and voting data and interviews, journalist Mann analyzes the disconnect between overwhelmingly Republican rural "homelanders," who vote their traditional values and Christian moral certitudes, and an urban "metro" culture whose cosmopolitanism, secularism and relativism they revile. An avowed moderate pushed leftward by Bush's policies, his attitude is respectful but conflicted. Mann chides liberal pundits (Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? is a favorite target) for caricaturing homelanders as rubes gulled by Republican culture wars rhetoric into voting against their interests. Instead he finds them thoughtful, politically savvy (aided by a Constitution that grants them disproportionate electoral clout) and adroit in commandeering government policy and largesse. But he remains frustrated in his attempts to translate across the ideological gap—"It's my nature, I guess," mutters his staunchly conservative brother when pressed on his convictions—and views rural conservatism as parasitic and doomed. Although inadequate in spots—he says little about class, for example—Mann's is a lucid, provocative contribution to the conversation over America's political future. (Sept. 1)

In this broadside against conventional American Jewish political thinking, Schwartz (The Two Faces of Islam) repeatedly poses the question "is it good for the Jews?"—concluding that neoconservativism would be, but the Democratic Party isn't. Schwartz (a convert from Judaism to Islam) argues that the community's leadership, including pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, has let down its constituency by failing to embrace neoconservativism's "universal, humanistic and liberal values" and inadequately responding to the "tidal wave of Jew-baiting" he believes preceded the Iraq war. Yet he backs his claims with speculative statements, while dismissing others' positions as "mak[ing] no sense" or insulting the messengers (e.g., "incompetent Western journalists and bought-off policy experts" are behind the dubious notion of an al-Qaeda/Saddam Hussein connection). The last sentence declares AIPAC to be "on the edge of its demise," but Schwartz provides no data to support such a prediction. He offers only an account of the spy scandal in which AIPAC has been embroiled since 2004, which led to tension with the administration, but which, Schwartz admits, also led to "an exceptional upsurge in donations" to the organization. Though the book has little to recommend it, it's likely to make waves regardless. (Sept.)

After its 1990 economic crisis, Japan entered a period of stagnation and has yet to recover. Although at first limited to finances, this depression slowly spread to the country's political system as well as its national consciousness. One extreme example of the problem is the more than one million young men who have given up on school or employment, spending their days in their cramped apartments. In this well-researched and well-organized book, journalist and scholar Zielenziger reveals how these men ("hikikomori") are both a symptom of and a metaphor for Japan's ennui. With compassion and vigor, he presents close-up portraits of the hikikomori, while grounding their stories in the political, economic and historic realities facing Japan today. Zielenziger also suggests that women who avoid marriage and children, men who drink too much and both men and women fetishizing brand names are additional signs of the mass confusion and discontent. Seven years as a Tokyo bureau chief for Knight Rider newspapers has given Zielenziger the necessary access to this closed culture, though his exposé is bound to be controversial. His inclusion of both small details and the big picture makes the book as intimate as it is revealing. (Sept.)

Transforming family-owned Haloid Corp., which struggled in the shadow of hometown behemoth Eastman Kodak, into the globally recognized Xerox is an amazing accomplishment. But as Ellis's biography of Joe Wilson attests, Wilson's achievements ranged more widely and went much deeper than many gave him credit for. Ellis, author of 11 books and former financial industry consultant offers a heartfelt, if not artful, telling of the CEO's life story. He contends that Wilson embodied all of the qualities that leadership management books celebrate: integrity, foresight and the ability to inspire people to perform. He credits these attributes to helping Wilson so spectacularly realize his vision for his company; its employees; his alma mater, the University of Rochester; and the city and people of Rochester, N.Y. Ellis's telling starts off slow and is initially quite repetitive. But once Xerox is finally born, after years of setbacks, the story picks up. The real purpose for the detailed buildup appears toward the end, when credit for the last 20-odd years of corporate strife and ultimate success is given to the wrong person, Wilson's best friend and the company's corporate counsel. At that point, it becomes clear why Ellis was compelled to write this book so long after the company's rise and its true founder's demise. (Sept.)

A little more than 100 years ago, two titans of industry faced off in one of the most vicious battles the marketplace had ever seen. On one side, Thomas Edison, inventor extraordinaire, the creator of the phonograph and the electric light; on the other, George Westinghouse, tycoon and titan, backing the mysterious eastern European inventor Nikola Tesla. They fought over the very nature of the electrical system in America: would it be built on alternating current (as Westinghouse proposed), or direct current à la Edison? Though a battle over electrical standards sounds dry, this tale is anything but. McNichol's solid if brief survey of this relatively unknown moment in the history of technology ranges from macabre electrocutions of hapless animals (and eventually prison inmates) as demonstrations of the "Death Current" to the gleaming "electrical wonderland" of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Though the author focuses on when it's wise to fight a standards battle and when to give in, some might wish that he had another 200 pages in which to flesh out the story. His book tantalizingly scratches the surface of Edison's ingenuity and force of will, Westinghouse's shrewd business sense, and most of all the sheer eccentricity of Nikola Tesla. (Sept.)

This delightful literary anthology of memoir-style essays by American writers under 30 is the fruit of an Internet contest organized by Kellogg and Quint, editorial assistants at Random House. Its acutely self-aware observers and philosophers inhabit experience intensely. Many write about work, be it night shifts at Wendy's, serving the U.S. military in Kuwait or playing with infuriating fellow band members in New York City. Whether admitting they are only just beginning to see their own parents as people or struggling to balance graduate study and parenthood, the essayists blend morbid irony and idealism. Many write of a dawning realization of mortality: Jennifer Glaser writes with a perfectly judged tone about being in love and losing a boyfriend to leukemia. Others attempt to define their generation and the trends that dominate it: John Fischer, who works for a company that monitors changing consumer attitudes, savagely contemplates high-tech capitalist consumer culture, while Theodora Stites, considering her obsession with Friendster and MySpace, confesses, "I am trying desperately be a celebrity in the network of my own digital world." This highly readable collection of voices is more assured and memorable than one might have expected from such a venture. 34 illus. (Sept. 5)

Welland, a lecturer in anthropology and women's studies at the University of Washington–Seattle, reconstructs the lives of her elite Cantonese grandmother, Amy Ling Chen, who in 1925 won a scholarship to study medicine in the United States, and of Amy's elder sister, Ling Shuhua, a writer and painter who remained in China until 1945. Welland balances family sources with meticulous research and insightful reading of Shuhua's fiction. Describing the anti-Communist paramilitary violence targeting Chinese "modern girls" that precipitated Amy's emigration, Welland charts her grandmother's courageous years as a medical intern and her subsequent pursuit of all-American respectability after marriage to a successful Chinese researcher. Welland also recounts Shuhua's frustrated existence as a faculty wife and struggling writer at Wuhan University, sensitively examining records of Shuhua's affair with visiting British lecturer Julian Bell, Virginia Woolf's nephew. Welland also tracks Shuhua's tenuous postwar relationship to the Bloomsbury Group (Julian Bell having died in the Spanish Civil War) and the genesis of her memoir Ancient Melodies—published by Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press in 1953. This restrained and melancholy biography is filled with fascinating glimpses of 20th-century Chinese women's intellectual history and insights into the Chinese-American and Anglo-Chinese experience. (Sept.)

For four decades, Foxfire magazine has been documenting and preserving the life and culture of Southern Appalachia. Drawing on the magazine's published talks by local high school students with elderly rural inhabitants, the books have explored the crafts, cooking, music, gardening and stories that have been passed down through the generations. The focus in this anniversary volume is on devotion to religion, family and the land. Collecting pieces from 40 years' worth of the magazine, the book inevitably covers topics covered in previous Foxfire collections, including snake handling, childhood toys and recipes. But the spoken words remain captivating, eloquent if plainspoken. It's clear that most of the respondents feel, as Eunice Hunter does, that "religion is everything to me." Many of the subjects speak movingly of their belief in the Bible, the power of the Devil, and Judgment Day. Prefatory comments from the editors are more admiring of the culture described (even whipping children as a form of discipline) and condemning of modern society than they are informative and objective. Best to overlook them and let the Appalachian elders speak for themselves. B&w photos. (Sept.)

In this eccentric, energetic and engaging memoir of his long run on America's favorite television quiz show, Harris, a former standup comedian and current comedy writer, gives readers the lowdown on life as "one of the show's big winners—and big losers." He promises to tell all, and he does, from the show's beginning in 1963 to his own blow-by-blow experiences as a contestant. He discusses his growing obsession with winning, how it cost him a girlfriend and how he luckily found another. For those who would follow in his footsteps, he is generous with tips on strategy: buzzer skills, how to predict topics (keep holidays in mind), how to suss out a Daily Double, which clues to tackle first, how to one-up your competition (though one of the gems of this often charming book is the account of the quite sincere friendships that grew among the top competitors). Like many a standup routine, his narrative zigs and zags back and forth in time and topic, but like the best of routines, it is sharply timed, pulling out many swerves and surprises to keep the reader alert. And what is Alex Trebek really like? "I dunno," says Harris, but the Trebek we meet is highly professional and unfailingly courteous. "Just like on TV." (Sept.)

Celebrity biographer Spoto (The Art of Alfred Hitchcock) offers a sparkling, fawning life of the European gamine whom America took to instantly with her 1953 debut in Roman Holiday. Hepburn (1929–1993) held the irresistible charm of a childlike star naïvely unaware of her appeal, from her first big break at age 22 when selected by Colette herself to play the Broadway version of Gigi. Born to a Dutch baroness and an English ne'er-do-well (and fascist sympathizer) who separated when she was six, Hepburn and her mother underwent horrendous deprivations during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII; her early ambition to become a ballet dancer was undermined by inadequate nutrition and training. Her early film successes flowed astonishingly, however, from Sabrina, Funny Face, Love in the Afternoon, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady to attempts at roles with more gravitas, as in The Nun's Story and Wait Until Dark. Often paired with older, avuncular leads, Hepburn was viewed as unerotic, yet Spoto tracks her steamy relationships with playboys and co-stars, and marriage to American actor-director Mel Ferrer, who often acted as her Pygmalion. Her later work with UNICEF is sketched too briefly. Spoto's previous Hollywood biographies allow the author authoritative access to Hepburn. (Sept.)

In 1975, singer-dancer-choreographer McKechnie was one of the brightest lights on the Great White Way, winning a Tony for her performance in A Chorus Line, and now theatergoers will be elated to see her autobiography shelved in stores only days before A Chorus Line's October Broadway revival. McKechnie's memories of the original musical's creative genesis serve as the centerpiece, and the other chapters are equally compelling. Her story is one of fierce drive and determination. Leaving Detroit at 16, she ran away from home to dance with a touring troupe, arriving in Manhattan at 17. Following a failed audition with American Ballet Theatre, she performed in Massachusetts musicals, filmed commercials and toured in West Side Story, leaping from the long-run Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1961 to TV (Hullabaloo; Dark Shadows). By the time Stephen Sondheim's Company brought her back to Broadway in 1970, her career was a cakewalk, but the aftermath of a divorce from choreographer Michael Bennett led to a "vicious circle of depression." McKechnie writes honestly, revealing her innermost thoughts, looking back at family, close friends and intimate relationships, while probing her anxieties, low self-esteem and personal pain between the plaudits, raves and theatrical triumphs. 16-page photo insert not seen by PW. (Sept.)

The day-to-day life of independent film production is not the stuff of charming anecdotes on DVD commentaries. Instead, as Vachon skillfully explicates, it is a constant and difficult struggle between the competing influences of artistic vision and the always present bottom line. As the head of Killer Films, which has produced such alternative hits as Boys Don't Cry and Far from Heaven, Vachon is in a difficult position: she is an insider whose job is to constantly support outsider stories. The financial reality of the world she chronicles provides the drama that sustains this empathetic and thoroughly engaging memoir. Vachon's voice is likable and slightly neurotic, allowing the reader to develop a rooting interest in her continual quest to secure financing for often controversial films. Though Vachon's account is slightly hampered by her obvious bias toward her own films, the book teems with the veracity that can only come from hard-earned experience. This is an immensely appealing view into the expensive reality of imaginative filmmaking. (Sept.)

Actual musician and New York Times writer Crane created his alter ego, Björn Türoque, as part of a heated but unsuccessful attempt to win the 2003 Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, a yearly competition—usually attended by thousands of fans—to see who can best mime the movements of guitar solos in songs by actual rock gods such as Led Zeppelin and Guns N' Roses. With hilarious detail, Türoque/Crane recounts what became a three-year, nearly full-time immersion into the cutthroat, usually drunken, but always serious world of air guitar competitors, who choreograph detailed 60-second routines of air-jumping, air-fretting, air–power-chording and air-soloing in order to be "transposed from insignificance into supernatural supershredding superheroes." Crane often veers into stoned philosophizing—he sees air guitar as "creating a reality in which the audience can place themselves"—but overall he easily and accurately captures the telling elements of what is uniquely a visual event: one participant is described as looking "as if he's repeatedly trying to pull-start a lawnmower with a great deal of frustration," while another—sporting "a Hello Kitty breastplate fastened to his chest with binder clips" has hands that move "like twin Tasmanian devils." (Aug.)