Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 11/20/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 11/20/2006

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
Tom Bissell. Pantheon, $25 (448p) ISBN 978-0-375-42265-2

In his fourth book, journalist and fiction writer Bissell (Chasing the Sea) revisits the much-trodden territory of the Vietnam War to offer a fresh perspective: that of the adult children of the war's veterans. On assignment for GQ magazine, Bissell and his ex-Marine father, John, retrace the elder Bissell's tour of duty through a now mostly peaceful and prosperous Vietnam. The first of the book's three sections narrates the historical leadup to Saigon's fall in 1975, spliced with Bissell's imagined vision of his family on the night Saigon fell (his parents' marriage was rapidly collapsing due to John's postwar trauma and alcoholism). Next comes an exhaustively researched history of the war—including a harrowing retelling of the My Lai massacre, during which civilians were brutally murdered by crazed American soldiers—within the narrative of the father-son trip, aided by Truong and Hien, their entertaining and illuminating Vietnamese tour guides. As Bissell repeatedly presses his father to confess regrets about Vietnam, the two push toward an ambivalent sense of closure on national and personal wounds. A final, less effective, section gathers testimonials from American and Vietnamese veterans' children. This humorous memoir, travelogue and accessible history—the author's most ambitious book—confirms Bissell's status as a rising star of American literature. (Mar.)

With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change
Fred Pearce. Beacon, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8070-8576-9

Pearce (When the Rivers Run Dry) presents some climate modelers' frightening predictions about the consequences of increased global warming. After studying the history of the earth's climate changes, these scientists have learned that, under pressure from natural forces, major shifts can happen abruptly. Today, with the added stress of human interference, irreversible changes could threaten the habitability of our planet. For example, drought and fire could cause the Amazon rainforest to disappear; huge amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that can be 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, could be released by the meltdown of Siberian peat; and aerosol emissions in India and China could end the indispensable Asian monsoon. Hard-line skeptics disagree, of course, but Pearce cites highly respected scientists who assert that the threats have been underestimated, especially by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even President Bush's chief climate modeler notes that the glaciers and ice sheets at the poles are disintegrating at alarming rates and warns that we may be only a decade and one degree of warming away from global catastrophe. The science behind climate studies is complex, but Pearce makes it accessible enough to terrify even the most uninitiated layperson. (Mar.)

Almost Human: Robots Think
Lee Gutkind. Norton, $25.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-393-05867-3

Gutkind (In Fact) spent six years as a self-described "fly on the wall" at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, watching a group of scientists—mostly grad students—try to develop human movement and decision-making capabilities. The machines he encountered came in a variety of shapes and sizes, from dog-shaped toys programmed to play soccer to a Hummer equipped with sensors that enable it to drive itself. As that Hummer indicates, the institute's research isn't confined to the lab: Gutkind follows his roboticists to abandoned mine shafts and the northern edges of Chile, where they use the world's driest desert to test machines developed to find signs of life on the surface of Mars. Gutkind's reporting captures the individual quirks of the scientists—like one researcher who only shaves on Sundays to save time during the week for his research—but his low-key tone can mute the excitement of their successes, especially given the fail-fix-try-again nature of most of their projects. Yet even though his story lacks the drive of books like Soul of a New Machine or Hackers, it gives a solid sense of what's going on in the field. 15 illus. (Mar.)

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
David Damrosch. Holt, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8029-2

In the tradition of Edmund Wilson, Columbia literature professor Damrosch unearths the first great masterpiece of world literature: the ancient epic of the legendary Sumerian king Gilgamesh. Several copies of a largely complete version of the 4,000-year-old poem, which follows Gilgamesh on a heroic quest for immortality as he seeks out a survivor of a major deluge, were part of the great library assembled at the palace of Nineveh by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who ruled from 669 B.C. and sought ancient texts to guide him in ruling after his brother's disastrous rebellion. After Nineveh was sacked in 612 B.C., the Gilgamesh epic was forgotten for more than 2,000 years until archeologists Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam uncovered the library and shipped 100,000 clay tablets and fragments to the British Museum in the 1840s and '50s. There, in 1872, assistant curator George Smith decoded the cuneiform writing and Akkadian language and discovered that the epic offered a controversial earlier version of the biblical flood account. Damrosch's fascinating literary sleuthing will appeal to scholars and lay readers alike as they ponder the intricacies of cuneiform, the abuses heaped on the Iraqi Rassam and the working-class Smith by the Victorian class system, and recent Gilgamesh-inspired novels by Philip Roth (The Great American Novel) and Saddam Hussein. (Mar.)

The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
Susan Wise Bauer. Norton, $29.95 (800p) ISBN 978-0-393-05974-8

Bauer (author of the four-volume The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child) guides readers on a fast-paced yet thorough tour of the ancient worlds of Sumer, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Mesopotamia and Rome. Drawing on epics, legal texts, private letters and court histories, she introduces individuals who lived through the famines, plagues, floods, wars and empire building of the ancient world: the marvelous array of characters includes Gilgamesh, Sumer's first epic hero; Yü, the founder of the Xia dynasty in China; and Tiglath-Pileser III, who restored the Assyrian empire's fortunes. Because Bauer covers so much time and territory, she focuses on the Western cultures with which she seems most comfortable; the chapters on Asia and India are the least developed. In addition, some of her assertions—for instance, that the biblical book of Joshua is the clearest guide we possess to the establishment of an Israelite kingdom in Canaan—contradict general scholarly opinion or are simply wrong. However, Bauer's elegant prose and her command of much of the material makes this a wonderful starting point for the study of the ancient world. 80 maps. (Feb.)

The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Adam Sisman. Viking, $25.95 (478p) ISBN 978-0-670-03822-0

The close (but ill-fated) friendship between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously spawned England's Romantic revolution in poetry. Although the men barely meet until almost halfway into this narrative, Sisman (who won a National Book Critics Circle award for Boswell's Presumptuous Task) provides an extensive background to their relationship, delineating in particular the political landscape that so influenced both men's thinking. The book opens with Wordsworth's travels through revolutionary France and his growing intimacy with his sister, Dorothy. But as soon as the charismatic Coleridge enters the scene in 1797, Wordsworth recedes—perhaps because, as a reluctant letter writer, he left fewer resources for Sisman to draw on. Still, Sisman elegantly weaves the two men's stories together. Knowing how people tend to justify their own actions, Sisman is appropriately skeptical of their own accounts of their lives, using them to propose the most likely scenarios rather than as hard fact. Though lengthy, this book engages the reader's attention, freely mixing larger questions of politics with gossip, which helps bring to life figures long reified in the public imagination. At times there is too much detail, which doesn't enhance an already overloaded story explored extensively elsewhere. But Sisman does open up to the general reader the personal interactions that led to the birth of Romanticism. 16 pages of photos. (Feb. 19)

Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World
Charles Higham. Carroll & Graf, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-78671-889-4

It would be difficult to write a tedious account of beautiful and appealing Jennie Jerome (1854–1921), who gave birth to future British prime minister Winston Churchill, but celebrity biographer Higham (The Duchess of Windsor) has managed to do just that. In gossipy but unexciting prose, he details the minutiae of Jennie's birth and childhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., as the daughter of Leonard Jerome, a corrupt and criminal investor who frequently traveled in Europe. In 1874 Jennie, against the family's opposition, married Lord Randolph Churchill, who, with his wife's eager backing, became deeply involved in English politics. The couple spent much of their time in and out of sexual liaisons and scandals until Randolph's death in 1895. They also ran up huge gambling debts. Jennie married twice more (the second union ended in divorce) to much younger men. The author's attempt to turn a flashy, compulsively promiscuous socialite into an early feminist fails miserably, although the fact that Jennie established a magazine and built a hospital for wounded troops during WWI is of interest. Winston, who was conceived before his parents' marriage, makes brief appearances. Replete with sensational details, this account nevertheless fails to bring its subject to life. Photos. (Feb.)

The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
Tim Hashaw. Carroll & Graf, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-78671-718-7

Hashaw (Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle for Mixed America) offers a welcome variation on early America and the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Historians have long known that Africans first appeared in the Virginia record in 1619. Hashaw traces those first black Virginians back to Portuguese Angola: they were captives on a Spanish slave ship, which was attacked by two pirate vessels that eventually transported 60 or so Africans to Virginia and Bermuda. Hashaw recreates the lives some of these early African Virginians made for themselves: Benjamin Doll purchased six indentured English servants, became a plantation owner, learned to read and write, and was appointed by a white widow to serve as her attorney. Another eventually purchased African slaves. Perhaps straining to find a partially happy ending to the tragic first scene in the history of American racial slavery, Hashaw notes that Angolan Virginians participated in Bacon's Rebellion, and he suggests that the 1676 revolt was the first expression of a fighting spirit that culminated in abolition. Hashaw offers both an exciting story of crime on the high seas and a fascinating social history of 17th-century black America. Illus., maps. (Feb. 5)

Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship That Saved the Revolution
David A. Clary. Bantam, $27 (512p) ISBN 978-0-553-80435-5

Personal friends and political allies, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette had one of the most important friendships of the 18th century. In this enjoyable study, Clary (The Place Where Hell Bubbled Up: A History of the First National Park) argues that although each man was a hero of the American Revolution, it was their partnership that secured American victory. Both men were orphans, and their devotion to each other was motivated by a deep psychological bond. As the title suggests, Washington was something of a father figure to the younger Frenchman, and Lafayette gave the general "unwavering loyalty, truly filial devotion." But the mentoring was not wholly one-sided: Lafayette was committed to the abolition of slavery, and Clary suggests that it was because of Lafayette's influence that Washington chose to free his slaves on his wife's death. The chapters on Lafayette's role in the French Revolution and Washington's anguish over Lafayette's imprisonment make this book far broader than the usual 1776 account. Occasionally, Clary gives over to cutesy Frenchisms (about Lafayette being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, he writes, "If this was martial glory, très bien"). Still, on the whole, Clary has satisfyingly woven together grand military history with an intimate portrait of deep affection. Illus. (Feb. 6)

American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China
Matthew Polly. Gotham, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-592-40262-5

In this smoothly written memoir, 98-pound weakling Polly makes the age-old decision to turn his nerdy self into a fighting machine. Polly's quest for manhood leads this guy from Topeka, Kans., to the Shaolin Temple, ancient home of the fighting monks and setting for 10,000 chop-socky movies. As much a student of Chinese culture as he is a martial artist, Polly derives a great deal of humor from the misunderstandings that follow a six-foot-three laowai (white foreigner) in a China taking its first awkward steps into capitalism after Tiananmen Square. Polly has a good eye for characters and introduces the reader to a Finnish messiah, a practitioner of "iron crotch" kung fu, and his nagging girlfriend. We get the inside dope on Chinese dating, Chinese drinking games and a medical system apparently modeled on the Spanish Inquisition. The last hundred pages of the book lose focus, and Polly doesn't convincingly demonstrate how he transforms himself from a stumbling geek to a kickboxing stud who can stand toe-to-toe with the highest-ranked fighter in the world. Although Polly may fall short in sharing Shaolin's secrets, as a chronicler of human absurdity he makes all the right moves. (Feb.)

The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures
Louis Theroux. Da Capo, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-306-81503-4

Ten years after hosting a BBC series on weird American subcultures, Theroux decided to make a "Reunion Tour" and write a book about how his interviewees' lives had changed. Theroux's weird Americans were UFO enthusiasts, porn stars, Aryan Nation white supremacists, brothel prostitutes, gangsta rappers, become-a-millionaire scammers, Heaven's Gate survivors and, strangely, Ike Turner. Theroux (son of writer Paul Theroux) likes them because he believes they use weirdness to feel "alive," and that's "more important than telling the truth." Apart from that, what they have in common, 10 years later, is their unavailability—the porn star had become a computer programmer, the UFOer was inhabiting a different reality, and the prostitute was either born-again or doing drugs, hard to say. So Theroux settled for talking to others in their communities. Although he sometimes criticizes himself for botching things (trying unsuccessfully to attend the Millionaires seminar as the guest of a blacklisted former adherent), Theroux never criticizes his subjects, confining himself to what he hopes will be inoffensive questions—like, have you "ever thought of trying to be less racist?" As their rants become repetitious, these "weird" subjects become surprisingly boring. By the end, readers may wonder why Theroux still finds these people so "alive," so interesting. (Feb.)

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche
Gary Krist. Holt, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-0-8050-7705-6

In a briskly paced and vividly written account, novelist Krist (Bad Chemistry) relates the tale of two trains, trapped on the tracks in Washington's Cascade Mountains in February 1910, that were subsequently swept away by the deadliest avalanche in American history. With a wealth of end notes attesting to the scope of his research, Krist complements his thorough recreation of events with telegrams, journal entries and newspaper clippings. He also does an elegant job of evoking the hubris that led to the crisis, the claustrophobia and panic of those who endured it and the misery of those left to deal with its aftermath, from the devastated relatives to the Great Northern Railway officials whose trains, Krist writes, were supposed to be "the ultimate symbols of twentieth-century America's new mastery over its own geography and climate." The tragedy gains resonance from Krist's avoidance of hyperbole, as he chooses instead to draw out the emotional toll by focusing on individual stories like that of Ida Starrett, who was the last person to be rescued but who was trapped in the snow atop her own dying baby. As a novelist, he also displays a keen sense for the telling of the story itself and the importance of balancing detail with pace. (Feb.)

Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, and Rock 'n' Roll
Evelyn McDonnell. Da Capo, $21.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7382-1054-4

In a lightweight offering, McDonnell, a 1990s music critic and a former editor at the Village Voice, explores the harmonious convergence of art and motherhood at age 40. Born to suburban bohemians in Milwaukee the year the Beatles played Ed Sullivan's show, McDonnell was weaned on the Jackson 5 and the women's movement, blow-dried hair and cowl necks, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. She attended Brown at the height of its coolness, and found "refuge in noise." Moving to Manhattan's East Village in 1989, she got a job as a copy editor at the Voice, a pacesetter in rock criticism, which segued into writing for other magazines. Her "tomboy soul" was undercut by a short-lived marriage to a man named Tad, but rebounded with a secure job as a senior editor at the Voice. Her romance with a Michigan carpenter with two young daughters, Bud, led to moving them all out to New York, then on to booming, multicultural Miami, where the author got a job as pop music critic at the Miami Herald. Motherhood soon followed in the form of son Cole, and the author has to wing it mostly as a parent and stepparent. Her rather tedious, unenlightening memoir closes as she bemoans the loss of feminist progress in the behavior of Britneys and Jessicas. (Feb.)

The Eighth Promise: An American Son's Tribute to His Toisanese China-Born Mother
William Poy Lee. Rodale, $23.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-59486-456-8

While many immigrants are focused on assimilation, Lee's mother, Poy Jen Lee, came to America with a different agenda. In 1948, Poy Jen agreed to leave Suey Wan, her Toisan village in the Pearl River delta of China, to come to America as the wife of a Toisanese-American man. Before leaving, she made eight promises to her mother, among them that she'd find good husbands for her sisters and arrange immigration papers for her mother and brother; teach her children Chinese and Toisan customs, so they'd know their heritage; keep clan sisterhood strong; and cook traditional medicinal soups. The eighth promise bound Poy Jen to the fundamental Toisan ethos, "to live her life in complete compassion" for all people—her family, her Chun clan sisterhood and her larger community. In this remarkable memoir, mother and son, in alternating chapters, tell the story of their life in San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1950s to the present. Between American racism and power struggles in the Chinese community, it's a tribute to Toisan endurance that Poy Jen not only held her family together but also brought her children back to China to fortify their clan connection. Fans of Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston shouldn't hesitate to embrace this formidable matriarch and the son she taught to cook her chi soups. (Feb.)

Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science
David Lindley. Doubleday, $26 (272p) ISBN 978-0-385-51506-5

The uncertainty in this delightful book refers to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, an idea first postulated in 1927 by physicist Werner Heisenberg in his attempt to make sense out of the developing field of quantum mechanics. As Lindley so well explains it, the concept of uncertainty shook the philosophical underpinnings of science. It was Heisenberg's work that, to a great extent, kept Einstein from accepting quantum mechanics as a full explanation for physical reality. Similarly, it was the Uncertainty Principle that demonstrated the limits of scientific investigation: if Heisenberg is correct there are some aspects of the physical universe that are to remain beyond the reach of scientists. As he has done expertly in books like Boltzmann's Atom, Lindley brings to life a critical period in the history of science, explaining complex issues to the general reader, presenting the major players in an engaging fashion, delving into the process of scientific discovery and discussing the interaction between science and society. Thus, Lindley presents a very good chapter dissecting historian of science Paul Forman's iconic, if terribly flawed, analysis of the same time period. (Feb. 20)

Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion
Jay Heinrichs. Three Rivers, $13.95 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-307-34144-0

Magazine executive Heinrichs is a clever, passionate and erudite advocate for rhetoric, the 3,000-year-old art of persuasion, and his user-friendly primer brims with anecdotes, historical and popular-culture references, sidebars, tips and definitions. Heinrichs describes, in "Control the Tense," Aristotle's favorite type of rhetoric, the deliberative, pragmatic argument that, rather than bogging down on past offenses, promises a future payoff, e.g., a victim of office backstabbing can refocus the issues on future choices: "How is blaming me going to help us get the next contract?" To illustrate "Control the mood," Heinrichs relates Daniel Webster's successful rhetorical flourish in a murder case: he narrated the horrific murder by following Cicero's dictum that when one argue emotionally, one should speak simply and show great self-control. Readers who want to terrify underlings into submission will learn from Heinrichs that speaking softly while letting your eyes betray cold fury does the trick handily. Thomas Jefferson illustrates Heinrichs's dictum "Gain the high ground"; keenly aware of an audience's common beliefs and values, Jefferson used a rhetorical commonplace (all people are created equal) to launch the Declaration of Independence. (Feb. 27)

Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
Lisa Margonelli. Doubleday, $26 (368p) ISBN 978-0-385-51145-2

In the last few years, just about everyone has had "oil on the brain" at some point, as record gas prices and a disastrous war have called our dependency into question. But though the U.S. burns 10,000 gallons of gasoline a second, few of us know how oil is created and drilled, how gas stations compete or what actually goes on in a refinery—let alone what happens in the mysterious Strategic Petroleum Reserve, where the U.S. government stores roughly 700 million barrels of oil in underground salt caverns on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Margonelli answers these questions and more, before examining some of the key patches in the oil industry's geopolitical quilt: source countries like Chad, where promises of real local growth fall hopelessly short, or China, which, "by 2025, perhaps, will import as much crude oil as the U.S. does now." Writing in a witty, first-person voice, Margonelli criticizes corruption in places like Nigeria, while expressing her "love of hydrocarbons" for the unlikeliness of their formation and the ingenuity required to extricate them. This is an original, open-minded look at a subject about which everyone has an opinion. (Feb. 6)

The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis
Alireza Jafarzadeh. Palgrave, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4039-7664-2

Best known for bringing details of Iran's nuclear program to international attention, Jafarzadeh offers a harrowing portrait of his native country with this sobering blend of history and contemporary politics. Starting with the 1979 revolution that marked the ascendance of the Ayatollah Khomeini, he argues that Islamist extremism has played a central role in the last 25 years of Iranian politics, including the Iraq-Iran War and the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which Jafarzadeh believes was orchestrated by the Khamenei regime. All the while, he contends, Iran has maintained a covert nuclear weapons program, threatening to radically destabilize the Middle East and strengthen the reach and scope of the oppressive Iranian regime. Jafarzadeh, a foreign affairs analyst for Fox News who was the U.S. spokesman for the National Coalition of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) until 2003, when it was placed on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations, has a strong emotional investment in his subject. He dismisses military and diplomatic solutions to the imminent nuclear crisis he foresees, but suggests that international support of Iranian resistance movements could succeed in upsetting the current regime. Highly detailed and compelling, his account is accessible to a general reader but will appeal mainly to students of Middle East politics. (Feb.)

The Sack of Panama: Captain Morgan and the Battle for the Caribbean
Peter Earle. St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-36142-6

In his latest vivid and well-researched account of the great era of piracy, historian Earle (The Pirate Wars, etc.) focuses on the greatest achievement of the English corsairs who sailed to Jamaica and their leader Henry Morgan. The capture and sack of Panama in 1671 was the culmination of five years of no-quarter warfare between Spain and Britain in the Caribbean. During that time, one island was captured three times by different people; two cities and three towns were sacked; and Morgan's buccaneers annihilated a Spanish fleet in less than two hours. Earle's extensive use of unexplored Spanish records enables him to avoid the triumphalism of most Anglocentric accounts of these operations. Still, it's clear that Morgan and his followers were willing to accept almost any risk to make profit and harm Spain, and were vicious even by 17th-century standards. The Spaniards appear consistently behind the curve, ascribing their catastrophes to God's will instead of developing their ability to fight back. Ultimately, the English government ended buccaneering's heyday, to preserve a treaty that ended the war with Spain in Europe—but hopes for friendly relations in the Caribbean were destroyed by the flames in Panama on January 28, 1671. (Feb.)

The Notebooks of Robert Frost
Edited by Robert Faggen. Harvard/Belknap, $39.95 (822p) ISBN 978-0-674-02311-6

A new book containing unpublished work by America's most famous poet is a literary event. While he was not much of a diarist, Frost avidly kept notebooks throughout his life. He recorded his daily musings in what Frost scholar Faggen calls " 'ordinaries,' unassuming dime-store spiral pads and school theme books." This roughly chronological (the poet abandoned and then resumed writing in some notebooks) and thoroughly annotated edition offers devotees a substantial glimpse of the workings of Frost's complex and often contradictory mind, though it provides little in the way of narrative. In scattered jottings on poetry, teaching, politics and family—to name just a few of the many topics covered—Frost drafts poems ("And oh but it was fetching/ To see the wretches retching"); theorizes about poetics ("The Poem must have as good a point as a [sic] anecdote or joke"); lists topics for later writings ("Subjects used in 1906 Eng classes.... Things My Mother Keeps to Remember My Infancy by"); spins aphorisms, stories and sketches; and even shows the development of famous quotes ("No surprise to author none to reader"). Better suited to flipping around in than reading straight through, this is an essential book for Frost fans and serious poetry lovers, who will find it to be a trove of Frost's famously earthy and yet deceptively simple wisdom, as well as a damn good read. (Jan.)

Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present
Michael B. Oren. Norton, $29.95 (736p) ISBN 978-0-393-05826-0

In this engaging if unbalanced survey, the author of the acclaimed Six Days of War finds continuity in U.S. relations with the Middle East from the early 19th-century war against the Barbary pirates to today's Iraq war. As America's power grew, he contends, strategic considerations became complicatedby the region's religious significance, especially to the Protestant missionaries whose interests drove U.S. policyin the 19th century and who championed a Jewish state in Palestine long before the Zionist movement took up that cause. Meanwhile, Oren notes, Americans' romantic fantasies about the Muslim world (as expressed in Mideast-themed movies) have repeatedly run aground on stubborn, squalid realities, most recently in the Iraq fiasco. Oren dwells on the pre-WWII era, when U.S.-Mideast relations were of little significance. The postwar period, when these relations were central to world affairs, gets shoehorned into 127 hasty pages, and the emphasis on continuity gives short shrift to the new and crucial role of oil in U.S. policy making. Oren's treatment views this history almost entirely through American eyes; the U.S. comes off as usually well intentioned and idealistic, if often confused and confounded by regional complexities. Oren's is a fluent, comprehensive narrative of two centuries of entanglement, but it's analytically disappointing. Photos. (Jan. 15)

The First Total War: Napolean's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It
David A. Bell. Houghton Mifflin, $26 (416p) ISBN 978-0-618-34965-4

Bell combines his roles as professor of history at Johns Hopkins and contributing editor for the New Republic in this interpretive study arguing that history's first total war was waged during the Napoleonic era. Scholars have increasingly stressed the global aspects of the network of conflicts extending across North America, South Asia and Europe during that time. Bell goes further, presenting a fundamental transformation of war from an ordinary aspect of human existence to an apocalyptic experience whose "terrible sublimity" tested societies and individuals to their limits and ultimately became a redemptive experience. Total war developed not in the context of nationalism or revolutionary zeal, but in the fundamental sense of a "culture of war" driving participants in the direction of complete engagement and total abandonment of restraint. Ironically, the intellectual roots of this modern militarism are in the Enlightenment belief in the coming of perpetual peace. Revolutionary France transformed a moral concept into a practical one: war to emancipate humanity from its past. Bell's conclusion that this mentality survived two world wars is open to challenge, yet his appeal for the rediscovery of restraint and limitation is particularly relevant at a time of nuclear proliferation and apocalyptic rhetoric. (Jan. 12)

Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries from World War I to Iraq
Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger. Penguin, $14 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-14-303871-9

This inspiring collection of children's war diaries provides a compelling window into life during conflict. Heartfelt voices detail the fear, longing, hatred and angst we associate with war, but also the banality of daily life, as the 14 authors struggle to interpret their changing societies and cling to normalcy. Russian Nina Kosterina, aged 15 at the outbreak of WWII, describes the desire she feels for a boy in her class as she grapples with a decision to defend her state. At the same time, Austrian Jew Inge Pollack, who was separated from her parents at age 12, writes of homesickness and her burgeoning love for her foster father. Filipovic, aged 11 when the war in the Balkans broke out, describes playing dressup in the one room available to her, amid the perils of sniper fire and without electricity or water. Through these myriad voices, Filipovic and Challenger create a gripping historical narrative whereby war stories are told not through facts and dates but through the honest impressions of youth. Many of the diarists have not survived, but we are fortunate that their stories—many previously unpublished—still remain. (Jan.)

Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers
Erika Andersen. Portfolio, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59184-151-7

The management lessons Andersen distills from her career as a consultant to corporations like MTV and Bank of America are not innovative—most executives have heard about the importance of listening and establishing clear lines of communication. The centerpiece of her technique is a form of personality typing developed in the 1960s to measure workers based on their assertiveness, responsiveness and versatility. Evaluating employees through these "social styles" templates, Andersen promises, will help determine "how they like and need to be managed." Writing in a pleasant, conversational tone, the author begins each chapter with an imagined scene in a garden, establishing an overriding metaphor for her techniques for everything from creating job descriptions to firing underperforming employees. Andersen makes extensive use of worksheets and what-if scenarios to elaborate her points, and summarizes the "big ideas" in each chapter. For rookies, it's a serviceable introduction to the field. (Jan.)

Accelerants: 12 Strategies to Sell Faster, Close Deals Faster and Grow Your Business Faster
Michael A. Boylan. Portfolio, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59184-150-0

At its core, Boylan's message is simple: sales pitches often fail because they're too long, don't contain enough solid information and aren't targeted to the right people. He spins that out into a fancy chart identifying 12 constraints on any sales pitch and the 12 tools he's developed to overcome them, each of which he addresses in detail. After showing readers how to suss out prospective clients' attitudes about their products and their competitors, he delivers the crucial (though inelegantly phrased) advice to "metric the message"—that is, to "grind down the messages and value propositions" into a concise, specific promise about what you can deliver. In presentations, less is more, argues Boylan (The Power to Get In). He recommends cutting your pitch down to a third of its usual length, front-loading it with the most essential information and getting into details only if the customer wants to hear more. On its own, Boylan's advice is useful, but he turns the closing sections into a blatant commercial pitch, urging readers to get fuller training in the Accelerant program through his consulting firm. For most readers, the introduction should provide all the help they need. (Jan.)

MadScam: Kick-Ass Advertising Without the Madison Avenue Price Tag
George Parker. Entrepreneur, $19.95 paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-599180-42-7

After 30 years of agency experience with Madison Avenue firms like Ogilvy and Mather and Young and Rubicam, Parker, who is known for his advertising blogs "AdScam.com" and "AdHurl.com," offers this friendly, informative guide to advertising for small businesses. After outlining how to focus your advertising on your business's strengths, find your unique selling point and budget appropriately, Parker devotes a chapter each to print, television and new media ad strategies. In the final sections, he discusses how to hire freelancers and agencies, and how to track results. Resources and a glossary round out the book. Beginners will find more useful ideas than an established small business person, though his insider tips (e.g., a list of "Dumb Things You Should Avoid" when advertising, such as "trying to associate yourself with things that have no relevance to what you do") can be very insightful. (Jan.)

Nothing Down for Women: The Smart Woman's Quick-Start Guide to Real Estate Investing
Robert G. Allen and
Karen Nelson Bell. Free Press, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9784-4

Despite several introductory chapters, it remains unclear why Bell found it necessary to "translate" Allen's bestselling real estate book, Nothing Down, in her own words, so women could understand it. That isn't the only aspect of the book that raises questions. Another is a story about how paying an elderly woman $35,000 for a home that was worth $85,000, but assisting her in moving to a new place shows how buying real estate with nothing down is all about helping people. Despite her shrill and repetitive writing style, Bell is clearly giddy about the property she has accumulated with other people's money, often as a result of someone else's financial distress. Because women are busy—in fact, Bell admits she is too busy to write longer chapters—the book is structured into five-minute dollops of Allen's advice on investing in real estate, followed by quizzes and homework. But readers trying to grasp the underlying theory and expectations behind acquiring real estate cheaply and renting it out or flipping are likely to feel shortchanged. (Jan.)

The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World Class Companies Is Overtaking the World
Antoine van Agtmael. Free Press, $28 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9457-7

Over the past 15 years, emerging market economies have grown rapidly, despite volatility and frequent crises. Companies from Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico and China, as well as some smaller countries, have become global leaders in a variety of industries. This book gives capsule summaries of 25 such companies—including Samsung, Concha y Toro, Televisa and Hyundai—to dispel the belief that developed market economy "companies continue to lead in global presence, in technology and design, and above all, in brand recognition and marketing prowess." As an experienced investor at the World Bank Group, the author has long acquaintance with these companies and shrewd insight into their strengths and weaknesses. His compelling summaries illustrate creative management solutions absent from most business textbooks and case studies. The best of these companies have turned challenges that are uncommon in developed economies into unconventional opportunities. But readers should also be wary: van Agtmael does not warn investors that good companies are not always good investments, because profits do not always accrue to shareholders or the stock may be overpriced. (Jan. 9)

The Big Investment Lie: What Your Financial Advisor Doesn't Want You to Know
Michael Edesess. Berrett-Koehler, $24.95 (250p) ISBN 978-1-57675-407-8

Having learned deceptive sales practices as a teenager selling magazine subscriptions, Edesess sold overpriced credit life insurance before becoming an investment adviser after a boss told him that "the way to make money is to handle money." By 2004, he found himself in Florida, failing to entice investors into a trading scheme that lost 80% over six months, when the company promoting the idea collapsed without paying him. That experience, he says, "provoked me to write" this book. But his pose as a reformed sinner is unconvincing. The how-to chapter on deceptive sales is more animated than his cursory review of academic literature arguing for low-cost, diversified, buy-and-hold strategies. He likes self-promoting investment failures, like the ones created by Charles Ponzi and the Beardstown Ladies, but disparages successful investors like Warren Buffett, Ed Thorp, George Soros and Julian Robertson. Edesses's most useful ideas are covered better in John Bogle's books, among others. (Jan.)

The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900
David Edgerton. Oxford Univ., $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-19-532283-5

A class titled History of Modern Technology 101 would probably focus on electricity, mass production, the automobile and the Internet, but according to British historian Edgerton, it would miss the real history of 20th-century technology. We should pay less attention to novelty and invention, he argues, and more to the technologies that people actually use in their daily lives—"a whole invisible world of technologies," many of which have served the poor more than the rich, such as corrugated metal and flat-pack IKEA furniture. Ranging across broad swaths of history, Edgerton offers multiple examples of overlooked technologies that are far more important than they might initially seem, including the condom and the sewing machine, as well as innovations in killing, such as insecticides, slaughterhouses and chemical warfare. The result, while sometimes overly pedantic for nonhistorians, is a provocative challenge to students of technology. (Jan.)

Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
Pauline W. Chen. Knopf, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-26353-7

Like most physicians, Chen, a transplant surgeon and former UCLA faculty member, entered medicine in order to save lives. But as a medical student in the 1980s, she discovered that she had to face death repeatedly and "found disturbing inconsistencies" as she learned from teachers and colleagues "to suspend or suppress any shared human feelings for my dying patients." Chen writes with immaculately honed prose and moral passion as she recounts her quest to overcome "lessons in denial and depersonalization," vividly evoking the paradoxes of end-of-life care in an age of life-preserving treatments. Chen charts her personal and professional rites of passage in dealing with mortality, from her first dissection of a human cadaver, through the first time she pronounces a patient dead, to having to officially took responsibility for the accidental death of a patient in her care. Focusing on the enormous moral and psychological pressures on doctors and on the need for greater empathy in hospital end-of-life care, Chen also reports on signs of change within the profession, stemming from both criticisms of training and institutions and from physicians' initiatives to bring a greater sense of shared humanity to their work. Announced first printing of 75,000. (Jan. 17)

Kickboxing Geishas: How Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation
Veronica Chambers. Free Press, $27 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7432-7156-1

In her fifth book, Chambers (Mama's Girl) reports on dramatic changes in women's lives in postbust Japan, where, she notes, men are no longer the "financial titans" and where women—international travelers and avid consumers—are now driving the economy. Yet, Chambers says, rampant consumerism masks the true complexity of these women's lives as they negotiate the divide between Japan's traditions and their own more career-centered outlook. With compassion and warm wit, the author talks to successful Japanese women—from hip-hop superstars to senior corporate executives and entrepreneurs—about their education, careers, personal lives and aspirations, and about the social norms they face as they carve out a bold new existence in a country wedded to tradition. Chambers portrays her subjects as social pioneers operating in a cultural vacuum, without the support of a widespread women's movement. Chambers captures a gender clash, in which young Japanese women despair of Japanese men's cultural insularity and inability to lose face. (She also interviews men who seek to break with stereotypic Japanese masculinity.) Writing in a hip, visually vivid and entertaining style, Chambers fluently places the courage and isolation of these women in a briefly sketched social and economic context, noting that "today's young career women—entrepreneurial, independent—have more [in common] with their hard-working grandmothers than they do with their Bubble Economy housewife mothers." (Jan. 9)

Fight Like a Girl: How to Be a Fearless Feminist
Megan Seely. New York Univ., $65 (300p) ISBN 978-0-8147-4001-9; $17.95 paper ISBN 978-0-8147-4002-6

With her guide addressed to a generation of girls who have grown up "denying feminism but embracing its rewards," the youngest woman ever elected president of the California chapter of NOW seeks to make feminism palatable for a generation put off by outmoded images of unshaven legs and burning bras. Echoing Robin Morgan's phrase "sisterhood is global," Seely takes a holistic approach, touching on everything from the exploitation of sweatshop workers (90% of whom are women) and the importance of easing racial tensions within the feminist community to her own struggle against bulimia—she presents herself as living proof of the depth and prevalence of body hatred among women—along with more familiar subjects like Title IX and the politics of abortion. Each chapter in this beginner's guide is punctuated by boxes containing definitions of terms (patriarchy, glass ceiling), brief descriptions of relevant court cases and suggestions for further reading. Seely also includes examples of grassroots activism and ways of getting involved in the movement. Eschewing the exclamation points of today's "Girl Power" in favor of question marks, this is a thorough, thought-provoking introduction, but more informative than inspiring. (Jan.)

The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans "Mafia" Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob
Tom Smith. Lyons, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-59228-901-1

The court appearances of immigrant Italians for the 1890 murder of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy was the first organized crime trial to capture worldwide attention. Though it is now a household term, the word "mafia" wasn't a part of the American lexicon till the acquittal of half of the 19 defendants in the case that led to a mob lynching of 11 Italians, nine of whom had been found not guilty and two who had yet to be tried. The lynchings—the largest mass lynching in American history—not only caused great tensions between Italy and the U.S., but the trial itself left a stigma on Italian-Americans that has lasted to the present day. Freelance reporter Smith digs deep into the Big Easy's murky past to uncover the underlying connections between the compromised police force, the battling Italian dockworkers' syndicates and the city's corrupt political factions that made New Orleans' legal system ineffective in the simplest of cases. Quoting heavily from newspaper accounts, Smith is able to bring a local and timely flavor to his otherwise straightforward account of Hennessy's life, the murder and its spiderweb of repercussions. The sensational nature of the case certainly lends itself to conspiracy theories, but Smith stays unbiased, allowing his readers to use the facts to come to their own conclusions. (Jan.)

Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media
Eric Klinenberg. Metropolitan, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8050-7819-6

Klinenberg is clearly aiming to deliver the Fast Food Nation of corporate media, and his disdain for conglomerates blares from every page, constantly reminding readers that a handful of companies have a stranglehold on media outlets, subverting the public interest for the sake of profit. It's a grim world where radio stations can't inform their listeners about local disasters because all the programming is recorded at a studio in some other state, where TV newscasters don't bother covering state elections, and even the alternative press has given its pages over to advertisers. The author's coverage appears scattershot, because it tries to take in as much of the media landscape as possible, but each section is extensively reported, and the pieces do finally fit together in the final chapters. As Klinenberg details former FCC chairman Michael Powell's efforts to loosen restrictions on how many American television stations one corporation can own, the story becomes a perfect convergence of his issues with large corporate entities and the Bush administration, as well as his enthusiasm for grassroots civic activism. His impassioned call to restore local journalism and its role in creating informed, engaged communities is sure to strike a chord with readers. (Jan.)

All American: Why I Believe in Football, God and the War in Iraq
Robert McGovern. HarperCollins, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-061-22785-1

God and football are justified by the author's Catholic education and his four-season stint as an NFL linebacker (with the Chiefs, Steelers and Patriots), full of gridiron pratfalls and hymns to teamwork, goal setting and perseverance. The war in Iraq is justified by his experiences as an army lawyer prosecuting terrorists and insurgents in Baghdad, which he elaborates with strident rhetoric—"we serve the cause for [sic] peace and life, while our enemy seeks only chaos and death"—and tendentious argument. McGovern's case is simplistic and one-sided. He blames the violence in Iraq entirely on foreign terrorists while ignoring the sectarian strife engulfing the country. He insists that Saddam was a "clear and present danger" who would have attacked America if he could. Instead of confronting critics of the Iraq War head-on, McGovern conflates them with unnamed straw men who allegedly want to coddle Osama bin Laden. It all merges into a manifesto, complete with broadsides denouncing drugs and supporting the death penalty, a touch of France-bashing and jockishly cloying salutes to lawyer colleagues ("Deep down inside, John is really just a big old Teddy bear"), revered coaches and other all-Americans. McGovern's stay-the-course cheerleading seems irrelevant to the agonizing quandaries confronting America in Iraq or the results of the recent elections. Photos. (Jan. 30)