Nonfiction: Nonfiction Reviews Week of 7/31/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 7/31/2006

With Their Backs to the World: Portraits from Serbia
Åsne Seierstad, trans. by Sindre Kartvedt. Basic, $15 paper (352p) ISBN 0-465-07602-5

After covering the 1999 NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia, Norwegian journalist Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul) found herself wondering about the Serbs—a "people that started one war after another, and lost them all." In 2000, she returned to explore the lives of 13 Serbians. Her account is noteworthy for casting a broad net and for her involvement in their everyday lives—in the field with a farmer, in a secret studio with a journalist, on the street with a black marketeer, attending marathon services with a cleric, even performing with a rock star. Her timing was also serendipitous: in spring 2000, she witnessed the rallies that ultimately toppled Slobodan Milosevic; that October she watched thousands of protestors take over Belgrade, the parliament and the state TV station. Seierstad allows each subject his or her own voice: a stalwart Milosevic supporter longs for a new dictatorship; another claims there was "never any ethnic cleansing of Albanians"; a student activist hopes for membership in the EU. A disturbing enmity toward the U.S. and Muslims runs through many Serbs' accounts. "Great wars," Seierstad observes, "start out as folk songs and camp-fire stories, and end in genocide and bloodbaths." (Nov.)

On June 28, 1939, in a heavyweight title fight, a very fat man knocked down the champion Joe Louis in the third round; Louis jumped to his feet and soon dispatched his opponent. From this slender thread, freelance writer Monninger hangs the story of Tony "Two Ton" Galento, a journeyman boxer and spectacular character whose lucky punch made him a celebrity. The child of poor immigrants and a professional "ice man," Galento, in his oversized way, embodied the forces that made boxing a realistic career choice for the poor and the most popular sport in pre-WWII America. As far as underdogs go, Galento is no bout-winning "Cinderella Man" or even a Chuck Wepner (the real-life model for Rocky), but his is an entertaining story. At times, Monninger's digressions range too widely, and he has an unfortunate tendency to impart what he thinks the average guy on the street is thinking. Yet he displays a sure feeling for the eccentricities and color of the era, and he has a novelist's ability to put the reader in the moment. In Monninger's hands, all "two tons" of Tony come alive. (Nov.)

Langguth follows his popular Patriots with a fast-paced account of the War of 1812. Ostensibly a fight over the impressment of American sailors by the British, this little-understood three-year conflict was really about who controlled the middle of North America. As the subtitle suggests, Langguth argues that only with America's second victory over England did the new nation fully confirm its sovereignty over the vast western territories. Langguth thankfully takes his time setting up the war, spending 150 pages walking readers through the first decade of the 1800s, when Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and attempted an ill-fated embargo against Britain. Though not a traditional military history, this book has a few rip-roaring battle scenes, such as Andrew Jackson's famous routing of the British at New Orleans. Langguth presents the War of 1812 as a pivot, the end of the era of early America. The war's end unleashed the next stage of aggressive expansionism. Langguth's prose is vivid, and he brings to life a panoply of personalities, from Dolley Madison to Tecumseh. He hasn't broken new ground, but he has provided a panoramic view of a decisive event in American military and political history. B&w illus., 5 maps. 100,000 first printing. (Nov.)

Steinhardt (Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony) turns this memoir about becoming a classical concert performer into an adventure. Beyond the specifics of a lifetime spent learning music (Steinhardt hated to practice but remembers swooning to Beethoven as a six-year-old), the first violinist of the celebrated Guarneri Quartet shapes his story with a series of almost mythical odysseys and visions that parallel his technical and intellectual progress. There is the search for the right teacher and the right violin, as well as quirky impressions of such virtuosos as Heifetz and Swigeti. But above all is Steinhardt's ultimate challenge: interpreting J.S. Bach's Chaconne, the most moving but inscrutable of all violin solos. Throughout, Bach is the standard by which Steinhardt measures himself, the artist whose "interlocking qualities of intelligence and sensitivity" he emulates. He knows Bach's history, deconstructs his music, even dreams about the man. When Steinhardt writes of his own fondness for mountain climbing or playfully labels an 18th-century instrument crafted by Sanctus Seraphim "the violin's answer to a fashion model—slender, high-arched, shapely," his subtext is, inevitably, the effect on playing Bach. Watching this accomplished violinist take on the master is riveting; the feeling of immediacy he creates in its telling is an opus at once heroic and brillante. (Oct.)

In October 1956 the Hungarian people spontaneously rose up against an oppressive Soviet-imposed Communist regime and basked briefly in the light of freedom. In this history lesson–cum– memoir, Korda (Another Life) stitches an appealing retelling of his journey of discovery into the larger context of the desperate, short-lived Hungarian revolt. Part hard-nosed history lesson, part affectionate celebration of Hungary and Hungarian culture, and part sepia-tinged memoir, the book attempts to pull back the veil on the post-WWII machinations of the victorious Allies and expose how such diplomatic wheeling and dealing can devastate an entire nation. The first two-thirds are strong, with both a comprehensive overview of the postwar geopolitical scene and a finely tuned take on the specifics of the Hungarian situation. Korda's account of his own journey there during the revolution at age 24 is strangely flat. Along the way from the pastoral comfort of his native England to the rubble and corpse-strewn streets of Budapest, he has some near misses with life-threatening danger. At the border between Austria and Hungary, Korda and his mates encounter a machine gun–toting guard who offers them barack, homemade peach brandy, and a warning about the invading Russians: "there are some very bad guys in Györ." While the tale at times has difficulty rising from the page, Korda's story is a worthy read. (Oct.)

In a book that is "as much about a certain time as a single player," journalist Callahan (In Search of Tiger) offers not only a biography of one of professional football's early legends but also a look at the nature of the sport in his day. He charts the career path of Unitas from an undersized and unheralded Pennsylvania quarterback prospect to his glory days leading the Baltimore Colts to three championships from 1958 to 1972. In narrating Unitas's story of tryouts, cuts, timely phone calls and chance scouting encounters, Callahan reveals as much about Unitas's character and ambition as he does about the machinations of a talent system very different from today's. He also relies heavily on extended comments from a range of Unitas's coaches, friends and fellow players: as teammate Raymond Berry notes, Unitas "had a certain blend of humility and self-confidence that was unusual, to say the least." Quotes like this help the book feel more like listening to a group of old-guard players reminiscing around the back table than reading a strictly structured biography. The result is light, conversational and bound to fascinate anyone interested in Unitas or the hardscrabble, blue-collar era of football he dominated. (Oct.)

In this welcome addition to the annals of punk, journalist Beeber does a commendable job of illuminating the Jewish backgrounds of many of punk's pioneers, including Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman), Tommy Ramone (Tamas Erdelyi), as well as Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Blondie's Chris Stein, CBGB owner Hilly Kristal right up to the heir-apparent to the Jewish-punk crown, the Beastie Boys. The scene was centered in 1970s New York's Jewish Lower East Side, so it's fitting that punk might have a strong Jewish tradition. Beeber ably cobbles together interesting biographical sketches of the preeminent Jewish punks, rather astutely placing the punk rockers among the pantheon of Jewish entertainers, including the controversial comic Lenny Bruce. He also neatly ties the irreverent punk ethos to the American Jewish experience. Still, the book overreaches at times, straining under the weight of too much tangential cultural history and an overly academic tone. Beeber, however, has clearly done his homework, with more than 100 primary interviews and a clear grasp of the Jewish traditions within which he places punk. And just in time: with "Jewish-owned punk landmark" CBGB slated to close on September 30, Beeber's book will open a hidden chapter for many fans. (Oct.)

Summers—a musician best known for playing guitar in the seminal 1980s band the Police—recounts the details of his time in the spotlight and his circuitous and fantastic journey toward fame in a memoir that is just as generous (and sometimes meticulous) in providing details as it is in exploring the human toll of living out the "collective fantasy" of being a "rock god." There are many great rock moments that dazzle—hanging with Clapton, jamming with Hendrix, hallucinating with John Belushi—but the less extraordinary memories make for a more compelling narrative: he recalls his childhood in England, where, after an "immediate bond" with the guitar, "the spiritual side of life slowly fills with music." Narrated in the present tense and with occasionally vivid language (Summers recounts "the familiar backstage" as "the taste of Jack stuck on a Wheat Thin"), every rock cliché is described (drugs, sex, ego), but, refreshingly, little is romanticized. This is a stage-side account of the birth, rise and dissipation of the Police—and fans of the band will not be disappointed—but it is also an honest travelogue of a British kid who, subsisting "on a diet of music and hope," traversed the most coveted landscapes of pop culture and lived to write about it. (Oct.)

There's a lot of potential in the story of a young American woman hired onto a Chinese vessel to teach the sailors English as they cross the Pacific, and Kendall, a freelance writer who lives in Australia, hits it from time to time in this swift and eventful memoir of her weeks at sea as "Teach-ah." The setting is ripe for misunderstandings, loneliness, bonding and self-reflection. As her students' English improves and Kendall's Chinese and "Chinglish" develops, she befriends some of the men on board, attempts to sort out a series of cultural faux pas and thinks about her doomed relationship with her boyfriend back home. She hints at the deeper issues that influence her, most especially her nascent homosexuality, but only with glancing strokes that leave much unexplored and the relationship between the reader and writer stymied. The fun, however, is in the stories of the daily navigation of tight quarters, cultural collisions and storms—and the cigarettes, sweets and chicken feet that get them all through the long days and nights of sea and sky. (Oct. 3)

This addition to the popular Chicken Soup series should help anyone diagnosed with or undergoing treatment for breast cancer, as well as their close friends and family members. Divided into categories such as love, healing, challenge and courage, the wide-ranging first-person accounts set a positive but realistic tone. Donna St. Jean Conti describes how a saleswoman, seeing Conti's scar from a mastectomy, whispered that she had found a lump in her breast and asked her for advice on what to do. Beverly Vote writes about the difficult problem of holding on to her sense of herself as a woman after undergoing a mastectomy and of how her husband's devotion helped her. In the face of her beloved sister Meemee's diagnosis, Barbara Curtis dealt with her fears by cooking and freezing healing foods for Meemee during her treatment (Curtis shares a recipe for Chemo Popsicles to fight nausea). Jennie Nash details how difficult it was to handle the worry about who would raise her children if she died. The editors touch all bases by including a useful account of a male breast cancer survivor. B&w drawings. (Oct.)

Best known for her classic funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford (1917– 1996) was fifth of the famous Mitford sisters, but rebelled against her privileged English roots to become a member of the American Communist Party and union organizer, a civil rights activist and a celebrated investigative journalist. Sussman, a former longtime editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, has gathered an array of letters that capture Mitford's legendary wit, warmth and self-deprecating humor: decades of exuberant—and sometimes sparring—correspondence with friends, including civil rights activists Virginia and Clifford Durr, publisher Katharine Graham, journalist Shana Alexander, writers Kay Boyle and Maya Angelou. Mitford's prickly relations with her aristocratic clan are much in evidence, as is her estrangement from its fascist members; writing to Winston Churchill in 1943, she unswervingly protests the release from prison of her sister Diana Mosley and Diana's husband, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Relating her bold emigration to the United States with her cousin and first husband, Communist journalist Esmond Romilly; her resilience as a war widow in a foreign country with an infant daughter; and the evident happiness of her 50-year marriage to her second husband, radical labor attorney Robert Treuhaft, Mitford's letters crackle with wit and mordant observations. 59 illus. (Oct. 21)

Yeats has had plenty of attention in recent years (most notably a two-volume life by R.F. Foster), but McCormack believes that previous biographers have been too willing to overlook what he sees as the poet's association with fascism in his last years (he died in 1939). Even Richard Ellmann, McCormack says, failed to mention Yeats's acceptance of an award from Nazi Germany in 1934. Where others reputedly have allowed only that Yeats "flirted" with fascism, McCormack sees a more intense relationship. Yeats's favorable comments about Nazi Germany play a part in this argument, but McCormack also relies heavily on guilt by association, sketching out the fascist and anti-Semitic tendencies of members of Yeats's inner circle, including Maud Gonne and her daughter Iseult. This is not quite convincing, especially when invoking people who knew Yeats's friends but not the poet himself. McCormack, a former professor of literary history at the University of London, tends to make grand and repeated announcements about his aim instead of simply getting on with the story. His life study also assumes the reader has a deep familiarity with its subject, with frequent reference to incidents that will leave less informed readers puzzled. While the political revisionism is straightforward enough, the attempt to link it to Yeats's poetic and spiritual beliefs makes for maddeningly tough going. (Oct. 1)

British author Everitt begins his biography of Augustus (63 B.C.– A.D. 14) with a novelistic reconstruction of the Roman emperor's last days, offering a new spin on his murder at the hands of his wife, Livia. Everitt presents the death as an assisted suicide intended to speed and secure the transition of imperial power to his stepson Tiberius. Later, Everitt presents a careful historical argument for this theory—and, save for a few other shadowy incidents such as the banishment of the poet Ovid, he keeps guesswork to a minimum, building his narrative carefully on solid evidence. Everitt (Cicero) makes Augustus's rapid rise through Roman society comprehensible to contemporary readers, deftly shifting through the major phases of his life, from childhood through his adoption by his great-uncle Julius Caesar to the power struggle with Mark Antony that ended with Augustus's recognition as both imperator and princeps, or "first citizen." Everitt also neatly presents his subject's complex personality, revealing how Augustus secured a political infrastructure that would last for centuries while reportedly keeping up a highly active sex life, all the while fighting off longstanding rumors of cowardice in battle. This familiar story is fresh again in this lively retelling. (Oct. 17)

Ancient Alexandria was first and foremost a Greek city. Its history, however, is framed by two religious events that were alien to Greek intellectual traditions: Ptolemy's creation of the cult of Serapis, which helped him establish rule, and the Christian riots that massacred the pagan philosopher Hypatia in A.D. 415. Between these two events is an unmatched record of intellectual achievement, elegantly chronicled by documentary makers Pollard and Reid. Among the many scientific advances they cover, from Euclid and Archimedes to Claudius Ptolemy, perhaps the most illustrative of the city's cosmopolitanism is human anatomy, the Greeks' limited understanding of which was tremendously aided by contact with Egyptian mummification. Throughout, the authors are eager, at times overly eager, to demonstrate ancient Alexandria's modernity. So it is curious that little is said about the famous feud between Callimachus, poet and cataloguer of the great library, and his former pupil Apollonius. The ingredients of the feud—plagiarism, obscenity, professional envy—are strangely contemporary. The authors also paint an incomplete picture of the city's literary culture and its museum, which functioned like a modern university. These criticisms aside, most readers, especially those interested in the history of science, will find this a nourishing account. (Oct. 23)

During the Middle Ages, the abbey at Cluny, in southern France, towered over every other church in Christendom, both physically and spiritually. An architectural marvel, the abbey also served as the headquarters for a steadily growing monastic movement directed by the Rule of Benedict of Nursia. By the end of the 12th century, however, the abbey's fortunes had begun to decline, thanks to external challenges to the authority of the church and internal conflicts about Cluny's mismanagement of financial resources. By turns prosaic and lively, this loving paean to Cluny by Mullins, a former art correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, traces the abbey's history from its inception in 910 to its ultimate destruction in the late 18th century. In particular, Mullins provides an intimate portrait of Hugh the Great, whose administrative and political skills as well as his theological sensibilities fostered the dramatic rise of Cluny. At his death, close to 1,500 Cluniac monasteries and 10,000 monks could be found scattered throughout England, France, Spain and Germany. During Hugh's tenure, Cluny provided money and spiritual support for the First Crusade. By the time Peter the Venerable succeeded Hugh, the abbey had begun its decline because of divisiveness among the monks and financial losses. Mullins's affection and admiration for Cluny provide a glimpse into a mostly forgotten medieval abbey. (Oct.)

McCaffrey (In Search of Ancient Ireland) has penned a "quick," partisan (from the Catholic viewpoint) version of Irish history. The arrival of the English in the 12th century is duly noted and the long melancholy march to the modern age is marked by jumps from King Dermot MacMurrough to Oliver Cromwell, the potato famine and the political turbulence of the late 19th century. Of particular interest is McCaffrey's excellent portrait of Charles Stewart Parnell and his policies in the 1870s and '80s, such as his involvement in the Land Leagues, his quest for Home Rule, his affair with Kitty O'Shea and subsequent abandonment by both church and state. McCaffrey also views the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland and comes to some interesting conclusions about orthodoxy and traditional Irish resistance to it. The political ferment of the early 20th century is explored by painting portraits of all the familiar names, from Patrick Pearse to Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins. The modern troubles in the North are examined and the Celtic Tiger is praised (somehow without mentioning its father, 1960s' prime minister Sean Lemass). A breezy, somewhat superficial work, this will best appeal to the Irish history neophyte. (Oct. 6)

At Versailles, where even the daily rouging of the Dauphin's cheeks was a highly ritualized and politicized affair, and where obedience to protocol could brook no infringement, 14-year-old Marie Antoinette's refusal to wear her whalebone corset threatened the Bourbon-Hapsburg alliance. As this prodigiously researched, deliciously detailed study (perfectly timed for the fall release of Sofia Coppola's movie) of the doomed royal's fashion statements demonstrates, her masculine equestrian garb, ostentatious costumes for masked balls, high Parisian hairdos and faux country-girl gear were bold bids for political power and personal freedom in a suffocating realm where a queen was merely a breeder and living symbol of her spouse's glorious reign. An iconic trendsetter whose styles were copied by prostitutes and aristocrats alike, Marie Antoinette was blamed for France's moral decay and financial bankruptcy, the blurring of class lines and callousness toward the poor. When many of her aristocratic contemporaries donned tricolor ribbons and jewelry set with stones from the Bastille's demolished walls as pro-revolutionary emblems, a defiant Marie Antoinette reintroduced her most opulent jewels into her daily costume. The generously illustrated history by Weber (Terror and Its Discontents) posits that the queen's fashion obsession wasn't about narcissism and frivolity but self-assertion; even at the guillotine she controlled her image with a radiantly white ensemble. (Oct. 1)

Lowry (Don't Shoot That Boy: Lincoln and Military Justice) recounts the exploits of women who broke the law to serve the South. These feisty Scarlett O'Haras spied, smuggled medicine and cut telegraph wires. Even women who didn't intentionally help the Confederacy are included: prostitutes spread venereal disease that made Union soldiers "that much less of a threat to the men in butternut and gray." As the title suggests, there is more than a little lost cause Confederate patriotism in this book; Lowry praises the women as "heroic," but never grapples with the fact that their daring deeds were acts of treason against the U.S. government. A retired psychiatrist, Lowry doesn't bring the questions of a trained historian to bear, nor does his prose transcend the workaday. Nonetheless, this book is remarkable for the amount of research it represents—the author and his wife, Beverly Ann Lowry, slogged through transcripts of over 80,000 Union military trials, and they have done Civil War buffs a great service by digging up so many accounts of Confederate women's wartime activities. 4 b&w photos, 1 line drawing. (Oct.)

Roosevelt, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, defends the Supreme Court against right-wing charges of undue judicial activism. Roosevelt sees the "activist" label as code for political disagreement with the outcomes of cases. A more productive approach, he suggests, would be to examine decisions for what he terms "legitimacy." Roosevelt's theory rests on distinguishing the meaning of a constitutional provision from the doctrine the Supreme Court uses to implement that meaning. The nomenclature seems unnecessarily abstruse, but the author clarifies his argument by surveying the Court's rulings on diverse issues, including the death penalty, abortion and freedom of speech. In most instances, Roosevelt finds the Court's decisions as at least minimally legitimate (that is, within the range of constitutional interpretation that reasonable judges could adopt) even though he disagrees with some of them. This willingness to recognize the good faith of outcomes he disapproves of is a winning characteristic of this book. The author's tolerant approach is matched by the composure of his writing style. If Roosevelt (who wrote the novel In the Shadow of the Law) is right that "excessive vilification" of the Supreme Court is dangerous to democracy, then his call for principled analysis rather than partisan name-calling is a timely contribution to our public discourse. (Oct.)

Uber-humorist Borowitz (Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers) churns out humor at a fast clip—and here is another timely example. Filled with short memos, talking points and marginal notes from its purported possessor, George W. Bush, this is the latest update of a playbook that claims to have changed very little in recent years—except that the Internet has made it easier to "spread lies and distortions." It advises candidates to scare voters with a doctored photo of a future Democratic-controlled Supreme Court featuring the Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin. There's a devastating sketch about how the Republic Party favors a credible voting process—in Iraq—followed by a somewhat labored Bruce McCallesque set of drawings of Republican-approved voting machines. A hilarious set of photos moves six degrees from Hillary Clinton to Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il. A Republican-to-English glossary translates "personal responsibility" to "welfare cuts" and "My fellow Americans" to "My fellow evangelical Christians." More silly, but still amusing, is a "Democrat to French conversion chart," rendering Joseph Biden as "Giscard Boudin." Enough serious points are presented with humor—how the Republicans fool the public with black faces prominent at their conventions, for example, or where the "war on terror" breaks down—to make this book more than just a diversion. (Oct.)

True to such observations as "Simple trumps everything," Adamson boils down his 25-plus years of experience in brand development to provide six clear steps to understanding what makes a good brand. Along the way, the current managing director for Landor Associates (a firm within Young & Rubicam) discusses how to sync branding signals with the "brand idea" to serve a company's business strategy. Using examples such as Apple and FedEx, he explains how the brand idea can be turned into an internal rallying cry so that the message is reinforced in the packaging and employees pass it along to current and potential customers. Throughout, he provides a dynamic first-person commentary on the thought process and activities that went into creating and repositioning iconic brands like American Express, HBO and eBay, though it can be odd in cases where he wasn't personally involved. Unlike other branding gurus, Adamson doesn't celebrate the industry's mystique and keeps his discussion jargon-free. The charts and graphs are immediately understandable and the exercises doable. The result is an unusually readable how-to book that will help anyone involved with branding understand what works and why. (Oct.)

It's neither provocative nor fresh to note that some people are buying big things while others are buying small things, and that premise isn't enough to rescue this cheery but uninspired collection of musings about consumer trends. "Bottom line, it's become hip to contradict," says Waters (The Trendmaster's Guide), who sees "consumers pursu[ing] opposites simultaneously"—for instance, sales of both high-tech video games and classic board games have increased. But the former Target v-p never considers that these may be different consumers. Her broad, breezy survey includes products from Vespas to Tupperware, poker to dodge ball, Whole Foods to the slow food movement, but no coherent trends emerge. Worse, the self-described "Trendmaster" offers no new interviews with experts or behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt. Rather, she gives us "secondhand learnings" drawn from "endless magazine and newspaper articles written by others." Though an agreeable guide to today's consumer landscape, she doesn't leave the reader—whether manufacturer, marketer or shopper—with enough insights to make the journey worth it. (Oct. 5)

Through the events of her late maternal grandmother's life, British journalist Benjamin tells the saga of the Iraqi Jews, who arrived during the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles from Judea in the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. and were once Iraq's largest and wealthiest ethnic minority. Born in 1905 in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, Regina Sehayek is a compelling character who lived in tumultuous times, witnessing as a child the British takeover of Baghdad and, as an adult, Arab nationalism and revolution. A moneychanger's bright and opinionated daughter, Regina was married off (and deflowered semipublicly as tradition dictated) to a virtual stranger, a prosperous merchant 30 years her senior whose ancestor was the Persian Jewish doctor for an 18th-century shah. Although indifferent to Zionism, Regina and her kin were victims of the rabid anti-Semitism that began to pervade Iraq in the 1930s. By 1950, the Jews' desperate situation forced a widowed Regina to thwart police and petty bureaucrats and flee, eventually settling her children in London. Benjamin (Rocket Dreams) honors her family by vivifying a once-thriving community that has dispersed worldwide, leaving only 12 souls struggling for survival in present-day war-torn Baghdad. Photos. (Oct. 3)

In 1765, Venetian doctors were stumped by the death of a man who had suffered from insomnia for more than a year and spent his final months paralyzed by exhaustion. Over the next two centuries, many of his descendants would develop similarly fatal symptoms, with a range of misdiagnoses, from encephalitis to alcohol withdrawal. Finally, in the early 1990s, their disease was recognized as a rare genetic form of prion disease. The family reluctantly shared their history with Max, who has written about science and literature for the New York Times Magazine and other publications. Max (inspired in part by his own neuromuscular disorder) has crafted a powerfully empathetic account of their efforts to make sense of their suffering and find a cure. But this is only half the story. Looking at prion disease in general, Max doubles back to the English mad-cow epidemic of the 1990s, retracing established backstories among New Guinea aboriginals and European sheep herds. There's enough fascinating material—in particular, a theory suggesting that early humans were nearly wiped out by a plague spread by cannibalism—to keep readers engaged, but they're likely to want still more about the genuinely captivating family drama. (Oct. 3)

The title capitalizes on the popularity of the Oscar-winning movie about Nobel Prize–winning mathematician John Nash. But this is a serious and adroit look at a branch of mathematics, influenced by Nash's work, that is steadily sending tendrils into nearly every area of science. It may even, says science journalist Siegfried, result in a mathematical description of nature of the sort imagined and called "psychohistory" by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation trilogy. Siegfried is talking about game theory, which was originally conceived as a model of economics predicting what rational people would do when competing for monetary gain. But with the help of the "Nash equilibrium," it has since evolved into a system that helps describe social networking, physics, evolution and more. In guiding the reader through the outgrowths of game theory, Siegfried steps nimbly around anything that would bog down the narrative, crisply painting the key concepts and framing them with pop culture, biographies of and conversations with giants in the field, and reacting ("Now, you have to admit, that's a little strange") to each new discovery. His clear and easy voice makes the content effortless and a pleasure to read. (Oct. 20)

Moir deftly chronicles the efforts of the dedicated biologists at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service who work to save the California condor from extinction. Remarkable birds with 10-foot wing spans and the ability to fly 150 miles a day, the condors numbered only 27 in 1987, and, although members of the service's condor recovery program had for years been trying to help the population recover in the wild, all but one of the birds lived in captivity. After a bruising battle with those who opposed confining condors for any reason (including David Brower of Friends of the Earth), the biologists captured the remaining wild condor and put all their efforts into a captive breeding program. Moir, who has spent years writing about the recovery team's work, keeps the reader in suspense from the poignant moment when the last wild condor was captured to the triumphant morning in 1992 when the first birds raised in captivity were released. Today more than 125 California condors fly free. But as Moir convincingly shows, their environment is fraught with dangers. The book includes appendixes listing condor Web sites and places to view condors. (Oct.)

It's hard to believe, but it's been more than 20 years since beloved preschooler icon Elmo made his debut on Sesame Street—in fact, Clash wasn't even the first puppeteer to try his hand at bringing the "baby monster" to life. It was Clash, though, who gave the character the high-pitched voice and distinctive laugh that quickly endeared him to young viewers and eventually led to his own spinoff series. When he writes about Elmo, in fact, he verges on describing the Muppet as if it possesses its own personality. Clash's working relationship with Elmo is used as a starting point to discuss basic themes like love, tolerance and courage, but it's the story of his life before meeting his furry partner that often holds the most interest. He talks with obvious affection about his childhood growing up in an African-American suburb of Baltimore, encouraged from a early age to follow his talent for designing and performing with puppets. Though generally upbeat, this is no sugar-coated tale; Clash describes his initial struggles to make a name for himself on other children's shows, and speaks frankly about the toll performing on Sesame Street took on his marriage. (Sept. 25)

In 1941, Moscow was ruled by Stalin and besieged by Hitler's armies, so it teemed with disagreeable characters, tragic events and a great deal of unrewarded heroism. Although the siege was a miserable experience for Muscovites, readers will enjoy reading about it. Braithwaite (Russia in Europe) was British ambassador from 1988 to 1992, so he clearly knows Russia. Early 1941 was a modestly hopeful time: a short-llived decrease in arrests after the massive purges of the '30s coincided with an increase in food in the stores. The official press had lavished praise on the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Friendship Pact, but by spring 1941 many Soviet leaders had seen enough evidence to convince them of an imminent German invasion. But the paranoid Stalin suspected an Allied plot to take the pressure off Britain, so Hitler's June 22 attack devastated Russia's unprepared troops. By autumn, Wermacht armies were threatening the capital, leading to the greatest battle in history, with more than 900,000 Russian deaths—more than all WWII British and American casualties combined. Most accounts emphasize the fighting, but Braithwaite mixes interviews, diaries, memoirs and letters to portray the reactions of dozens of individuals to that catastrophic year. This is an absorbing contribution to what he considers WWII's turning point. (Sept. 30)

In his latest screed, the host of Fox News'The O'Reilly Factor mobilizes fellow "traditionalists" against a "secular-progressive movement" supposedly led by billionaire George Soros ("public enemy number one") and the liberal rhetorician George Lakoff. O'Reilly condemns the "erosion of societal discipline" flowing from an alleged "S-P [secular-progressive]" agenda of drug legalization, teenagers' rights, moral relativism, church-state separation, therapy instead of punishment for criminals and, above all, the "communist" freeloader's doctrine that the government should tax the rich to fund housing, health care and early-childhood education for the poor. None of this coheres well, but O'Reilly keeps fans stoked with red meat, including tales of ACLU Christmas-bashers who wanted schools to stop teaching kids to sing carols, and permissive judges who go easy on child molesters. Too often, though, he feuds with personal enemies like "smear-merchant" Al Franken, Hollywood liberals, press critics and unnamed "black-hearted websites." As a result, his populist swagger subsides into kvetching ("Clooney's press agent, a guy named Stan Rosenfield, began badmouthing me and Fox News around Hollywood") and paranoia ("S-P power-brokers... will command their forces to attack me in every way possible"). More resentful and self-pitying than feisty, O'Reilly may be suffering from battle fatigue. Photos. (Sept. 25)

The well-respected and much-fêted editor emeritus of Harper's magazine and recipient of a National Magazine Award, Lapham presents a collection of previously published articles that range from the funding of think tanks and propaganda outfits to the rigging of the 2004 election and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Overall, this book is a lament for the state of our society and a bitter condemnation of the Republican hold on power and the machinations with which that grip has been cultivated and sustained. Lapham's dense and self-assured style is rivaled only by that of William F. Buckley Jr. in delivering a whopping dose of sanctimony and affectation with each paragraph. Though more erudite than Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly, Lapham's essays are similarly bereft of a sustained line of argument. He also shares their irredeemably dark view of human nature, or at least of Americans, who we learn are "[w]arfaring people, unique in our gift for violence... killing anyone and anything." Above all, he seems to enjoy nothing more than to display his boundless contempt for all those who are not him. (Sept.)

The author of this lively but conflicted study, an ex–think tanker and Marine vet, is torn between libertarian impulses and a lingering social conservatism. "Conscription sucks so bad," he moans, yet he believes that "every American male should spend some time in uniform." (Women, too, he allows, despite grousing about "man-hating" feminists.) Gold (Take Back the Right) suggests that the army needs several hundred thousand more troops for its many missions, from hurricane relief to fighting wars and nation building. But he also considers conscription an intolerable, perhaps unconstitutional infringement of liberty, historically fraught with corruption, unfairness and malign social engineering. Gold squares this circle, not very persuasively, with a nod to the wisdom of the founding fathers and the nation's hoary citizen-militia tradition. People should have a choice of different commitments, he argues, from overseas deployment in the regular military to strictly domestic service in state militias—or no service at all, which would subject them to extra taxes. It's hard to see how this system would sustain a tough foreign conflict—but maybe that's the point, since Gold considers the Iraq War a disaster. He presents an engaging, down-to-earth take on the urgent problem of military manpower, without quite resolving it. (Sept. 19)

Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, tells the fascinating story of how he set off a media storm in the summer of 2003 when he and two graduate students revealed that the Diebold electronic voting technology in use in 37 states was riddled with errors and problems. A self-described "computer-geek," Rubin was publicly accused of undermining democracy by officials he describes as desperate to save face after investing state money in the machines. He also became the object of an e-voting industry campaign to smear his work, especially after it was revealed that he had connections to a voting software company. Refreshingly, he describes this potential conflict of interest with considerable candor. Rubin's account of his mounting frustration as governmental and industrial spin doctors continued to champion electronic voting in the face of its manifold problems, and turned electronic voting into a partisan issue, is a sympathetic one. Despite the inability of his critics to understand it, his explanation of the technological issues at the heart of electronic voting is clear, and his argument that votes need to be verifiable in order for the democratic process to be meaningful is so reasonable that it sounds almost revolutionary. (Sept. 5)

Corera, a security correspondent for the BBC, offers a measured account of how a young Pakistani metallurgist named A.Q. Khan became the world's leading dealer in nuclear technology. The story starts as Khan watched Pakistan lose the 1971 war with India and vowed to help prevent it from happening again. Three years later, as India tested its first nuclear device, he offered Prime Minister Bhutto his help in creating the Muslim world's first nuclear bomb. In 1975, when his Dutch employer discovered Khan had stolen centrifuge designs, he fled to Pakistan. Though he was tried in absentia in 1983, it wasn't until January 2004, under pressure from the U.S. and Britain, that he was arrested for 30 years of selling nuclear materials and designs to Libya, North Korea and Iran. By the mid-1980s, Corera points out, the U.S. was aware that Pakistan had produced weapons-grade uranium. Drawing on CIA and diplomatic accounts of the spread of technology, Corera also examines why the Americans initially looked the other way as Pakistan joined forces in arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan before becoming an ally in the hunt for bin Laden. (Sept.)

British author Allen (Soldier Sahibs) argues persuasively that violent Islamic extremism isn't as new as we might think, but unfortunately, his book doesn't do much to explain the phenomenon. Carefully drawing distinctions between mainstream Islam and the fanaticism that spawned al-Qaeda (which he calls "as much a threat to Islam as to the West"), Allen goes back to the 18th-century founding of Wahhabism, a strain of Islam fostered in the Arabian desert that now serves as the Saudi state religion. Fixated on removing any hint of deviation from their interpretation of Muhammad's teachings, violent Wahhabists have traditionally killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. A Central Asia expert, Allen focuses on the form of Wahhabism that developed against the backdrop of waning British imperialism in that area, gradually leading up to Osama bin Laden's arrival. But his rapid-fire account is littered with names and battles, explaining little about how an ideology always rejected by most Muslims, and whose proponents were nearly annihilated on many occasions, managed to survive so spectacularly. Nor does he explain why Wahhabists' anger has shifted from supposed infidels in their midst to citizens of the West. (Sept.)

Canton's background in future-planning consultancy began when he studied under Alvin Toffler in the 1970s—and it shows in this big-picture take on the world of tomorrow. Taken individually, none of the trends Canton believes will shape the upcoming decades are surprising: major crises brought on by energy shortages and climate change; economic transformation wrought by globalization; and the "war on terror" has barely started. But he recognizes that the future is created by a "convergence" in which these developments interact. Canton's imagination runs in a dozen directions at once, peppering the margins of his vision with media headlines and short vignettes from a science-fictional future. Some of these are more believable than others—hydrogen-based energy systems by 2040, sure, but drugs that will keep us from even thinking antigovernment thoughts? Canton's goal, however, isn't predicting, it's convincing Americans to take a more active role in envisioning and safeguarding the 21st century before somebody else does. His lively scenarios are designed to spark debates, and they surely will. (Sept.)

Beginning as a work of economics, moving through soap opera and finishing as history, this book tells the stories of 11 great family businesses in Europe, Japan and America with at least three generations of family control. Observing that the vast majority of businesses are family owned and run, historian Landes (The Wealth and Poverty of Nations) argues that dynastic businesses offer a proven route to developing emerging markets, while companies managed by unrelated professionals and funded by public investors offer mostly bad jobs and slim profit shares to local employees. Even among the largest corporations, many retain significant financial and managerial involvement by the founder's relatives, and those that do perform better than the others. Landes's stories emphasize emotional life within these dynasties; he includes business details and general economic history only as context for family adventures and feuds. His emphasis is on how family considerations such as authority, love, trust, envy, marriage, adoption and succession determine the growth and direction of the business. While this may seem irrational compared to entrusting strategic decisions to specialized professionals selected according to talent rather than bloodline, Landes argues that family does a better job. (Sept. 25)

While Appel's previous books offered advice on technical analysis of stocks and price movement charts aimed at aggressive day traders, this one covers tamer versions of those strategies for conservative retail investors. Despite the sensational subtitle, the advice is generally solid, calling for broad diversification with a little excitement from a moderate level of turnover. However, unlike conventional wisdom, which advises buy-and-hold diversification, the book recommends aggressive market timing, moving in and out of various investment types based on market and economic conditions. The strongest aspect of the book is the clear explanations of how these diverse sectors work, and how ordinary investors can put money into them conveniently and at a reasonable cost. But the advice on how to tell when different market sectors are attractive or unattractive for investment is much less clear. There is extensive discussion of how much money one could have made if one had known what was going to happen, but the rules for switching investments in the future are hard to understand and not backed by systematic statistics. (Sept.)

Education watchdog and author Kohn (No Contest: The Case Against Competition) questions why teachers and parents continue to insist on overloading kids with homework when there are no definitive studies proving its overall learning benefits. Indeed, argues Kohn persuasively, homework can be detrimental to children 's development by robbing families of quality evening time together and not allowing a kid time simply to be a kid. Americans in general advocate a tough-going approach to education and push teachers to give more drudgery nightly as a way of "building character." Yet Kohn shows that doing forced busywork only turns kids off to school and kills intellectual and creative curiosity. The American insistence on producing good worker bees "by sheer force or cleverness," notes Kohn, "reflects a stunning ignorance about how human beings function in the real world." Kohn pursues six reasons why homework is still so widely accepted despite the evidence against it, including the emphasis on competitiveness and "tougher standards" and a basic distrust of children and how they would fill their time otherwise if not doing busywork. There aren't enough case studies in Kohn's work, but Kohn sounds an important note: parents need to ask more challenging questions of teachers and institutions. (Sept.)

Happy families may be all alike, but as it turns out, so are families that hire nannies. In this collection of 24 essays, Davis and Hyams have selected essays that examine the relationship between mothers and their child-care givers. "Employing a nanny is beyond a necessity," they assess. "It becomes a question of identity." The very nature of an anthology—writers writing about their lives—also leads to this collection's main problem: the vast majority of these mothers are looking for help while they stay at home to write. There are no CEOs who must desperately look for backup care when the nanny is sick, no blue-collar workers who must figure out how to make a living while still paying for child care. Each mother is trying anxiously to please both nanny and child. When the circumstances are exceptional, so are the essays, as Andrea Nakayama's story of the "manny" hired as her husband was dying, and Ann Hood's piece about the nanny who cared for her now-deceased daughter. Daphne Merkin's essay is the strongest, focusing on her own childhood experiences with a nanny. Mothers who hire nannies will certainly appreciate this anthology, but the complete story surely lies somewhere between The Nanny Diaries and this. (Sept.)

Cuadros, an investigative reporter of Peruvian descent, set out to write a book on the "Latino Diaspora" in the southeast but decided to tell the story through the Mexican high school soccer players of Siler City, N.C.—whose team Cuadros himself lobbied for against the resistance and overt prejudice within this old-boy "football town." The players' thwarted ambition and punitive social hurdles encapsulate the plight of Latino immigrants who flock to rural hamlets seeking better lives and steady work but run up against palpable fear and suspicion in towns that still faintly reek of Jim Crow hostility. The Siler City team's struggles bring the town conflicts into sharp relief and give Cuadros a sturdy framework for exploring meaty issues of class and ethnic conflict. In alternating terse and tender prose, he delves into his players' backstories and captures their buoyant camaraderie to shape an inspiring underdog's tale without romanticizing the team's painful immigrant realities, such as their parents' shaky health insurance and high school drop-out rates. This feel-good read coincides neatly with the start of a new school year, staking its faith on fresh starts. (Sept.)

During the turbulent battles over issues such as civil rights and Vietnam in the mid-1960s, the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide football team, led by legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, had its own cause—becoming the first team in modern college history to win the national championship for three straight years. In this solid if somewhat overlong study of the Tide's quest, Dunnavant expands upon his earlier Bryant biography, Coach, to explore how national politics and collegiate sports inevitably collided. While the bulk of the book delivers insightful profiles of the team's working-class players and fast-paced looks at the team's unbeaten season, it also convincingly argues that Alabama's image as reflecting "establishment America" was skewed by "the poisonous climate" of Gov. George Wallace's segregationist policies. But in a provocative account of a late-season meeting with Notre Dame, Dunnavant names his story's true villains: Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian, who, as Dunnavant sees it, played for a tie, sitting "on the ball to avoid a turnover" instead of playing to win—"the most cynical act in college football history"—and the sportswriters who voted "media darling" Notre Dame the national champion over a team from "a state seen by many Americans as a national pariah." (Sept.)

Former senator from North Carolina and John Kerry's running mate in 2004, Edwards delivers a poignant coffee-table meditation on an institution as intensely venerated in America as it is universal: home. Some 60 Americans—from novelist Isabel Allende, chef Mario Batali, musician John Mellencamp, quarterback Joe Montana and architect Maya Lin to numerous lesser-known professionals in social work, farming and academia—contribute reflections on the place where they grew up or the locus that has meant the most to them in their lives; large full-color photographs of those places accompany their stories. Their first-person testimony is consistently engaging and downright endearing. Danny Glover, for example, recalls his family's house in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco as the source from which he and his siblings inherited their lifelong consciousness of "equanimity and responsibility, ownership and aspiration." Paging through the book offers the reader a pleasant sense of discovery—of how people feel about how they live. Edwards's introduction, which unfortunately reads like a political speech, gives way to an inspiring, myth-making journey through diverse lives sprung from a vast, ever changing America. (Nov. 14)

The breast cancer diagnosis Edwards received on November 3, 2004, is dismayingly common. Uncommon, however, is the timing and the circumstances surrounding it. Wife of the vice presidential candidate John Edwards, Edwards's discovery of the lump on her breast came the day after the election and subsequent defeat of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. This mixture of the common and the uncommon, of the everyday and the extraordinary, defines Edwards and her life. A lawyer, mother of a grown daughter and two young children, and the wife of a politician, Edwards is both an optimist and a realist with the ability to laugh at herself. Yet she has had to endure a parent's worst nightmare—the death of her teenage son, Wade, in a car accident. In the end, however, Edwards's memoir is not about cancer, politics or even unbearable loss (though the description of her grief is heart-wrenching). It's about the value of people coming together to support each other. You'll find no celebrity gossip here. But like the kiss on the forehead her husband gave her at the end of their first date, this memoir is disarmingly moving. First serial to People, second serial to Ladies' Home Journal; feature in Good Housekeeping; national author tour; October 2 appearances on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. (Sept. 26)