 Edith Wharton: A Biography
Hermione Lee. Knopf, $35 (896p) ISBN 978-0-375-40004-9
One might think that R.W.B. Lewis's excellent 1975 biography had precluded the need for another book about Edith Wharton. Not so. Reading Lee's superb new biography is akin to comparing a fine watercolor sketch to a vivid masterpiece. Access to previously unrevealed letters, and the same meticulous research for which her Virginia Woolf biography was praised, allow Lee to illuminate many dark corners of Wharton's life and to reinterpret previously accepted opinions.
Most important, Lee exhibits an intuitive empathy with her subject (never glossing over her less admirable characteristics) and thus animates Wharton as a fully dimensional figure of complex and contradictory values and impulses—a woman of fierce ambition and lingering self-doubt, of generous friendships and ignoble snobbery and prejudices, with a zest for travel and adventure despite frequent, debilitating ill health. Lee challenges several traditional stereotypes about Wharton, including her literary relationship with Henry James—more peer than acolyte, Lee shows—and with Walter Berry and Bernard Berenson. (Although she provides many instances of Wharton's violent anti-Semitism, Lee does not note the paradox of Wharton's close relationship with Berenson.) In no other biography is there a more perceptive analysis of how Wharton's life was reflected in her work. Her nightmarish marriage and midlife passionate affair with Morton Fullerton, the straitjacket social code that she violated by seeking a divorce were transmogrified in the novels, stories and poetry (some of it erotic).
Lee's portrait of Wharton as a strong-willed woman determined to surmount the background she drew on for inspiration, a woman obsessed with "double lives, repression, sexual hypocrisy, hidden longings," is a major achievement. 24 pages of photos. 75,000 first printing. (Apr. 30) |
How Doctors Think
Jerome Groopman, M.D. Houghton Mifflin, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-0-618-61003-7
Signature
Reviewed by Perri Klass
I wish I had read this book when I was in medical school, and I'm glad I've read it now. Most readers will knowJerome Groopman from his essays in the New Yorker, which take on a wide variety of complex medical conditions, evocatively communicating the tensions and emotions of both doctors and patients.
But this book is something different: a sustained, incisive and sometimes agonized inquiry into the processes by which medical minds—brilliant, experienced, highly erudite medical minds—synthesize information and understand illness. How Doctors Think is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong: "[m]ost errors are mistakes in thinking. And part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don't realize."
Attribution errors happen when a doctor's diagnostic cogitations are shaped by a particular stereotype. It can be negative: when five doctors fail to diagnose an endocrinologic tumor causing peculiar symptoms in "a persistently complaining, melodramatic menopausal woman who quite accurately describes herself as kooky." But positive feelings also get in the way; an emergency room doctor misses unstable angina in a forest ranger because "the ranger's physique and chiseled features reminded him of a young Clint Eastwood—all strong associations with health and vigor." Other errors occur when a patient is irreversibly classified with a particular syndrome: "diagnosis momentum, like a boulder rolling down a mountain, gains enough force to crush anything in its way."
The patient stories are told with Groopman's customary attention to character and emotion. And there is great care and concern for the epistemology of medical knowledge, and a sense of life-and-death urgency in analyzing the well-intentioned thought processes of the highly trained. I have never read elsewhere this kind of discussion of the ambiguities besetting the superspecialized—the doctors on whom the rest of us depend: "Specialization in medicine confers a false sense of certainty." How Doctors Think helped me understand my own thought processes and my colleagues'—even as it left me chastened and dazzled by turns. Every reflective doctor will learn from this book—and every prospective patient will find thoughtful advice for communicating successfully in the medical setting and getting better care.
Many of the physicians Dr. Groopman writes about are visionaries and heroes; their diagnostic and therapeutic triumphs are astounding. And these are the doctors who are, like the author, willing to anatomize their own serious errors. This passionate honesty gives the book an immediacy and an eloquence that will resonate with anyone interested in medicine, science or the cruel beauties of those human endeavors which engage mortal stakes. (Mar. 19)
Klass is professor of journalism and pediatrics at NYU. Her most recent book is Every Mother Is a Daughter, with Sheila Solomon Klass. |
Thick as Thieves: A Brother, a Sister—a True Story of Turbulent Lives
Steve Geng. Holt, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8056-8
In his bold memoir, Geng takes readers on a wild ride through low-life Paris, Miami and above all, New York City. The brother of New Yorker writer Veronica Geng (who died of a brain tumor in 1997), Geng enjoyed a lucrative career as a petty criminal—and hardcore junkie—while his sister climbed the masthead of the New Yorker. The chronicle of Geng's misadventures includes prison stints, an HIV diagnosis in the early 1980s and murder attempts by not one but two girlfriends, the second one drugging Geng before setting him on fire. It's amazing that Geng is still alive and a miracle that a man who didn't pick up a pen until he was in his 50s writes with such vigor and joy. "Record Steve," as he was known for his LP shoplifting skills, draws vivid scenes of Parisian brothels, South Beach stints on Miami Vice and the hipster underworld of 1960s and '70s Greenwich Village. Geng tells of meeting such celebrities as Don Johnson, Debbie Harry and Leroi Jones (who told Geng that heroin was keeping Gengyoung), but his finest descriptions are of his fellow hustlers. Although his sister's rarely involved in Geng's hijinks, she hovers throughout the narrative as a puzzle, goad and guardian angel. (May)
The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 B.C. to the Present
Harry G. Gelber. Walker, $34.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-8027-1591-3
The challenges for China change—Mongol horse archers in the 13th century, European gunboats in the 19th—but the response remains remarkably steady in this engaging survey of Chinese foreign relations. Historian Gelber (Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals) takes a cyclical view of Chinese history. From ancient times, he contends, dynasties underwent patterns of population growth, governmental decay caused by bureaucratic sclerosis and inept emperors (exacerbated by overmighty concubines and court eunuchs), and outside military pressure. This led to chaos and conquest until a new strongman restored order. As crises and foreign incursions come and go, China's insular Confucian culture remains, and so does the sense of cultural superiority—symbolized by the prostration ritual called the kowtow,loathed by Western ambassadors—that enables China to neutralize outside influences. Even the current Communist regime, Gelber argues, is in many ways a traditional imperial dynasty, with foreign policy interests similar to those of the past. The author also assesses China's shifting image in foreign eyes, as either a model of sophisticated order or a cesspool of backward despotism. Gerber is a bit sketchy on the premodern period; his account comes into its own as a lucid, insightful narrative history of China's evolving place in the modern, Western-dominated world order. Maps. (May)
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian. Univ. of Chicago, $45 (256p) ISBN 978-0-226-59566-5
Before the recent development of submersibles capable of exploring the ocean more than six miles down, oceanographers gleaned most of what they knew about the denizens of the deep from dead fish in trawler nets. One such creature first captured in 1901, the "vampire squid from hell," turned out to be a living fossil whose origins date back more than 200 million years. Now known to be quite benign, so are most of the creatures depicted in this stunning collection of more than 160 color photos—even the Pacific viperfish, with fangs so long it can't close its mouth, and the spookfish, with its enormous telescopic eyes. Species from as far down as four and a half miles are depicted in exquisite detail; most are mere centimeters long, though the giant squid, a timid creature despite its size, grows to almost 60 feet. Fifteen short, jargon-free essays assembled by editor and French journalist Nouvian—who became enthralled with the deep after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium—flesh out the fantastical images with scientific fact. They dismiss the myth of deep sea monsters and describe the amazing persistence of life around hydrothermal vents and methane flues; a thoughtful glossary adds to this impressive book's popular appeal. (Apr. 28)
The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic
Melanie Mcgrath. Knopf, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4047-6
In this riveting tale of Canadian bureaucracy and cultural arrogance, British journalist McGrath (Motel Nirvana) tells how in 1953 a handful of Inuit families were coerced from Hudson Bay's eastern shore and relocated 1,500 miles north to bitterly rocky and icy Ellesmere Island—the world's ninth-largest island. Sold as a humane attempt to provide a livelihood for the Inuit when fox pelt prices plummeted, the scheme was, in fact, callously political. Canada wanted to plant the flag—and some people—on the uninhabited and largely impenetrable island, over which Greenland, Denmark and the United States had territorial aspirations, particularly as the Cold War intensified. A compact history of northern life adds context to the story of horrific exile, which McGrath humanizes by focusing on Josephie Flaherty, the mixed-race son of an Inuit mother and of American director Robert Flaherty, who created the cinematic sensation Nanook of the North in the 1920s. McGrath's account of inhumane deprivation is based on contemporary documents and astonishing interviews with survivors, who after decades of pleading to be repatriated to their homeland finally forced public hearings in 1993 that shocked Canadians and culminated in the 1999 creation of Nunavut, the world's only self-governing territory for indigenous people. (Apr. 5)
Come Hell or High Water: Extraordinary Stories of Wreck, Terror, and Triumph on the Sea
Jean Hood. Burford, $30 (416p) ISBN 978-1-58080-143-0
These 17 stories of catastrophes at sea demonstrate why shipwrecks have been a mainstay of literature since Homer's Odyssey. English sea historian Hood (Marked for Misfortune) begins with three mid-18th-century shipwrecks, all resulting from bad weather, bad luck, unsafe ships and incompetent leadership. Though the invention of radio, metal hulls, the internal combustion engine and effective safety regulations eventually ameliorate these problems, in this collection they only figure in the last two stories, about 21st-century Russian submarine sinkings. Except for the tragedy of the Titanic, most of these unhappy events have faded into obscurity; but in their time, the news of mass death accompanied by horror, courage, cowardice and sacrifice produced universal shock. Since survivors rushed to tell their stories, there is no shortage of documentation. Skillfully mining the archives, Hood produces a gripping narrative illuminating ship operation, nautical terms and historical context, so readers have a clear idea of not only what happened but why. But despite wonderful material and obvious writing talent, Hood relies too much on invented dialogue, internal monologues and short, speculative scenarios. Readers who can overlook those unfortunate interludes will enjoy a relentlessly fascinating series of horrific sea disasters. 24 b&w photos. (Apr.)
Julia Child: A Penguin Life
Laura Shapiro. Viking/Lipper, $19.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-670-03839-8
Shapiro's biography of Julia Child—one of America's most beloved personalities—is a short but comprehensive book, and the newest in the Penguin Lives series. Born Julia McWilliams in Pasadena, Calif., in 1912, Child attended college and worked for the OSS in Asia during WWII, where she met her future husband. After marrying, they moved to Paris, which led her to cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu. Child had an appetite for learning as well as eating, one that soon developed into a desire to pass on the knowledge and skills—the love—she was acquiring. And in her late 30s, she found her calling. With two women who later coauthored her first book, she started her own cooking school; her class notes led to the cookbook, which eventually led to the television show. Her husband provided steady support, and Child learned of the value of trial and error and an ability to laugh at her mistakes. She was also patient: the cookbook was nearly a decade from conception to publication and the television show started equally shakily. In this wonderful short bio, Shapiro doesn't skimp on less-flattering aspects of her subject's life and personality (Child found homosexuality to be "a rude disruption in the natural order of things"). (Apr.)
And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress
Charles B. Rangel with Leon Wynter. St. Martin's, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-37252-1
Congressman Rangel didn't become one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the House of Representatives, or the newly appointed chair of the Ways and Means Committee, by alienating his colleagues, and he upholds that tradition in this memoir. A few of his anecdotes reflect badly on Republicans, but mostly the emphasis is on Rangel. The title comes from the attitude he adopted after nearly dying in the Korean War. "I lost my right to complain about anything again in life" after that, he explains, though the lesson really sank in after a job counselor pressured the high school dropout to choose a career and helped him get the college education that sent him to law school and beyond. Such stories from Rangel's early life, when he straddled the line between street life and higher aspirations, offer some of the most engaging passages. As for contemporary politics, Rangel revels in his role persuading Hillary Clinton to run for the Senate, while occasionally weighing in on the war in Iraq and the "kind of racist algebra" he believes keeps the GOP from making concessions to black voters. All in all, a fairly standard political memoir. B&w photos. (Apr. 5)
A Shadow of Red: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television
David Everitt. Ivan R. Dee, $27.50 (384p) ISBN 978-1-56663-575-2
On June 27, 1962, former grocer Laurence Johnson was found dead in a cheap motel just outside New York City. His mysterious death would have been unremarkable had Johnson not been the driving force behind the rabid hunt for Communists that gripped the radio and TV industry from the late 1940s through the 1950s. In freelance writer Everitt's deeply researched, highly detailed account of this sordid episode in American history, Johnson was the leader of a cabal of committed anticommunists who sought to eliminate what they saw as undue influence by Communists or Soviet sympathizers in the New York–based broadcast media. In 1947, with Johnson's support, a trio of FBI agents published "Red Channels," a newsletter devoted to exposing what they saw as growing Communist influence in radio and later television. The newsletter evolved into a de facto blacklist—an ad hoc compendium of writers, producers and performers who due to their association, real or imagined, with left-wing causes were effectively barred from work. Everitt's narrow focus, however, makes this more for the history buff or red scare aficionado than the general reader. (Apr.)
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life
Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26 (560p) ISBN 978-0-374-29950-7
Philosophy professor and political leader Nusseibeh, as the Oxford and Harvard-educated descendant of an ancient and influential Jerusalem family, draws on deep roots in his account of a dramatically displaced life. That's one reason why, despite his relative privilege, his autobiography dovetails persuasively with the larger story of Palestinian dispossession and struggle in the 20th century. Nusseibeh, as a former PLO representative, also has the vantage of a political insider. Equally instructive are his differences from his fellow Palestinians, many of whom he encountered as his students in the classrooms and cafes at Birzeit University in the West Bank, and later as president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem. These interactions, among others, give shape to the story of this curious but reticent loner's immersion into national politics, which is overshadowed by the memory of his father (a fiercely independent former Jordanian minister and governor of Jerusalem). In relating the Palestinian perspective on the expulsions, expropriations and deprivations during and after the wars of 1948, 1967 and beyond, Nusseibeh convincingly interweaves personal experience and tectonic historical shifts, while charting his own political evolution and eventual and resolute insistence on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (Apr.)
Endangered Species: Mass Violence and the Future of Humanity
Stephen M. Younger. Ecco, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-06-113951-2
A scholar and former designer of nuclear weapons, Younger writes stimulatingly and convincingly on the causes of war and terrorism and ways to prevent them. He begins by asking if humans are violent by nature, answering "yes," because war and homicide occur in all cultures, but also "no," because they're rare in some, routine in others. What does history teach? His answer: autocratic governments tend to go to war against the will of the governed; and since "no two democracies have gone to war with one another," their spread will reduce mass violence. Characterizing the U.S. as "a great nation that eschews mass violence, he finds "foreign adventures ill-suited to our national character," despite our current involvement in Iraq. Younger begins his review of solutions to violence by extolling President Bush as a visionary with "a deep personal belief in the benefits of democracy" and the courage to take action "to create an island of democracy" in the Middle East. Sensibly, Younger moves on to specifics, urging America to take the lead in supporting free elections, fighting corruption, promoting the rule of law and encouraging small business, education and agricultural reform to defeat poverty and immunize nations against the siren song of terrorism. (Apr. 10)
Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond
David Gessner. Beacon, $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8070-8578-3
At the outset, Gessner tells readers that "[t]his is not a bird book"; indeed, it's more about what Gessner came to understand about himself by spending day after day studying one particular species of bird, the osprey. Gessner, who previously wrote Return of the Osprey, which focuses on the effort to rescue ospreys from DDT annihilation, this time turns his attention to migration—why ospreys migrate to Central and South America every winter, and what they do when they're there. He tracked ospreys on one basic migration route—from Cape Cod to Cuba and back. While Gessner weaves in the science of tracking the birds, it's his rowboat-and-binoculars approach to the subject that will most attract readers. Spending days watching ospreys and chatting with other bird-watchers, Gessner discovers the "joy in reducing life to one thing." Gessner writes beautifully, with grace and humor. (Apr.)
French by Heart: An American Family's Adventures in La Belle France
Rebecca S. Ramsey. Broadway, $12.95 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-7679-2522-8
First-time author Ramsey adopts a sweet but never cloying tone to tell the charming story of her family's four-year stint in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Ramsey, a young mother of three whose husband's company relocates them to France, recounts what it feels like to sell the family home in South Carolina, say good-bye to everyone you know and move overseas. Rather than tell the story chronologically, Ramsey links the narrative to everyday events recalling the pitfalls and petite triumphs inherent in each encounter. Moreover, because the family's command of French is minimal, routine tasks often become embarrassing lessons. Ultimately, Ramsey and her family embrace their adopted country's language and customs. Entering a bookstore, she finds herself surrounded by graceful young women in high heels, short skirts and stylish leather blazers, while she is "standing there in my big red field jacket and clunky black clogs… like a frumpy giant." Ramsey acknowledges telling "the whole truth, even when it makes me look ridiculous"—and this results in an endearing memoir. (Apr.)
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America
Joe Posnanski. Morrow, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-085403-4
Posnanski, sports columnist for the Kansas City Star, spent a year on the road with the iconic Negro Leagues player and manager Buck O'Neil (1911–2006), recording the magnanimous 94-year-old's encounters with scores of fans and his vast repertoire of entertaining stories. O'Neil, the first African-American to coach in the Major Leagues, was a tireless spokesman for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Posnanski is at his best when recounting O'Neil's baseball memories of the likes of legends Satchel Paige, Willie Mays and Josh Gibson. The author captures O'Neil's rhythmic voice and often relays it in italicized verse, while painting an uplifting portrait of a man who was without bitterness despite long experience with racial discrimination. Too often, however, Posnanski bogs down in mundane details that read like a travelogue of airports and tardy drivers. Many of the chapters have the feel of lengthy newspaper articles stitched together, lacking segues and narrative. Nevertheless, the final scenes are moving tales of the funeral of 103-year-old Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe and O'Neil's dignity when he was infamously passed over by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. (Apr.)
Shell Game: One Family's Long Battle Against Big Oil
J. Michael Veron. Lyons, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-59921-033-9
Legal narratives pitting the hero against a malicious corporation are not in short supply, but trial lawyer Veron adds an environmental twist as he describes nine years fighting Shell Oil over decades of pollution on his family's Louisiana farm. By 1991, after his family had made a comfortable income for 62 years off the royalties from the discovery of oil on his great-grandfather's property, the land was covered with discarded equipment and poisoned with chemicals and buried toxic waste. Spurred by a cousin who wondered why the company wasn't vacating the property and cleaning it up as required by the lease, Veron spent more than a year trying to persuade Shell to fulfill its contract and pay damages, before he filed suit. Veron delivers a blow-by-blow account of the trial, quoting testimony liberally, often stepping back to discuss his and his opponent's tactics and to explain the law. An accomplished novelist (The Caddie), Veron uses his considerable skill to portray Shell's lawyers (incompetent), the judge (inexperienced and hostile) and witnesses (his are devastating). Readers won't be surprised that he wins a huge settlement. Less biased accounts such as A Civil Action tell a more realistic and equally fascinating story, but this simpler good-versus-evil tale is a cracking good read. (Apr.)
The Hellenistic Age: A Short History
Peter Green. Modern Library, $21.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-679-64279-4
Although the Hellenistic Age flourished for barely 300 years, its contributions to world history are countless. Eminent historian Green—whose classic Alexander to Actium remains the most expansive and thorough introduction to the period—offers a marvelous survey of the key people, places and events of the years from 337 B.C., when Alexander came to power, to the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. Nimbly weaving history and cultural insights, Green chronicles how Alexander led Macedonia through heroism and canny political alliances. After Alexander's death, power was divided between the Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt, and the Seleucids, who ruled Greece, marking the beginning of the end of the Greek city-states that had been the hallmark of the classical Greek age. The civic masculine bonding so pervasive in Alexander's day was replaced by the familial bonding of husband and wife. Science replaced poetry and comedy replaced tragedy as the cultural hallmarks of society. Yet much remained the same: aristocratic rulers still used slaves to do their fighting for them, and monarchs still defied attempts to bring democracy into government. Green's splendid little study (a new entry in Modern Library's Chronicles series) provides a brilliant introduction to this crucial transitional period. (Apr. 10)
John Donne: The Reformed Soul
John Stubbs. Norton, $35 (576p) ISBN 978-0-393-06260-1
For his first book, Stubbs has produced a biography of the enigmatic, conflicted poet familiar today to many people mostly thanks to a single, lovely line: "No man is an Island, entire of it self." John Donne—born in 1572, at the outset of the most politically tumultuous and religiously violent era in English history—searched throughout his life for passage to a continent, to find a homeland, to involve himself, as he put it, in mankind. Beginning life as a secular Catholic, Donne ended it as a pious Protestant priest; a dissolute young man, he evolved into a serious intellectual of delicate demeanor; a swashbuckler who fought against Spain for loot and adventure, he buckled down and became one of the finest poetical craftsmen of the Renaissance; a promiscuous loner once focused on making money and powerful friends, he married for love and left it all happily behind. Throughout his life, Stubbs shows, Donne was a study in paradoxes, and one of the strengths of this book is his ready acknowledgment of his subject's contradictions. "Part of the job of this biography," writes Stubbs, "is to trace the strands between these personae and point out the unity underlying them." He succeeds admirably. (Apr.)
The Remarkable Millard Fillmore: The Unbelievable Life of a Forgotten President
George Pendle. Three Rivers, $13.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-33962-1
America's 13th president has often been the subject of humor, and this bogus biography by Pendle (Strange Angels: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons) is no exception. Fillmore was not a "blundering, pompous, ultimately shallow failure," claims Pendle. Instead, we learn that the multitalented Fillmore had a rich and varied life, at once heroic, artistic and full of intellectual vigor. He saved a woman from a shark attack and received good reviews for his minstrel show performance: "he had the audience guffawing mightily." A prolific inventor, he never received proper credit for vulcanizing rubber or designing the cooling "Tea-shirt." Like Woody Allen's Zelig, Fillmore had a knack for always being present at major historical events, where he usually emerged triumphant (as when he prevented the assassination of Andrew Jackson and survived the Battle of the Alamo. Using previously unknown sources, Pendle has achieved his goal "to redeem the reputation of a forgotten giant," and he also succeeds in amusing readers by mixing the historical and the hysterical. 40 b&w illus. (Apr.)
The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements
Lynne Viola. Oxford Univ., $30 (352p) ISBN 978-0-19-518769-4
This scholarly, nuanced work shines light on Stalin's forced resettlement of two million Soviet peasants in the 1930s. A professor of history at the University of Toronto, Viola shows how a combination of repressive central government policies and out-of-control regional officials ruined the lives of so many Soviet citizens by deporting them to these "special settlements" to perform forced labor in the harsh tundra. Viola draws on newly opened archives to paint a complete portrait of the lives of the citizens, labeled "kulaks," or wealthy peasants. Hundreds of thousands died of disease or famine. As one child later remembered: "People began to swell and die" and were buried "without coffins, in collective graves." Viola writes clearly, but she is often understandably focused on larger, political questions, such as the nature of the Soviet state and how much of the repression was ordered by Stalin, and how much was ad hoc and locally ordered. This focus might limit Viola's readership, but this book is likely to become the scholarly standard on one of the 20th century's most horrific crimes. 25 b&w photos. (Apr.)
The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing
Kathleen Alcalá. Univ. of Arizona, $32 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8165-2626-0; paper $14.95 ISBN 978-0-8165-2627-7
Novelist and short story writer Alcalá (Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist) writes essays about everything from her family's Mexican, crypto-Jewish history to boilerplate pieces about the function of the writer. The bulk of her writing is steeped in Mexican history and culture. In general, the analytical essays in this collection are stronger than the more personal pieces, which seem raw and unpracticed for an experienced writer; unnecessary details are interjected; for example, a comment on the videotaping of her mother's funeral service appears for no apparent reason in the middle of a piece that is, ostensibly, about the power of singing to bring people together. On the other hand, Alcalá displays an intellectual curiosity that has led her to think and write creatively about less personal matters. Her essay on the Opata peoples of Mexico is fascinating, and in another essay, she masterfully blends the harrowing experience of Andrea Yates, who drowned her five young children, with the mythic stories of Mexican folklore. For all that, the collection is haphazard and far too broad, including everything from a travel diary of a trip to Tepotzlán to an unpublished e-mail written to a friend after the 9/11 attacks. (Apr. 26)
I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic, $26.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-465-03078-1
Hofstadter—who won a Pulitzer for his 1979 book, Gödel, Escher, Bach—blends a surprising array of disciplines and styles in his continuing rumination on the nature of consciousness. Eschewing the study of biological processes as inadequate to the task, he argues that the phenomenon of self-awareness is best explained by an abstract model based on symbols and self-referential "loops," which, as they accumulate experiences, create high-level consciousness. Theories aside, it's impossible not to experience this book as a tender, remarkably personal and poignant effort to understand the death of his wife from cancer in 1993—and to grasp how consciousness mediates our otherwise ineffable relationships. In the end, Hofstadter's view is deeply philosophical rather than scientific. It's hopeful and romantic as well, as his model allows one consciousness to create and maintain within itself true representations of the essence of another. The book is all Hofstadter—part theory, some of it difficult; part affecting memoir; part inventive thought experiment—presented for the most part with an incorrigible playfulness. And whatever readers' reaction to the underlying arguments for this unique view of consciousness, they will find the model provocative and heroically humane. (Mar.)
The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being
Sherwin B. Nuland. Random, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6477-9
The septuagenarian surgeon whose brutally honest demythologization of death in How We Die garnered a National Book Award offers a mushier, platitude-filled treatise on aging, calling it a "gift" that establishes boundaries in our lives, making everything within those boundaries all the more precious. Brief, frank descriptions of droopy penises, declining hormone levels and loss of hearing and bone density are accompanied by reminders that stroke is not a normal consequence of aging and that our bodies are like cars and taking good care of parts extends their usefulness. A gushing tribute to pioneering cardiac surgeon Michael DeBakey, now aged 98, teaches the importance of knowing one's limitations and learning to function within them, while now-80-year-old actress Patricia Neal recalls how sheer stubbornness and a browbeating husband enabled her recovery from a debilitating stroke at 39. Nuland learned life lessons from two fans, a cancer survivor who understands that it's her response to adversity, and not the adversity itself, that shapes her future, and a formerly depressed octogenarian who now doesn't allow herself the "luxury" of despair. Although some of Nuland's devotees will be comforted by his hopeful if familiar advice, others seeking more of the bracing, defiant insights that made him famous will be disappointed. (Mar. 6)
The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
Greg Bottoms. Univ. of Chicago, $20 (128p) ISBN 978-0-226-06685-TK
Driven by painful memories of a schizophrenic brother who had visions and turned to Christian fundamentalist thinking, Bottoms (Angelhead: My Brother's Descent into Madness) sought out religious outsider artists, hoping to discover whether artistic expression helps relieve the suffering of visionaries who hover between madness and ecstasy. He writes thoughtfully of his quest, which takes him first to Georgia to visit Paradise Gardens, a four-acre Christian art environment replete with biblical quotes and apocalyptic predictions created by the late Rev. Howard Finster. In South Carolina, Bottoms interviews William Thomas Thompson, a paralyzed ex-millionaire who was inspired by an apocalyptic vision to paint a 300-foot mural called Revelation Revealed. In Wisconsin, the author calls on painter and sculptor Norbert Kox, once a member of the Outlaw biker gang and now a born-again Christian who lives in an abandoned store and creates savage critiques of organized religion. Although the art Bottoms sees is not to his liking, and the artists' politics are far to the right of his own, he presents sensitive vignettes. His poignant book, imbued with troubling thoughts of his brother's illness and his own uneasiness about his motives in seeking out marginalized artists, ends on a positive note: the creative process does indeed have life-affirming powers. (Mar.)
She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband
Helen Boyd. Seal, $15.95 paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-58005-193-4
I've been preparing myself to lose my husband for the past few years," observes Boyd in this humorous, self-deprecating follow-up to her first memoir, My Husband Betty. "There is another woman, in a sense. My husband is that other woman, or might become her." Delving deeply into the question of gender identity, she explores the role of gender and its impact on how and who we love. Boyd, an androgynous-looking heterosexual woman (often mistaken for a lesbian), is married to a heterosexual man, who for the past few years has been "presenting as female" most of the time." Betty hasn't yet decided to have "the surgery," while Boyd isn't sure she'd be able to stay in the relationship if Betty does fully "transition" into being a woman. When referring to Betty, Boyd switches back and forth from "he" to "she"—even within the same sentence—portraying the confusion that a "trans person" presents daily in defining gender. Though she covers her complex topic well, and even includes a chapter of sex advice, Boyd's attempts to conceptualize her experience are unnecessarily repetitive. Part love story, part psychological treatise and part cautionary tale, this book will speak most directly to those who are confronting gender's perplexing contradictions. (Mar.)
From Edison to iPod: Protect Your Ideas and Make Money
Frederick w. Mostert and Lawrence e. Apolzon. DK, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7566-2602-0
The growth of technology, coupled with the speed at which ideas spread, makes it more important for businesspeople to understand the difference between copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and related matters, yet few recent books have managed to translate this complex topic into clear guidelines. Mostert and Apolzon fill this need with a chatty, inviting resource for anyone who's interested in protecting a great idea, but isn't sure whether a trademark, copyright, utility or design patent will do the trick. The authors have boiled down their message so well that a single two-page chart serves as a terrific crib sheet for the entire resource. Yet they also spice up their lessons with bold images, fun tidbits (who knew that Jamie Lee Curtis holds a patent?), notes of caution and definitions. This valuable guide for aspiring entrepreneurial thinkers provides overall principles for thinking through the basics of intellectual property (e.g., establish your idea first), while sharing hands-on tips, such as how to make your trademark distinctive yet not too cute. (Mar.)
The Last Link: Closing the Gap That Is Sabotaging Your Business
Gregg Crawford. Greenleaf (Greenleaf, dist.), $21.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-929774-42-7
This book's vague title obscures its real subject: how sales people and their managers can better support corporate strategy by streamlining the sales process. Consultant Crawford urges executives to focus on what he calls "Pivotal Agreements": elements that are crucial in determining whether every sale meets broader company objectives. For example, if a sales team doesn't achieve the pivotal agreement to defer price negotiations until late in the sales cycle, prices will probably fail to satisfy profit objectives. To create appropriate pivotal agreements, Crawford recommends a "3D Model" involving data, dialogue and discipline to "close the gap" between strategy and sales. The concept is sound, and the author's warning that merely racking up a high volume of sales is unlikely to guarantee long-term profitability is well taken. But the book is larded with consultant-speak, short on concrete details and lacks examples. Three pages about the importance of "the Sales Execution Plan" explain this document's value, but don't provide a sample or show readers how to create one. The book concludes with a playlet in which executives commit sales blunders that the author warns against—a last-ditch attempt to make this tome a bit more vivid. (Mar.)
Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl
Steven Bach. Knopf, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-0-375-40400-9
Hitler's favorite filmmaker prettified her own story almost as much as she glorified the ugly reality of the Third Reich, which makes her a natural for biographers with a taste for dish and debunkery. Bach (Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend) excavates, somewhat more fluently, many of the low points covered in Jürgen Trimborn's recent Leni Riefenstahl: A Life: her courting of Nazi sponsorship and admiration for Hitler, her witnessing—later denied—of a massacre of Polish Jews, her deployment of Gypsy slave laborers as extras (many of them died at Auschwitz) and her postwar efforts, through lawsuits and misleading memoirs, to downplay or suppress these facts. Bach also fleshes out more of Riefenstahl's private life, with details about a parade of lovers (one of them, an American decathlonist, apparently tore off Riefenstahl's blouse and kissed her breasts in front of 100,000 spectators at the 1936 Berlin Olympics) and her attempts to get her hands on the inheritance of her niece and nephew. He intersperses perceptive commentary on her masterful propaganda films, while noting that her art "lulls and deceives" instead of awakening and illuminating. The result is a lively, incisive look at a compelling and somewhat appalling figure who demonstrated that beauty isn't always truth. Photos. (Mar. 19)
Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist
Mike Farrell. Akashic/RDV, $21.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-933354-08-8
In this honest autobiography, Farrell, who played B.J. Hunnicutt in the TV series M*A*S*H, provides intimate accounts of growing up working-class in the shadows of wealthy Hollywood, overcoming personal demons as he starts his acting career and finding happiness in the popular sitcom and what he describes as a supportive and cohesive cast and crew. Throughout the series, Farrell also began to pursue an interest in politics and human rights that took him to Cambodia, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and his passionate descriptions of the human rights abuses in those countries show why Farrell currently is considered one of Hollywood's most prominent activists. He moves easily between diarylike descriptions (which sometimes are dry) of his further travels as an activist after M*A*S*H* ended in 1983, and a look at his present-day career as both an actor and producer. Best of all, his chapter on his involvement in the film Patch Adams is one of the best looks at "game-playing, duplicity, ineptitude, wasted money, manipulation and ass-covering" behind the production of a major Hollywood film. (Mar.)
The Label: The Story of Columbia Records
Gary Marmorstein. Thunder's Mouth, $29.95 (624p) ISBN 978-1-56025-707-5
In 1948, Hungarian-born engineer Peter Goldmark unveiled for Columbia the creation of the 331/3long-playing microgroove record, revolutionizing the music industry. In this comprehensive history, Marmorstein (Hollywood Rhapsody) offers an overview of those events in the context of a complete company history spanning a dozen decades. He documents the 1889 origins of the Columbia Phonograph Company and subsequent technological plateaus, from cylinder recordings to single-sided and double-sided discs, followed by the LP, stereo and the dawn of the digital era. Along with company mergers, he profiles music makers from Bessie Smith to Bob Dylan and looks at the innovative album art of Jim Flora ("a post-nuclear Miró") and the creation of logo designs. He turns up the volume when writing about the men behind the music, from "witty and plugged-in" president Goddard Lieberson to acclaimed producers John Hammond and George Avakian. Along with an earful of audio archives and oral histories, Marmorstein leafed through recording contracts, sales reports, job sheets, memos and personal correspondence. The 35 pages of bibliographic notes indicate the exhaustive research that led to this authoritative history. 16-page photo insert not seen by PW. (Mar. 26)
Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics
Alexander Frater. Knopf, $25.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-679-40871-0
Frater, author of Chasing the Monsoon, was born in Vanuatu, where his mother had run two schools and his father, a "misinari dokta," had taught and practiced medicine. His grandfather had been a much-revered Presbyterian missionary on nearby Paama Island. Not everyone born and bred in the tropics likes tropical life; many envy the seasons or schools or health services of the temperate world. But just as church bells in the tropics have a unique resonance, so Frater himself has the human version of "tropical resonance." Everything about life in the tropics—food, diseases, insects, religion, rivers, language, drink, forestry, human sweat—is endlessly fascinating for him, reminding him of a story he heard traveling downstream from Mandalay, or filming in Mozambique, or riding a bus into Rarotonga. He finds the smallest details of tropical life so entertaining, he barely notices the attendant inconveniences. Thus he makes the insects eating his grandfather's book—selectively consuming its constituent parts, "the spine's sweet glue and crunchy muslin, biscuity strawboard covers, a confit of gold leaf licked from the titles"— sound like regular gourmands. Frater's final tale, of how he brought a grand English bell to his grandfather's church on Paama, forms a fitting grace note to an outstanding memoir. (Mar.)
Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence
Rebecca Walker. Riverhead, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-59448-943-3
The author of Black, White and Jewish gives voice to the uncertainty of her generation in a powerful new memoir. In journal format, beginning with the day her pregnancy is confirmed and ending as she and her partner bring their son home, Walker tells of her physical and emotional journey toward motherhood, poignantly reflecting on the ambivalence that has delayed her dream of having a child for years. Like many 20- and 30-somethings, she was raised to view partnership and parenthood as the least empowering choices in an infinite array of options. This tension comes to the fore as Walker's mother, Alice Walker, opposes her decision to have a baby and challenges her account of their relationship in Black, White and Jewish. Alice ends their relationship and removes Rebecca from her will, and Rebecca endures a tumultuous pregnancy, estranged from her mother as she prepares to become one herself. Elusive health complications arise, and she hops from doctor to doctor, ever wary of Western medicine. Through a lengthy litany of decisions (midwife versus M.D., stroller versus "travel system"), she Googles her way to information overload. At the end of this nine-month mental tug-of-war, she emerges changed: a meat eater, a committed partner with a renewed faith in intimacy, a new woman plus-one. Walker's story is accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit and warmth. (Mar.)
Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China
Beth Nonte Russell. Touchstone, $14 paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9297-9
Russell was asked by a friend, Alex, to accompany her to China to help her pick up the baby she and her husband were adopting. While parents usually make the trip together, Alex's husband had to stay home to care for another child. Russell didn't know Alex all that well, but agreed to go anyway. In this offbeat memoir, Russell describes the trip. It wasn't long into it before she noticed signs of Alex's ambivalence— she'd brought no camera to document the baby's adoption, and she'd refused to spend more time in China than was absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, Russell was having heavily symbolic dreams: she was an empress of China pregnant with an illegitimate child who had to be given away for adoption. Before long, Alex confessed that she didn't want this baby after all, and Russell fell in love with the baby herself. In the end, Russell brought home the baby she felt she was meant to have. The foreshadowing's heavy-handed, the dreams perhaps too prescient and some apparitions—the Virgin Mary, no less— strain credulity. But spiritual-minded readers might embrace the concept of linking reincarnation, adoption and fate. (Mar.)
The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City
Dore Gold. Regnery, $27.95 (362p) ISBN 1-59698-029-X
This exhaustively researched book by a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. (Hatred's Kingdom) reads like an informed diatribe recounting the 3,000-year history of Jerusalem, from its origins in Davidic Israel through the Islamic conquests and Crusades, to its central place in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and global religious consciousness. While meticulously detailing the role of the Holy City in the evolution of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the modern diplomatic battle for its custody, Gold is far from impartial. He displays an intense repudiation of fundamentalist Islam, and the perceived ineptitude and ingratitude of the West toward Israel, which he considers the only legitimate savior of the city. Warning of the apocalypse, he concludes that today's Jerusalem is threatened by the "evil wind" of Islamic fundamentalism; if redivided, he argues, the precious city will be the next great victim of global jihad. Comprehensive and cogent, this book may be a helpful resource to anyone interested in the historical and theological antecedents to today's political quagmire. However, the spiteful, defensive tone diminishes an otherwise fascinating history. Christians and Muslims alike will find his argument disquieting, as Gold repeatedly devalues the religious authenticity of their claim to the city. (Jan.)
Religion
A New Zen for Women
Perle Besserman. Palgrave Macmillan, $21.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-4039-7214-9
Zen Buddhist teacher and author Besserman hangs a load of dirty laundry in this book, both a memoir of her training years and an argument for a new and improved Zen that accommodates the unique strengths of women. The memoir part is a page-turning account of the time she spent—exactly how long is unclear—in London and in a Japanese monastery with her teacher, a highly placed roshi. The latter is portrayed as an autocratic, sexist, arbitrary, perfidious and nasty creep. Besserman in turn comes across as a woman scorned by a substitute for her overcritical father. She slugs her teacher when he speaks heartlessly about a woman whom she believes he has impregnated. Buddhism has certainly had its share—maybe more than its share—of personally outrageous teachers. But Besserman selectively stacks the deck against this one in a crusade for justice for women in Buddhism. That subject is important and alive, and Besserman is admirably familiar with the growing literature of women confronting and wrestling with yet another historically patriarchal wisdom tradition. But contrary to the publisher's description, she has written not a "heartwarming narrative of a woman's life in Zen" but an unloading of old wrongs. Other books on women and Buddhism—Sallie Tisdale's, for example—offer more spacious and gracious correction. (Apr.)
10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (but Can't Because He Needs the Job)
Oliver "Buzz" Thomas. St. Martin's, $19.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-312-36379-6
Christianity, "like Islam, is in danger of being hijacked by a militant minority of fundamentalists," writes Thomas, a Southern Baptist minister and constitutional lawyer active in public debates about religion, science and education. In this short book, he takes on today's big religious questions: homosexuality, the place of women, evolution vs. creationism, the plausibility of miracles, religious pluralism, life after death and others. Thomas's writing is clear and engaging, if occasionally flip ("This book is written for all the people who want to live lives of purpose... without having to put their brains in their pockets"). Taking on popular religious writers like Tim LaHaye and Rick Warren, Thomas argues against many conservative interpretations of biblical texts and sides with those who understand them as written by humans in a particular time and context far removed from the 21st century. Little in the book will be new to readers of contemporary religious newspapers or magazines, who may find its brevity disproportional to its price tag. But for those who have not yet been exposed to the religious debates taking place in the public forum, this concise book serves as a good introduction. (Mar. 22)
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
Anne Lamott. Riverhead, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-59448-942-6
It would be easy to mistake this book for more of the same. Like Lamott's earlier spiritual nonfiction, Traveling Mercies and Plan B, it's a collection of essays, mostly previously published. The three books have strikingly similar covers and nearly identical subtitles. The familiar topics are here—Mom; her son, illness; death; addictions; Jesus; Republicans—as is the zany attitude. Not that repetitiveness matters; Lamott's faithful fans would line up to buy her shopping lists. But these recent essays show a new mellowness: "I don't hate anyone right now, not even George W. Bush. This may seem an impossibility, but it is true, and indicates the presence of grace or dementia, or both." With gentle wisdom refining her signature humor, Lamott explores helpfulness, decency, love and especially forgiveness. She explains the change: "Sometimes I act just as juvenile as I ever did, but as I get older, I do it for shorter periods of time. I find my way back to the path sooner, where there is always one last resort: get a glass of water and call a friend." Here's hoping that grace eventually persuades this older, wiser Lamott that her next nonfiction book should be wholly original. (Mar. 20)
Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books
Ilana M. Blumberg. Univ. of Nebraska, $24.95 (178p) ISBN 978-0-8032-1367-8
Tension wraps around the pages of Blumberg's memoir, an ardent intellectual autobiography by a woman in love with both Jewish texts and secular literature. Yet even more than the religious-secular divide symbolized by the beit midrash (Jewish house of learning) and the university, the struggle over a woman's place in Judaism tears at her soul. The granddaughter of a Hebrew scholar, as a child Blumberg juggled an Orthodox education with participation in an egalitarian Conservative synagogue. She details at length a depressing year in Israel at a women's michlalah (yeshiva), and then her introduction to university life, where she steeped herself in literature. Today, she has found a balance of sorts as a professor of English literature and Judaic studies at Michigan State University, but admits to still feeling a "sense of deep conflict" between tradition and secular ideas. Blumberg tries too hard to be poetic, and she risks losing some readers with assumptions of familiarity with Hebrew and Jewish texts. What her memoir elucidates, however, is the passion for study no matter what a person's gender: "If we studied we might come to see what... was truly important and what was trivial... we might come to see how God saw the world." (Mar. 15)
Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul
Carolyn Myss. Free Press, $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7432-5532-5
Fans of Myss's earlier books (Sacred Contracts, etc.), which drew inspiration from such diverse traditions as Indian medicine and ancient divination methods, may be surprised at how thoroughly entrenched her new book is in the Western religious tradition. In the preface, she discusses how an out-of-the blue seizure and a midlife hunger for an authentic spiritual practice set her exploring the mystical tradition of her childhood Catholic faith. Using St. Teresa of Ávila's metaphor of the "interior castle" as a template, Myss challenges readers to get in touch with their own souls and shows how they can then lead deeper, more joyous lives. Every chapter is packed with meditations that help to either clean out the detritus that prevents spiritual growth or prepare for a mystical meeting with God. Interspersed are supportive stories of those who have gone before on the path. While Myss explicitly states that readers need not become Catholic or even Christian to enter the castle, some may be turned off by how little she incorporates other traditions. Even so, the material clearly springs from a deeply personal place and every page rings with the passion and intensity of someone who has finally found what she was seeking. (Mar. 6)
The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War
Dan Gilgoff. St. Martin's, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-35790-0
In the deluge of books rushing to explain the rise of conservative evangelicals' influence on American politics, Gilgoff's offering makes a unique contribution: he argues that press-shy James Dobson should be regarded as the most powerful evangelical spokesman of the last decade (surpassing Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson). Gilgoff, a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, boasts extensive interview time with Dobson at the sprawling Focus on the Family campus in Colorado Springs, Colo., inside access that is complemented by excellent writing and a mother lode of information. Gilgoff argues that Dobson is a political powerhouse precisely because his constituency was built on dispensing no-nonsense family advice to millions of Americans desperate for help, not on any explicit political platform. When he ventures to make political statements, he commands a public trust few policy makers enjoy. Gilgoff traces the rise of evangelical influence in politics from the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in the 1970s and 1980s to Focus on the Family in the 1990s and 2000s, walking readers through the backroom power brokering of everything from Roe v. Wade to Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court. This is a smart piece of investigative journalism. (Mar. 6)
Peace Be Upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence
Zachary Karabell. Knopf, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4368-2
Conventional wisdom says that Christians, Jews and Muslims cannot get along and have never gotten along; the Crusades, the Inquisition and September 11 have all fueled the flames of constant religious intolerance. In a pedantic and frustrating study, journalist Karabell (The Last Campaign) challenges this view by pointing to numerous but little-known periods of peaceful coexistence among the three religions. For example, he points to John of Damascus's condemnation of Islam as a Christian heresy as a powerful indication of the close connection between the two faiths in the early Middle Ages. During the Crusades, Christian rulers often adopted the policies of the Muslim governments they had supplanted, while in the 19th century, some Muslim nations attempted to emulate the progress of Europe and to coexist more peacefully with European nations. Karabell points to Dubai as an area in which such ironic coexistence still occurs and wonders whether Dubai holds the key to the future. Regrettably, the moments of peaceful coexistence are hard to spot in Karabell's narrative, since the largest portions are occupied with the ways that Christians, Jews and Muslims have failed to get along. (Mar. 2)
Relics of Christ
Joe Nickell. Univ. Press of Kentucky, $27.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-8131-2425-4
Christian communities all over the world hold sacred material artifacts that supposedly date to early Christianity—baby Jesus' swaddling clothes, pieces of the sponge from which the dying Jesus drank, even a tear Jesus shed at Lazarus's grave. In this quirky little book, Nickell (author of more than 20 books and columnist for Skeptical Inquirer) debunks those relics. Nickell examines the Shroud of Turin, the Crown of Thorns, chalices that people have identified as the Holy Grail and so on. Could any of these objects be what Christian enthusiasts claim? In Nickell's view, the answer is a simple no. He concludes that "not a single, reliably authenticated relic of Jesus exists." For example, a 2003 scientific examination of the so-called "Holy Lance," purported to be the spear with which Jesus was pierced on the Cross, found that the gold sheath dated to the 14th century. Nickell includes a bibliography, but footnotes, directing readers to the specific scientific research on which he relies in each chapter, would have been appropriate as well. One of the most interesting passages comes in the epilogue, where Nickell notes that some defenders of relics are sincere believers. A longer discussion of people's experiences with relics would have rounded out this book. (Mar.)
Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women
Andrew Greeley. Forge, $17.95 (176p) ISBN 978-0-765-31776-6
Father Andrew Greeley is well known for his sometimes spicy murder mysteries and his always progressive view of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. It comes as no surprise that he would pen this delightful exploration of Jesus' relationships with women. Focusing largely on the parables, the book brings fresh meaning to these familiar stories, infusing them with what Greeley terms "the good news of a Great Surprise," the marvelous revelation of God's love and acceptance of women in a largely male-dominated society. Many of the women are unnamed—the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well, etc.—and some are named, like Mary of Magdala, who may have had a romantic relationship with Jesus. Greeley is certainly a prolific author—he's written some 50 works of fiction and more than 100 works of nonfiction—and this book illustrates why he is so popular. He takes the familiar—in this case, the parables of Jesus—and infuses it with new life and meaning. He leaves behind the dour, solemn proclamations of the church fathers and reminds us that "Jesus delights in surprising those he loves." In fact, Greeley's observations go far beyond Jesus' relationships with women, reminding us that God's love extends to even the least of us. (Mar.)
Shalom in the Home: Savvy Advice for a Peaceful Home
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Meredith, $14.95 paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-696-23507-8
Boteach offers readers realistic, effective and remarkably simple advice in this eminently readable guide to achieving a better family life. As part of his TLC television series, Shalom in the Home, the rabbi follows 10 families who have requested his counseling to resolve family dysfunction. From cheating husbands and raging wives to spoiled children and rebellious teens, Boteach underscores, with a smile and a calm voice, that the key to domestic peace lies in core values: taking responsibility, leading through inspiration, treating our spouses and parents as we would like our children to treat us, raising our children with patience, and loving them for who they are, not what they do. Perhaps most significant is the rabbi's admonition to remember that as human beings, every word and action results from the split-second choices we make. His mantra of "words which emanate from the heart penetrate the heart," works well, and his genuine desire to effect change is evidenced by his frequent admissions of qualities he lacks, as well as a willingness to push the envelope and risk the wrath of the profiled families and the criticism of his fans. Boteach's traditional wisdom will find approval with religious enthusiasts, but his candor and commitment will earn him the respect of anyone who values a peaceful home. (Mar.)
A Heart for Africa: Rosemary Jensen and the Story of Rafiki
Annie E.J. Thorp. Kregel, $12.99 (64p) ISBN 978-0-8254-3889-9
The heart of Rosemary Jensen, former director of Bible Study Fellowship (BSF), beats true in this chronicle of Rafiki, the organization she founded to help the people of Africa. She and her husband first went to Africa as missionaries in 1957. Though they returned to the U.S. in 1966, they still had compassion for the troubled continent. In 1986, concerned about the devastation AIDS was causing throughout Africa, the Jensens and two others formed the Rafiki Foundation, which includes Rafiki Children's Centers that offer homes and education to orphans in countries such as Ghana and Uganda, and Rafiki Girls' Centers and Boys' Centers that offer core education and vocational skills. Rafiki Villages, now in five countries, have sprung up out of these endeavors. This small book, written by Jensen's daughter, offers an overview of Rafiki, its miraculous growth and the African countries in which it operates. It also features emotion-laden stories of children and young adults whose lives have been changed, and 75 color photographs. BSF participants will be eager readers of this inspiring story, as will anyone interested in Africa and missionary work. (Mar.)
Speaking of Faith
Krista Tippett. Viking, $23.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-670-03835-0
Tippett, host of the weekly NPR radio show Speaking of Faith, offers a challenging book that is part intellectual autobiography, part rumination on the issues of the day. It begins with a fairly detailed discussion of the death of "secularization theory" as outlined by Harvey Cox and others—not a typical opening salvo for a spiritual memoir—and then reveals Tippett's own intellectual and spiritual formation. She discusses at length how her views were shaped not only by her Southern Baptist grandfather in Oklahoma, or by her adolescent rejection of his rigidity, but by the time she spent in East and West Germany in her 20s, first as a journalist and then as a diplomat. She followed this period with marriage and a stint in England before taking the plunge and enrolling in divinity school in the early 1990s. More than a personal chronicle, however, this is a rigorously brainy piece of work, as informed by the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Charles Darwin and Annie Dillard as it is by Tippett's fascinating interviews with figures like Elie Wiesel and Karen Armstrong. As Tippett takes on issues from the science-and-religion debates to the future of progressive Islam, she shows herself to possess the same "imaginative intellectual approach" that she admires in some of her interview subjects. (Mar.)
