Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 12/11/2006
By Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 12/11/2006
Nonfiction
The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers Harry Bernstein. Random, $22.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-345-49580-8
Bernstein writes, "There are few rules or unwritten laws that are not broken when circumstances demand, and few distances that are too great to be traveled," about the figurative divide ("geographically... only a few yards, socially... miles and miles") keeping Jews and Christians apart in the poor Lancashire mill town in England where he was raised. In his affecting debut memoir, the nonagenarian gives voice to a childhood version of himself who witnesses his older sister's love for a Christian boy break down the invisible wall that kept Jewish families from Christians across the street. With little self-conscious authorial intervention, young Harry serves as a wide-eyed guide to a world since dismantled—where "snot rags" are handkerchiefs, children enter the workforce at 12 and religion bifurcates everything, including industry. True to a child's experience, it is the details of domestic life that illuminate the tale—the tenderness of a mother's sacrifice, the nearly Dickensian angst of a drunken father, the violence of schoolyard anti-Semitism, the "strange odors" of "forbidden foods" in neighbor's homes. Yet when major world events touch the poverty-stricken block (the Russian revolution claims the rabbi's son, neighbors leave for WWI), the individual coming-of-age is intensified without being trivialized, and the conversational account takes on the heft of a historical novel with stirring success. (Apr.)
Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in AmericaJoan Shelley Rubin. Harvard/Belknap, $29.95 (450p) ISBN 978-0-674-02436-6
Americans—especially those who read poetry—like to ask whether poetry matters; Rubin's big cultural history demonstrates how, and how widely, it once did. From the 1880s through the 1950s, Americans of many tastes and stations considered poetry part of their daily lives; they read it to one another at home, memorized and recited it at schools, in citizenship ceremonies, in churches, in synagogues and in parades, and quoted it to reassure themselves, argue with one another or demonstrate their links to their past. Using a wide range of primary sources, Rubin (The Making of Middlebrow Culture) constructs a detailed and determinedly democratic study. Americans, she makes clear, saw poets as "celebrity and cipher," friend and wise elder, sophisticate and innocent, sometimes—as with Edna St. Vincent Millay—all these at once. Their many uses for verse contradicts simple oppositions of highbrow-lowbrow, canonical-obscure. Rubin might have spent less space on some conclusions few will find surprising (e.g., the continuing popularity of Longfellow), and she never quite says why (or whether) these uses of poetry have diminished. Nevertheless, her study should get attention, not just from historical circles but from people who want poems to matter now. B&w illus. (Apr.)
Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad ZooLawrence Anthony with Graham Spence. St. Martin's/Dunne, $23.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-312-35832-7
Anthony, a South African conservationist and recipient of the U.N.'s Earth Day award, details how, through a series of complex maneuvers, he entered Iraq after the American invasion and led the fight to save what was left of the Baghdad Zoo. Most of the animals were killed by war and looting; the remainder were starved and in filthy cages, with no staff to care for them. Anthony describes how he, along with the zoo's former deputy director and several brave workers, risked daily danger to save the bears, lions, tigers, monkeys and birds. Anthony fended off looters with a gun obtained from a sympathetic U.S. soldier, spent his own funds for equipment and bartered the use of a satellite phone for food and other essentials. Anthony vividly recounts the rescue of other animals, including the inhabitants of the appalling Luna Park Zoo and Saddam's prize Arabian horses, saved from the hands of black marketeers. The author takes no position on the invasion. His goal is for his mission, so dramatically recounted with journalist Spence's help, to set an example of conservation and respect for animal life. 8 pages of color photos. (Mar. 12)
The Dogs of Windcutter Down: One Shepherd's Struggle for SurvivalDavid Kennard. St. Martin's/Dunne, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-36200-3
For the past three years, Kennard, with his wife, Debbie, and their three children, has owned and managed a 150-acre sheep farm in England's rural North Devon. This account focuses both on the difficulties of maintaining a vanishing way of life and on five border collies Kennard (A Shepherd's Watch) has expertly trained to assist him in tending his flock. From late fall through the summer, the author deals with the specter of foot-and-mouth disease, a broken tractor, lice misdiagnosed as sheep scab and the ups and downs of birthing new lambs. When it becomes clear that Greg, the lead dog, is getting too old for his job, Kennard acquires an unusual-looking puppy that his children name Jake, a collie who will prove his worth. Pressed by mounting expenses, the Kennards decide to hold sheepdog demonstrations on their farm, which garner increasingly bigger and more responsive audiences. Kennard's commitment to sheep farming, despite the hardships, comes through clearly, but his low-key style lacks detail, and while anecdotes bring Kennard's children to life, his wife remains a cardboard figure. 24 b&w photos. (Mar.)
Villains' Paradise: A History of Britain's UnderworldDonald Thomas. Pegasus (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 paper (528p) ISBN 978-1-933648-17-0
The latest installment in Thomas's fascinating series unearthing the sordid underbelly of Britain (The Victorian Underworld) examines the postwar years, concluding his survey in the gritty 1970s. Between 1944 and 1945, he finds, violent crime almost doubled as army deserters and black marketeers struggled for control of the streets; by 1970, violent crime had only tripled. Not a shocking tabloid newspaper goes unread, not an Old Bailey transcript unperused, as Thomas tracks down the half-forgotten felons (Jack Spot, the Velvet Kid) who both terrorized and thrilled the country. Alongside the psychopathic killers (John Haigh, the "Acid Bath Murderer," who resembled Hollywood actor Ronald Colman), Thomas investigates the prostitution rings, the early days of drug dealing and the sharply dressed spivs who exported the fraud now known as three-card monte to the United States. On the other side, there's the creation of the Ghost Squad—undercover officers penetrating the underworld—and the rise of the "supergrass." In 1970, Bertie Smalls, a veteran of 15 armed robberies himself, put away 32 of his colleagues, who menacingly sang "We'll Meet Again" when he appeared in the witness box. It makes for wonderfully colorful history, told with all the relish of the true-crime aficionado in a very British, almost Dickensian kind of way. (Mar.)
Lois on the Loose: One Woman, One Motorcycle, 20,000 Miles Across the AmericasLois Pryce. St. Martin's, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-35221-9
Bored by her desk job at the BBC, Pryce decided to convert her travel daydreams into real-life adventure. At her local travel bookshop, she discovered a book called Jupiter's Travels by Ted Simon as well as a few handbooks on motorcycle adventuring, and she was hooked. She bought a small dirt bike, a versatile and affordable Yamaha XT225 Serow, and decided she'd bike from Anchorage, Alaska, to the southernmost city of South America, Ushuaia, Argentina—almost 20,000 miles. In this engaging read, Pryce narrates the adventure. Local bikers helped the witty and sociable Pryce get her Serow fixed, strangers offered shelter or advice and various friends joined her, for better or worse. She rode through flaking dried mud and boulder-strewn donkey paths, through broiling desert heat and blinding Andean snows. Armchair travelers will delight in this funny, vivid account and—almost—wish they'd done it themselves. B&w photos throughout. (Mar.)
Biography: A Brief HistoryNigel Hamilton. Harvard Univ., $21.95 (316p) ISBN 978-0-674-02466-3
This zesty romp through millennia of biographical portraits comes from the pen of a master biographer (JFK: Reckless Youth). Hamilton's a friendly spectator to his own art, undaunted by its age, variety or the number and skill of the practitioners who've gone before him. Starting with the ancient Gilgamesh epic, he speeds us through the forms—writing, theater, painting and film—in which biographers have portrayed and interpreted individual lives. No shrinking violet, he wrestles with every major figure who's tried a hand at biography or criticized biographers' work. While his own strong convictions are clear, he's fair in his assessment of others and the ideal referee. Not surprisingly, Hamilton uses the most ink on recent decades, when the protections to privacy have fallen away and every dimension of a subject's life has become fair game. That doesn't much bother him, although it deeply troubles others. He also leans to the risky view that our age has brought biographical art to its maturity. Perhaps it has. But even if time proves Hamilton wrong, no one will fail to find his brief, interpretive history of life stories compelling. It's hard to think of a better introduction to one of the most popular genres of literature and art today. B&w illus. (Mar.)
Imperfect Presidents: Tales of Presidential Misadventure and TriumphJim Cullen. Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4039-8474-6
Cullen (Born in the USA) unmasks the major mistakes of 11 American presidents. Some of his choices are predictable, such as FDR's fumble in trying to subvert the judiciary. Other choices seem quirky. Lincoln's greatest error? Arrogantly criticizing Methodist minister Peter Cartwright when the future president was a young man. Clinton's real misstep was not his failure to keep his pants zipped, but his health care plan. Cullen overreaches when he suggests that this political disaster was linked to Clinton's sexual shenanigans: in Cullen's view, Clinton delegated health care reform to his wife "in part [as] an act of personal atonement for marital infidelity." Cullen singles out the invasion of Iraq as the current president's grossest blunder, with his mishandling of Katrina a close second. A few of the portraits are redemptive. LBJ, who engaged in electoral fraud to get elected to the Senate in 1948, later signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Cullen's grand conclusion takes the tone of a tedious inspirational speech and trades in clichés ("Effective governance is a two-way street") as he pedantically explains that what really matters is not who the president is, but "who the people are" and what presidential behavior the American electorate will accept. This is a sadly thin contribution to presidential history. B&w illus. (Mar.)
1920: The Year of the Six PresidentsDavid Pietrusza. Carroll & Graf, $27.95 (544p) ISBN 978-0-78671-622-7
Pietrusza's (Rothstein) chronicle of the presidential election of 1920 is absorbing, despite the subtitle's rather tangential claim that the election involved six men who had served or would serve as president: Harding, Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover and both Roosevelts (though Teddy had died in 1919). This book isn't really about them, nor is it merely the story of one electoral race. Rather, Pietrusza is telling a grander tale, of a country toppling into "modernity, or what passed for it." In 1920, the automobile had overtaken the horse, jazz and the fox-trot were replacing the camp meeting as popular entertainment, people were learning to buy on installment, and more and more of those fox-trotting shoppers lived in cities. Presidential candidates, for the first time, courted women voters. (Democrat Cox was divorced, which was expected to play badly with the fairer sex.) Both parties waffled on the so-called race question, seeking black votes while either tacitly or explicitly endorsing white supremacy. Given Harding's electoral victory and death during his term, Pietrusza could have devoted more space to the abiding importance of this election. All in all, Pietrusza has produced a broad, satisfying political and social history, in the style of Doris Kearns Goodwin. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Feb. 7)
A Murder in Lemberg: Politics, Religion, and Violence in Modern Jewish HistoryMichael Stanislawski. Princeton Univ., $21.95 (168p) ISBN 978-0-691-12843-6
Murder, intrigue, media spotlight, community in-fighting, police coverup, judicial malfeasance. O.J. Simpson? Jon-Benet Ramsey? No, it's the poisoning of Rabbi Abraham Kohn and his family by a fellow Jew, Abraham Ber Pilpel, in 1848, in the Ukrainian city of Lemberg (now Lviv). Stanislawski, professor of Jewish history at Columbia, uncovers a forgotten story as his fascinating book details the events surrounding the murder of the reformist (but not Reform) Rabbi Kohn and his four-year-old daughter (four other family members survived) after Pilpel sneaked into their kitchen and poured arsenic in the family's soup. While the twists and turns of the case make a compelling narrative, Stanislawski has a far more important story to tell. The assassination of Kohn was the result of roiling religious and political tensions between Lemberg's Orthodox community, which remained loyal to the Hapsburg empire, and Rabbi Kohn, allied with those demanding independence as revolution spread across Europe in 1848. While there is too much on Lemberg Jews' communal affairs for most readers, Stanislawski tells his story with a sharp eye for detail and plot, with the historical context and analysis that students of Jewish history will appreciate. (Feb.)
Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy AwardsBronwyn Cosgrave. Bloomsbury, $32.50 (320p) ISBN 978-1-59691-087-9
At the first Academy Awards event in 1928, Janet Gaynor had received advance word of her "best actress" award for three silent films the year before. For the ceremony she wore a store-bought Peter Pan–collared dress, but for future events she sought the advice of designer Gilbert Adrian, whom she married. In this entertaining look at the history of Academy Award fashion, Cosgrove, who covered the Oscars for British Vogue and the BBC, demonstrates that the Gaynor-Adrian pairing was the start of many between star designers and actresses—Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, Edith Head and Grace Kelly, Thea van Runkle and Faye Dunaway, Scaasi and Streisand, Halston and Liza, Bob Mackie and Cher. Earlier screen queens (and their producers and minders) had quickly learned that a drop-dead appearance at the awards ceremony led to invaluable glam photos and inches in print: Carole Lombard, Vivien Leigh, Garbo and especially perfectionist Marlene Dietrich who, after experimenting, turned to Dior. Cosgrave could have simply served up a deep dish of anecdotes, gossip and tales of rivalry, but she has gone several steps further to deliver a carefully researched and footnoted book that belongs in every Hollywood historian's library and is sure to be consulted for a long time to come. 90 b&w photos and illus., 12-page color insert (not seen by PW). (Feb.)
Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American HeartlandMark Kreidler. HarperCollins, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-082318-4
Sportswriter Kreidler, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, immerses himself in "the largest event of its kind in the United States," the Iowa State High School Wrestling Tournament, and the result is a deeply insightful look into how young athletes and their families prepare for and participate in a yearly, four-day event where "Fathers and sons, coaches and wrestlers locked in screaming matches are as commonplace as injury timeouts." But this is no exposé: Kreidler paints a highly sympathetic portrait of the struggles of two smalltown seniors to become the 15th and 16th four-time state champions in Iowa's history. One is motivated by the doubts raised about his abilities by Iowa wrestling fans, while the other struggles with a family history of depression. In Kreidler's final stunning account of how both teens deal with the "recurring emotional whiplash" of the tournament itself, he more than proves his contention: "The really great ones, deep down, just don't give a damn" about doubts and struggles external to the sport itself. (Feb.)
The Night Casey Was Born: The True Story Behind the Great American Ballad "Casey at the Bat"John Evangelist Walsh. Overlook, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-1-58567-893-8
It seems likely that the author of this slender volume dedicated to baseball's most famous doggerel would have felt very much at home producing the hagiographic journalism practiced a century ago. Penned in 1888 by young Harvard graduate Ernest L. Thayer, "Casey" was calculated to cash in on the incipient national pastime, then in the throes of its first spasm of widespread popularity. Perhaps the most popular piece of American verse ever written—its only rivals being Clement C. Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (today known as " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas") and Poe's "The Raven"—"Casey" was not widely hailed upon publication. However, the poem was soon taken up by well-known stage actor DeWolf Hopper. It would be his signature performance piece for decades to come, making him just as much the "father" of "Casey" 's popularity as its actual author. Walsh (Darkling I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats) succeeds at evoking the easy familiarity and rough bonhomie of an era whose baseball and theatrical stars are long since forgotten. He tries his best to heighten the drama of what may not be a book-length subject, connecting Thayer's composition with recent heartbreak, and dedicating a chapter to Hopper's previous success on the stage. Walsh's writing style and pop psychology are almost as quaint as his subject matter, but the origins of "Casey" are appealing in their own right. (Feb.)
To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip-Hop Aesthetic William Jelani Cobb. New York Univ., $22.95 (200p) ISBN 978-0-8147-1670-9
Hip-hop "freestyle," according to Cobb, assistant professor of history at Spelman College, is an extension of "the dozens"—exchanging barbs using "the rapid-fire calculation of speed chess combined with the language virtuosity of a poetry recital." Cobb subtitles his book a freestyle, and on literally every page he displays a tremendous command of language and history as he "examines the aesthetic, stylistic, and thematic evolution of hip hop from its inception in the South Bronx to the present era." But make no mistake: this groundbreaking work is an artfully constructed and vividly written look at "the artistic evolution of rap music and its relationship to earlier forms of black expression." Cobb brilliantly displays how hip-hop has its own aesthetic in five sections: hip-hop's relationship to ancestral forms of African-American culture; the history of its aesthetic evolution; its use of the "entire palette of poetic techniques"; the influence of the storytelling tradition, especially black autobiography; and studies of seven important artists in the field, from Rakim to the Notorious B.I.G. Much of the book's pleasure also comes from Cobb's ability to "freestyle" serious and humorous insights—from how artists such as Tupac and Nas sometimes "stepped outside the conventions of hip-hop to pen sympathetic narratives about the sexual exploitation of young women," to how LL Cool J's pioneering "I Need a Beat" sounded "like he'd raided every entry in an SAT book." (Feb.)
Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of AutismRoy Richard Grinker. Basic, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-465-02763-7
Autism is no longer considered a rare, stigmatized disorder; it's one that touches the lives of an increasing number of individuals worldwide. Grinker, director of the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research, is one example of this phenomenon. Driven by the 1994 autism diagnosis his daughter, Isabel, received, Grinker endeavors to collect the myriad scientific, historical and cultural components of autism into an accessible primer. The book is divided into two parts—academic and anecdotal—throughout which the author illustrates his daughter's development and how his family has coped and developed alongside her. The first section recounts the history of autism, from the illness's initial description in 1943, its once taboo status and the erroneously cited causes of autism. Special attention is given to the evolving diagnostic criteria and the increase in prevalence rates. In the emotionally powerful second portion, Grinker details the experiences of parents of autistic children in South Africa, South Korea and India, how their respective societies view the disorder (often negatively) and the obstacles surmounted to increase awareness of autism, its treatment and management. While this grounds the book, the lengths to which Grinker goes to prove to the parents of autistic children they are not alone needn't have been so extensive. (Feb.)
A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things AreByron Katie with Stephen Mitchell. Harmony, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-33923-2
This unusual collaboration brings together the Way (the Tao) and the Work, Katie's form of self-inquiry and path to joy. Katie is the author of Loving What Is, and Mitchell, the noted translator of the Tao, is her husband. In each chapter of this new book, Mitchell has presented Katie with a passage from the Tao and noted down her exposition on the theme. (This oral format can result in choppy, repetitive text.) Katie's own "awakening" came in 1986, after 10 years of depression. One morning she felt a sense of freedom from her overwhelming distress, a feeling she calls "a falling-away of the self." This freedom, she claims, is available to anyone who practices the Work, which consists of asking oneself four questions intended to turn around fixed ideas and dismantle painful, knotted thoughts about the past. Four dialogues Katie has conducted with seekers illustrate the Work in action. Her belief that reality is good and can only be grasped if we live in the present moment resonates with many traditional spiritual teachings, and in this genuine and fresh spiritual manifesto, Katie's engaging personality springs from the page. (Feb. 6)
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power Virginia Rounding. St. Martin's, $29.95 (592p) ISBN 978-0-312-32887-0
This lengthy biography of Russia's greatest female ruler is by no means as salacious as the subtitle suggests, but this sympathetic portrayal certainly focuses on Catherine's private life. British scholar Rounding (Les Grandes Horizontales) relies on memoirs, private letters and previous monographs as she details how, after dissolution of the unhappy marriage that brought Catherine (1729–1798) to Russia from Germany, the empress juggled her relationships with men as she attempted to thrust Russia into the modern era and make it a European power. Indeed, Rounding offers an intriguing (and partially convincing) thesis that Catherine was most effective as a ruler when she was satisfied in her private life. That life was never dull: Catherine's final lover was 40 years her junior, helping to give rise to wild but untrue rumors about her sexual appetite. Rounding's prose matches the excitement of its subject, with vivid portrayals of the late 18th-century Russian court and the machinations of Catherine and those around her. Readers looking for more scholarly and analytical treatments of Catherine's policies and Russia during this time might want to look at biographies by Isabel de Madariaga and John T. Alexander, but Rounding's work will appeal to Catherine-philes and those interested in women's history. 16 pages of color photos. (Feb.)
Libertarian MovementBrian Doherty. Public Affairs, $35 (768p) ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0
Modern libertarians see themselves as the loyal opposition to the totalitarian tendencies of centralized power, in an American tradition reaching back to the anti-Federalists. Doherty's astute history shows where that consensus comes from and where it fractures along personal, political and practical lines. As a procapitalist and antistatist philosophy, libertarianism has had its greatest impact in economics. But Doherty shows that modern libertarianism since the 1940s, and increasingly since the 1980s, has been politically and ideologically influential, too. Whether believers in a small state regulating only contracts and national defense, or no state at all (like self-described "anarcho-capitalist" Murray Rothbard), libertarians have rooted themselves in a number of institutions—from schools, publications and think tanks to the Libertarian Party, the country's third-largest ticket. Reason magazine senior editor Doherty conveys an insider's understanding in clear, confident prose. However, his sympathies resist questioning the fundamental assumption uniting diverse ideas, personalities and institutions: the belief in the power of completely unfettered markets to bring about the best possible society. Though partisan and sometimes hagiographic, Doherty's well-researched history avoids polemics in outlining a vital political orientation that cuts across the political spectrum. (Feb.)
The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third WorldVijay Prashad. New Press, $25.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-56584-785-9
Scholarly but accessible, this history of Third World intellectual thought and politics captures the shared ideals, institutions and strategies that have united the Latin American countries and the new Asian and African states that have stood outside U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence since WWII. This Third World project did more than steer a neutral course between the nuclear-armed contenders of the Cold War era, claims Prashad (The Karma of Brown Folk). Anticolonial nationalism was also the basis for an alternative world order premised on peace, autonomy and cooperation. But Third World unity was also fragile. The optimism of newly independent nation-states that shaped the United Nations into their principal global platform gave way after the 1960s to frustration, conflict, compromised sovereignty and diminishing expectations. Prashad reveals the close interrelations among such obstacles as the persistence of old social hierarchies, the mobilization of religious views and reinvented tribalism, and punishing debt burdens designed to maintain Western hegemony over a "developing" world. Indeed, he argues, "cultural nationalism" easily becomes "the Trojan-horse of IMF-driven globalization." While the subtitle is misleading—Prashad necessarily concentrates on towering figures like India's Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno and Egypt's Nasser—the book offers a vital assertion of an alternative future, grounded in an anti-imperial vision. (Feb.)
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American The Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is FailingStefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. Basic, $26.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-465-01141-4
The experts we trust to provide guidance to our elected officials have failed us, seduced by the lure of cable television fame and popular book sales, argue Halper and Clarke (coauthors of America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order). Abandoning scholarship, too many have instead set off in search of the next Big Idea in foreign policy that purports to explain the world in five words or less. This phenomenon is not new—the authors identify Big Ideas from manifest destiny through the domino theory to the clash of civilizations—but the tendency to simplify a complex reality has become especially pernicious in the Iraq war debate. Finding targets on the right and left, the authors excoriate the Heritage Foundation as much as Noam Chomsky for lowering the level of public discourse. Though sometimes overblown (e.g., calling a public intellectual's decision to pen a regular op-ed column for a major daily newspaper a "Faustian arrangement with the media"), they paint a picture familiar to anyone who follows politics. Ironically, for a work that praises dispassionate, in-depth investigation, this book would have been better as a short essay. (Feb.)
America at Night: The True Story of Two Rogue CIA Operatives, Homeland Security Failures, Dirty Money, and a Plot to Steal the 2004 Presidential Election—by the Former Intelligence Agent Who Foiled the PlanLarry J. Kolb. Riverhead, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-59448-900-6
After 20 years of CIA covert operations, Kolb looked forward to retirement and the obligatory memoir (Overworld, 2004), when he discovered the wildly sinister plot recounted in this engaging book. As a favor to the Department of Homeland Security, he consulted colleagues, his files and the Internet for information on Robert Sensi and Richard Hirschfeld, once vaguely CIA-connected but now wanted by the FBI for numerous financial scams. The avalanche of data he unearthed makes the inability of the FBI, CIA and DHS to gather information very disturbing. Specifically, Kolb discovered the pair had placed the treasurer of Sen. John Kerry's campaign committee on the board of a company that (perhaps inadvertently) sold supplies to al-Qaeda—a revelation that would have devastated Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Kolb also recounts details of his subjects' long career of fraud and extortion, often with cooperation from prominent Washington figures. Stories of powerful men behaving badly have irresistible appeal, and Kolb relates them in prose far more lively than the average bureaucrat's, while backing his story with footnotes, Internet addresses and quotes from named sources. (Feb. 1)
Jeb: America's Next Bush: His Florida Years and What They Mean for the NationS.V. Dáte. Tarcher, $26.95 (416p) ISBN 978-1-58542-548-8
Love Jeb Bush or hate him, Dáte writes, but "if you want to see what he would do with the nation, take a good look at what he did here in Florida." Though the Palm Beach Post reporter admits he has a bit of an axe to grind after covering the younger Bush for eight years, he says it's on principle alone, as a critic of Jeb's autocratic ruling style, not his policies. As Dáte portrays it, Jeb Bush for president is less a question of "if" than "when." Yet the book is worth close attention regardless of what Jeb decides. Bush's personal story—his youth; his business relationships in Miami before taking office (which weren't always savory); his years spent running a highly secretive administration, obsessed with tax cuts and school vouchers—is a masterful lesson in political ambition. Most compelling is Dáte's examination of the constantly evolving history of the hypercompetitive, hyperpowerful Bush family dynasty; how the family has amassed, wielded and abused political power and entitlement; and how it has evolved after that power and entitlement have been transferred from one generation of leaders to the next. B&w photos. (Feb. 15)
The Definitive DruckerElizabeth Haas Edersheim. McGraw-Hill, $27.95 ISBN 978-0-07-147233-3
In a concise introduction to the philosophy of the 20th century's most distinguished business theoretician, Edersheim explores the insights that have shaped management thinking from the 1940s through the 1990s. Drucker himself chose Edersheim to interview him, based on her previous book (McKinsey's Marvin Bower, about the man who built the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company), but he had in mind a biography of his ideas, not a traditional bio. Edersheim blends brief summaries of Drucker's thinking on various management topics (innovation, customers, leadership, decision making) with examples of how his ideas have been practiced at specific organizations and comments from contemporary business leaders. She doesn't try to trace the development of Drucker's ideas over time; instead, she focuses on the challenges managers face today and tries to cull useful advice for tackling them from Drucker's writings. Those seeking a broad intellectual and social context for Drucker's work might prefer Jack Beatty's 1998 The World According to Peter Drucker, while aspiring managers should turn instead to one of Drucker's own books, whose intellectual rigor and lively prose make them immensely readable to this day. (Feb.)
Five Days in AugustMichael D. Gordin. Princeton Univ., $24.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-691-12818-4
Drawing on evidence that the atomic bomb was regarded as a weapon like any other before its first use, Princeton University's Gordin offers a concise and provocative reinterpretation of the beginning of the nuclear age. For the American military commanders in charge of the bomb, the main consideration was whether it would destroy enemy personnel and infrastructure as part of a "shock strategy" for winning Japan's unconditional surrender. Launching the nuclear missions from Tinian Island, the B-29 airplane base, further normalized the bomb's use within the matrix of Pacific island combat. Consideration of such special characteristics as radiation was muted until after the Japanese capitulation—indeed, discussions of a "Third Shot," with Tokyo the probable target, continued until the successful American occupation began in September 1945. The initially overwhelming support of the American public for the nuclear strikes reflected a belief that the war might have lasted more than another year. Even in that context, half the population opposed using gas in an attack—another indication, according to Gordin, that the atom bomb's special status was a postwar development. His worthy study concludes that the bomb's uniqueness has inappropriately encouraged Japan's reluctance to recognize and evaluate its war responsibility, and points toward the importance of examining nuclear weapons outside the familiar context of a nuclear standoff. (Feb.)
Tales from a Tin Can: The U.S.S. Dale from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay Michael Keith Olson. Zenith, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7603-2770-X
Author Olson managed to interview 44 veterans of the World War II destroyer U.S.S. Dale (despite their average age of 88), producing the first oral history of one ship's adventures over the entire Pacific theater. Their tales produce no new insights, but their eyewitness accounts of great and trivial events are fascinating. A dozen veterans describe the attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred all around them, leaving their ship untouched. The men also spent nine miserable months in the Aleutians in subzero weather and stormy seas with no relief; five crew members suffered nervous breakdowns. But the Dale was a lucky ship: no sailors died in action, though all agree on the terrors of kamikaze attacks that destroyed nearby vessels. More frightening were typhoons during which everyone expected death for days on end, joining companion destroyers that sank with all hands. Between reminiscences, Olson writes a running account of the war and illuminates shipboard details readers need to know. His book is an impressive accomplishment, bringing vividly to life the actions of a single warship that fought across half the world during 1941–1945. (Mar.)
The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New YorkMat Johnson. Bloomsbury, $19.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-58234-099-9
Novelist Johnson (Hunting in Harlem) convincingly re-creates New York City's stratified colonial society in 1741, while reinterpreting the only historical account of the rumored slave revolt, hysteria and kangaroo trial that led to the executions of many black New Yorkers. (The uprising was also chronicled in Jill Lepore's New York Burning.) Narrated by a modern-day black man who acts as defense attorney for the executed, this account painstakingly refutes Daniel Horsmanden's 1744 book, The New York Conspiracy, in which the trial's judge, prosecutor and court recorder sought to justify the jailing of about 160 Africans, the hanging of 18 and the burning of 13 more at the stake. Johnson's strength is his ability to breathe movement and motivation into Horsmanden's witnesses, though trotting out one intimidated witness after another bogs down the latter half of the narrative. He repeatedly drumrolls an unsurprising conclusion: that 18th-century New York really was a racist and ignorant backwater. Fans of historical fiction or readers interested in the impact of slavery on African-American identity today will enjoy Johnson's daring reconstruction. (Feb.)
John Constable: A Kingdom of His OwnAnthony Bailey. Chatto & Windus (Trafalgar Sq., dist.), $29.95 (366p) ISBN 978-0-7011-7884-0
Romantic painter John Constable (1776–1837) struggled for years to enter the Royal Academy, was constantly torn between the demands of family and artistic life and had a tortuous path to the limited success he did achieve in his lifetime. Bailey (Vermeer: A View of Delft), a longtime New Yorker contributor and prolific author, seeks to expose both the chiaro and scuro in the painter's life and work—a perspective, argues Bailey, left largely unrealized in the only other full-length biography of Constable, Charles Leslie's 1843 Memoirs of the Life of John Constable. The result is an intricate, intimate, balanced study, revealing the artist's moody, depressive, acerbic and often parsimonious nature along with his intense devotion to his wife, Mary Bicknell (whom he met when she was 12, he 24) and their seven children. Bailey's meticulous scholarship at times overwhelms with detail disproportionate to its larger relevance, and interesting issues, such as contemporary criticism of Constable, invite further analysis. Bailey writes with the elegant, carefully composed quietude of a Constable painting, and has crafted a sensitive and highly comprehensive portrait that will be essential for Constable scholars and very significant to general readers with an interest in the artist and his period. Color and b&w illus., maps. (Feb. 1)
Emily Mason: The Fifth ElementDavid Ebony. Braziller, $39.95 (144p) ISBN 978-0-8076-1570-6
In this handsome book, five decades of paintings by the contemporary American abstract artist Emily Mason are presented in 86 full-color illustrations that capture the extraordinarily vibrant quality of her work. In his short text, Ebony, associate managing editor of Art in America, succinctly characterizes Mason's visionary style and traces her career, showing how she became involved in New York City's Abstract Expressionist art scene in the 1950s and '60s, and went on to develop her own innovative artistic vocabulary. Mason's abstractions, often inspired by nature and poetry, have underlying geometric structures, but her emphasis has always been on color. Overlapping and layered shapes in glowing yellows, brilliant reds, vivid oranges, rich blues, jewellike greens and deep purples shift and flow into each other and have an otherworldly luminosity that evokes for Ebony the Aristotelian fifth element—ether. The book concludes with a selection of prints made by applying ink and a paste of silicon and carbon to glass plates; in these works Mason's ethereal colors reach new heights of intensity. The beautifully produced volume, the first comprehensive account of Mason's work, is a splendid tribute to an artist whose paintings deserve to be better known. (Feb.)
Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the ArtistGail Levin. Harmony, $29.95 (496p) ISBN 978-1-4000-5412-1
With Judy Chicago, Levin (Edward Hopper) takes on a subject who has spent most of her career fighting for her place in a male-dominated and masculinized art world. As the title suggests, the book shows how the daughter of a radical Jewish Communist became the power behind The Dinner Party (1979), a work that forces women's history forward on women's terms, expressed through craft and female imagery. Often described as outspoken, confrontational, strong willed and difficult by even her closest colleagues and friends, Chicago carved a path for other women artists. She demanded that her students—all female—live and create a radically new and feminist movement in the arts. Levin captures Chicago's struggle with her emerging feminism in the context of her marriages, her art and her role as teacher and collaborator. Levin handles the complexity of Chicago's relationships with both men and women deftly, in a manner that exemplifies the issues many women have gone through as they attempted to stake their claim in a man's world. Although not an authorized biography, this was written with Chicago's aid. Hagiographic at times and sometimes burdened by its living and larger-than-life subject, the book is an enlightening look at this controversial artist and at feminist art in general. 16 pages of color photos, 15 b&w photos. (Feb.)
FYI: The Brooklyn Museum of Art will exhibit The Dinner Party this spring.
Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. Scott W. Berg. Pantheon, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-0-375-42280-5
To all those who have encountered the delights of driving in the District of Columbia—and subsequently suffered the distress of getting lost amid its oddly angled avenues—Berg (a teacher of nonfiction writing and literature at George Mason University) offers a welcome narrative of the man responsible: Pierre Charles L'Enfant. A French volunteer during the American Revolution, L'Enfant was asked by George Washington in 1791 to design a gleaming federal city, not on a hill but in a swamp. Suffering from constant interference, not least by Thomas Jefferson, and a nasty episode of credit-stealing by a rival surveyor, L'Enfant—something of an easily inflamed control-freak himself—persisted for 11 months before being dismissed. Still, his plan lived on, a monument to Enlightenment architectural principles and plotted with geometric regularity. Washington, D.C., as conceived by L'Enfant, would be the republican antithesis to the medieval, dirty warren of Paris; it would be a polis where the people's Congress would form the city's nexus—and what would become the White House was pointedly set off to the side. Berg performs sterling service in excavating this little-known story from the archives. Every tourist to the nation's capital, and every driver within it, will enjoy the ride. B&w illus., maps. (Feb. 13)
Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory LendersJames D. Scurlock. Scribner, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4165-3251-4
In this companion to his documentary film of the same name, Scurlock takes a provocative though scattershot tour of "debt hell," exploring Americans' use and misuse of credit. He introduces us to upbeat debt collectors, downbeat academics, motivational speakers who insist that we can get out of debt by refinancing our homes and "skipping the a.m. latte," and "average Americans who are swimming in debt." Scurlock's villains are Visa, Citibank, credit bureaus, legislators who do the financial industry's bidding and a system of credit that "has mutated into a relentlessly efficient and voracious machine." We learn that most consumers who teeter on the brink of bankruptcy aren't bad people—they've just taken all those no-credit-buy-anyway ads at face value. It's all pretty involving, though as with most documentarians, Scurlock is only as good as his sources—and in print, anecdotes and testimonials aren't necessarily the best way to convey complex information or make an airtight case. The author also oversimplifies issues ("banking is about selling a single product: debt"), avoids engaging anyone who might challenge his banks-are-evil argument and turns occasional tangents into full-fledged digressions. But Scurlock deserves credit (no pun intended) for opening more eyes to this dire issue. (Feb.)
The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic ChaosRavi Batra. Palgrave Macmillan, $27.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4039-7579-9
After nearly 20 years of predicting economic disaster, Batra (Greenspan's Fraud, etc.) suggests a reversal, though only after we rise up in revolution against the forces of chaos. This time, he charges politicians, academics, business executives and rich people with "corruption," defined as "any policy that enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor and the middle class." Among the practices Batra censures are raising congressional pay but not the minimum wage, and cutting income taxes while increasing Social Security taxes. Though the analysis is keen and provocative and the conclusions unorthodox as ever, his specific economic predictions aren't likely to be any better than those in his 11 previous books. Though he admits that "three or four" of his previous predictions "have been wrong," and "the cycle of depression has misfired," he gives no specifics. His examples of successful predictions sidestep his previous books, citing anecdotes from unrecorded private conversations. Some readers might wish Batra would stick to analysis and exposition, at which he excels, and leave off the name-calling and the wild predictions that mar this effort. (Feb.)
Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing GuideJohn Jantsch. Nelson Business, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7852-2100-5
Fans of Jantsch's popular marketing blog and Web site will be disappointed by this tepid resource. His Duct Tape Marketing refers to systematically "getting people who have a specific need or problem to know, like and trust you" and to inspire customers to "stick" to your company. The book plods through basic marketing precepts such as finding your ideal client, honing your message, being memorable, and making your Web site work for you. The chapters that draw from the author's Web expertise provide a solid overview of creating productive Web sites and automated referral systems. But too many chapters provide only a bland overview of familiar material without providing interesting case studies to illustrate the author's prescriptions. For example, chapter 10, on garnering media attention, starts with a 24-year-old example of a man who got a rush of publicity from offering to sell the Brooklyn Bridge, followed by boilerplate advice on writing press releases and updating media lists. Readers looking for real insights will quickly move on. (Feb.)
Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy—and Others Don'tLynda Gratton. Berrett-Koehler, $24.95 (230p) ISBN 978-1-57675-418-4
What organization wouldn't want to encourage "places and times where cooperation flourishes, thus creating great energy, innovation, productivity and excitement"? This final volume in a trilogy of books on creating energy at work by London Business School professor Gratton (after Living Strategy and The Democratic Enterprise) attempts to analyze the ingredients of positive workplace energy. Gratton details ways to foster a cooperative mindset, remove boundaries between people, give them a sense of purpose and increase their productive capacity, drawing on examples from organizations like BP and Nokia. But despite her interesting and well-organized findings, some readers may find her intensive focus on scientific research too academic, particularly the complicated diagrams and formulae for workplace qualities that are difficult to quantify. (Feb.)
Geisha: A Photographic History 1880–1910Stanley B. Burns and
Elizabeth A. Burns. PowerHouse, $39.95 (80p) ISBN 978-1-57687336-6
Hand-tinted images of geishas, courtesans and other 19th-century Japanese entertainers illustrate not only their history and culture, but also the development of commercial photography in this intriguing compilation assembled by husband-and-wife curators and collectors Stanley and Elizabeth Burns. Made by Japanese photographers for tourists who flooded the country after it opened to foreigners, these slightly faded images show geishas performing grooming, bathing and mealtime rituals on studio sets that conjure the luxurious interiors of feudal Japan. Printed in sepia tones and delicately washed in pastel colors, some were made by artists, who labored for hours on a single frame. An essay on the social history of the geisha analyzes the nuances of the clothing, postures and settings of these women, who were recognized in their own culture as artists, quite distinct from the prostitutes and courtesans sometimes accompanying the geishas' clients. Three essays and captions detailing Japanese history represent the key to understanding the symbolism in every image. But even as the authors seek to demystify the geisha and Japanese culture, the serene, tender and sometimes cryptic masks of the geishas retain an inexplicable allure. (Jan.)
Greek Architecture and Its SculptureIan Jenkins. Harvard Univ., $35 (272p) ISBN 978-0-674-02388-8
This overview aimed at the general reader is dense but fast-moving, despite its occasional detours into musty scholarly controversies. Jenkins focuses almost exclusively on temples and tombs whose artifacts can be seen at the British Museum, where he is senior curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. This arbitrary framework turns out to be as good as any for a long view of ancient Greek buildings and sculpture, given the breadth of the museum's holdings. Jenkins's accounts of the Parthenon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and half a dozen other sites are wrapped in deft capsule histories of the political situations that gave rise to them. Hundreds of mostly color photos and diagrams, smartly laid out for easy reference to the corresponding text, usually make the most obscure of his points comprehensible—his theory of how the drainage from the roof of the Artemision Temple worked, for example. A few times Jenkins discusses, in somewhat excruciating detail, questions unlikely to excite the nonspecialist (e.g., the apparently passionate debate among scholars about exactly how many columns were in that same Artemision Temple). But for the most part, the smart design and the author's obvious enthusiasm for his subject make this an accessible and lively survey. (Jan. 15)
Lifestyle, Food & Entertaining
Small Bites, Big Nights: Seductive Little Plates for Intimate Occasions and Lavish Parties Govind Armstrong. Clarkson Potter, $30 (256p) ISBN 978-0-307-33793-1
Celeb chef Tyler Florence writes in the foreword that "Govind Armstrong [the executive chef and co-owner of Table 8 restaurant] is the new king of Los Angeles and I want to tell everybody about it." Armstrong's big personality certainly comes across in the pages of this festive book; his passion, dedication and playfulness are evident from the first lines of his intro to the last recipe, and he never gets pretentious about it. After a discussion of the well-stocked pantry, there are chapters—somewhat sporadically arranged—on cocktails and hors d'oeuvres; grilled dishes (Grilled Squid with Green Garbanzos and Bruschetta, for example); dinner party food; comfort foods; "Sexy Savories," such as Heart & Sole and Breakfast in Bed (an omelet with asparagus, morels and goat cheese); and "Lounge Foods," like Scotch Quail Eggs with Chorizo, Smashed Spuds with Sliced Beef and Blue Cheese, and Krispy Kreme "Coffee & Doughnuts." Even recipes that sound intimidating are approachable (although readers will have to get used to the somewhat unconventional recipe format in which ingredients are listed on the left and amounts on the right). But that's a quibble, for the 125 color photos are simple and striking enough to make up for that. (Apr.)
Cowgirl Cuisine: Rustic Recipes and Cowgirl Adventures from a Texas RanchPaula Disbrowe. HarperCollins, $29.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-078939-8
Disenchanted by her hectic New York City lifestyle, Disbrowe, a former travel writer, packed her bags and moved to Texas Hill Country to become the chef at Hart & Hind Ranch. The dishes she created there combine her love for Mediterranean food with fresh local ingredients and cooking traditions from south-central Texas, with recipes such as Texas Tofu Scramble, and Eggs over Polenta with Serrano-Spiked Tomato Sauce. Also included in the Ranch Breakfast section are more traditional recipes like Blackberry Blue Corn Muffins and Banana Bread. Other sections included are "Charming Sandwiches and a Belt-Busting Burger," which feature Smoked Turkey Wraps with Chipotle Cream, and a Venison Burger. In the chapter "Ring the Dinner Bell" are fun, and simple dishes like Halibut with Salsa Verde and Cowgirl Steaks with Pink Peppercorns and Red Onion Marmalade. Throughout, Disbrowe shares various tales from life on the ranch (from raising baby chicks to living with a pet goat). Disbrowe's goal, she explains in her intro, was to write a cookbook "about fresh, satisfying food that is easy enough to prepare while living life to the fullest." In this she has succeeded. (Mar.)
Health
The Reverse Diet: Lose Weight by Eating Dinner for BreakfastTricia Cunningham and
Heidi Skolnik. Wiley, $24.95 (374p) ISBN 978-0-470-05229-5
The adage "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" inspired this book, for Cunningham, a motivational speaker who lost 172 pounds in nine months with that approach. She and coauthor Skolnik, a nutritionist, met while filming a food-centric segment for Good Morning America, and have paired up to recommend a lifestyle change that emphasizes fueling up with a larger meal early in the day and, in the later hours, replenishing as needed via snacks and smaller meals. While much of the duo's advice is not new (whole foods are preferable to processed ones, eat more vegetables, avoid sugary sodas), it is intriguing. Food lists, portion information and recipes help with planning ahead—preparing meals ahead of time is also key, the authors say. A section on setting realistic goals aims to help readers manage their expectations, and recommendations for using a "hunger scale" encourage mindfulness. (Jan.)
Parenting
Bipolar Kids: Helping Your Child Find Calm in the StormRosalie Greenberg. Da Capo, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7382-1080-3
A child psychiatrist with 25 years of clinical experience, Greenberg specializes in juvenile bipolar disorder, a condition that affects an estimated half million children in the U.S. Greenberg explains that bipolar disorder is often misdiagnosed in children as such other disorders as ADHD or OCD; the "diagnostic morass" is further complicated by the fact that many bipolar kids also suffer from these very conditions or others such as autism or Asperger's syndrome. When bipolar disorder "rides sidesaddle" with other disorders, the wrong diagnosis can result. Fortunately, scientists are learning more about the disorder, and with this book in hand parents will also become more aware of the intricacies of this complex condition. Greenberg walks parents through a multitude of "hidden symptoms," including impulsivity, difficulty waking up, nightmares, anxiety, hypersexuality, carb cravings and sinus infections. Although in and of themselves these clues don't herald the condition, they are among the many fascinating links to pediatric bipolar disorder that Greenberg explores through current research and her own clinical experience. Along with examining the challenges, the author celebrates the bipolar child's creativity, sensitivity, and ability to "think outside the box." She also stresses the importance of listening to bipolar children, revealing that their self-observations can often be key in proper treatment. (Mar.)
Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family GrowsStacie Cockrell,
Cathy O'Neill and
Julia Stone. Collins, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-117354-7
In this feisty treatise, three mothers with seven kids between them team up to do their own research on the state of marriage after children. Though their admittedly "pseudo-scientific" research seems to have come mainly from interviewing friends, family and people on the street, they arrive at some reasonable solutions to how couples can keep their marriages fresh and stimulating amid armloads of dirty diapers and screeching babies. While they explore the division of labor, parental exhaustion and how to juggle the grandparents, the focal chapter is on sex; the three authors attempt to address the problem of how to keep men satisfied when, at the end of the day, their wives want nothing to do with them ("coitus non-existus"). Moms' lack of interest isn't surprising, the authors maintain, given that women do the lion's share of managing the house and kids, often in addition to working outside the home. Though the authors claim to be fair and balanced, they frequently give clueless fathers a tongue-lashing with some great one-liners (e.g., "pitch in if you want her to put out"). The bottom line is that the more child care and domestic chores the guys do, the better their sex lives and the marriage in general. Instead of score keeping, the authors steer couples toward ways to appreciate one another. And if all else fails to solve a marital issue, as they point out in this frank and funny book, there's always rock, paper scissors. (Feb.)
The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier Children David Elkind. Da Capo, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7382-1053-7
In this fascinating look at the importance of letting kids be kids, Elkind argues that "Play is being silenced." According to Elkind, a child psychologist and author of All Grown Up and No Place to Go, important, unstructured play is too often replaced in modern times by organized activities, academics or passive leisure activities such as watching television and playing video games. Elkind explains how even toys have changed: "toys once served to socialize children into social roles, vocations, and academic tool skills. Today, they are more likely to encourage brand loyalties, fashion consciousness, and group think." Elkind acknowledges that technology has its place in the classroom, but debunks computer programs marketed toward babies and preschoolers whose young brains are not yet able to fully comprehend two-dimensional representations. "Parent peer pressure" is often to blame, causing parents to engage in "hyperparenting, overprotection, and overprogramming." Media-spread fears about everything from kidnapping and molestation to school shootings and SIDS can cause parents to forget that "children can play safely without adult organization; they have done so as long as people have been on earth." With clarity and insight, Elkind calls for society to bring back long recesses, encourage imagination and let children develop their minds at a natural pace. (Jan.)
Religion
The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande PassionLeonard Sweet. WaterBrook, $13.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-57856-649-5
Studies show that fewer Americans than we thought attend church, and Sweet, popular author (Soul Salsa) and professor of evangelism at Drew Theological School in New Jersey, thinks that the church should take cues from an institution that isn't suffering a lack of customers: Starbucks. For all his hip cultural sensitivity, Sweet hasn't shed one standby of church-growth books: the acronym. His is EPIC, which stands for Experience, Participation, "Images that throb with meaning," and Connection. Starbucks has mastered EPIC living, and the church can, too. The successful coffee corporation recognizes that people are drawn in through visual icons, and it beats competitors because its design sensibility is superior—indeed, its imagery is shot through with "spiritual significance." The church should take a hint and, instead of focusing solely on its written mission statements, devote some energy to design. Starbucks understands that people hunger for "authentic experience." Finally, just as people like to drink coffee together, people seek community and connection in religious settings. Sweet's bottom line? Christianity must move beyond rational, logical apologetics, and instead find ways of showing people that it can offer "symbols and meaningful engagement." This whimsical and insightful book offers a fresh approach to a topic of perennial interest. (Apr. 17)
Working Families: Navigating the Demands and Delights of Marriage, Parenting, and CareerJoy Jordan-Lake.WaterBrook, $14.99 paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-87788-199-5
After penning three books and having three children, Jordan-Lake writes of juggling the demands of two holy callings—hers as a writer, her husband's as a pastor—with raising kids. What distinguishes this book from the other Christian family-balancing guides that crowd the shelves is its emphasis on the fundamental equality of husband and wife, even while it recognizes that women often bear a greater psychological burden than men when they try to follow their bliss careerwise. The book is also refreshing for its social conscience; Jordan-Lake, who has worked with the urban poor and is an advocate for micro-enterprise loans, is all too aware that merely asking these questions about family and work is a luxury that few women in the world will ever afford. Writing with sharp humor and snappy prose, she draws heavily on her own experiences as well as interviews with other women about how they manage the competing expectations of career and family. Although the book's repeated sailboat metaphors grow tiresome, this stands out as one of the more thoughtful guides to Christian family life for the 21st century. (Mar. 20)
The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Harmony, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-34625-4
This refreshing book is yet another sign that the next generation of Buddhism is creative, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary. Born in 1975 in Nepal, the author is among the generation of Tibetan lamas trained outside of Tibet, and he's also a gifted meditator. His brain activity has been measured during meditation, earning him the enviable sobriquet of "happiest man on earth." He fuses scientific and spiritual considerations, explaining meditation as a physical as well as a spiritual process. Mingyur Rinpoche knows from experience that meditation can change the brain. He experienced panic attacks as a child that he was able to overcome through intensive meditation. If diligently practiced, meditation can affect the "neuronal gossip"—his imaginative rendering of brain cell communication—that keeps us stuck in unhappy behaviors. The meditation master offers a wide variety of techniques, counseling ease in practice to avoid boredom or aversion. Less is more; practice shorter periods more often, he says. His approach will be especially welcome for anyone frustrated by meditation or convinced they're "not doing it right." This book is a fresh breath from the meditation room, written with kindness, energy and wit. Three cheers for a cheerful contemplative. (Mar. 6)
God Has a Dream for Your LifeSheila Walsh, W, $19.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-8499-0133-1
Walsh, a popular songwriter and Women of Faith core speaker, has worn many hats (and shoes) over the years. It hasn't all been easy, however. While cohosting The 700 Club some years back, Walsh entered a psychiatric facility battling depression, feeling that she was living in a self-made virtual prison. She writes that though she gave her life to Christ at age 11, she could only give him her shame at 35, having lost the ability to dream and love as God had intended. Utilizing themes from The Wizard of Oz, Walsh takes evangelical women on a journey through Oz and weaves life lessons throughout. She asks poignant questions on gaining the freedom to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven. Claiming that most women go "gray" as a result of extinguished dreams and lifelong disappointment, Walsh tells them to believe in love rather than judgment, recognizing that God frequently uses pain as a bridge between individuals. The book opens forcefully, with Walsh making colorful connections between the messiness of life and God's sovereign, loving care. Sadly, the book grows less compelling near its close, fizzling to a flat send-off from Oz. (Mar. 6)
God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and NowJohn Dominic Crossan. Harper San Francisco, $22.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-06-084323-6
In this fine study of civilization, culture and transformation, Father Crossan asks important questions: have those who resort to violence as a means of change succeeded in their quest for empire? Or has nonviolence been more effective in bringing about lasting change? Crossan, professor emeritus at De Paul University and author of several well-received works including The Historical Jesus, believes that the solution is not in violent intervention but in the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. But how, and when, will this Kingdom come? In comparing the missions of Jesus and John the Baptist, Crossan states his idea clearly: "Jesus differed precisely from John in emphasizing not the future-presence but the already-presence of God's Kingdom as the Great Divine Cleanup of the world." In other words, Christ saw the Kingdom as a present and active reality. Crossan uses the teachings of Jesus to promote his thesis, and then turns to an unlikely ally—the Apostle Paul—by suggesting that Paul's emphasis on equality and freedom helped carry forward Jesus' program of nonviolent change. Crossan's latest work presents a complex subject in a clear and powerful way, and it merits a wide readership. (Mar.)
Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality Rob Bell. Zondervan, $19.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-310-26346-8
Bell raises the bar with this evocative follow-up to last year's bestseller Velvet Elvis. "Is sex a picture of heaven?" he wonders. It's all about God and sex and heaven, he says: "...they're connected. And they can't be separated. Where the one is you will always find the other." Bell's book isn't a sex manual, an exploration of the differences between men and women or a marriage how-to, though all of that is here. Instead, it's the story of God becoming human, of humans mirroring God and love made manifest in the chaos of our humanity. Sex God is about relationships revealed in a way that elevates the human condition and offers hope to those whose relationships are wounded. In Bell's spare, somewhat oblique style, he addresses lust, respect, denial, risk, acceptance and more. His love for God and the Bible is clear, as is his ability to ask probing questions and offer answers that make readers think deeply about their own lives. He does a fine job using the Bible and real life to show that our physical relationships are really about spiritual relationships. This book joyfully ties, and then tightens, the knot between God and humankind. (Mar.)
The Vatican's Exorcists: Driving Out the Devil in the 21st CenturyTracy Wilkinson. Warner Books $24.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-446-57885-1
Anyone who has seen the movie The Exorcist will never forget the transformation of lead actress Linda Blair from an innocent young girl into a demonically possessed, vomit-spewing monster. According to Wilkinson's account, some contemporary Catholic priest-exorcists have seen even more horrifying metamorphoses. If the priests interviewed in this informative book are to be believed, there is an increasing demand for their services. Underlying the attraction to exorcisms, Wilkinson speculates, is a desire for simple explanations for complex problems. "In a world awash in catastrophe and unspeakable suffering, many people feel increasingly compelled to see evil in concrete and personified—not to mention simplified—forms, and to find a way to banish the bad." Wilkinson adroitly places those who recommend exorcisms in tension with those who do not see value in the practice. The questions the skeptics raise are obvious but important: are people who desire an exorcism really possessed by Satan, or are they mentally ill? How does one distinguish a "legitimate" possession from other pathologies? This book is certainly not an apologia for exorcisms, but it will appeal to those looking for a fascinating history and some thoughtful commentary from proponents and skeptics alike. (Feb. 21)
Journey of Light: Jewels of Wisdom for Future GenerationsPeter Shockey and
Stowe D. Shockey. Doubleday, $21.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-385-50126-2
The Shockeys have often asked themselves, "If I died tomorrow, what legacy would I leave?" In response, the married writers offer this memoir-cum-spiritual exploration as a gift to their young daughters. Operating on many levels, this collection of anecdotes and experiences is as much a catharsis for Stowe Shockey, now a successful musician and songwriter, as it is a platform for the minister hiding inside Peter Shockey, an accomplished filmmaker and screenwriter. Through a combination of journal entries, commentary and at times almost random musings, they reveal their successful navigation of the wildly different routes and tests to their faiths—abandonment, abuse, alcohol, cancer, cults and drugs. They successfully maintain an inclusive everyman voice, furthered by a wide selection of quotes—mostly scripture, but employing no less than eight different versions of the Bible. What started out as a legacy quest ends as a self-help medium, replete with candid discussions of depression, guilt, shame and the counseling that brought the Shockeys to this point in their lives. Their pain is well balanced with healing, their despair with hope. Readers who have suffered any or all of the Shockeys' trials may find some comfort within these pages. (Feb. 20)
Spiritual Progress: Becoming the Christian You Want to BeThomas D. Williams. FaithWords, $19.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-446-58054-0
Written by a Catholic priest who is the Vatican analyst for NBC News, this primer on the spiritual life is geared to "beginners in the broadest sense"—those just embarking on a religious path as well as readers in need of a refresher. Williams emphasizes the practical aspects of maintaining and growing in a relationship with God, covering such areas as discerning God's will, prayer and impediments to spiritual work. He illustrates his points with brief excerpts from writers like Jean-Pierre de Caussade and John Henry Newman, but his primary source is scripture, giving the book a broad appeal. Thomas touches on specific Catholic practices, such as the sacraments and the role of Mary and the saints in the spiritual life, but he does so by offering sound, simple definitions that explain rather than defend. Readers who are more advanced in the spiritual life may find his opening chapters elementary, but they are written for those who lack the spiritual formation presupposed by the authors of traditional spiritual manuals. Most helpful to anyone with more experience in the spiritual life will be the chapters on spiritual direction ("Your Own Personal Trainer") and the spiritual program, a structured, written plan outlining ideals, goals, obstacles and means of achieving objectives. (Feb. 13)
Dream Talk: Could God Be Talking to You Through Your Dreams?Katrina Wilson. Nelson, $12.99 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-59951-032-3
Wilson, a retreat leader and seminar speaker who co-pastors Christ Life Sanctuary with her husband, Dr. Fred Wilson, describes being called to teach evangelical Christians on the subjective topic of dream interpretation. In the fall of 1985, a prophetic evangelist declared Wilson's ministry would soon entail traveling, speaking and teaching biblical importance of dreams and visions. Quick to warn skeptical Christians that spiritual dreams are indeed God-given and not some New Age ploy to distract believers from their faith, Wilson details why dreaming is essential for optimal physical health; describes how dreams originate; and speculates about the spiritual purpose for dreaming, how to interpret key symbols and how to recognize false dreams. Wilson says natural dreams encourage individuals to be sane and healthy, while spiritual dreams reveal an understanding only God can unveil and can even predict future events. Since daily circumstances can influence dreams, symbols need to be evaluated carefully. Despite Wilson's clear exuberance for this topic, little of the text is practical in scope. Even her brief listing of common symbols and their meanings leaves much to personal interpretation. While the book is interesting and suggestive, it is not definitive enough to prompt many evangelicals to embrace such a subjective spiritual practice. (Feb. 6)
The Life You Were Born to Give: Why It's Better to Live Than to ReceiveDavid H. McKinley. W, $12.99 paper (192p) ISBN 978-0-8499-1202-3
In this study of the biblical book of Romans, McKinley urges us to shift our focus away from getting whatever we can out of life to giving our lives away. "God intends for us to become catalysts for distribution, not containers for consolidation," he explains. He divides his study into three sections: our need for God, our need to extend God's grace to others and practical ways to live the life we "were born to give." McKinley liberally quotes others and uses historic and current events and positive personal stories to make his points. However, his chapters feel like a series of sermonettes ("Are you discouraged today?"), with all the predictable sound bites. The advice that McKinley, a Southern Baptist pastor, offers is what you'd expect: he calls for placing God in the center of our lives, practicing baptism by immersion, putting aside homosexuality, paying a full tithe, living in love, finding our gifts and using those gifts for others. Some Christians may find his short discussion on alcohol overly conservative, and the long list of people he is grateful to belongs in the acknowledgments. Still, many Christian readers will find his key point compelling: "When you learn to give, you learn to live." (Feb. 6)
God Is Not Through with Me Yet: Holding On to the One Who Holds You CloseThelma Wells. Multnomah, $15.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-59052-785-6
Popular Women of Faith presenter Wells speaks with delightful winsomeness of her tender relationship with God in this uplifting, if uneven, guide to an abundant life. Wells, who endured multiple complications following a surgery, details her harrowing experience and what she learned about Christ's enabling strength. The author always believed her personal relationship with Jesus was characterized by intimacy and committed love; now, as a great-grandmother, she feels her spiritual understanding is richer and more precious than ever before. Wells offers snapshots of her life history, describing being raised by her own devout great-grandmother, and how early on she was assured of God's active participation in her poverty-stricken life. Readers will gain deep appreciation for Wells's struggles and triumphs, and read with interest the assorted vignettes in which Wells played counselor and prayer warrior to other hurting Christians. However, the writing is lackluster and disorganized; much of this text is presented with little transitioning from one topic to the next. Further, a hefty one-third of the book is allotted to simply listing various Bible passages by theme. While Wells has an interesting personal testimony, her written work is disappointing compared to her public speaking. (Feb.)
Why Can't We Be Good?Jacob Needleman. Tarcher, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-58542-541-9
Most people have a intrinsic desire to do good rather than evil, yet all humans fail in perplexing ways to do good. Needleman's titular question has haunted philosophers and religious thinkers since Socrates. Needleman, professor of philosophy at San Francisco State and popular author of Lost Christianity, offers his eloquent and entertaining thoughts about why humans are such flops at goodness. He draws on a wide range of philosophers, religious thinkers and psychologists—from Socrates to Buddha to Rabbi Hillel—and discovers that our inability to be good is simple: humans are creatures of choice, and our freedom allows us to make bad choices as well as good ones. This freedom, however, is also "the freedom to love and act justly toward man." Using exercises from his own classes, Needleman suggests that the practice of attending to the other—listening carefully, repeating what the other person has said to ensure an accurate hearing—moves us a long way toward achieving the good. Though Needleman's answer to this age-old question about goodness is no more satisfying or original than any other, his lively prose, storytelling skills and lucid insights draw us into an animated conversation with a brilliant teacher. (Feb.)
Stronger Than You Think: Becoming Whole Without Having to Be PerfectKim Gaines Eckert. InterVarsity, $15 paper (220p) ISBN 978-0-8308-3373-3
This is not a self-help manual with the obligatory seven steps for growth or spiritual renewal. This is a book about women's brokenness. Eckert, an assistant professor of psychology and counseling at Tennessee's Lee University, says that failed relationships, body issues, sexual wounds, low self-esteem and dormant anger conspire to keep women from the wholeness they desire. In the first half, Eckert draws on the work of Mary Pipher and Kathleen Fischer to highlight the damaging messages women internalize, and the "negative self-talk" that can cripple them. These chapters are well done, with Eckert bringing the message home through various "tools for the journey"—practical suggestions of things that women can do to enjoy greater authenticity and wholeness. The book's second half really sings as Eckert tackles specific issues like anger, depression, self-image and—in the book's most poignant chapters—beauty and women's sexuality. Drawing on her own stories and those of women she has counseled (and mixing in song lyrics from Dar Williams and Natalie Merchant), Eckert asserts that women are stronger than they think they are: emboldened by Christ, they can find spiritual healing and emotional wholeness. (Feb.)
