Nonfiction: Nonfiction Reviews Week of 8/14/2006
by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2006
[Signature] Reviewed by James L. Swanson In this splendid, beautifully written followup to his blockbuster thriller, Devil in the White City, Erik Larson again unites the dual stories of two disparate men, one a genius and the other a killer. The genius is Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless communication. The murderer is the notorious Englishman Dr. H.H. Crippen. Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless communication. Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and error. Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his invention. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a proper, unattractive little man with bulging, bespectacled eyes, possessed an impassioned, love-starved heart. An alchemist and peddler of preposterous patent medicines, he killed his wife, a woman Larson portrays lavishly as a gold-digging, selfish, stage-struck, flirtatious, inattentive, unfaithful clotheshorse. The hapless Crippen endured it all until he found the sympathetic Other Woman and true love. The "North London Cellar Murder" so captured the popular imagination in 1910 that people wrote plays and composed sheet music about it. It wasn't just what Crippen did, but how. How did he obtain the poison crystals, skin her and dispose of all those bones so neatly? The manhunt climaxed with a fantastic sea chase from Europe to Canada, not just by a pursuing vessel but also by invisible waves racing lightning-fast above the ocean. It seemed that all the world knew—except for the doctor and his lover, the prey of dozens of frenetic Marconi wireless transmissions. In addition to writing stylish portraits of all of his main characters, Larson populates his narrative with an irresistible supporting cast. He remains a master of the fact-filled vignette and humorous aside that propel the story forward. Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world, while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of "the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant communication, now inescapable, conquered the world. 14-city tour. (Oct.) James L. Swanson's most recent book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, was published by Morrow in February. Borneman offers an excellent general-audience version of Fred Anderson's Crucible of War (2000), the definitive academic history of the mid–18th-century French and Indian War and its long-term consequences for America and the world. Drawing on a broad spectrum of primary and secondary sources, Borneman (1812: The War That Forged a Nation) argues that the French and Indian War not only made Britain master of North America but created an empire that dominated the world for two centuries. What began in the Ohio Valley in 1755 as the local defeat of a small force under Gen. Edwin Braddock escalated into what legitimately merits designation as the First World War. Borneman connects that complex conflict in North America with events in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Although the Native Americans were "the real losers" in the war for their continent, they offered formidable resistance to a developing European hegemony. But the English colonials' discomfiture overshadowed Native Americans', as the settlers were expected to help finance the war but were denied its fruits by being forbidden to claim land west of the Appalachians. Britain's victory in the French and Indian War thus lit the kindling for the American Revolution. (Nov.) Former Washingtonian magazine editor (and Louis Freeh's coauthor) Means recreates the first weeks of the presidency of a man who had never expected to find himself in that role. Initially, Andrew Johnson had nothing but harsh words for Southern planters and other erstwhile Confederates. But on May 29, 1865, he offered amnesty to any Confederate supporters who would take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. Though Radical Republicans in Congress were furious that Johnson had unilaterally made this decision, the New York Times praised the president. Means suggests that Johnson took this bold step because he thought it was faithful to "Lincolnian doctrine." But Means is not out to make a hero of Johnson—quite the opposite. He believes Reconstruction was a failure. Intended "to forge a new postwar South," it "instead perpetuated the old one." Johnson's amnesty, for instance, paved the way for the establishment of discriminatory Black Codes in the South. Though Means doesn't add much to our understanding of Johnson, he has done history buffs a service by offering an impassioned, easy-to-read introduction to the 17th president. (Those who want to go deeper should read Eric L. Mc-Kitrick's majestic Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction). (Nov.) Many people consider the ubiquitous rock dove, better known as the pigeon, a "rat with wings." But as Blechman demonstrates in his enjoyable and informative book, this much maligned bird has served humans well for thousands of years, carrying messages informing the ancient Egyptians about flood levels along the Nile, bearing news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and saving thousands of soldiers' lives during the two world wars. Today pigeons are found everywhere, from the queen of England's luxurious racing pigeon lofts to the garbage-strewn streets of every large city. Pigeons—gregarious, easily domesticated and capable of flying for hours at speeds of more than 100 mph—are interesting in their own right, but Blechman writes not so much about the birds themselves as about the people who either love or hate them. These include members of a Newe York City homing pigeon club who dedicate themselves to raising and racing pigeons; Queen Elizabeth's royal pigeon handler; breeders who spend years perfecting champion birds for show; gun enthusiasts who participate in brutal live pigeon shoots. Many of these people are eccentric, and while Blechman's book won't convert pigeon haters to pigeon lovers, it does make for entertaining reading. (Nov.) The publication of Copernicus's theories on the structure of the solar system is a touchstone of the scientific revolution. But as Danielson shows in this fascinating account, Copernicus's work might have been lost without the assistance of a passionate young scholar named Georg Joachim Rheticus. Born in 1514, Rheticus, a German doctor's son, became a protégé of the mathematician Melanchthon, who said the youth was "born to study mathematics." Made a professor at the University of Wittenberg at the age of 22, Rheticus took a leave of absence in 1538 to track down Copernicus in Poland. Rheticus had seen a copy of a narrowly circulated short paper by Copernicus about a solar system with a stationary Sun and moving Earth, and had become obsessed with the idea. Although in his twilight years, the elder scientist welcomed the younger man, who persuaded him to pull his notes together to create his paradigm-breaking work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Drawing on academic records and papers, Danielson, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, gracefully recounts the compelling story of a scientist whose "sole interest was in reflecting, not deflecting, the light that shone from the mind of his teacher." B&w illus. (Nov.) This eye-opening account details the German opposition that long predated the well-known July 1944 putsch that attempted to assassinate Hitler. The coarseness, rhetoric and brutality of the lower-echelon Nazis offended the elite who ran the military and civil service, and when Hitler threatened war in 1938 if his demand to annex the Sudetenland was rejected, military leaders began planning his ouster. But their plan depended on Hitler starting a war that had little popular support, which Britain short-circuited by yielding at Munich. Once war did begin, German victories in 1939–1940 discouraged the opposition, which revived when Russia and America entered the war in 1941. Readers may be amazed at the number of top officials who not only opposed Hitler but also actively aided the Allies. Sadly, the resistance was reluctant to plan a coup without assurance that Britain and America would deal gently with Germany once Hitler was gone. When they finally acted in 1944, they failed, and Hitler took terrible vengeance. Like Roger Moorhouse in his recent Killing Hitler, Von Hassell (grandson of a bomb plotter) and MacRae, an editor and translator, have done an impressive job of demolishing the myth of a German monolith, united behind their fanatical leader. (Nov. 23) Tall, poet and editor of the Seneca Review, has long championed a form called the lyric essay, which employs the associative movement and lyrical suggestiveness of poetry while also maintaining the familiar narrative structures and conventional organization of prose. In a singular extended work in this form, Tall (Summons) constructs a powerful account of her search for the origins of her Ukrainian Jewish family; her parents and other relatives emigrated to the U.S. around WWII and proceeded to disavow their past in an effort to overcome traumatic memories of pogroms and Nazi genocide. Throughout her upbringing, Tall's parents maintained a strict, if suspicious, silence about their relatives and lives before emigrating, leaving Tall, now a wife and mother of two daughters, desperate for information about her family history. In short chapters bearing repeated titles ("Anatomy of Secrecy," "The Dream of Family"), Tall movingly traces her genealogical quest, which leads her to the discovery of her family's pre–Ellis Island name (Talesnick), the revelation of a forgotten uncle abandoned to a mental institution and, finally, a meeting with her family's last ailing matriarch near Ladyzin, Ukraine. This deeply affecting account offers new formal avenues for memoir while providing a necessary piece of the ever-unfolding puzzle of 20th-century Jewish diaspora. (Nov.) Hansen, an editor of health books, wanted to quit smoking and realized that it would take drastic measures to stop. In November 2003, she and her husband, John, bought a 40-pound, 72-foot steel chain—the rasp of its dragging links intended to underscore her battle with nicotine—and he shackled her to a radiator in their Pennsylvania home every day for a week. In seven chapters marking each of her days enchained, Hansen explores her experience of withdrawal and delves into her memories of the life that led to this self-imposed bondage. She describes her mother's daily cigarette, her father's abandonment, her stepfather's reticence, her time writing porn and health advice, her battle with alcoholism, her son Daniel, her divorce and a lifetime of friends and lovers. As the title alludes, each memory floats in a haze of smoke, punctuated by flashbacks to the burn and beauty of individual cigarettes. Hansen's writing is skillfully rich in detail, but for readers, the very premise of chaining herself to a radiator is itself like inhaling that first cigarette—to some the very idea is distasteful, to others intriguing. (Nov.) Mann, a skilled chronicler of gay Hollywood (Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines), says at the onset it doesn't make sense to try to pin down Katharine Hepburn with modern labels of sexual identity. Mann's careful research on the longstanding rumors about Hepburn's lesbianism suggests that the notoriously feisty and tomboyish actress lived her life as a man with little empathy for women's issues. This interpretation also shatters the legend of her romance with Spencer Tracy—instead, Mann establishes a pattern of relationships in which the sex-averse Hepburn played emotional caretaker to a series of alcoholic, closeted homosexuals that, in addition to Tracy, included director John Ford. Yet the portrait is constructed so carefully that it never feels shocking. Mann also devotes significant attention to Hepburn's rocky relationships with Hollywood studios and with the press, revealing that the self-styled renegade wasn't above collaborating to shape her public image, and depicts her final decline into alcoholism and depression with sensitivity. Hepburn's siblings and contemporaries (now free to speak after her death) make major corrections to earlier Hepburn biographies, creating a picture of a complex woman rather than the icon she worked hard to become in the public's eye. This will surely be the definitive version of Hepburn's life for decades to come, as it is an outstanding example of painstaking research matched with splendid writing. (Oct. 3) While a competing collection (Reviews, July 31) found the majority of its articles in mainstream publications like the New Yorker, guest editor Greene (The Elegant Universe) sticks to the fundamentals in the seventh volume of Houghton's science anthology. In line with his belief that scientific literacy is increasingly vital to full participation in contemporary culture, Greene draws heavily from the scientific press—six selections come from Scientific American alone. These articles lay out the facts about topics like lupus and the nature of mass with admirable clarity, but can fall short of the excitement level in other pieces that have a more personal touch. John Hockenberry, for example, shows how blogging technology has radically changed the way U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq communicate with friends, family and even total strangers, while Mark Dowie thoughtfully considers how environmentalist zeal threatens to disrupt indigenous communities. Other writers focus on the compelling stories of individual scientists, from Drake Bennett's profile of "the godfather of Ecstasy" to Oliver Sacks's memories of his lively correspondence with Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA. (Oct. 11) Lay readers interested in mathematical history will learn a lot they didn't know from Aczel's latest book, which focuses on a group of French mathematicians who in the 1930s decided to publish their collective work under an imaginary name. But readers may also get the feeling that this able math and science popularizer is running out of suitable topics. It's not that the contributions of the Bourbaki school weren't important—their rigorous approach to proofs and emphasis on set theory provided the basis for what became known as the New Math—it's just that this curious story isn't as inherently dramatic as, say, that of Andrew Wiles's solving Fermat's Last Theorem. Aczel surveys with his usual panache the careers of some major members of the group, like the eccentric Alexandre Grothendieck, who in 1991 became a hermit in the Pyrenees, but Aczel is less convincing when he draws simplistic parallels between advances in mathematics and modern art. While always readable, this diffuse narrative (including chapters on Bourbaki's influence on anthropology and linguistics) strains to pull its disparate parts into a satisfactory whole. (Oct. 10) The history of geology and how we learned about the age of the Earth is a fascinating subject, but Jackson, a geologist at Trinity College, Dublin, is unable to explain and pass along his enthusiasm. Aficionados might appreciate the tour through attempts to arrive at the planet's age from ancient myths, the Bible, the salinity of the oceans, temperature readings, fossils, geology, biology, radiology and cosmology. Each chapter ends with a "close but no cigar" statement of why a given theory was a good idea at the time. Numerous sections feel rushed—in particular the opening catalogue of creation myths—though when readers finally arrive at the sections on geology and fossils, Jackson injects more detail and, consequently, more interest. But while the preface states that this book is meant for a general as well as scientific audience, too many terms go undefined and too many names are dropped without immediate explanations of who the people were. B&w illus. (Oct.) First published in Italy in 1946, this newly rediscovered early work by the celebrated late author of such Holocaust memoirs as Survival in Auschwitz—an eyewitness account of conditions at Buna-Monowitz, a satellite camp of Auschwitz—appears in English for the first time. The short report was written for the Russian authorities who had liberated the camp and were gathering information on German war crimes. While the report is not exactly a curiosity—one of the first written by eyewitnesses, it has an important place in Holocaust historiography—it contains little new information. Some of what it does contain—for instance, the authors thought the Sonderkommandos were criminal inmates rather than Jews—we now know to be inaccurate. Despite this, the publication of the document gives readers, and especially Holocaust scholars, new insights into Levi's work. An excellent introduction by editor Gordon gives an astute overview of the stylistic and historical relationship between this work and Levi's later autobiographical writings. Levi's training as a chemist and his friend and fellow survivor De Benedetti's training as a physician bring to the piece a dispassionate tone that has, in a sense, prefigured the best writing about the Holocaust. This is an important addition to Holocaust literature, but probably of limited interest to the general reader. (Oct.) One of America's great myths, says Kagan, is that the U.S. has always been isolationist, only rarely flexing its muscles beyond its borders. Not so: in the first half of a two-volume study of American foreign policy, Washington Post columnist and bestselling author Kagan (Of Paradise and Power) argues that even in the colonial era Americans restlessly pushed westward. At every turn, Kagan shows how a policy of aggressive expansion was inextricably linked with liberal democracy. Political leaders of the early republic developed expansionist policies in part because they worried that if they didn't respond to their clamoring constituents—farmers who wanted access to western land, for example—the people might rebel or secede. Also provocative is Kagan's reading of the Civil War as America's "first experiment in ideological conquest" and nation building in conquered territory. He then follows American expansion through the 19th century, as the U.S. increased its dominance in the western hemisphere and sought, in President Garfield's phrase, to become "the arbiter" of the Pacific. Kagan may overstate the extent to which contemporary Americans imagine U.S. history to be thoroughly isolationist; it's a straw man that this powerfully persuasive, sophisticated book hardly needs. 75,000 first printing. (Oct. 12) According to the ballad that made him famous, John Henry did battle with a steam-powered drill, beat the machine and died. Folklorists have long thought John Henry to be mythical, but while researching railroad work songs, historian Nelson, of the College of William and Mary, discovered that Henry was a real person—a short black 19-year-old from New Jersey who was convicted of theft in a Virginia court in 1866. Under discriminatory Black Codes, Henry was sentenced to 10 years in the Virginia Penitentiary and put to work building the C&O Railroad. There, at the Lewis Tunnel, Henry and other prisoners worked alongside steam-powered drills, and at least 300 of them died. This slender book is many-layered. It's Nelson's story of piecing together the biography of the real John Henry, and rarely is the tale of hours logged in archives so interesting. It's the story of fatal racism in the postbellum South. And it's the story of work songs, songs that not only turned Henry into a folk hero but, in reminding workers to slow down or die, were a tool of resistance and protest. This is a remarkable work of scholarship and a riveting story. 25 b&w illus. (Oct.) Fo, Italy's leading contemporary playwright, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, is a radical dramatist best known for his political satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970). In staging his provocative plays on such social and political issues as abortion, political corruption and organized crime, the controversial Fo was attacked and censored. In this memoir, he offers a lively, evocative narrative of his youth. Born in 1926, Fo grew up on the shores of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, and he vividly recalls his childhood experiences, encountering jazz musicians, circus performers and, most importantly, storytellers. From his grandfather and locals, he learned the art of improvisatory storytelling: "Their language and tales made an indelible mark." In the concluding chapters he writes of WWII and gives an amusing but tense account of sneaking a trainload of British and South African prisoners disguised as women out of Italy and into Switzerland. Writing with verve, wit and an imaginative flair, Fo reveals the roots of his caustic satires, his commedia dell'arte style and his anarchistic attitudes. (Oct. 4) Many who think of Time as a staid pillar of establishment journalism will be surprised to learn that, at its birth in the 1920s, it was an edgy, controversial upstart. Journalist Wilner revisits its development through this scintillating biography of Time's founding editor, Briton Hadden, a Promethean figure whose contributions were, the author suggests, erased from the corporate history after his early death in 1929 by jealous cofounder Henry Luce. Hadden, Wilner contends, came up with the then novel idea of the "news-magazine," a national publication presenting the news (largely cribbed from the New York Times) in a highly organized, easily digestible format for America's busy middle classes. He was also the originator of "Timestyle" journalism—news as a pageant of outsized personalities, punchy narratives, colorful details, Homeric cadences and sly, urbane drolleries, where "heroes and villains strode through the world, raising voices, slamming fists, firing guns"—which readers found enthralling and critics shallow and misleading. In Wilner's telling, Hadden himself is a Fitzgerald character: a hard-drinking, perpetually carousing Jazz Age icon, his outward ebullience masking an inward despondency. The result is a perceptive psychological study and cultural history, with a touch of ink-stained romanticism. Photos. (Oct.) A part-time emergency medical technician, Perry delivers the latest account of his somewhat idiosyncratic life and times in a small Wisconsin town ("I am happy to live in a place where I can chuck a washing machine out my back door and no one judges my behavior unusual"). Here, he focuses on two main events over the course of a year: fixing up a 1951 International Harvester pickup truck and developing a romance with a local woman after a long stretch of failed relationships. Never cloying, Perry is a wry observer of how success in both areas "is the result of a modest accumulation of lucky breaks and the kindness of others," and displays the storytelling and observational skills that made his first book, Population: 485, such a success. One of his most memorable descriptions is of an ex-patient, Ozzie, a motorcycle-loving ventilator-dependent quadriplegic, who gets to ride again after his wheelchair is hooked up to the cycle of his paraplegic friend Pat—"You haven't really explored the outer limits of health care until you've watched a Hell's Angel suction a tracheotomy tube." (Oct.) The celebrated actress and author of several books on Indian cooking turns her attention to her own childhood in Delhi and Kampur. Born in 1933 as one of six children of a prosperous businessman, Jaffrey grew up as part of a huge "joint family" of aunts, uncles and cousins—often 40 at dinner—under the benign but strict thumb of Babaji, her grandfather and imperious family patriarch. It was a privileged and cosmopolitan family, influenced by Hindu, Muslim and British traditions, and though these were not easy years in India, a British ally in WWII and soon to go though the agony of partition (the separation and formation of Muslim Pakistan), Jaffrey's graceful prose and sure powers of description paint a vivid landscape of an almost enchanted childhood. Her family and friends, the bittersweet sorrows of puberty, the sensual sounds and smells of the monsoon rain, all are remembered with love and care, but nowhere is her writing more evocative than when she details the food of her childhood, which she does often and at length. Upon finishing this splendid memoir, the reader will delight in the 30 "family-style" recipes included as lagniappe at the end. Photos. (Oct. 11) Tenaciously exposing the role guns play for many Americans in their national and political identity, Burbick (Rodeo Queens and the American Dream) talks to gun owners, sellers, lobbyists, grassroots organizers and policy makers as she tours gun shows, gun-rights conventions and National Rifle Association gatherings across the land. Mining the history of gun manufacturing and shooting magazine editorials, she charts how the gun industry has successfully marketed its products using the image of the patriotic, law-abiding civilian shooter. She describes Civil War–era white fears of armed blacks and shows how the Second Amendment rights movement was born of the social unrest of the 1960s. She argues that conservatives responded to blacks' and women's demands for rights by talking about the right to defend oneself with a gun. Burdick also tracks the tactical courtship of the gun lobby by presidents and politicians from Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms to George W. Bush. Burdick highlights the prevalence of white, middle-aged men, misogyny and the paradoxical belief that the gun itself is capable of stopping violence. Noting that an anxious, self-justifying white settler identity underpins the Christian patriotism of the religious right, Burdick catalogues a culture that dwells imaginatively in a mythologized frontier past. (Oct.) The Morro Castle, a luxurious cruise ship, inexplicably caught fire on September 8, 1934, off the New Jersey coast on its way back from Havana. The blaze spread so quickly that many lifeboats were burned, and at least 134 passengers (out of 318) perished. Hicks (Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine) re-creates this incident in a page-turning chronicle. The cause was never determined, but drawing on official records, first-person accounts and recently declassified FBI documents, Hicks makes a convincing case that the fire was set by a crew member. Shortly before the fire, the ship's captain died mysteriously of an apparent heart attack and was succeeded by William Warms. Hicks details how Warms's agitation and indecision made the disaster worse: he neglected, for one thing, to turn his ship away from an impending nor'easter, whose wind further whipped the flames. Hicks has done a lot of research, but it never weighs down the narrative, which draws the reader in from the get-go. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Oct. 24) Most historians have dismissed John Tyler as an inept failure. In this remarkable study, Crapol, professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary, argues that Tyler was in fact a terrifically strong president who helped strengthen the executive branch. Tyler was William Henry Harrison's vice president. Before Harrison's death in 1841, presidential succession was murky: did the vice president become president, or was he merely a temporary stand-in until an emergency election could be held? Tyler decisively seized the office, setting a precedent that is followed to this day (and was codified in 1967 in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution). Yet Tyler's story, argues Crapol, is ultimately a "tragedy." Tyler's commitment to territorial expansion, which found its keenest expression in the annexation of Texas, was driven in part by his contorted thinking about slavery. The to-the-Virginia-manor-born president believed the contradictions of slavery would be best resolved not by abolition but by extending it into new territories, thus diffusing the slave population. That Tyler died a traitor to the Union, just about to assume his seat in the Confederate Congress, is the final, sad irony. This balanced, fascinating volume will introduce a new generation of readers to an oft-ignored president. (Oct. 9) This look at a largely forgotten reign of terror in San Francisco in 1973 and 1974 is an interesting if superficial true police procedural. Sanders, the SFPD's first African-American chief of police, was one of the lead detectives on the case code-named the Zebra Murders, involving a group of African-American men who, apparently racially motivated, were targeting whites in vicious random acts of violence that claimed 15 lives. The book reads less like an objective assessment of these events than a memoir of Sanders's experiences with the investigation and his role in a civil lawsuit against the SFPD to combat rampant racial discrimination. Oddly, about halfway in, the authors break the linear narrative with information derived only at the case's end, rather than lay out the police work and discoveries as they happened. The efforts to compare the police tactics with post-9/11 targeting of Muslims will strike most readers as labored despite Sanders's insistence that the killings were acts of political terror, not mere serial killings. Nonetheless, this serves as a useful introduction to the case. (Oct.) In this cautionary tale about the dangers of teenage substance abuse, Hutchison tells how she became reconciled with the drunken teenage boy who killed her husband. On New Year's Eve 1997, in Squamish, British Columbia, Hutchison's husband, Bob, went with two male friends to check on an unsupervised teenagers' party nearby. When Bob attempted to get the crowd of intoxicated, drug-using adolescents to leave the house, he was punched and then kicked to death. A few years later, Ryan Aldridge admitted his guilt and offered letters of apology to the author and her children; he was sentenced to five years for manslaughter. The author takes readers through the aftermath of her husband's death, describing their love for each other despite the usual marital conflicts. She is forthright in recounting how she fell in love with her second husband, marrying him eight months after Bob's death. The most valuable part of this compelling memoir is Hutchison's healing emotional journey, which resulted in reconciliation with Ryan. While in prison (he is currently out on parole), Ryan began to participate with Hutchison in presentations about the dangers of teenage substance abuse. Hutchison has become an activist for restorative justice, which facilitates victim-offender reconciliation. (Oct.) I am worried about this word, this notion—security," writes the renowned author of The Vagina Monologues at the beginning of this extraordinarily compelling, if somewhat scattered, memoir; "Why has all of this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure?" Ensler recounts her attempts to make sense of a war-ridden world in which "security" becomes both unimaginable and dangerous. Weaving together personal history (about her childhood relationship with her father, who would choke her in drunken rages and not remember the next morning), with a panoply of violent political scenarios around the world: the Serbs' use of rape to subdue Muslims in Bosnia; the public execution of women in an Afghan stadium; the unsolved brutal murders of more than 370 women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Ensler aims to explicate the moments when we, often unwittingly, implicate ourselves in this violence through our need for an illusory "security." She has a vivid, startling style that is both direct and poetic, and she is able to make chilling connections—she writes that the dust that covered New York on 9/11 was the dust that she had seen "in Kabul, in Bosnia, in Kosovo." This is an important work by a major American writer. (Oct. 3) Veteran essayists (Joseph Epstein, Oliver Sacks, Susan Orlean) share space with accomplished newcomers (Michele Morano, Laurie Abraham, Poe Ballantine) in this rich and thoughtful collection. Ethnic variety is one strain: Emily Bernard writes about being a black teacher in a white class; Ken Chen deciphers the cultural mix of Hong Kong. Peter Selgin's account of the maiming of his hand and Robert Polito's search for his unknown grandmother convey the poignancy of loss, and Scott Turow regrets never having met Saul Bellow. But the dominant theme is death. Toi Derricotte, Kim Dana Kupperman and David Rieff write about the deaths of their mothers (Rieff's mother was Susan Sontag). Sam Pickering's elegiac essay about putting his dog to sleep is also a lament on lost youth and coming age; Adam Gopnik wittily demonstrates how the death of a goldfish provides a watershed moment for his family. The most affecting piece is an excerpt from Marjorie Williams's elegant, unsparing The Woman at the Washington Zoo, in which she describes the progress of the cancer that was to kill her in 2005. Eugene Goodheart explains this preoccupation best: "I think of [the personal essay] as the genre of the posthumous," he says. (Oct. 11) Washington Post reporter DeYoung covers Powell's entire career in this nuanced, comprehensively researched first complete biography to bring to life the Jamaican immigrants' son who became chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state and a widely supported potential candidate for president. DeYoung presents her subject as above all a soldier, with an ethic of honor and service shaped by his career in the U.S. Army, during which he brought a combination of intellectual force and moral courage to his senior military appointments that distinguished him among his contemporaries. DeYoung, who obtained six in-depth interviews with Powell, explains that he wrestled with whether or not he had the duty to run for president in 2000, but ultimately realized he didn't want the presidency from the "depth of [his] stomach or soul." She correspondingly demonstrates that his continuing commitment to public service drove his ascension to secretary of state—a commitment that was strained to the limit during Powell's four years in office. DeYoung paints a favorable but balanced portrait of Powell, and she avoids using him as an instrument for Bush-bashing. Powell emerges from her account as a person who grew to meet his wider responsibilities. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct. 10) Despite his résumé as an actor (Cheers, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back), Ratzenberger sees himself as a blue-collar everyman and identifies more closely with the factory workers he interviews on his Travel Channel cable TV show, John Ratzenberger's Made in America than he does with the "Hollywood elite." Like his show, Ratzenberger's book celebrates manufacturing in America—and then digresses into a stimulating if contradictory mishmash of political ideas. Nostalgic and perhaps more than a little naïve, Ratzenberger wants to return America to its golden age: "We need to get back to being the industrial giant." At times, his politics resemble those of Michael Moore circa Roger & Me, as in his critique of corporations for abandoning loyal employees by moving operations overseas. But it's the "Hollywood powers that be" and "intellectual elites" who bear the brunt of Ratzenberger's anger. President Bush, meanwhile, gets his compliments for a lack of "contempt for the average American's intelligence" and for his actions in Iraq. Compelling for his unpredictability, this patriotic, independent-minded author will alternately frustrate and fascinate both progressives and conservatives. (Oct. 11) Keep it "Short. Simple. Sweet," Brown (Customers for Life) and Davis, an employee communication consultant, advise business professionals in this cheery but disheartening primer on reaching an American public suffering from "brain overload" and "attention deficit trait." The authors' recommendation: treat every potential reader or viewer like a restless teenager. There's plenty of commonsense advice—keep information easy to digest, break up communications into bite-size bits, directly address consumers' desires and understand your audience. But it's hard not to recoil at the implication that all of today's consumers are scatterbrained or at the authors' impossible suggestion to "love your audience members unreservedly." And no, business professionals can't fake it: their "love has to be real—not manufactured or manipulative—and unconditional." While keeping prose at the recommended seventh-grade level, business people must communicate in an "authentic voice... it should be the real you." Laid out in bullets, sidebars and extra-wide margins, this basic volume is for professionals with as little patience with prose as their target audience. (Oct.) Halperin (ABC News) and Harris (the Washington Post and The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House) illustrate "trade secrets" to political victory with this penetrating examination of the personal lives and political histories of the biggest names in recent presidential politics. From the losers (John Kerry and Al Gore, defeated because they "lost control of their public images") to the potential winners (Hillary Clinton, who, they assert, will have a significant fund-raising and fame advantage if she runs in 2008), the authors extract canny lessons in political strategy. But they offer particularly valuable insights into inadequately understood players like Matt Drudge, whom the authors credit as one of the greatest forces behind the Clinton impeachment and the Gore and Kerry losses, and Karl Rove, a man who, regardless of one's politics, "deserves unique notice for one reason: he is an exceptionally good political strategist." The authors' analyses are savvy and unsentimental, without collapsing into cynicism. Though very topical, the book's comprehensiveness should make it a lasting piece of scholarship—an in-depth, indefatigable examination of American media and politics at the turn of the millennium. (Oct. 3) When Megatrends was first published nearly a quarter-century ago, Naisbitt was hailed as a cutting-edge futurist. Today, however, he's more like your crotchety grandpa, complaining about how he can't get through the voice-mail system to talk to a real person. Naisbitt's latest book reads like a manuscript that's been stuck in a drawer since 1985, as his insights into the future—corporations are becoming more powerful than nation states, video games are an art form—are embarrassingly behind the times. Although he touts 11 principles to help readers cultivate forward-looking thinking, these turn out to be banal guidelines like "focus on the score of the game" and "don't add unless you subtract." Tangential rants about hysterical environmentalists and free market capitalism as the only way to organize modern society reveal a creeping conservative mindset, but even here Naisbitt is bringing up the rear, touting Friedrich Hayek long after everyone else has moved on to Leo Strauss. In his eighth predictive tract, the author coasts on his reputation. (Oct.) Troy's careful but unenlightening account comes as the sixth in a Modern First Ladies series and, as such, aims to measure Hillary Clinton's "historical footprint" as a president's wife. But Troy, a history professor (Mr. and Mrs. President), retreads a well-known arc of the nine years beginning with the start of the Clinton presidential campaign in 1992 and concluding with their handover to the Bushes in 2001. From Bill Clinton's "two for one" 1992 campaign slogan indicating their "unique partnership," to the health care debate, Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky scandal of 1998–1999, Troy analyzes the career of the "feminist first lady." (He does not consider her five years in office as senator from New York). His conclusion: the office of the first lady is a throwback, and "women who want real power... need to learn the democratic lesson that Hillary Clinton ultimately learned: better to earn power via election than assume it via marriage." Given Troy's emphasis on Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, his decision not to interview any of the key players and his reliance on previously published books and articles, the reader never gets a sense of Hillary beyond what's already very familiar. 24 photos not seen by PW. (Oct.) In this well-constructed sketch of American-Iranian relations, Takeyh (senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) critiques the U.S.'s unnuanced approach to Iran since its 1979 revolution as well as the failure of successive administrations to note that decades of sanctions and containment haven't significantly changed Iranian behavior. A picture emerges of a complex society marked by cultural struggle and compromise, as Takeyh criticizes the perception of Iranian politics as monolithic. He concludes that the "chimera of regime change" must finally be rejected, and pointedly observes that "it is rare... for a state that views nuclear weapons as fundamental to its security interests to dispense with such weapons under relentless threats." Takeyh urges America to look beyond President Ahmadinejad to such institutions as Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council and Foreign Ministry, each of which distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric. Takeyh even suggests areas in which Iran and the U.S. might forge a "selective partnership"—not least their shared need for a stable Iraq. Though he occasionally slips into a too-casual assumption of the inevitability of his forecasts, Takeyh (The Receding Shadow of the Prophet) provides a well-argued, seldom heard viewpoint. (Oct.) This collection of essays on being Italian-American (or in some cases, an Italian in America or an American in Italy) is filled with imagery and topics of not only food and wine but Catholicism, immigration and linguistics. In a poetic tale of family and forced immigration with Catholic and culinary undertones, Louise DeSalvo's " 'MBriago" is the collection's opener as well as a literary high point. In "Sacrifice," Maria Laurino writes of an Italian-American who sacrifices her life to care for her disabled son; Edvige Giunta describes her native Sicily in "The Walls of Gela." Almost every essay in the collection explores the notion of someone surrendering a major part of themselves (their homeland, their identity, their childhood, their Saturday afternoons, their happiness) for the greater good of their family. The stories are inspiring, but they also give the collection a bittersweet flavor. In the end, this welcome collection challenges preconceived notions about Italian-Americans. (Oct.) Wellesley College professor Hertz (More Equal than Others) gathers stories of women along with supporting data to assert knowledgeably what has grown obvious in recent years: with increased education and financial independence, women are bypassing the traditional family structure and creating their own models. The lives of women have been transformed by 1970s' feminism, and although many women still consider marriage essential to motherhood, their attachment to work and the sense of autonomy it engenders sidelines, in many cases documented here, the supremacy of a traditional marriage with children. Hertz chronicles the sense of women in their 30s feeling "stuck." Instead of becoming so-called spinsters of ages past, women have overcome the social stigma to craft a new definition of motherhood as legitimate and valuable. Hertz tracks the ways many women advanced intrepidly: approaching a sperm donor bank, reconstructing a father profile once the child is born ("ghostly but present"), chancing pregnancy with an iffy romantic partner (and bearing the legal ramifications) and building a transracial family through adoption or a "transacting family" made up of committed gay partners. In this grounded, accessible study, Hertz also poses some challenging questions about the future role of fathers. (Oct.) In the opening scene of Viesturs's memoir of his quest to become the first American to climb the 14 mountains in the world higher than 8,000 meters, he and a friend nearly get thrown off the face of K2 when they're caught in an avalanche. It's one of the few moments in the story when his life genuinely seems at risk, as his intense focus on safety is generally successful. "Getting to the top is optional," he warns. "Getting down is mandatory." That lesson comes through most forcefully when Viesturs recounts how he almost attempted to reach the summit at Everest the day before the group Jon Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air, but backed out because it just didn't feel right. His expertise adds a compelling eyewitness perspective to those tragic events, but the main focus is clearly on Viesturs and his self-imposed "Endeavor 8000." From his earliest climbs on the peaks of the Pacific Northwest to his final climb up the Himalayan mountain of Annapurna, Viesturs offers testimony to the sacrifices (personal and professional) in giving your life over to a dream, as well as the thrill of seeing it through. (Oct.) Religion American evangelicalism, with a reported 50 million believers, is not as easily categorized as many think. According to Sheler (Is the Bible True?), contributing religion editor for U.S. News & World Report, it "has exploded into a torrent of confusing cross currents" and is more complex than the media typically allows. Sheler came to Christianity in a fundamentalist church in the 1960s and spent years in evangelical congregations before moving into mainline Christianity, so his exploration is both personal and professional. He investigates power centers that evangelicals will readily recognize: James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Rick Warren's Saddleback Community Church, and Wheaton College. He attends the Creation Festival (think a Christian Woodstock) and goes on a short-term mission to Guatemala with a church group. Along the way, he sketches a detailed history of the movement (though he ignores the most recent developments like the emerging church movement) and concludes that evangelicalism today is at a crisis point, with theological and political crusaders on one side and those who urge more moderation on the other. He also concludes that evangelicals are "extraordinarily normal." Throughout, he does an excellent job capturing the complex diversity within this conservative faith movement. (Oct. 9) Expect no sugar-coated sweetness about "felt needs" and in-church coffee bars from Erre, pastor of teaching at Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, Calif. Expect, instead, compelling discussion of how the Christian church has lost sight of the revolutionary teaching and love of Jesus. "Much of the message of American Christianity presents Jesus as the purveyor of the American Dream," he says. American Christians, he claims, have reduced Jesus to a study of risk management; we want him to be "predictable and safe." Erre also uses the adjectives "insecure, threatened, naive, simplistic, mean and shortsighted" to describe many of today's churches. He lambastes our love of theology instead of Jesus, our contentment with "simply knowing about him instead of knowing him." While this protest continues in the vein of other recent books that take a hard look at Jesus and the church (Jesus Mean and Wild; Out of Your Comfort Zone), it offers a fresh look at how the American church must begin "demonstrating the message of Christ," not merely explaining it. After all, says Erre, "if you follow Jesus, you follow the most radical man who ever existed." (Oct. 10) Devoted fans of Weaver's bestselling title, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, have waited some seasons for a follow-up worthy of this original Mary/Martha signature piece. According to Weaver, a six-month writing sabbatical morphed into six years while two children grew up, a third was born, church-building projects loomed large, relational miscommunications snowballed and inner chaos reigned. She admits that the tugs between flesh and spirit took their toll on her flagship message for Christian women to achieve life balance between the soulfully serene "Mary" and perfectionist "Martha." Weaver spends 16 delightfully entertaining and spiritually hefty chapters challenging and entreating women to allow God entrance to the heart's inner places for a "soul-surgery" of sorts. She discusses guarding one's heart from distractions and cynicism; bringing thoughts under control; honing a fearless, courageous attitude; and learning to adopt a discerning, malleable and servant-minded spirit. Weaver's insight is keen and far-reaching, patient and practical. Clearly, the substance of this material is neither new or unique, yet Weaver has a way of approaching even well-worn subject matter with a neighborliness that both charms and enthralls. (Oct. 10) In the wake of 9/11, Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, sought out fellow mothers of the Jewish and Christian faiths to write a children's book on the commonalities among their respective traditions. In their first meeting, however, the women realized they would have to address their differences first. Oliver, an Episcopalian who was raised Catholic, irked Warner, a Jewish woman and children's author, with her description of the Crucifixion story, which sounded too much like "Jews killed Jesus" for Warner's taste. Idliby's efforts to join in on the usual "Judeo-Christian" debate tap into a sense of alienation she already feels in the larger Muslim community, where she is unable to find a progressive mosque that reflects her non–veil-wearing, spiritual Islam. The ladies come to call their group a "faith club" and, over time, midwife each other into stronger belief in their own respective religions. More Fight Club than book club, the coauthors pull no punches; their outstanding honesty makes for a page-turning read, rare for a religion nonfiction book. From Idliby's graphic defense of the Palestinian cause, Oliver's vacillations between faith and doubt, and Warner's struggles to acknowledge God's existence, almost every taboo topic is explored on this engaging spiritual ride. (Oct. 3) The "best of" collections can often appear contrived and forced, but Doyle, writer and three-time editor of this Loyola Press series, avoids such pitfalls. Drawing upon works from a variety of genres, Doyle assembles a truly "catholic" compilation. Included with the thought-provoking essays and articles are inspired poems by Mary Oliver and Seamus Heaney, alongside a true sign of the times—excerpts from Web logs ("blogs"). Kudos to Doyle for recognizing the creativity and vitality within this modern electronic medium. Catholicism, Doyle believes, should not be afraid of contemporary culture. Nor should it be afraid of a variety of perspectives. Doyle includes an impassioned article by Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, with a Thomas Aquinas–inspired spoof called "The Existence of Chuck Norris" by ordained Protestant minister Douglas Beaumont. Other highlights from this collection include Orbis Press editor-in-chief Robert Ellsberg on Dorothy Day, funeral director and essayist Thomas Lynch on his relatives in Ireland, and Jesuit George Coyne's religion and science apologia. In his introduction, Doyle posits, "there's a stunning amount of terrific Catholic writing." He has managed to sift through much of it and find the cream of the crop. (Oct.) When Mercadante misses the neighborhood where she grew up, she watches reruns of The Sopranos. Newark's Bloomfield Avenue, site of numerous scenes in the TV series, was where her Italian immigrant father brought his New York Jewish bride shortly after World War II. "Mixed marriages" were scandalous in those days, and the couple dealt with their differences by virtually banning religion from their home—"the worst solution of all," according to their daughter, because "children are naturally spiritual." Hungry for God's approval, Mercadante was baptized twice; first at age eight in Sacred Heart Cathedral, then in her 20s at L'Abri, Francis Schaeffer's evangelical center in Switzerland. Eager to assimilate into the wider American culture, she became a reporter, accumulated awards and earned advanced degrees, despite struggles with infertility, domestic violence and gender-based barriers. "We don't take girls in management," an airline recruiter told her, "but you'd make a great airline stewardess." Now an ordained Presbyterian minister and a theology professor at a Methodist seminary, Mercadante concludes her colorful and compelling memoir with a dash of American optimism: "No matter how many dreams smash in front of you, if you follow the lure of love, God will use that love to make you whole." (Oct.) Every page reveals something new and fascinating in this innovative Jewish calendar that utilizes nature and the universe to mark each day by the holiday, person, characteristic or occurrence that best defines it. Instead of dividing the calendar by months, Hammer guides us through each of eight segments by focusing on seasonal developments and their correlation to the human spirit and experience, interweaving the values of Judaism with the importance of remaining faithful to the natural world. Each day's entry includes a biblical quote, a midrash and an observation highlighting the connection between the text and the months, seasons and cycles of the year. Nearly every Jewish theme is touched upon, providing readers with an excellent overview of Jewish history, life and lore. Hammer expounds nicely upon the day's theme by quoting ancient and medieval Torah luminaries as well as modern-day scholars, but at times, her biblical quotes merely repeat much of what she has already expressed, and the space might have been better used for quoting sources that shed new light. The calendar begins with a well-researched analysis of the myriad elements and divisions of nature, ends with a thorough explanation of solstices and equinoxes, and contains a treasure chest of Jewish gems within. (Oct.) Is there a God? Are you willing to bet your eternal soul on your answer? This essentially is what has become known as Pascal's Wager, a bare-bones approach to challenging the folly of unbelief. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) is widely regarded as a brilliant mathematician, but he is less well-known as a deep student of religion and the Bible. He and his father were devoted Jansenists, schismatic Roman Catholics seeking to revive Augustine's stern views of judgment, predestination and radical orthodoxy. Connor, professor of English at Kean University in New Jersey and author of Kepler's Witch and Silent Fire, believes that this passion, along with Pascal's insatiable curiosity and his father's deep love for learning, produced the prodigy who would change the way we view both God and the sciences. Driven by the tumultuous events of 17th-century France (vividly recreated by Connor), and meeting resistance not only from fellow mathematicians like René Descartes but from such powerhouses as the Jesuits, young Pascal repeatedly proved himself more than just a "spoiled son of a controlling father," rising above the challenges of his youth and diminutive stature. Written for a general audience, this biography is a compelling and readable study of one of the most influential thinkers in religious history. (Oct.) No one could find fault with the subject of this book, a story of two educators—a Catholic nun and a Jew—who have spent the past 20 years creating and leading projects in "interreligious learning" as a means of reconciling their traditions. Backed by their conviction that "religion must become a catalyst in reducing the world's conflicts," Boys and Lee tell their personal stories, detail projects that stress study and dialogue "in the presence of the other" and describe trips they took together to Auschwitz and Israel. As they confront issues like history and theology, their underlying concept of "textured particularism" denotes "a keen sense of the beliefs and practices of one's own religious tradition" as well as making space for other traditions. As inspiring as their journey is, however, their retelling of it reads more like a paper delivered at an academic conference than an engaging give-and-take. Those interested in learning about other traditions will find hope in Lee's words: that dialogue has served as a mirror through which she sees herself in a new light, a perspective which would be inaccessible without the "reflection in the image and faith of the other." (Oct.) Beginning with a meticulous study of just what a canon is, Dungan offers a panoramic view of the first three centuries of Christian history and how the major players, both ecclesiastical and civil, contributed to defining the collection of writings we call the New Testament. One of the claims of the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code is that the institution of theCatholic Church suppressed some writings that challenged its own views and agendas. Dungan, professor of religion at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, finds this view untenable and offers as evidence a long and detailed examination of the scripture selection process as documented by the fourth-century church historian Eusebius. While various schools of Christianity exerted pressure to either include or exclude certain works, he concludes that the selection process produced "a minimalist canon, but one that is as hard as rock: all regional agendas have been intentionally ignored, all personal proclivities of prominent theologians or bishops dispensed with, every possible taint of 'politicking' avoided." Although written for the general reader, the book's detail can be overwhelming. But while his case for an orthodox canon is not unassailable, he succeeds in providing a wealth of information to enable readers to decide for themselves. (Oct.) In the 1950s, the Edward R. Murrow–hosted radio program This I Believe prompted Americans to briefly explain their most cherished beliefs, be they religious or purely pragmatic. Since the program's 2005 renaissance as a weekly NPR segment, Allison (the host) and Gediman (the executive producer) have collected some of the best essays from This I Believe then and now. "Your personal credo" is what Allison calls it in the book's introduction, noting that today's program is distinguished from the 1950s version in soliciting submissions from ordinary Americans from all walks of life. These make up some of the book's most powerful and memorable moments, from the surgeon whose illiterate mother changed his early life with faith and a library card to the English professor whose poetry helped him process a traumatic childhood event. And in one of the book's most unusual essays, a Burmese immigrant confides that he believes in feeding monkeys on his birthday because a Buddhist monk once prophesied that if he followed this ritual, his family would prosper. There are luminaries here, too, including Gloria Steinem, Warren Christopher, Helen Keller, Isabel Allende, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Updike and (most surprisingly, considering the book's more liberal bent) Newt Gingrich. This feast of ruminations is a treat for any reader. (Oct.) For too long, we've seen the pitfalls of mixing religion and politics. Miller, state treasurer of Kentucky and an active leader of such groups as the Democratic Leadership Council and the United Jewish Communities, manages to gently merge the two into a less-than-gentle plea for American compassion in virtually all corners of our country. Each chapter begins with a concept highlighted by a Hebrew Bible hero and then quickly turns to politics. For example, through Moses and his representation of freedom, Miller lays out a 10-point plan for giving our military and their families the respect, help and benefits he believes they deserve. Jacob's story provides the backdrop for a particularly intriguing chapter on finance, covering everything from predatory credit card companies to identity theft and a call for national financial education. Tempered with anecdotes from his own experiences, political and otherwise, Miller provides extensive examples of successful state programs across the country that he thinks can and should be implemented at the national level. He takes care to consider not just the followers of the Abrahamic religions but Eastern faiths as well as no particular faith at all, making this a must-read for all Americans concerned about the future of their country. (Oct.) Try to love the questions themselves," wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in his oft-quoted Letters to a Young Poet. That's what writer and photographer Tompkins and editor and creative designer McMahon have done in this collection of prose, poems, interviews and artwork from 180 contributors in 42 countries that explore questions that launch and keep people on the spiritual journey. Each piece is prefaced with a description of the spiritual "influences" felt by the author or artist, highlighting the concept that despite differences in particular faith perspectives, the questions we all ask are much the same. Chapters address the need to ask questions, following a particular spiritual path, coping with dark times and the roles of beauty, nature, rites, doctrine, practices and creativity in spiritual quests. The full-color pages and the layout and design are inviting and signal that the book is to dip into rather than read straight through. As with any anthology, the quality of the pieces is uneven, but overall this celebration of curiosity and questioning will appeal to those who are on a spiritual journey and find individual exploration to be more fulfilling than institutional religious experience. (Oct.) This book by a former Jesuit priest and Christian Zen master opens by presenting Zen Buddhist practice as a means to heal a "wounded" world. An introductory chapter with footnotes ranging from Heidegger to the World Watch Institute details myriad ways the world needs fixing. None of that is particularly fresh. What is fresh, however, is Habito's interpretation of Christian orthodox beliefs through a Zen lens: for example, Jesus' mystical body may be fruitfully compared to "this very body" of the Buddha. Given this parallel, both enlightenment and what Christians term "the reign of God" are already at hand. From a Buddhist point of view, there is nothing to attain; for a Christian, beholding God can happen right now rather than only in the afterlife. For both, the interconnectedness of all beings becomes apparent, and a statement like "God is love" can express a moment of enlightenment. These kinds of comparisons enrich and unlock the challenging and sometimes mysterious language of Christianity. For a Zen master, Habito sometimes writes too much like an academic ("A diagnostic view of the human problematic and its resolution"). This book's highest value is as Zen apologetic for Christians. (Oct.) The religion depicted in this absorbing memoir of falsehood and betrayal is fundamentalism gone berserk: it has turned into an inhuman, apocalyptic, darkly controlling force that reshuffles common sense, "jumbling all logic into madness." After indoctrination at a Bible college, Cross finds herself in a marriage from hell replete with abuse, addictions and mental illness. Her husband, a popular young pastor, uses religion to mask the alternate reality he has created, a netherworld that will potentially destroy not only his career but the entire family's safety and sanity. With the courage of a trapped animal, Cross reinvents her life, waiting tables and going on welfare in order to earn a degree and support her three children. For a time discarding God, the Bible and organized religion along with her malevolent husband, she eventually redefines spirituality as "a road of discovery—not of submission to a rulebook." Cross's brief summaries of Christian history are at best simplistic, and some readers will contend that the fundamentalism she portrays is an aberration, not the norm. Still, her heartfelt condemnation of public hypocrisy couldn't be more timely. In her ex-husband's own self-indicting words: "Isn't it ironic, a guy condemning sinful society and completely without a conscience himself?" (Oct.) With all the talk these days about a diversity of Christian beliefs in the first century, here's a book designed to smack some sense into the dialogue. Traditional sense, that is. Witherington, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary, creates well-researched profiles of people in Jesus' inner circle—profiles that stand up to the most rigorous biblical criticism. No flights of fancy—just the historical understandings as they can be agreed upon by the best and brightest evangelical biblical scholars. At times, there is a strong whiff of defensiveness about the orthodoxy of the canon as Witherington skewers views on early Christian beliefs made popular by Gnosticism scholars Elaine Pagels and Karen King (they being among the purveyors of the "strange theories and bad history" in the title). Readers seeking a uniform and conservative view of early Christianity will find a wealth of information about Jesus and his early followers, which offers an ardent corrective to recent popular works by Bart Ehrman and others. Others, however, may be so put off by Witherington's polemical tones that they miss the meat of his research. (Oct.) A little more than 40 years ago, many Protestants in the U.S. thought that a Catholic in the White House was a sign of the Apocalypse. Now, Catholics and Protestants often find themselves on the same side of political and social battle lines. "The barriers are breaking down," writes award-winning religion journalist Feuerherd, a self-described "liberal New Yorker" who investigates the evangelical Protestant movement in the U.S. Feuerherd begins his exploration at the Holy Land theme park in Orlando, Fla., which boasts a replica of the ancient city of Jerusalem and tour guides who proselytize visitors. Feuerherd also writes about his time at the Protestant-run American Bible Society in New York, where he worked as an editor, and investigates the Willow Creek megachurch in suburban Chicago. He is not afraid to levy criticisms against some intolerant evangelicals, but he never does so at arm's length—he inserts himself into the evangelical world and one can sense his appreciation growing. His daughter's recent decision to forgo Catholicism and attend an evangelical church presents Feuerherd with a new perspective on evangelical hospitality that he generously shares with the reader. Feuerherd's writing style is light and often humorous, which helps defuse many of the Catholic/evangelical tensions he encounters. (Sept. 28) As with Roiphe's well-received novels and nonfiction about women's lives, this creative examination of four biblical matriarchs ably reflects her continuing emphasis on the relationships between women and their children. Roiphe embroiders the terse accounts of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah in Genesis by using her own imagination and by drawing on prayer books, Talmud, midrash, the Zohar and several collections of legends. The result is a colorful, character-driven portrayal of the women, emphasizing their experiences with their husbands and their children. In each instance, Roiphe follows the biblical practice of depicting highly regarded ancestors with all their foibles and limitations. In Rebekah's deception in conspiring with favored son Jacob over his brother Esau, or Sarah's bitterness and mistreatment of Hagar, Roiphe identifies deep weaknesses and character flaws, but also offers inventive justifications for morally questionable behavior. In Rachel's long wait before becoming pregnant, Roiphe traces echoes of what happened earlier to Sarah and Rebekah. These women all experienced barrenness, neglect, death in childbirth and joy from children as "the staples of female life." Roiphe hopes that the stories she so beautifully retells can inspire us "to be decent people... [and to] better the world." (Sept. 19) Graff struggled with significance as he pastored a small church in Texas, yet when a large urban church asked him to join their staff, he declined. He began to understand that struggling churches in small towns "had their own unique significance" and, perhaps more importantly, so did he. Graff, founder of the Significant Church Network, guides readers to new understanding of true significance and how to live significantly each day. King David, whose story is told in the Old Testament, is the basis for Graff's five keys to significance: confidence, character, concentration, cooperation and community. He speaks of partnering with others, recognizing motives and cultivating forgiveness, plus myriad other things. Graff applies these concepts to individuals in typical pastorlike fashion, with lots of stories, an animated voice, some repetition and occasionally annoying alliteration. Yet the knowledge gleaned from David's life, from shepherd boy to wandering warrior to king, helps bring readers' own search for significance into focus as Graff addresses the highs and lows of what that means. "We must pursue embracing the fullness of who God made us to be and then [use] those gifts to serve others." (Sept. 19) In this book-length love letter from a disciple to his mentor, author and editor Kurzweil traces his discovery of a "Teacher with a capital T" in Jerusalem-based Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, probably best known for his commentary on the Talmud. Fascinated and enlightened by Steinsaltz's masterpiece of Jewish theology, The Thirteen-Petalled Rose—he knows it almost by heart—Kurzweil once called the rabbi's U.S. office, volunteering to pick him up at the airport and chauffeur him around during his lecture tours. Thus began a two-decades-long journey of conversations about reincarnation, suffering, Talmud, Kabbalah, marijuana, parenting and much more. Part spiritual memoir, Kurzweil's own story is interpolated with Steinsaltz's, from his secular upbringing, experimentation with Eastern religions, immersion in magic and ultimate rediscovery of Judaism. Kurzweil faithfully transcribes the rabbi's encounters with Ted Koppel and the Lubavitcher rebbe as well as his poignant conversations with Kurzweil's own daughters about role models, love and divorce. All these interactions show the rabbi's nonjudgmental depth and wisdom. Steinsaltz's gifts as a scientist, mathematician, skeptic and man of God results in a "wholeness of vision" that helps Kurzweil transform his life and motivates him to encourage readers to mine Steinsaltz's genius for themselves. (Sept. 17) In his highly acclaimed The Next Christendom (2002), Jenkins boldly proclaimed that the center of Christianity was moving slowly out of Europe and North America to Latin America, Africa and Asia. By 2025, he points out, Africa and Latin America will compete over which area is most Christian. In this compelling sequel, Jenkins probes more deeply the differences between northern and southern Christianity, examining various elements that characterize Christian life, especially belief in the Bible. He argues that the mostly agrarian Christian communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia resemble early Christian communities, enabling southern-hemisphere Christians to read the Bible with fresh eyes. Such communities read the Bible communally rather than individually, and they read it less critically and more literally than their North American and European counterparts. Explosive debates over the ordination of women and homosexuals and the authority of the Bible in various global denominations—such as the Anglican Communion—illustrate not only the stark theological differences between North and South but also the sheer size of the southern communions influencing the debate. As part of a proposed trilogy (his book on Europe's coming religious struggle is scheduled for late 2007), Jenkins's prescient religious histories offer brilliant insights on the state of modern Christianity. (Sept.)
Thunderstruck
Erik Larson. Crown, $25.95 (464p) ISBN 1-4000-8066-5
The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America
Walter R. Borneman. HarperCollins, $27.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-076184-4
Howard Means. Harcourt, $25 (304p) ISBN 0-15-101212-1
Andrew D. Blechman. Grove, $23 (256p) ISBN 0-8021-1834-8
Dennis Danielson. Walker, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8027-1530-2
Agostino von Hassell and Sigrid MacRae. St. Martin's/Dunne, $24.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-312-32369-1
Deborah Tall. Sarabande, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 1-932511-48-8; paper $16.95 ISBN 1-932511-44-X
Julia Hansen. Free Press, $24 (304p) ISBN 0-7432-8958-7
Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn
William J. Mann. Holt, $30 (608p) ISBN 0-8050-7625-5
Edited by Brian Greene. Houghton Mifflin, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-618-72221-1; paper $14 ISBN 978-0-618-722222-8
Amir D. Aczel. Thunder's Mouth, $23.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-56025-931-2
Patrick Wyse Jackson. Cambridge Univ., $30 (238p) ISBN 0-521-81332-8
Primo Levi with Leonardo De Benedetti, edited by Robert S.C. Gordon, trans. from the Italian by Judith Woolf. Verso, $17.95 (98p) ISBN 1-84467-092-9
Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century
Robert Kagan. Knopf, $30 (560p) ISBN 0-375-41105-4
Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend
Scott Reynolds Nelson. Oxford Univ., $25 (224p) ISBN 978-0-19-530010-9
My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More)
Dario Fo, trans. from the Italian by Joseph Farrell. St. Martin's/Dunne, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 0-312-35917-9
Isaiah Wilner. HarperCollins, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 0-06-050549-4
Michael Perry. HarperCollins, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 0-06-057117-9
Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India
Madhur Jaffrey. Knopf, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4295-1
Joan Burbick. New Press, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 1-59558-087-5
Brian Hicks. Free Press, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8008-2
John Tyler: The Accidental President
Edward P. Crapol. Univ. of North Carolina, $37.50 (344p) ISBN 978-0-8078-3041-3
Prentice Earl Sanders and
Bennett Cohen. Arcade, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-55970-806-7
Katy Hutchison, foreword by Frederic Luskin. New Harbinger, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 1-57224-503-4
Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World
Eve Ensler. Villard, $21.95 (208p) ISBN 1-4000-6334-5
Lauren Slater; series editor, Robert Atwan. Houghton Mifflin, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-618-70531-3; paper $14 ISBN 978-0-618-70529-0
Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell
Karen DeYoung. Knopf, $28.95 (624p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4170-1
John Ratzenberger and
Joel Engel. Hachette/Center Street, $23.99 (257p) ISBN 978-1-931722-84-1
Paul B. Brown and
Alison Davis. Adams Media, $14.95 paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-59337-687-1
Mark Halperin and
John F. Harris. Random, $26.95 (496p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6447-2
John Naisbitt. Collins, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-113688-7
Gil Troy. Univ. Press of Kansas, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7006-1488-2
Ray Takeyh. Times, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-8050-7976-0
Lee Gutkind and
Joanna Clapps Herman, foreword by Joe Mantegna. Other Press, $15.95 paper (312p) ISBN 978-1-59051-242-1
Rosanna Hertz. Oxford Univ., $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-19-517990-3
Ed Viesturs with David Roberts. Broadway, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 0-7679-2470-3
Jeffery L. Sheler. Viking, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 0-670-03802-4
Mike Erre. W Publishing, $13.99 paper (224p) ISBN 0-8499-0059-X
Having a Mary Spirit: Allowing God to Change Us from the Inside Out
Joanna Weaver. WaterBrook, $13.99 paper (272p) ISBN 1-4000-7247-6
Ranya Idliby,
Suzanne Oliver and
Priscilla Warner. Free Press, $25 (320p) ISBN 0-7432-9047-X
The Best Catholic Writing 2006Edited by
Brian Doyle. Loyola, $14.95 paper (224p) ISBN 0-8294-2356-7
Linda Mercadante. Cowley (NBN, dist.), $14.95 paper (182p) ISBN 1-56101-278-5
Jill Hammer. Jewish Publication Society, $30 (400p) ISBN 0-8276-0831-4
James A. Connor. Harper San Francisco, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 0-06-076691-3
Mary C. Boys and
Sara S. Lee. Skylight Paths, $21.99 (240p) ISBN 1-59473-144-6
David Laird Dungan. Fortress, $17 paper (96p) ISBN 0-8006-3790-9
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and WomenEdited by
Jay Allison and
Dan Gediman. Holt, $23 (320p) ISBN 0-8050-8087-2
Jonathan Miller. Palgrave, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 1-4039-7408-X
Mark L. Tompkins and
Jennifer McMahon. Celestial Arts, $18.95 (144p) ISBN 1-58761-277-1
Ruben L.F. Habito. Wisdom, $15.95 paper (176p) ISBN 0-86171-508-X
Carlene Cross. Algonquin, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 1-56512-498-7
Ben Witherington III. Harper San Francisco, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-06-112001-4
Peter Feuerherd. Crossroad, $16.95 paper (192p) ISBN 0-8245-2297-4
Water from the Well: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah
Anne Roiphe. Morrow, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 0-06-073796-4
Jim Graff. WaterBrook, $19.99 (240p) ISBN 1-4000-7262-X
Arthur Kurzweil. Jossey-Bass, $24.95 (278p) ISBN 0-7879-8324-1
The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South
Philip Jenkins. Oxford, $26 (288p) ISBN 0-19-530065-3
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