Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 4/9/2007

Right now, as you read this, somebody, somewhere, is planning a war": from its opening sentence, Smith's book demands the reader's attention. A professor of philosophy and the cofounder and director of the Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New England, Smith has written a stark study of human nature, examining how we are biologically wired to fight. The human need for war is based on two powerful evolutionary factors: an innate aggressiveness born of a need to fight for food, shelter and the right to breed, and the human craving to belong to a group. Dispelling illusions of the peaceful, noble savage, Smith discusses anthropological and archeological evidence of war, raids, terrorism and genocide between hunter-gatherer societies: mass graves of people executed by blows to the head; human bones scarred by butchering or with arrow and spear points lodged in them. Human settlement brought wars of conquest and industry devoted to making weapons. Now we attempt to disguise the facts of war with euphemisms like "target" (instead of person), "friendly fire" and "collateral damage." Smith's writing, reinforced by one grim example after another, is crisp and sobering, never blunting the fact that we are "our own worst enemy." (Aug.)

Heraclitus famously noted that you can't step into the same river twice, and Hudson Valley author Busch (Geography of Home) reaches this literal truth by swimming across nine different rivers—many once polluted beyond recognition—in order to "reclaim" them for personal and communal renewal. An avid swimmer, Busch resolved to swim across these rivers (with friends, in summer and during benevolent weather conditions) over the course of four years, despite repeated local admonitions not to go in the water: from the upper Hudson, where she resides, to the Delaware, Connecticut, Susquehanna, Monongahela, Cheat, Mississippi, Ohio and Current Rivers. Along the way she shares delightful lore about these important waterways, insinuating aspects of each river's particular history and beauty, such as that the Hudson was called "the river that flows two ways" by the local Algonquin; the Susquehanna is listed as the most polluted river; the Mississippi is the longest and most changing; while the Current in Missouri is the clearest. Busch enlists reflections from environmentalists and nature writers such as Edward Abbey and Thoreau, and taps into local organizations (e.g., Pete Seeger's) that claim that swimming in a river leads to a sense of stewardship. Busch's journey across these rivers becomes an elegant metaphor for life. (July)

Humorous, jubilant and touching by turns, this story of the relationship between man and dog is informed by the author's grasp of animal research and his attachment to Merle, a stray dog he adopted. A Labrador mix, Merle first appeared while the author was on a camping trip. Kerasote (Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age), an award-winning nature writer, decided to take his canine friend home to rural Wyoming. This chronicle of their 13 years together is interspersed with studies by animal behaviorists that strengthened Kerasote's desire to see Merle as a responsible individual rather than a submissive pet. Merle set his own eating schedule (though not without early mishap), refused to hunt birds (although not elks) and, according to the author, possessed a range of emotions and sentiments similar to those of humans. Kerasote tends to anthropomorphize Merle's every look and movement, but this narrative is entertaining and Kerasote's strong love for Merle and enthusiasm for life in the wild will win over many readers. Kerasote's joyous relationship with Merle is balanced by a bittersweet account of a close relationship the author had with Alison, a neighbor and fellow dog owner. Kerasote's last weeks with the dying Merle are beautifully rendered. (July)

Americans considered World War II over in August 1945, but in this enthralling sequel to Eagle Against the Sun, historian Spector recounts the brutal postwar conflicts inside former Japanese conquests. Although hailed in American media as China's savior, Chiang Kai-shek enlisted and received the help of the undefeated Japanese army in fending off Mao Zedong's Communist forces. The modest assistance of two U.S. Marine divisions barely slowed Chiang's ultimate defeat. WWII's end in Malaya produced a vicious racial conflict between Malaysians and the Chinese minority. Vietnam considered itself independent when the French returned to resume control, a bloody process that, after eight years, failed. Before surrendering, the Japanese granted independence to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), but four years of warfare and anarchy passed before the Dutch withdrew. American occupation forces arrived in South Korea, entirely ignorant of its culture and language, and remained till 1949, leaving a turbulent country ruled by the only Koreans the U.S. could understand: missionary-educated, English-speaking and very conservative; U.S. troops returned the following year. Spector relates dismal accounts of civil war and mass slaughter, much of it provoked by the blundering victorious powers—a painful lesson backed with impressive research and delivered with Spector's usual wit and insight. (July 17)

The song "House of the Rising Sun," which became a chart-topping hit in 1964 by the Animals, has a murky history, said to have originated in Appalachia, maybe New Orleans and perhaps even England, as well as having a thriving universal afterlife among cover bands and karaoke singers. Anthony, an editor for the Associated Press, crisscrossed the globe in search of the twisted roots and many spreading branches of this lonesome ballad of unknown origins. The song's ultimate odyssey began in 1937 when folklorist Alan Lomax recorded a version by 16-year-old Georgia Turner Connolly in Middlesboro, Ky. Lomax published the lyrics as "The Rising Sun Blues" and from there it grew in popularity and was performed and recorded by many, including Bob Dylan on his first record in 1962. The story seems promising, but Anthony's narrative is an uneasy mix of memoir, dissertation-like detail (with tedious repetitions of multiple versions of lyrics), journalistic feature writing and esoteric trivia. Anthony at times unconvincingly adopts the authoritative voice of an American studies expert, and he also lacks the musical or poetic knowledge to dissect the song. This exploration will be of most value to those who share Anthony's unbridled obsession with this ubiquitous ballad. (June)

Sharp and sensitive, stoned silly and serious, all in the right places, Lindeen's account of her life as guitarist and songwriter for Zuzu's Petals is a love song (played really fast) for the postpunk or Amer-indie scene of mid-1980s Minneapolis, when bands like the Replacements and Soul Asylum had yet to move from cult heroes to major-label artists. It was also the time when Lindeen, a music-loving, four-time college dropout with multiple sclerosis, could guilelessly decide to "start a band and make that exciting life of song and guitar feedback, travel and intrigue, carousing and cavorting our own." What Lindeen finds at first is fulfillment and self-confidence on stage, and at the end a hard cycle of "drive, eat, go to a bar for sound check, hang out, play" that leads to her breaking up the band. In between, along with some touching scenes from her youth, Lindeen skillfully details great and not-so-great gigs, horrible hotels, wonderful (if weird) fans, boyfriends and all sorts of strange events and locations ("The walls are covered with black Astroturf"). After paying her dues, Lindeen finds love and marriage in ex-Replacements leader Paul Westerberg, which brings it all back home for her—and her readers—in what is a truly wonderful book about life in rock music. (June)

The author of this absorbing memoir was a misfit in the most misfit-intolerant place on earth. Coming of age during the Cultural Revolution, Kang kept secret diaries, disdained the political sloganeering at his university and was sent away for requesting the suspect novel Doctor Zhivago—crimes that landed him a three-year prison term and resettlement in a peasant commune where the work was almost as backbreaking as in the camps. His story is a lively, intricate account of communism's panoptic police state, suffocating bureaucracy (residency permits and ration cards made moving, working and eating impossibly complex) and rabid witch hunts for imaginary class villains, all of which only exacerbated traditional obsessions with obtaining food, housing and a spouse. But official denunciations of Kang's bad attitude weren't entirely wrong. "I treasured laziness," he writes. "I admired the work habits of carnivorous animals like lions... free to loll around all day once they had finished capturing their prey." Such profoundly unproletarian sentiments put him at odds not only with the Party but with his despairing parents and disgruntled villagers who felt he was shirking in the fields. Kang's rugged individualism takes his story beyond the usual narrative of persecution and hardship, making it an incisive, personal critique of a deeply conformist society. Photos. (June)

Not only has Katz written 16 books, he cohosts Dog Talk on public radio, freelances for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and operates the eponymous Bedlam Farm in upstate New York—sometimes with his wife, but always with dogs and chickens and sheep and even a few donkeys and cows. Readers familiar only with Katz's suburban mystery novels will find that his farm memoirs set out to do basically the same thing, bring order to chaos. His goal in running Bedlam Farm is to find ways for his various animals and their humans to work together in harmonious synchronicity. Everything requires balance. He must be mindful of his own tendency to anthropomorphize, while remaining open to the emotional bonds his animals invite. He must remember that many awful things—flies, freezing weather, disease—are normal in the lives of animals, even as he struggles to give his animals the best life possible. He has to balance his focus on the farm with his relationship with his wife, who never particularly approved of the farm idea, even if she supported his need to do it. Anyone who loves animals or country life, but maybe can't have a pet or actually live in the country, will find Katz a perfect armchair companion. (June)

The Other Woman may be a topic of eternally prurient interest, but the main attraction of this strong collection of 21 personal essays is the top-drawer writers such as Diana Abu-Jaber, Laurie Stone and Susan Cheever. Narrated from the point of view of the marriage wrecker or that of the wife who suffers the anguish of triangulation in a trusting relationship, these tales drip with the bitterness of experience. In "Palm Springs," Mary Jo Eustace records the shattering moment when she was stranded on vacation with her small children, and her husband revealed he had fallen in love with his movie co-star. Jane Smiley's terrifically funny "Iowa Was Never Like This" describes the incorrigible but enchanting litany of love's fickle nature. Dani Shapiro's "The Mistress" recreates her several years' affair with the much older stepfather of her college friend—and the lies she finally uncovered by hiring a detective. And in her plainspoken "The Uterine Blues," Connie May Fowler wonders when women are going to smarten up and stop sabotaging one another by sleeping with each other's husbands. The anthology features tales from women of all ages, lesbians and women who have been abused physically: it is a candid and truly fascinating look at how men and women love and hurt. (June)

Bennett, who's written several funny books about his adopted home, New Zealand, decided to roam his native England in the footsteps of H.V. Morton, a good-old-boy who traveled England in 1926 for his popular In Search of England. Bennett, remembering the footloose wanderings of his youth, had planned to hitchhike, but after hours and days just standing by high-speed motorways, he took a few trains before borrowing his buddy's car. He visited the durable tourist destinations—Bath, Salisbury, etc.—as well as many spots notable in Morton's day but barely interesting to modern visitors. Still, some detail always catches Bennett's eye, from the way modern football uniforms resemble "a sort of sexy lingerie," to the "lachrymose drunk" wandering the pub, "hugging anyone she can, like a blowsy octopus." Bennett feels there are "few truly remarkable places"—and most "are more significant when imagined than when visited." In the end, he stumbles on the filming of Antiques Roadshow at Norwich Cathedral—a perfect example of the commercialization of history. Readers will enjoy Bennett's understated, ironic humor, whether or not they plan to visit England. (June)

Coauthors Amann and Breuer (Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly) let rip with this vehement screed against Fox News, which features a host of conservative, opinion-heavy programs targeted to a middle America audience, according to its well-crafted sales strategy. What concerns these avowedly liberal pundits is that "Fox does a demonstrably poor job of presenting the cold, hard facts in a spin-free fashion" as compared with CNN or MSNBC. Solidly referencing their arguments, the authors take issue with the slanted presentation by news shows such as Hannity & Colmes, Fox & Friends and, especially, The O'Reilly Factor, whose hosts regularly target the secularization of Christmas, Hollywood elites and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. The authors are outraged by what they perceive as the network's shoddy, irresponsible journalism and alarmed that these right-wing views imbibed daily by millions of people will turn Americans into "fatuous morons." Stylistically sarcastic and fairly raunchy, the authors have sadly allowed themselves to be tainted by what they see as Fox's own brand of vulgarization and can be downright rude and their criticism personal. (June)

Wolk bids adieu to carefree living by returning one last time to summer camp before he gets married. In his account of his eight-week stint as a counselor at Camp Eastwind in Maine, he takes the reader on a romp through male adolescence, which, for Wolk, has retained an archetypal purity. Through the humor ("apoopeatersayswhat?"), the diving board games ("arrrgh, ya got me!"), the smell ("a mixture of feet, old olive loaf and an un–air-conditioned morgue"), he captures the essence of the male teenager with tender, wistful insight. The book evokes in the reader the same nostalgia for camp—and even adolescence—that Wolk feels as he anticipates his return to Eastwind. What propels the memoir, though, is Wolk's frank description of his own re-emerging insecurities inherent to his adolescent self. When he receives a tepid reception from the other counselors, for instance, he calls his fiancée and expresses his reservations about his plan, sounding like a homesick camper calling home. Then there is Mitch, the "action-sport junky" counselor from Wolk's youth, creating the perfect balance between tension and fun-loving innocence: Wolk's domination over his campers in backgammon just cannot compare to Mitch's speedboat rides. But Wolk undergoes a significant transformation, leaving behind his adolescent misconceptions about manhood and re-entering the world on his own terms. (June)

The strength of print and television reporter Lerman's funny and insightful look at full-time parenthood has almost nothing to do with being a "real" man and everything to do with being an older dad. At 44, Lerman hits his self-imposed age deadline for fatherhood and being able to attend a child's marriage "without the aid of a portable oxygen tent." His account of what older parents-to-be go through to get pregnant will be immediately familiar to any couple who has experienced what Lerman correctly calls "the promising, terrifying, and enormously embarrassing world of Baby Science"—including Clomid fertility treatments, sperm tests and in vitro fertilization—and it adds a sweet and thoughtful edge to the many adventures over four years after his son, Max, is born. While Lerman's Dave Barry–style humor doesn't always work, he is far more successful—and funny—recounting his struggles with lack of sleep, changing diapers and "full-fledged neurosis" about forgetting Max somewhere. More important, he captures the many ways fathers work hard at establishing their "own special relationship" with babies and toddlers, concluding with a beautiful definition of "Dadditude" as "being in the moment" and experiencing the "closeness beyond words and before words" that can be felt between parent and child. (June)

In this probing exposé, Washington Post investigative reporter Gup (The Book of Honor) surveys the post-9/11 mania for secrecy, focusing on the ubiquitous classification of routine information, the gutting of the Freedom of Information Act and the persecution of whistle-blowers. The government, he notes, is busy reclassifying information that has been in the public domain for decades, and a Pentagon report criticizing excessive secrecy was stamped Top Secret. It's all part of a national obsession with confidentiality, Gup argues, that afflicts corporations, universities and the press itself, whose reliance on unnamed sources corrupts and misleads its reporting. Gup's muckraking sometimes misfires (he reports on an intelligence operative who either murdered two other agents or was pulling his leg), and he ups the anxiety by conflating government secrecy with surveillance and wire-tapping programs. Democracy seems more gummed up than actually threatened by the problems he spotlights, such as the concealment of crimes, defective products and corporate chicanery, gossip replacing verifiable news, government pursuit of misguided policies based on secret information rather than public information that can be checked and debated. Still, this is a cogent critique of a tight-lipped America that is increasingly paranoid, dysfunctional and absurd. (June 5)

Controversial former North Carolina congressman Hendon and attorney Stewart make the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up. The main reason for the secrecy, say the authors, is the billions in war reparations demanded by the Vietnamese and promised by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon at the Paris Peace talks. Hendon and Stewart provide a mountain of evidence, mainly intelligence reports of live sightings of American prisoners in Vietnam and Laos that make for less-than-scintillating reading. But riveting sections describe Hendon's crusade on this issue in the early 1980s, including two meetings with President Reagan, pleading his case that the government free the live POWs. Hendon and Stewart directly accuse a long list of government officials of the coverup. Among the most culpable: Kissinger, President George H.W. Bush, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state George Schultz and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It's a chore wading through the live-sighting reports and the massive, detailed endnotes, but the descriptions of Hendon's unsuccessful personal mission provide an intriguing story—and carry the ring of truth. 36 b&w photos not seen by PW. (June 1)

With this lengthy but frequently gripping memoir, Shrum recounts his three-decade career in American politics, which he began as a speechwriter for New York's Mayor John Lindsay and ended as a campaign strategist for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. More insider history than memoir, the book focuses almost exclusively on the author's professional experience, featuring richly detailed accounts of his efforts working on Edward Kennedy's, Al Gore's and John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bids (conversely, Shrum covers his engagement and wedding to Marylouise, his wife of 18 years, in three swift pages). Unsurprisingly, given his background, Shrum writes with eloquence and passion; more unexpected is his disarming candor. He's by turns effusive and brutal, for example waxing poetic about Edward Kennedy after vehemently criticizing Jimmy Carter. Later, he voices somewhat harsh ambivalence toward Bill Clinton. A deep sense of disappointment pervades the book: Shrum's string of failed presidential campaigns led to talk of the "Shrum curse," which the author never managed to overcome. Casual judgments and frank disclosures along the way make this a provocative and entertaining behind-the-scenes look at American politics. B&w photos not seen by PW. (June)

Mejía, a veteran of the Iraq conflict, became an antiwar hero when he refused to return to his unit and was court-martialed in 2004 for desertion. His memoir is a blend of compelling war narrative and dubious soapboxing. Mejía's claim to conscientious objector status, after eight years in the U.S. military, months of combat and a long campaign for a discharge, rings rather hollow. The son of prominent Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he takes a view of the insurgents' "fight for self-determination" that seems naïve ("[t]here seemed to be a unity that spread through the differences among Iraqis") and his prose is laced with clunky rhetoric about "the imperial dragon that devours its own soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike for the sake of profit." Most powerful are his firsthand experiences of prisoner abuse, senseless patrols that invite insurgent attacks, discord among his demoralized comrades and their careerist officers, and the constant brutalization of Iraqis by paranoid, trigger-happy GIs. (In one incident, an irate soldier arrests an eight-year-old rock thrower, who is then beaten by a local man desperate to appease the vengeful Americans.) Those stories add up to an indelible portrait of the dirty war in the Sunni triangle and Mejía's painful confrontation with his immoral complicity in it. (June)

Walls, like those of Hadrian and Maginot, do not have a good reputation, and Taylor (Dresden) has written a superb narrative of the rise and fall of the monstrous one that scarred Berlin between August 1961 and November 1989. Walls, too, are more than merely bricks and mortar (or, in the 100-mile-long Berlin version's case, anti-vehicle crash obstacles, unclimbable barriers, barbed-wire fences, self-activating searchlights and heavily armed border guards), and one of Taylor's major themes is the Berlin Wall's significance in the global power politics of the Cold War. According to Taylor, Kennedy, Macmillan and de Gaulle were not decisively opposed to the division between East and West Germans. Berlin, in truth, was a dangerously volatile potential flashpoint, and while the erection of the wall was brutal and oppressive to those caught behind or trying to get over it, it stabilized Europe and symbolized the differences between capitalism and communism. Reagan, however, emphasized the rights of the trapped and challenged Gorbachev to tear it down. The Kremlin, ironically, was undone by its own creation. Taylor's enthralling story, combined with impeccable research and its rich human interest, makes this as dramatically gripping as any of the spy thrillers that used the wall as a backdrop. 16 pages of b&w photos, map. (June 1)

Historian and journalist Hersh (The Old Boys) might well have titled his excellent book "Collision Course," for that is exactly what J. Edgar Hoover and the Kennedys were on from as early as the 1930s. The many tensions between Bobby (as both attorney general and senator) and the power-hungry FBI director are well known. What Hersh brings to the party is important new research and intensive analysis revealing the complex background attendant to the confrontations of the 1960s. The third party to RFK's and Hoover's sparring was Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., whose long history of professional affiliations with such gangsters as Johnny Rosselli, and amorous flirtations with the likes of Gloria Swanson, swelled one of Hoover's secret files and (like JFK's peccadilloes) did much to complicate dealings with "the Director." Joe's past still overshadowed everything when in December 1961 the father was incapacitated by a stroke, leaving his boys to deal with an FBI head who secretly despised not only the father but his brood. On this stage, in a drama populated by such fascinating and contradictory characters as Roy Cohn, Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Hoffa and mob boss Carlos Marcello, Hersh reveals the ways of power, deceit and survival-of-the-fittest in Kennedy-era D.C. (June 1)

Freelance author Lowe presents the 1943 Hamburg firestorm raids as a case study in WWII's defining characteristic: the tension between desire to destroy at random and will to restrain that desire. Historically inclined to the liberal and socialist Left, Hamburg complied with the Nazi New Order, but didn't celebrate it. The city was also a major industrial center and legitimate target—especially given the Allied belief that air attacks could make war shorter and less destructive. Lowe vividly describes the death, destruction and accompanying horrors, such as blocks of people being sucked into the firestorms. He's at pains to show the airmen's lack of triumphalism, after suffering heavy losses in attacking the well-defended target. But when he says that Hamburg is regarded as a byword for horror, he seems to mean in Germany—Europe has not developed much sympathy for the tribulations of the Third Reich. He's on even shakier ground arguing that Britons and Americans developed a "legacy of guilt" for the bombing, and positioning the later years of the combined bomber offensive on a continuum with the Holocaust, because neither distinguished between combatants and civilians. Nevertheless, this balanced and evocative analysis makes a provocative contribution to moral studies of the air war over Germany. (June)

In France, it is called l'exode, or "exodus": the flight from their homes of up to seven million residents before and during the German invasion of the country in May and June 1940 (events described in the bestselling novel Suite Française). Diamond, who specializes in modern French history at the University of Bath, combed dozens of memoirs and diaries about the flight for this first major study in English. She notes a number of reasons for the mass internal migration, including a belief in the "atrocity propaganda" about Germany from WWI; fears that the Germans would bomb Paris and other cities; a desire to avoid working for the Nazi war machine; and the flight of the French government itself from Paris. She captures how an initial "holiday spirit" gave way to a sense of displacement, loss and impoverishment for some and separation of families. Diamond also shows how the host communities, predominantly in France's south and west, often were overwhelmed by a doubling or tripling of their populations virtually overnight. Perhaps most important and interesting is her exploration of how Marshall Pétain exploited the exodus to discredit the government of the Third Republic. While Diamond's treatment of some topics, like fatalities during the exodus, is cursory, this is a solid work on a socially convulsive episode of WWII. 22 b&w photos. (June)

Ferling, professor emeritus at the University of West Georgia, caps his distinguished career as a scholar and popular writer on the colonial/revolutionary period with arguably the best, and certainly one of the most stimulating, single-volume histories of the American Revolution. Exhaustively researched and clearly written, it stresses the contingent aspects of a war where victory depended on making the fewest mistakes. Despite chances to end the war in battle, by negotiation or by international conference, Britain failed for lack of manpower, the decision to wage limited war and an ineffective central government—and above all, comprehensive underestimation of American military effectiveness and political resolve. America's cause, ironically, nearly foundered on reluctance to support a standing army, and a government that wasn't strong enough to plan and execute a concerted war effort. That popular enthusiasm never broke owed much to a stable French alliance and to George Washington, who was a good diplomat, a better politician and an excellent judge of character. Steadily growing into the responsibilities of commander in chief, he achieved legitimate iconic status by the war's end. Ultimately, Ferling demonstrates that independence was won through the endurance of the American people and their soldiers, who held on for that last vital quarter of an hour. (June)

Remember that Metropolitan gala in The Devil Wears Prada, where Miranda Priestly has someone whisper in her ear the name of everyone she meets? Well, ancient Roman politicians had such an aide, too: he was called a nomenclator. León entertainingly introduces us to this and other colorful professions held by men and women in Greco-Roman society. With short, humorous anecdotes, she describes the daily grind of scribes, vestal virgins, fishmongers, astronomers, sophists, hoplite slaves, sellers of purple, curse-tablet makers, funeral clowns, sycophants and orgy planners. Scribes, for example, were speed writers who not only recorded public information but also acted as journalists jotting down juicy tales of love, death and political intrigue in the Daily Record. The beast supplier, or praepositus camelorum, tracked, captured and supplied all the animals used in gladiatorial contests and circuses in Rome. León weaves sketches of actual people employed in these professions. Banker's son Apollodorus, a rich-kid-turned-lawyer, litigated a 19-year lawsuit after his father willed his fortune to an ex-slave. Drawing on the same outrageous sense of humor that's made her Uppity Women series so popular, León demonstrates how uncannily similar the workaday experiences of the ancient world are to ours. Illus. (June)

Well written and accessible to a general audience, these 21 articles from Scientific American since 1999 provide insight into our current state of knowledge about the human brain. Floyd, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former editor of its flagship journal, Science, is ideal to make this selection. In the first section, "Mind," about high-level brain functions, Nobel laureate Eric Kandel argues that we are now poised to turn "mind" from a philosophical concept into a scientific one. The next section, "Matter," deals primarily with disorders of the brain and how, for example, researchers hope to devise effective treatments and better understand the healthy brain. The final section, "Tomorrow's Brain," envisions a time when prosthetic devises might be controlled by thought alone, when artificial retinas are commonplace and when humans and machines merge into what could only be described as a new entity—a future that may not be so far off. Miguel Nicoleli and John Chapin show how Belle, an owl monkey, working with a microwire array implanted on the surface of her brain, moves an artificial arm merely by thinking of making it move. There's much to stimulate the brain of any reader. 30 color illus. (June)

Leading medical minds were once convinced that health and sickness resulted from the interplay of the four "humors": blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, each associated with a certain personality trait (e.g., black bile signifies melancholic) and with one of the basic elements of the universe (e.g., yellow bile is linked to fire). The rational mindset naturally recoils at the crudity and superstition of this ancient medical framework, but independent historian Arikha's pleasing historical survey usefully reminds us that our modern theories of the relationship between mind, mood and body rest on gains made by humoral analogy. To investigate the humors is to probe all of Western medicine, starting with the ancient physicians Hippocrates and Galen, the Persian Hunayn ibn-Is'haq, through the bloodlettings of the Middle Ages and Harvey's experiments on blood, to Mesmer and Freud and beyond. If Arikha's defense is occasionally a touch too fervent, her passion, intellectual energy and empathy are laudable . After all, says Arikha, neurotransmitters are today's humors, and pharmaceutical companies are not all that different from the apothecaries of yore. This is a stimulating work that shows the Western mind nobly grappling with the inscrutable nature of the human body. 36 b&w illus. (June)

Segrè (A Matter of Degrees) once again applies a human scale to important physics topics in a way that's as informative and accessible as it is appealing. Beginning in 1929, Niels Bohr hosted an annual gathering in Copenhagen for his fellow physicists, where they joked and argued about the new theory of quantum mechanics. Tradition demanded that the younger physicists entertain with a skit, and in 1932, the centenary of Goethe's death, the entertainment was Max Delbrück's parody of Faust, with the proponents of classical physics and the new quantum mechanics fighting for primacy. The discovery of the neutron and the positron had disturbed classical atomic theory, while quantum mechanics raised troubling issues, such as how one could find the true position of an electron and how the photon could be both a particle and a wave. Segrè brings the scientists and their ideas to vivid life, from convivial Bohr and iconoclastic Wolfgang Pauli (nicknamed "Scourge of God"), to emotionally guarded Werner Heisenberg, gracious Lise Meitner, reclusive Paul Dirac and others, as well as the consequences of their discoveries. For after 1932 came Hitler and WWII, and a new physics that could never be as intimate, or as innocent, as it had once been. (June 18)

With his first book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of "irreducible complexity." Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the sickle cell response in humans, Behe argues that genetic mutation results in only clumsy solutions to selective pressures. He goes on to conclude that the statistical possibility of certain evolutionary changes taking place is virtually nil. Although Behe writes with passion and clarity, his calculations of probability ignore biologists' rejection of the premise that evolution has been working toward producing any particular end product. Furthermore, he repeatedly refers to the shortcomings of "Darwin's theory—the power of natural selection coupled to random mutation," but current biological theory encompasses far more than this simplistic view. Most important, Behe reaches the erroneous conclusion that the workings of an intelligent designer is the only reasonable alternative to evolution, even without affirmative evidence in its favor. B&w illus. (June 5)

As has happened many times in the history of science, just when we finally are able to cozy up to an idea like the big bang that initially was hard to like, let alone understand, another even more mind-bending one comes along. Steinhardt and Turok, cosmologists at Princeton and Cambridge, respectively, present their case that string theory gives a more complete account of our origins; in this account, the big bang came about through the collision of two membrane-thick strings called "branes." Our universe sits on one brane, which floats parallel to the other, unseen one. Every few trillion years, the two branes approach each other; when they collide, a flash of radiation annihilates everything in both, kick-starting the creation process all over again. According to the authors, this solves certain problems with the standard big bang theory, such as inflation, dark matter and dark energy. General readers will be able to follow the authors' clearly laid out, equation-free arguments. Their new theory has little chance of being confirmed experimentally in the foreseeable future, but many who eventually embraced the big bang will doubtless find the notion of cyclic universes and parallel worlds attractive. Illus. (June 5)

It's easy to assume that William Shakespeare has always held his position at the top of the literary canon. But the truth is not that simple, as Lynch, a professor of English at Rutgers and longtime student of literary history, demonstrates. He ably chronicles how "in three hundred years, William Shakespeare the talented playwright and theatre shareholder had become Shakespeare the transcendent demigod," against whom no slight of literary criticism was too small not to be deemed heresy. Along the way, Shakespeare was all but forgotten; criticized for his sloppy, profane dramaturgy; rewritten, forged and bowdlerized (literally, by the eponymous Bowdler); hijacked as a spokesperson for political causes of all stripes; revered and, finally, unquestioningly glorified. Lynch tells the story of the personalities and politics that shaped both the reception of the Bard's works and the development of the theater in England between 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, and 1864, his 300th birthday. Lynch writes fluidly about the Puritan aspirations that shut the English theaters after Queen Elizabeth's death, the Restoration and consequent revitalization of London's theatrical culture, the rise of celebrity culture and the spread of literacy that took Shakespeare off the stage and into the parlor and classroom. Illus. (July)

The growing number of readers who have relatives with Alzheimer's will warm to Kessler's excellent account of the months she worked as an unskilled resident assistant in an Alzheimer's facility on the West Coast. This facility, which she calls Maplewood, is a state-of-the-art institution, divided into small "neighborhoods" of 14 rooms with private baths, a common space and enclosed patios. The author of several nonfiction books, Kessler (Full Court Press) was attempting to resolve her feelings after her own mother, with whom she had a troubled relationship, died of Alzheimer's; bittersweet memories of her are scattered through the narrative. At Maplewood, Kessler feeds, toilets and converses with residents in varying stages of the illness. Marianne, for instance, an alert and well-dressed woman, appears not to belong at Maplewood. She still regards herself as a successful working woman, and the author treats her as such. Kessler becomes strongly attached to some of the other men and women in her neighborhood, feeling bereaved when several die during her tenure. She comes to regard Alzheimer's sufferers as individuals who can still enjoy life, given the care and recreational opportunities extended at this facility—a powerful lesson in the humanity of those we often see as tragically bereft of that quality. (June 4)

Miller, the medical doctor and stage director, introduces this volume with an essay on camouflage in nature. Newark, editor of the magazine Military Illustrated, writes the history of camouflage in its military context starting in the 19th century and ending with the present war in Iraq. A final chapter touches on camouflage in popular culture, fine art and fashion. The development of long-range weapons taught armies the advantages of blending in rather than standing out on the battlefield. Air reconnaissance in WWI introduced the need for the disruptive pattern techniques still used by armies worldwide. Inspiration for patterns came from both nature and modern art, and scientists and artists at different times took the lead in developing techniques and materials. Cubist-inspired "Dazzle" designs covered warships, and factories disappeared under acres of netting. Newark acknowledges that camouflage has always been more effective on equipment than on men, but soldiers identify intensely with their national patterns—frog skin, oak leaf, chocolate chip, etc. Current experiments involve iridescence and fiber optics. Newark's text is informative, but the story is told best by the 248 color and 32 black-and-white illustrations drawn from photographic archives, military training manuals, street culture and fashion layouts. (June)

In 2002, as managing editor of the alternative weekly, Las Vegas CityLife, O'Brien was intrigued when a murderer eluded police by vanishing into the Vegas flood-control system. After O'Brien and CityLife contributor Josh Ellis explored half a dozen storm drains, their adventures attracted such attention on the Internet that the publication's Web site scored a million hits in a day. By then, O'Brien was convinced "there were secrets to be discovered beneath the neon." His first discovery was that, despite the dangers, homeless men and women were living in the tunnels. How did they wind up there? Returning with a tape recorder and flashlight, he interviewed the storm-drain denizens, finding one sleeping in an elevated bed suspended above the watery floor, another residing in a plywood hut and some in the cool tunnels just to escape the heat. The photos capture the inhabitants of these bleak encampments. Continually contrasting the sparkling casinos above with the dank, cobwebbed catacombs below, the observant O'Brien writes with a noirish flair, but his compassion is also evident as he illuminates the lives of these shadowy subterranean dwellers. (June 1)

Claes Oldenburg first achieved fame in the 1960s with the expansive whimsy of his enormous cheeseburgers, lipstick canisters and other pop art sculptures. All the more disappointing, then, that this retrospective work with his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen, has so little hint of the giddy fun that lights up their art. It's true that the book thoroughly and competently documents the dozens of large-scale pieces the pair have produced since 1985, including giant reproductions of a pocket knife, a matchbook and tumbling bowling pins. A short account by the artists of how each piece came to be accompanies color photos of the work, along with watercolor and model studies. Interviews and excerpts from van Bruggen's journal offer insightful glimpses into the artists' preoccupations with the sculptural possibilities and secret inner lives of everyday objects. But published as it is in conjunction with an exhibit at Turin's Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, the book has a bland, institutional respectability that largely eclipses the high-minded goofiness of their art. They helped redefine what a building can be with their binocular-shaped facade for a Frank Gehry building. How baffling that they weren't enlisted to make this book something other than stodgy and thoroughly unsurprising. (May)

In this insightful book, Chu (who edited and translated Gustave Courbet's letters) examines how the painter (1819–1877) used the press to market his work. Courbet, who once called himself "the proudest and most arrogant man in France," relished any kind of publicity and courted journalists, critics and editors who reviewed his work and published letters in which he explained his paintings and expounded his antiestablishment philosophy. He claimed that art could not be taught and that it should not be controlled by the state, and his paintings often attacked such institutions as the church and the academy. Analyzing many of these paintings, Chu shows how their subtly subversive content caused public debate while eluding the censors. Courbet's proudest moment came in 1870, when he refused a knighthood cross in the French Legion of Honor and published a letter saying that the state was "incompetent in matters of art." But facing punishment for participating in the riots of 1871, he fled to Switzerland and died there several years later. Chu's brilliant study of Courbet's paintings and marketing strategies sheds much light on his work and the artistic milieu of the 19th century. B&w and color illus. (May)

Spiritual awakening is "a strange mystery with few rules and even fewer explanations," writes spiritual guide Hart, who describes in this memoir her own journey, which includes stints with Buddhism, psychology and Sufism. Living on an inheritance and financial assistance from her mother, Hart spends a decade trying to find peace through her studies and time spent with various communities. After six years with a Sufi teacher, she is told to leave the community and to learn instead from her dog, Pearlie. Hart writes well, and some spiritual seekers will resonate with parts of her travels into and out of her own darkness. Others will find her focus on the world's (and especially Pearlie's) responsibility to be her teacher distressing. The author euthanizes Pearlie, who is suffering from cancer and seizures, only when she feels that Pearlie's work with her is done. Hart writes continuously of her losses and sadness, but expresses little concern for the needs of others. Even as she talks about her growing ability to love near the end of the book, she is asking if her own life will be sweet, leaving readers with the impression that she still has further to walk. (July)

Maher's laudatory objective is to present to his fellow Christians a primer on Judaism. He is well qualified for the task, having studied theology in Rome and Jerusalem. Also, he earned a master's degree in Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and a Ph.D. in Semitic languages at University College, Dublin, where he was a faculty member. Having lectured to mostly Roman Catholic students in Dublin, Maher is now trying to reach a wider audience, hoping that information about Judaism will promote better Jewish-Christian relationships. Maher offers an outline of Jewish beliefs and rituals, opening with a historical overview that rapidly considers Jewish history from biblical times to the final redaction of the Mishnah in about 200 C.E. The contemporary Jewish community with its many branches is then discussed, followed by a review of Jewish sacred texts. Maher offers material on the Jewish festivals, the life cycle, the synagogue, prayers and dietary laws. The final chapters delve into Jewish-Christian relations, the Holocaust and (intriguingly) the Jews of Ireland. Throughout, Maher displays a depth of knowledge and a sympathetic regard for Jewish faith and traditions, fully achieving his objective of introducing his readers to Judaism. (June 20)

This deeper look at the precepts of Buddhism strives to eliminate the misconception that Zen is just a form of meditation, putting it forward as a philosophy of day-to-day, minute-to-minute living. The book is fashioned like a primer, divided into logical bites and descriptions, first of the three treasures (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha), then of the three pure precepts (not creating evil, practicing good, actualizing good for others) and then the 10 grave precepts (affirm life; be giving; honor the body; manifest truth; proceed clearly; see the perfection; realize self and other as one; give generously; actualize harmony; experience the intimacy of things). However, this book by Loori (The Zen of Creativity) is not exactly an introduction. The cadence, the language and the concepts all assume more than a cursory familiarity with the practice of Zen Buddhism. Ideas like gasso and the koan Mu, for instance, are mentioned but not defined. At times the book feels uneven; some grave precepts feel more rushed while others get noticeably longer treatment. Although the core argument—that Zen requires an ethical code of conduct as well as meditation practice—is certainly user-friendly, this book's presentation will make it most valuable for those who are already very familiar with Zen teachings. (June 12)

The unwieldy title of this book may be a roadblock, but what's inside is remarkably easy to follow. Rabjam is from the second generation of Tibetan Buddhist teachers who were born outside Tibet yet part of a significant spiritual and familial heritage. He is the grandson of Buddhist master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. This book, a commentary on a traditional text that is also included, is based on talks given by Rabjam. In unpacking the text, he manages to link it to a range of key Buddhist practices and concepts. Bodhichitta—the "great medicine" of the title, which means the intention to become enlightened—is not the simplest Buddhist teaching to understand, but the author gives a focused and cohesive interpretation. An appended glossary is exceptionally comprehensive and helpful. Despite several removes from the original oral presentation through translating, transcribing and editing, the content is clear and well-organized. Rabjam is not as easygoing as some of the second-generation Tibetan teachers who are more bicultural, but the simplicity and economy of his expression of advanced Buddhist teaching is praiseworthy. Serious Buddhist students will welcome this fresh opening to an important Tibetan Buddhist text—it's good medicine. (June 12)

Mitchell is a respected financial consultant and a dedicated youth advocate, but what's not well known is that he had a tumultuous childhood. His memoir reveals his life in an orphanage after his mother abandoned him at age 3, as well as his struggle to find love and acceptance and learn to trust. Mitchell knew his mentally ill mother, who once kidnapped him from the orphanage, but had no real memories of his father, who attempted suicide but ended up brain damaged. His maternal grandmother was the boy's anchor, but she couldn't raise him, which only added to his confusion. He teetered on the edge of disaster as he matured, but at age 17 he prayed, "Jesus, if You are real, come into my nightmare. Forgive me of my sins and change me." Mitchell's story is inspiring both for its spiritual dimension and its conventional Horatio Alger narrative. The facts of his case are also verifiably true, which Mitchell and the publisher take pains to ensure in part through the Web site www.amillionlittleproofs.com, which offers .pdf versions of documents from Mitchell's past. His memoir will appeal to adults with difficult pasts, those who work with troubled kids and anyone who revels in seeing God change a life. (June)

The author of several titles for the Wicca market, including Garden Witchery, Dugan returns with a lighthearted, gently empowering book for the solitary practitioner. She begins with the premise that "you already have inner wisdom and all the creativity you'll ever need to make magick in your life." From there, she outlines several steps including developing readers' psychic abilities, tapping into the cycles of the moon and sensing the energies of the seasons that are designed to encourage readers to practice the craft from a more spiritually centered place and ease their anxieties about whether they're "good enough" Wiccans. Interspersed throughout the text are lively anecdotes from Dugan's own Samantha Stephensesqe household. She speaks of her struggles to deal with nosy evangelical Christians and her teenage daughter's rejection-cum-furtive acceptance of her mother's religion. She also chats about some uncomfortable experiences she's had in group settings with other Wiccans where her own intuitive approach to the craft has been frowned upon by practitioners who are supposedly more learned. While some more experienced Witches will likely find Dugan's spells and spiritual practices to be boilerplate, the value of this book lies in the warm, personal touch Dugan uses both in her writing and in her craft. (June)

Death is never timely: it comes either too soon or too late. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recounts the aftermath of her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. At the other edge of the spectrum, Owens describes seven years preceding her mother's relentless descent into dementia, "God's own breath slowly leaking out through the fissures in her brain." Afflicted first with Parkinson's, then small strokes and Alzheimer's disease, Mrs. Stem eventually required round-the-clock care. Owens moved next door and spent hours every day with her: "All I could do was squat beside the avalanche, listening for any sign of life; sometimes I could hear a faint but familiar echo of her voice or gesture from under the heap." Through essays as incisive and insightful as Didion's, this account succeeds on multiple levels: medical detective story, personal memoir, flawless description, philosophical and spiritual exploration (where is the self when the brain no longer functions normally?). Owens offers not self-help but hope as she bears witness to the grief and glory of life's ending: "If love... weren't the center from which life flows, if it didn't, as Dante says, move the stars, how could we bear such weight?" (June)

Both "as citizens and as members of the household of faith, we have an obligation to act on behalf of children in poverty," write co-editors Sider and Unruh, president and staff member, respectively, of Evangelicals for Social Action. In this anthology they attempt to provide a wide range of perspectives to help civic and religious leaders do just that, drawing on contributions from leaders of relief organizations like World Vision, Bread for the World and Compassion International. Unfortunately, the collection often comes across as a pastiche of statistics. While some of the articles provide articulate summaries of one or more aspects of the problem and possible solutions, others are simply one-page lists of suggestions or strings of quotes from school principals. Perhaps the most helpful section of the book is the final one, which briefly highlights various programs that are actually making a difference in the lives of poor children. Unruh's helpful introduction to the section, which includes an excellent summary of characteristics common to successful programs, may provide a concrete starting point for those in government, social services and churches looking for solutions to these desperate problems. (June)

Anderson, pastor of Bridgeway Community Church in Baltimore (and author of Multicultural Ministry) advocates "gracism" and encourages people to focus "on race for the purpose of positive ministry and service." Against conventional wisdom, he argues that Christians should extend favor to people based on "color, class, or culture." Because of the increasing number of minorities in America, Anderson argues, this makes good demographic sense, but it also makes biblical sense, because Scripture enjoins Christians to extend themselves on behalf of the downtrodden and the outcast. Anderson outlines many steps Christians can take toward gracism: they can lift people up in prayer, and celebrate with people from other ethnic groups. He encourages churches to partner with, rather than adopt, poorer churches around the globe. On a very practical level, Anderson calls those who have personal ties with bankers to leverage those relationships and help minorities, who are often discriminated against when they try to secure a loan or buy a house. This is a thoughtful but flawed book. Too-cute phrasing abounds ("racism is not... a skin problem but is a sin problem"). Occasional digressions, like Anderson's musing about his wife's immodest dress, are distracting. Still, Anderson's framework is innovative, and the discussion questions included after each chapter will usefully guide the conversations that this provocative manifesto is sure to inspire. (June)

After the 9/11 attacks, the Forward Movement of the Episcopal Church rushed into publication a collection of short reflections on the questions suffering raises for Christian life. After Hurricane Katrina, the agency considered a similar response, but instead opted to collect somewhat longer reflections that treat suffering caused by terrorists and natural disasters alongside more quotidian and personal calamities. The result is a volume you can still slide between fingers balled up with grief; the reflections are short enough to bite off easily, but meaty enough to chew on at length. The strongest essays are the most personal: a Vietnam vet remembers receiving news of his baby daughter's deadly illness in between combat runs, when he wondered if he was being judged for killing people. A priest reflects on the suicide of a young parishioner that left him speechless and almost pastorally helpless—and, thankfully, bereft of platitudes. Yet he is thanked profusely by the family for "saying" so much by his mere presence. The more abstract and timeless reflections on the nature of suffering without specific names and faces begin to bore. Yet a distinguished set of authors (Archbishops Desmond Tutu and Rowan Williams) add heft, while some essays by lesser-known authors brim with wisdom. (June)

Reflecting on a lifetime of work in theoretical physics, Thirring tempers scientific progress with humility as he describes a universe where "[w]e're able to explain a lot of things that previously appeared incomprehensible, but only by introducing new, strange, and wondrous explanations." From the conditions of the Big Bang to the life cycle of stars, planetary dynamics to the foundations of chemistry, Thirring observes that "at a crossroads... the turn has always been taken that would ultimately allow the creation of human existence." Do all these coincidences suggest a Creator? Thirring believes so, even as he resists any suggestion that science can "prove the existence of God." The interplay between random processes and exquisitely finely tuned natural laws is simply too marvelous to attribute to chance. At turns brilliant, difficult, enthusiastic and quirky, the text breathes with Thirring's passion for solving scientific and mathematical puzzles. In spite of efforts to make the material more accessible to nonspecialists (such as relocating some calculations to appendixes), the text remains highly technical at points. Vignettes of the author's encounters with 20th-century physics greats like Einstein, Pauli, Heisenberg and Schrödinger provide a respite from the equations and illustrate the very human face of scientific discovery. (June)

Relationship evangelism is the message of this book from Bryant, "the bald white guy" on staff at the 80-nationalities multicultural Christian community Mosaic in Los Angeles. "Love is the new apologetic," writes Bryant. For too long, he argues, the world has been made aware of what Christians hate rather than whom they love; what they are against rather than what they support. Christians, he says, "have created an environment where we are seen as judgmental, irrelevant, mean, and hypocritical." Mixing scripture, humor and personal anecdotes (including a great one about a filling station clerk), Bryant invites Christians to develop a "party theology": invite others to share in your life, and accept invitations to participate in other people's lives, especially if they are different from you in some way. The content is familiar: look to connect through a common cause, hobby or passion. Learn conflict resolution and practice it. Break stereotypes, whether they are ethnic, economic, sexual, religious or political. Apart from one confusing anecdote about a schizophrenic who seems to get well through Christian service, this is a solid book for Christians who have "head knowledge" about relationship evangelism, but need encouragement rather than how-to steps to put that knowledge into action. (June)

In an engaging personal memoir, Mackall, an Ohio-based writer and professor of English, describes the close-knit relationship he has cultivated over more than a decade with a neighboring Amish family. This is neither an exposé nor an outsider's fanciful romanticization of the Amish. By focusing on the loves and losses of one large Amish clan, Mackall breathes life into a complex group often idealized or caricatured. He refers, for example, not to "the Amish" writ large, but instead to "the Swartzentruber Amish I know," describing in some detail the tremendous differences between the Swartzentrubers, by far the most traditional sect, and the Old Order, New Order, Beachy and other Amish groups. The Swartzentrubers not only eschew electricity but also padded or upholstered chairs, souped-up buggies, indoor plumbing, the tradition of rumspringa (a running-around period for some Amish teens) and—perhaps most important for this narrative—contact with "the English." Mackall's is the first book to venture behind-the-scenes of this most conservative Amish group. At times Mackall is critical of the Swartzentruber way of life (such as when an eight-year-old girl dies in a buggy accident because the sect rejects safety measures for buggies), but it is a deeply respectful account that never veers toward sensationalism. (June)

In this thematic group of reflections based on the ancient creeds of Christendom, the 104th archbishop of Canterbury once again demonstrates his stature as a scholar with a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of contemporary believers. Author of Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love, and a former professor of divinity at Cambridge University, Williams here investigates the great themes of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, from creation to crucifixion, sin to resurrection. But while he does not evade examining the doctrines undergirding these early church confessions, his purpose is to support his central argument: when we do not know whom to trust or where to turn, we can have complete confidence in the reliability of a loving God. "At the heart of the desperate suffering there is in the world," writes Williams, "suffering we can do nothing to resolve or remove for good, there is an indestructible energy making for love." At times sober, but rarely inaccessible, the learned archbishop brings a restrained passion to these meditations that will make them more available to readers seeking pastoral guidance along with their theology. (June)

Inspired during an Outward Bound winter dogsledding expedition in northern Minnesota, Lionberger left his business career, attended seminary and founded his Renewal in the Wilderness ministry. He takes generally middle-age people on spiritual outdoor adventures, and their voices are interspersed along with his friendly, intimate narratives recounting various awe-inspiring locales and harrowing episodes such as having a literally crippling panic attack on a ropes course. This book documents and advocates for the power of the raw, close communication with the divine that is frequently fostered far from the madding crowds. Lionberger has an encompassing reach, giving voice to atheists, agnostics and the simply soul-weary, as well as believers from many of the world's great faith traditions. For Lionberger, all roads lead into the wild, a destination for spiritual renewal supported in sacred literature and the Bible, which has a surprising and convincing presence here. Probing and provocative questions at the end of each chapter clear paths to self-discovery. Lionberger enjoins us to remember our primal sacred beginnings with clear grace and compelling reasons. His final words of invitation to go into the original cathedral beguile and charm: "Surprise yourself and thrill God." (June)

Is there such a thing as too much historical context? Flesher and Torry, both academics, make an important point at the start of these loosely confederated essays about the religious themes of American major-release films since World War II: that it is crucial to understand films in the historical context in which they were written and released. Fair enough, but the execution can be clunky and obvious: historical overviews about religion in America could be more seamlessly integrated into the much better discussions of various films, ranging from the overtly religious (The Last Temptation of Christ; The Ten Commandments; Little Buddha) to the prophetically spiritual (Field of Dreams; Close Encounters of the Third Kind). The book is worth it for the film discussions, because whether they are analyzing supernatural horror flicks like The Exorcist and The Omen or dissecting the surprising Hindu themes latent in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Flesher and Torry often have valuable and incisive observations about the ways films both reflect and shape religious culture. Though of use primarily for the college classroom (and with a teacher's preface to this end), serious students of film and religion will discover interpretive nuggets. (June)