Web-Exclusive Reviews: Week of 6/11/2007

 

Jessika Auerbach. St. Martin's, $23.95 (288p) ISBN 9780312355982

First time author and mother of four Auerbach uses original interviews with mothers and nannies ("many more…than I have room to recount") to create a lucid, many-faceted portrait of the intense love triangle among a mom, her kids and the person she employs to care for them. Descriptive rather than polemic, chapters wander through a host of topics clustered around the mother-nanny relationship, a bond that, tempered by "money, thwarted expectations, the potential for exploitation, and often profound differences in culture, class, education, and language" can quickly turn into "a pressure cooker of love, ambition, need, and misunderstanding." Auerbach has a straightforward writing style that gives prominence of place to the voices of her subjects—who comment on everything from illegal immigration to dad's dubious position in the family hierarchy—and her clear-eyed commentary is consistently sharp and judgement-free. This volume takes a fair, eagle-eyed look at a complex topic. (May)

 

Edited by Emma Forrest. Avon, $13.95 paper (304p) ISBN 9780061175350

 

Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Doerr turns out a well-observed chronicle of his family's year in Rome, when he was a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Doerr is a precise, lyrical writer who, dividing his book into seasons, captures in equal measures the wonder of the Italian countryside, the mind-boggling history of the Eternal City and the measured joys and trials of parenting twin baby boys. Upon their autumn arrival, it is the boys who most connect Doerr and his wife to their new city: "Grown men in suits stop and crouch over the stroller and croon. Older men in particular. Che carini. Che belli. What cuties. What beauties." In Spring, Doerr captures well the color and emotionof the vigil for the dying Pope John Paul II, providing insight into the man and his death: "More than three miles of artwork hang in the Vatican Museum and the pope could have any of it brought in front of him…Instead, he wants only to hear something read from the Bible in Polish." The memoir is full of other such rewarding passages, and anyone with fond memories of Rome will want to savor it slowly. Illustrations. (June)

 

Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr. Little, Brown, $29.99 (424p) ISBN-13: 978-0-316-01742-8

Gertz was one of the New York Times investigative reporters who started poking around the Whitewater case, but that doesn't mean readers should expect any four-alarm scandals from this unauthorized biography. Even with never-before-seen material from sources like White House counsel Vince Foster's notebooks, the worst Gertz and Van Natta (First Off the Tee) can say about Senator Clinton is that she may have padded her fees as a corporate lawyer and is lax about the required paperwork for hiring staff advisors. Their primary contention about Clinton—that she's a "meticulous architect of her persona" with "an almost scientific devotion to self-creation" and an unwillingness to admit to her mistakes—is hardly news, although a ballyhooed "secret pact," in which she and Bill planned from the earliest days of their marriage to maneuver him into the White House, may raise eyebrows. The profile in ambition is rich in anecdote, spending far more time on Clinton's Senate career than Carl Bernstein's bio. Far from a conservative hit job, their reportage tends to focus on public reaction to Clinton rather than to her politics, with the notable exception of her 2002 vote to support George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, including her vocal support of the theory that Saddam Hussein supported Al Qaeda, and her subsequent attempts to reinvent herself as an anti-war presidential candidate without refuting her previous position. The analysis of the early stages of her presidential campaign is somewhat hurried by necessity, but effectively supplements the balanced character study. Though they face stiff competition, Gertz and Van Natta's version of events is poised to gain traction. (Jun. 8)

 

Krisha Chachra. Mountain Trail, $14.95 paper (60p) ISBN 9781424329212

Columnist Chachra takes a good, honest look at going home again in this winning collection of essays from Blackburg, Va., first published in The Roanoke Times between 2002 and '04. Largely unknown outside the region until the Virginia Tech shootings of April 2007 (a portion of all sales will be donated to the Hokie Spirit Fund), this small town faces some familiar challenges under Chachra's watch: the march of progress, racial tension, a dearth of suitable mates and the struggle to retain its native sons and daughters. Indeed, a recurring theme is Chachra's own rediscovery of her hometown, which she spent "a lifetime plotting to leave." Chachra's voice, unfettered by tragedy, makes a poignant love letter not just to a place, but to the years before that place became the focus of a nation's sorrow. (May)

 

Don Yaeger and Mike Pressler. Simon & Schuster/Threshold, $25 (336p) ISBN 9781416551461

In the early hours of March 14, 2006, a group of Duke University lacrosse players got in an altercation with two strippers they hired for a party; afterwards, one of the strippers placed a call to 911 that set off a campus-shaking rape case that would captivate the national media. A number of parties, including District Attorney Mike Nifong, lined up to characterize the defendants as "a bunch of hooligans" before charges against the three indicted players were finally dropped, half a year later. In this riveting book, sports author Yaeger (Turning the Tide) and Mike Pressler, then-head coach of the Duke lacrosse team, present a fast-moving account of the 13 months that tore apart the university and the town. Looking at all aspects of the case, including Durham's troubled racial history and profiles of the Nifong and Duke president Richard Brodhead, Pressler and Yaeger find plenty of blame to spread around—including the "self-perpetuating monster" of media coverage, the university administration that took "some of the worst actions…against the Duke lacrosse team"—but Pressler, the tale's sacrificial lamb, avoids a bitter or accusatory stance. Instead he adds color and insight to Yaeger's rigorous, efficient investigation; for anyone who got caught up in the story, this is a must-read. (June)

 

Roy Blount Jr. Knopf, $25 (400p) ISBN 9780307266187

Ever since beloved Southern writer Blount moved to Massachusetts, he's been trying to use his "regional ambivalence…to get Aunt Dixie and Uncle Sam on speaking terms." In this diverse collection of humorous essays and occasional verse, Blount tackles a number of topics, including Emmanuel Kant, the mind-boggling "Bushy Juggernaut" and the correct grammatical usage of y'all (always plural). Concerned largely with his own pleasures and peccadilloes, Blount sings the praises of New Orleans's jazzy Boswell sisters, staying up late and the company of Jack Russell terriers ("like living with a movie star who seems to be able to handle quite a lot of cocaine). On the other hand, Tom DeLay of Texas gets called "the thinking person's Satan," Garth Brooks and Forrest Gump both receive snubs, and caring about college sports in the Northeast draws comparison to "caring about French food in South Carolina." Adorned with poetical lists and quirky details, Blount's work is unflaggingly passionate and provocative over a range of subjects, including food, politics and all things Southern, and he's as likely to quote The Women's Times as Shakespeare or Zora Neale Hurston. A lively curmudgeon who's talked to just about everyone on just about everything (especially grits), Blount's energetic, unpredictable essays are sure-fire fan-pleasers, and fine discoveries for newcomers. (May)

 

MP Dunleavey. Broadway, $18.95 (224p) ISBN 9780767922784

By highlighting the "personal" in personal finance, New York Times and MSN Money columnist Dunleavey offers advice as easily understood as it is implemented. Dunleavy focuses her program on conquering the behavioral impulses that keep people from getting the bigger things they really want from life—whether that means packing in a jetset lifestyle, buying an alpaca farm or ditching the newly-purchased suburban dream home to return to the city to be near friends. By emphasizing the quality over quantity of spending and providing quick exercises to help prioritize what matters, she produces a holistic and realistic method of financial planning. Though she does not shy away from the obvious cure for under-saving, overworked, financially-stressed consumers—that being to buy less stuff—she does provide the framework for doing so, along with easy strategies for saving for retirement and erasing debt. Her advice is as solid as it is sympathetic and encouraging. (June)

 

Jennifer Block. Da Capo/Lifelong, $26 (336p) ISBN 9780738210735

According to writer and editor Block (Our Bodies, Ourselves), "the United States has the most intense and widespread medical management of birth" in the world, and yet "rank[s] near the bottom among industrialized countries in maternal and infant mortality." Block shows how, in transforming childbirth into a business, hospitals have turned "procedures and devices developed for the treatment of abnormality" into routine practice, performed for no reason than "speeding up and ordering an unpredictable…process"; for instance, the U.S. cesarean section rate tripled in the 1970s, and has doubled since then. Block looks into a growing contingent of parents-to-be exploring alternatives to the hospital—and the attendant likelihood of medical intervention—by seeking out birthing centers and options for home-birth. Unfortunately, obstacles to these alternatives remain considerable—laws across the U.S. criminalizing or severely restricting the practice of midwifery have led the trained care providers to practice underground in many states—while tort reform has done next to nothing to lower malpractice insurance rates or improve hospital birthing policies. This provocative, highly readable expose raises questions of great consequence for anyone planning to have a baby in U.S., as well as those interested or involved in women's health care. (June)

 

Anthony F. Smith. Jossey-Bass, $24.95 (192p) ISBN 9780787995829

In this emperor-has-no-clothes exposé, Smith attempts to get into the heads of the powerful, reveal what goes on there and develop strategies for the inferiors who must cope with them. The managing director of the Leadership Research Institute, Smith dissects various leadership qualities—looking at heads of business, the military and politics, among others—as well as the way they're perceived by followers, employees and the general public. The innate hypocrisy of the human drive to power—"leadership is rooted in the urges of blatant self-interest"—creates a tension between leaders' public and private feelings; Smith posits that, though leaders' responsibility is to the team, they must protect their own power with "tough, hard, ruthless, and overtly political act[s]." This results, all too often, in "taboos" such as double standards, isolation and favoritism, all of which underlings find difficult, if not impossible, to address openly. The topics considered are many, including the difference charisma makes, the effect of gender, the successor-grooming game and the pursuit of a balanced lifestyle; the message, ultimately, is to speak up and look out. (May)

 

Carl Bernstein. Knopf, $27.95 (638p) ISBN 9780407666

Which Hillary Clinton will prevail in this sprawling, muddled biography? Is she a "messianic" idealist or a ruthless pragmatist given to negative ad campaigns and vilifying opponents? A liberal feminist firebrand or a closet traditionalist and Washington prayer-group fixture? A Lady Macbeth, a First Soul-mate, or a stand-by-your-man marital martyr? Bernstein (All the President's Men) gives us all these Hillary's, foggily uniting them by reference to her "extraordinary capability for change and evolutionary development." (Then again, the Senate candidate who "told voters largely what they wanted to hear" seems much the same species as the Wellesley student-body president who "was more interested in…achieving victory than in taking a philosophical position.") Bernstein's ill-balanced treatment puts "the Journey"—Hillary's mystic term for her politico-conjugal relationship with Bill Clinton—at the center of the story, particularly her dominant, sometimes disastrous role in Bill's scandal-plagued administration. Ever the investigative reporter, the author serves up chapters of eye-glazing Whitewater arcana and probes Hillary's emotional turmoil as she defends Bill from bimbo eruptions, but flits through her entire post-impeachment career as a high-profile senator and leader of the Democratic party in a scant 19 pages. Bernstein provides a densely detailed road-map of Hillary's life, but we get little sense of where the Journey has taken her. Photos. (June 5)

 

Drew Whitelegg. NYU Press, $70 (320p) ISBN 9780814794074; $20 paper -81

Using interviews with more than 60 flight attendents, Whitelegg puts together a highly readable study of the perils and perks of working the friendly skies. Structured around the typical flight sequence—departure, safety checks, in-flight entertainment, cruising altitude, etc.—Whitelegg highlights the dangers involved (from accidents to terrorism) as well as minor nuisances (disrespectful passengers, coworkers) and those persistent gremlins, fatigue and disorientation. Whitelegg's interviews reveal anecdotes funny and dramatic, as well as thought-provoking points of contention like the disconnect between attendants' actual roles as safety officers and airline honchos' insistence they adopt the role of a friendly host. Even more interesting is Whitelegg's look at the sexist "Coffee, Tea or Me?" stewardess stereotype in light of the immense freedom flight attending now provides working mothers and other women: "There is no other female-dominated profession in which women spend so much time away from home." Whitelegg occasionally overreaches with unnecessary fabric-of-the-universe commentary ("Our lives are shaped by space at the same time that we, in turn, shape space"); his study of a singular profession flies ably on its own. (June)

 

Lynnette Khalfani. Kaplan, $14.95 paper (240p) ISBN 9781427754646

Though aimed at recent college graduates, the latest from Khalfani (The Money Coach's Guide to Your First Million) is divided into three main sections—bills, student loans and credit—of which only one is grad-exclusive; the rest is full of information useful to anyone in need of an introduction to personal finance. Packed with practical tips, Khalfani helps students still considering loans and those already knee-deep in debt—covering topics like payment schedules, loan consolidation, "savvy ways to put off payment" and little-known loopholes—along with anyone trying to keep up with monthly bills and build credit. Her conversational style keeps the dry material lively and makes it easy to understand complex financial concepts ("Re-aging is how you get a 'do over' in the credit card world"). Those who buy this volume for the graduate in their life may want to read up before passing it along. (May)

 

 

Regina Joseph. St. Martin's, $24.95 (262p) ISBN 9780312363826

This guide to eating and exercising the Brazilian way will appeal to those who want an approach to fitness that doesn't lack for flavor. Writer and fitness pro Joseph devotes the brunt of her text to chapters on eating ("Come!") and moving ("Se Mexe!"). "Come!" includes a wide range of Brazilian recipes that emphasize fresh tropical produce, legumes and spices, but doesn't skimp on meat, seafood or dessert; unfortunately, it may take some work to track down Brazilian "superfoods" like frozen acai pulp and yuccas. After a short consideration of "Brazilians and Body Image" ("Brazilians are obsessed with the bunda"), Joseph provides introductory lessons to the dancing martial art of Capoeira, which emphasizes constant, fluid movement; and Pilates, a "body-mind-spirit" exercise that focuses on controlled movement, core strength, concentration and breathing. She includes meal and workout plans, as well as tips for beginners and the injured; appendices include a weekly food-prep calendar and shopping lists. Though 30 days with Joseph's plan may not produce results like those in the cover photograph, enterprising dieters will find this a detailed, well-seasoned plan for getting in shape. (May)

 

Sandra Ingerman. Sterling, $14.95 (120p) ISBN 9781402742606

Readers with an open mind will find much to reflect on in the latest psycho-spiritual self-help guide from Ingerman (Soul Retrieval), who provides ways to "manifest positive energy and power in your life" with simple, straightforward writing touched by occasional poetic flourishes. Ingerman pulls ideas from a number of disciplines—including meditation, psychotherapy, shamanism and quantum physics—to formulate methods for combating fear and frustration, which may initially confuse readers; it's this broad reach, however, that keeps the book firmly grounded in a number of different belief systems, allowing for a flexible approach. Sprinkled with short assignments ("take at least a fifteen-minute walk a day; it will clear your head and move the oxygen in your blood") and fable-like stories, Ingerman's creative, multi-pronged plan for healing is gentle, practical and encouraging, making it a fine resource for the overstressed. (May)

 

Don and Debra MacLeod. Tarcher, $15.95 paper (288p) ISBN 9781585425617

The husband and wife authors (The French Maid And 21 More Naughty Sex Fantasies to Surprise Your Man) argue that maintenance sex, defined here as any activity designed to please the man in the relationship, is undeserving of its reputation as "both sexless and joyless" and "the bane of a woman's sexual existence." Jettisoning any real attention to female sexuality and needs (men are given virtually no tips on romancing, seducing or satisfying), the authors focus on the disparity between the male and female sex drive, taking at face value the common wisdom that men need more sex than women. As such, they provide 20 strategies for keeping him satisfied, which include everything from role-playing scenarios to racy emails to incorporating toys and videos. While none of the concepts are novel, the book's consideration of each topic is generally thoughtful and explained in graphic detail, including not just the how-to of a given "job," but exactly why it gratifies. Though some (if not, many) readers will find this single-minded guidebook patronizing, it does what it sets out to do, with very little deviation from the man-pleasing mission at hand. (June)

 

Jim and Ann Casada. Shady Oak (Sterling, dist.), $14.95 (160p) ISBN 9781581593167

More than just a collection of recipes, the Casadas' latest (following the couple's The Complete Venison Cookbook) will make a welcome resource for hunting season. While they offer more than 200 recipes for just about anything a hunter could bag, the Casadas also include ways to stretch dishes like stew, clean and dress animals in the field and tenderize tougher game like rabbits and squirrels. Yes, squirrels: the Casadas offer a number of options for the animal, ranging from Fried Squirrel to Squirrel and Biscuit-Style Dumplings. Fortunately, the book leans heavily on more popular game such as venison and waterfowl, and provides a whole section on wild turkey. There are multitudes of recipes for a number of venison cuts, ranging from ubiquitous Venison Jerky to Venison Croquettes and Honey Mustard Steaks with Onion Mushroom Wine Sauce, ensuring hunters and their families get the most out of their bounty before tiring of it. Most recipes employ only a handful of readily available ingredients, and an emphasis on canned goods means many dishes can be prepared at a campsite. Even the meat-averse will be pleased, as dishes like Orzo with Hazelnuts, Black Walnut Pound Cake and Cold Blackberry Soup fill out a final section of dishes "from nature's garden." (June)

 

 

Lynda Fitzgerald. Five Star, $26.95 (390p) ISBN 9781594145681

After meeting the boy of her dreams, Christie O'Kelly must overcome obstacles both personal and familial before realizing her happily ever after in this predictable 1970s-set Floridian love story from first-time novelist Fitzgerald. At 14, Christie, running a "bad third" to her older sisters' "picture-book" beauty, encounters Todd Harrington, the college-bound object of her affections—and soon-to-be step-cousin—at her uncle Jack's wedding to Todd's mother, Carly. The attraction isn't mutual, or so it seems, until Todd breathlessly declares his love for Christie during a summer visit home. But a few months later, Todd writes home and announces he's eloped with a girl from school, and Christie develops a grudge against him that will last eight years. Christie, having come into her own as a devoted aunt and journalist, next encounters Todd when he appears at her door and tells Christie that Uncle Jack is sick, and that he is moving back home to help out. Forced by circumstance to interact with Todd, Christie must deal with her uncle's Parkinson's and her own stubborn pride. While Christie inspiringly plays the independent woman card throughout, Fitzgerald fails to deliver nuance or suspense in a plot that never strays from the formula. (June)

 

Stanley Bennett Clay. Atria, $13 paper (288p) ISBN 9780743291026

Clay charts the affairs of L.A.'s gay black upper crust in his tawdry third novel (after In Search of Pretty Young Black Men). Brando Heywood and Omar Stevens have been best friends since high school. Now in their forties, Omar, a celebrity journalist, juggles boy-toy liaisons and hanging in Griffith Park while celibate Brando concentrates on his career as a highly-respected entertainment lawyer. But when one of his client's lesbian partner kills a man after he rapes her, he takes the headline-stealing case. The trial holds together a series of mini-dramas, including the discovery of a steamy secret video of Brando and Omar's and Brando's barely below-the-surface feelings for one another. Readers who can keep their disbelief deeply buried will enjoy this erotic, high-stakes romp. (June)

 

John Callahan. Fulcrum, $26 (448p) ISBN 9781555916206

The former running mate of Eugene McCarthy, Callahan makes his fiction debut with a political drama that collapses under the weight of minutiae. Mick Whelan, a displaced Connecticut Yankee finds himself on the slopes of an American volcano, Mt. Loowit, when it erupts and devastates the landscape and, not incidentally, kills Mick's secret lover, Rebecca. Rescued by Jonas and Martin, a father and son, who prove to be uncannily ubiquitous for the rest of the novel, Whelan parleys his notoriety into a congressional seat. Aided by the novel's narrator, Gabe Bientempo, Whalen's career develops over the next 17 years along a populist agenda as he moves from the House to the Senate, where his oratorical powers and acute knowledge of Roberts Rules of Order gain him primacy, and position him for a presidential bid. By then, however, even the most generous readers will have lost interest. The prose stumbles and reels around, spewing wooden and improbable dialogue, and dwelling on petty, unnecessary details of everything from driving methods to officious waitstaff to colors of neckties. Whatever human drama might fuel the plot is buried in a flurry of confusing congressional procedures, and suffocated deep in logistical boredom. (June)

 

Elise Juska. Pocket, $14 paper (288p) ISBN 9781416516927

After putting grad school on hold and following her entymologist husband Bob to his professorship in New Hampshire, linguist Claire Gallagher decides to end her marriage. She goes to stay with her gregarious younger sister Noelle in Ireland, where Noelle has been living and where their mother, Deirdre, was born. Noelle takes after their dramatic, stubborn, larger-than-life, Irish-born mother Deirdre, a sufferer of Lupus whose lust for life and love of all things Irish have been taken up by favorite Noelle, who soon reveals that she and boyfriend Paul are getting married in a week. Claire, who makes crosswords for a living, enters a period of stock-taking in which she must measure herself against Deirdre, Claire and her previous selves in order to move forward. Neither the resentful, bookish Claire or the brassy Noelle is particularly likeable, but Juska (Getting Over Jack Wagner) makes the stakes clear, and writes forthrightly enough to keep readers interested in their fates. (June)

 

R.J. Hillhouse. Forge, $25.95 (400p) ISBN 9780765315779

Hillhouse (Rift Zone) focuses on the larger-than-life exploits of Camille Black, the head of a major firm that supplies skilled personnel to the U.S. effort in Iraq, in a thriller best read as a cautionary tale about the dangers of national security privatization. When the C.I.A. asks Camille to find her ex-fiancé, Hunter Smith, a possible double-agent who may be selling arms to terrorists, the former lovers find themselves the pawns of shadowy forces working for competing factions of the U.S. government. A clichéd denouement caps an endless series of fights, escapes and torture scenes, but a sobering afterword ("The Facts Behind the Fiction") shows the author has done her homework. Unfortunately, the stock plot, with its unlikely scenario for the fate of Osama Bin Laden, fails to do justice to the real-life issues the novel raises. (June)

 

Ignácio De Loyola Brandão, trans. from the Portuguese by Christina Ferreira-Pinto Bailey. Dalkey Archive, $13.95 paper (364p) ISBN 9781564784384

An unnamed narrator offers a surreal tour of Araraquara, his Brazilian hometown, in this pointedly disjoint novel from Brandão (Zero). For the narrator, Araraquara is a ghost city, a town of spectral shut-ins who never leave the city limits, due to an 1897 lynching that cursed that town and unhinged its calendar. A book titled The Safe Guide to Leaving Home, by mysterious writer Ceres Fhade, offers the narrator a glimpse of freedom that seems to be denied to the other citizens of Araraquara. For the narrator, a trip to the cinema across from his apartment is momentous; meanwhile, the narrator's son, ex-wife and friends see him as a layabout who blew his chance to leave Araraquara, and who has frittered his life away ever since. The protagonist's sometimes crazed rambles are juxtaposed with short, magical-realist segments, labeled "The Facts," recounting pieces of Araraquara's past. Full of men who crumble to shreds, a swimming pool that swallows swimmers, and young men driven by obsession to smash their teeth to bits, The Facts set the narrator at odds with the society around him. Brazilian septuagenarian Brandão originally published the novel in 1976, during the years of Brazil's military dictatorship: the novel's spooky, off-kilter sallies at truth testify to the silent suffering of the era. (June)