Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 6/18/2007

The fiercely intelligent eldest daughter of President Teddy Roosevelt (1884–1981) was rebellious and outspoken partly as the result of her desperation to gain the attention of an emotionally distant father, according to historian Cordery. Utilizing Alice’s personal papers, Cordery describes how she was more devastated by the political infidelity of her husband, House speaker Nicholas Longworth, during the 1912 presidential election (he sided with Taft over TR) than by his sexual dalliances. Her own affair with powerful Idaho Sen. William Borah resulted in the birth of her only child, Paulina. When her beloved father died in 1919, the stoic Alice simply omitted it completely from her autobiography, and she was a poor mother to Paulina, who died in 1957, at 32, from an overdose of prescription medicines mixed with alcohol. Alice’s independence of mind often led her against the grain: she worked to defeat Wilson’s League of Nations and was a WWII isolationist and America First activist. Her witty syndicated newspaper columns criticized FDR and the New Deal, and she betrayed her cousin Eleanor by encouraging FDR’s liaison with Lucy Mercer Rutherford. Cordery (Theodore Roosevelt: In the Vanguard of the Modern) pens an authoritative, intriguing portrait of a first daughter who broke the mold. Photos. (Oct. 22)

On August 17, 1940, Oklahoma City police raided the Progressive Book Store, seized thousands of books and pamphlets, and arrested the owner, Bob Wood, his wife and a dozen others who happened to be in the store, under state laws against distributing materials aimed at “effecting industrial or political revolution.” Shirley Wiegand and Wayne Wiegand, professors, respectively, of law and American studies, examine the social, legal and cultural currents surrounding the arrest, conviction and eventual vindication of Wood and the three other alleged Community Party members who were eventually tried. The case became a national cause célèbre; Lillian Hellman, Richard Wright and Clifford Odets were among those who spoke out for the defendants. This is a sedulously researched book, and the details of the trials expose prosecutor John Eberle as driven by rank ambition and rabid racism and anti-Semitism as much as by anticommunism. The authors show that local media and politicians failed to foresee the national outrage the prosecutions would generate. Particularly interesting is how they show the effect of external events, such as the U.S. entry into WWII and fascism’s impact on the domestic atmosphere. The Wiegands conclude on a cautionary note, linking present-day antiterrorism fears to the anticommunist hysteria of 1940. B&w illus. (Oct.)

Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, ventures bravely into the controversial waters of constitutional reform. Sabato argues that the founders never intended the Constitution to be timeless, but rather understood that “government structures, ossified by constitutional neglect [can] become fundamentally unfair and tilted to those already in power.” Sabato’s reforms are consistent with the values he believes underpin the Constitution—fairness, idealism, pragmatism and focus on the needs of the present and the future—while attempting to mitigate social inequities. His lucid if unorthodox suggestions include a single six-year presidential term that could be extended another two years by referendum; limiting federal and Supreme Court justices to a 15-year term; a larger House of Representatives that would, among other benefits, allow for greater diversity in Congress. His reforms encompass the entire citizenry, who would be required to perform two years of national civilian or military service in what he calls a “Bill of Responsibilities.” While there’s room for skepticism and unintended consequences in some of his suggestions, Sabato makes strong, cogent arguments. (Oct.)

In June 1978, Larry Hasker was murdered in Hawaii. Maryann Acker was convicted of the crime in 1982 and sentenced to life in prison. In this sparkling account, noted Canadian novelist Spalding creates a nuanced, deeply felt tale of her own involvement in the story and how it led her along a path of self-discovery. Chosen for the jury, Spalding was dismissed from the case after showing up five minutes late one day. Acker was convicted and their lives spun off in different directions until, 18 years later, Spalding unearthed the diary she had kept during the trial, contacted Acker and became entwined in an attempt to get Acker a new trial (the main witness against her has since confessed to the murder). Spalding’s strong, elegant prose carries the story along effortlessly. With her own life full of tragedy—a failed marriage, the accidental death of a brother and sister-in-law—Spalding both relates to Acker and suffers from guilt, knowing her vote might have spared Acker a life behind bars. Along the way, Spalding weaves a beautiful story about coming to terms with her mother’s imminent death and her unresolved relationship with her often violent-tempered father. This delicate yet powerful work should find a wide readership.

For Broyard, who was “raised as white in Connecticut,” the discovery that her father, the writer and critic Anatole Broyard, “wasn’t exactly white” raised the question of “how black I was”—a question that set her in search of the history of “the most well-known defector from the black race in the latter half of the twentieth century.” In the first section, Broyard weaves her privileged childhood together with later travels to New Orleans (her father’s birthplace) and Los Angeles (where there is a determinedly white set of Broyards as well as a determinedly black set). Part two extends from the first Broyard, a Frenchman arriving in mid-18th century Louisiana territory, to six-year-old Anatole’s 1927 arrival in Brooklyn. The last section is devoted to Anatole’s life. Broyard’s “identity quest” takes her on an odyssey through social, military, legal, Louisiana and general American history, as well as U.S. race relations and her family DNA, introducing innumerable relatives, classmates, friends and employers, and making for a rather overstuffed account. Fortunately, she’s got an ear for dialogue, an eye for place and a storyteller’s pacing. But the most compelling element is her ambivalent tenor: “Was my father’s choice rooted in self-preservation or in self-hatred?... Was he a hero or a cad?” Part eulogy, part apologia, the answer is indirect: “But he was my dad and we loved each other.” (Sept.)

Journalist Goldstone (Making the World Safe for Tourism) puts scarce Mideastern water resources front and center in this flawed biography of Aaron Aaronsohn (1876–1919), a founder of NILI, a group that spied for the British in Palestine during WWI, and a pioneering agronomist and hydrologist. Goldstone is best at depicting British diplomacy and intra-Jewish politics leading up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine—a British declaration influenced, she shows, by a 1916 memo from Aaronsohn on Palestine’s potential to absorb million of Jews. Goldstone makes errors (such as stating that Israel lost the Sinai Peninsula in the 1973 Yom Kippur War) and offers the tendentious, unsourced claim that in 2003, “right-wing Jewish lobbyists” hoped that a defeated Iraq would be “used as a haven for persecuted Palestinians run out of Israel.” Above all, she never makes a case for her thesis that Aaronsohn’s plan for regional sharing of water resources could have prevented the longstanding Arab-Israeli conflict. (For another account of Aaronsohn’s life, see Lawrence and Aaronsohn, reviewed on p. 46.) 8 pages of b&w photos. (Sept.)

The writing is fast-paced and crisp, the stakes high and the tension palpable from the first pages of this high-flying account of the early days of the space race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., a race ignited by the Soviet launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. Brzezinski (Fortress America), a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, says this battle for military and technological control of space, part of the larger Cold War, had lasting consequences. Brzezinski illuminates how the space race divided Americans: for instance, then Sen. Lyndon Johnson wanted to aggressively pursue the race, but President Eisenhower thought the ambitious senator was merely seeking publicity. The author also dissects the failed American spin: despite White House claims that Sputnik was no big deal, the media knew it was huge. Sputnik II, launched a month later, was even more unsettling for Americans, causing them to question their “way of life.” The principals—Khrushchev, Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, rocket scientist Werner von Braun—are vividly realized. Yet even more than his absorbing narrative, Brzezinski’s final analysis has staying power: although the U.S. caught up to the U.S.S.R., it was the Russians’ early dominance in space that established the Soviet Union as a superpower equal to America. (Sept.)

In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA (The Political Culture of the American Whigs), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. history—a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York’s gradual emancipation of slaves; the growth of higher education; the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who “helped create the romantic image of the Old South,” but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a “market revolution” because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Supported by engaging prose, Howe’s achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade. 30 photos, 6 maps. (Sept.)

In this slim book, journalist Rothbaum explains how the liquor business has engineered a new golden age. As with so many industries, conglomerates have soaked up the small distilleries, improving global distribution, while increasing connoisseurship spurred partly by pop culture vehicles like Sex and the City has turned on consumers to super-premium vodkas and rum distilled from hand-harvested sugarcane. Among those he profiles is impresario Sidney Frank, who transformed Jagermeister from an obscure herbal elixir to frat-boy staple, and opened his Grey Goose vodka distillery not in Russia, Poland or Scandinavia but in France’s Cognac region, gaining easy access to excellent water, local distilling expertise and a unique and luxurious-sounding provenance. He eventually sold the brand to Bacardi for more than $2 billion, but not before me-too brands popped up to lure imbibers, with ever more complex backstories and filtration processes, not to mention flashier bottles for the tasteless spirit. Rothbaum devotes a chapter to applauding the revival of the pre-prohibition craft of quality cocktails, a trend distillers celebrate as well. The text is sprinkled with informative sidebars—perhaps too many, given its slender size—like a guide to artisan cocktail bars in New York, London and Prague, and a thumbnail history of rye whiskey. An industry cheerleader, Rothbaum tells his story well, but it could have benefited from more social context regarding the roots of today’s hard alcohol renaissance. (Sept. 4)

Every writer is an editor if only for choosing one word over another. However, the ability to edit your own work consciously as you go along or after the work is done is another thing altogether and one that leaves many a writer nonplussed. Enter Bell, a long-time professional editor of both fiction and nonfiction (Dare to Hope: Saving American Democracy) as well as a teacher of editing at the New School in New York. Bell flat out states that self-editing is not only possible, it’s necessary, and it can be learned. She provides a slew of ingenious methods for viewing your work with fresh eyes (hang the pages on a clothesline, use a different font when printing out). She also supplies exercises on macro-editing (dealing with structure, character, etc.). Neither how-to nor memoir, the book includes a little bit of everything: Bell’s own experiences editing writers; a long section on how F. Scott Fitzgerald—the consummate self-editor—produced The Great Gatsby; lengthy quotes by well-known authors on their self-editing process; and a list of editing symbols. Bell’s prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide. (Aug.)

This short and wonderful second book of prose from poet Revell (A Thief of Strings) begins as an essay on luminous mystical vision and ends as a poetic autobiography, explaining how the poet got from the bitter, involuted verse of his first books to his pellucid, delighted and delightful recent work. In between, Revell argues that poets should translate, with examples from Ezra Pound and Revell’s own engagement with Guillaume Apollinaire; he also argues that familiar ideas about imagination, originality, craft and revision have the true poetic process exactly backwards. True poetry, for Revell as for his frequent model Thoreau, flows from openness to whatever awaits us outside the self. That openness is for Revell finally religious (in his case, Christian): “it is simply natural,” he maintains, “that plain attention is a piety and that the unaggressive articulation of attention in poems may be a form of prayer, an instance of worship.” This compact book (part of Graywolf’s new Art Of series on the craft of writing) seems designed in part for poetry workshops, but Revell’s unusual take makes this as much a warmhearted essay on metaphysics as a guidebook, which is likely to make any poetry lover stop and pay attention. (Aug.)

Having immersed himself in Beat culture while writing Hip: A History, Leland, a New York Times reporter and former editor-in-chief of Details, makes a convincing case that Jack Kerouac’s most famous novel has endured for half a century because it’s “a book about how to live your life.” The lesson isn’t about impulsive self-gratification, as many readers believe, aided by Kerouac’s tendency to go vague in his most emotionally critical passages. Leland reminds us that narrator Sal Paradise was always looking to settle down into a conventional life, and Kerouac, Leland says, was generally of a conservative mindset. Framing On the Road as a spiritual quest, Leland deftly combines the biographical facts of Kerouac’s life with discussions of his literary antecedents in Melville and Goethe, as well as the inspiration he took from contemporary jazz, finding in bebop’s rhythms a new way to circle around a story’s themes. Section headings like “The 7 Habits of Highly Beat People” get a little silly, but Leland’s insights provide new layers of significance even for those familiar with the novel. (Aug. 20)

Prolific writer and cultural critic Sante (Low Life) has translated half a year’s worth of concise news blurbs written in 1906 for a Paris newspaper by Fénéon, writer, anarchist and promoter of artists like Seurat and Bonnard. These “nouvelles” (literally “novellas” or “news”) attest to the ongoing despair of the human condition, giving readers a relentless compendium of murder, suicide, accidental death (beware of train tracks), infanticide, beatings, stabbings, depression and, in a particularly French twist, endless mention of strikes and scabs. According to Sante, Fénéon took an established form and made it his own through the precision and style of his writing; yet it’s hard to define that style, because it seems so variable, often straightforward, at times cheekily irreverent, sometimes syntactically impossible to understand, although it’s hard to know how much of that is the translation and how much the writer’s native prose. That the news is still filled with stories like those related here attests to the constancy of human nature, in both private and public undertakings, as when Fénéon notes: “The fever, of military origin, that is raging in Rouillac, Charente, is getting worse and spreading. Preventative measures have been taken.” Illus. (Aug. 21)

The organizers of the Century of Progress International Exposition chose as their motto “Science Finds—Industry Applies—Man Conforms.” With the Great Depression at its worst, they wanted to offer the country a vision of modernity where science and industry worked together to improve every aspect of daily life. They built three million square feet of exhibition space in pavilions that stretched along three miles of landfill on Chicago’s southern lakefront. During the exposition’s two seasons, 38 million fairgoers watched the manufacture of everything from cars to tin cans, visited model homes with all the latest conveniences (one had a small airplane hanger), and saw ethnographic displays from around the world. Schrenk, an assistant professor of architecture at Norwich University, provides a good discussion of the debates on modern architecture that surrounded the design of the fair. But as her focus shifts to the innovative materials and building methods that went into producing the exposition, chapters on gypsum board, Masonite, glass bricks and thin-shell concrete roofs can be slow going for general readers. The 170 illustrations and 26 color plates, including architects’ designs and the fair’s promotional material, provide a sense of the vision that informed the undertaking. (Aug.)

In this dual biography of two key figures in Middle Eastern history, Florence (Blood Libel) grounds the clash of Arab and Jewish nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire’s collapse during WWI. T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) was a flamboyant British officer and romantic partisan of a mythologized Arab people, who cobbled together an anti-Turkish revolt out of fractious Bedouin clans. Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew and an agronomist who pioneered the Zionist effort to make the desert bloom, organized a spy ring to feed intelligence on Ottoman defenses in Palestine to the British. There’s suspense and pathos in Florence’s saga of the war-torn Middle East—Aaronsohn’s sister, also a spy, was tortured by the Turks and committed suicide—along with eye-glazing diplomatic wrangling as Aaronsohn and Lawrence try to influence British policy toward conquered Ottoman lands. Florence’s portraits of his protagonists color his account of the competing political claims. His depiction of Aaronsohn makes Zionism the more authentic nation-building project, deeply rooted in the careful stewardship of a soil watered with Zionist blood, while Arab nationalism comes off as largely a shallow, alien conceit imported by an eccentric Englishman to Bedouin more interested in booty than independence. (See alsoAaronsohn’s Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East, reviewed on p. 44.) Photos. (Aug. 20)

During the winter of 1943–1944, Albert Einstein met weekly with three other aging geniuses—philosopher Bertrand Russell, mathematician Kurt Gödel and physicist Wolfgang Pauli—in the study of his home at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, N.J. Feldman (who died in 2003) and Williams (who chairs the English department at the New York Institute of Technology) admit early on that “[n]othing really emerged from their meetings, so far as we can tell.” What the authors present are illuminating biographical sketches of these men and their earlier, groundbreaking work. By 1943, the four European-born friends found themselves “sidelined and isolated” from the war effort, such as the atomic research at Los Alamos. To balance their stories, Feldman (The Nobel Prize) and Williams also review Werner Heisenberg’s fission research in Nazi Germany and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work as leader of the Manhattan Project. While the book adds nothing to current scholarship on these individuals, it sheds light on a moment when architects of the early 20th century’s most important discoveries in science and logic could only stand by and watch as their scientific discoveries directly affected the outcome of world events. (Aug. 20)

Karl Brandt (1904–1948) was for a time the leading medical authority in the Nazi regime. He was responsible for the euthanasia program, in which tens of thousands of handicapped individuals were killed. But that Brandt (who also served for a time as Hitler’s physician) left the details up to subordinates didn’t help him after the war, at Nuremberg, where he was convicted and executed for his crimes. As British historian Schmidt (Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial) shows, a belief in eugenics, combined with a dash of ambition, motivated Brandt. During the war, he saw it as “legitimate to sacrifice individual human lives in the name of science.” Outside of the diaries he wrote during the Nuremberg trials, which Schmidt had partial access to, Brandt left few writings, so Schmidt is forced to make informed guesses about the degree of Brandt’s involvement in certain projects, such as the gruesome medical experiments conducted on concentration camp inmates, as well as about some of his motivations. Schmidt concludes that whether Brandt backed the genocide of the Jews is almost impossible to know. There’s a lot to wade through, but readers who do will learn about a man of culture and science who turned medicine into a tool of murder. B&w illus., maps. (Aug.)

The bloody February 1862 Union victory at Fort Donelson on Tennessee’s Cumberland River is remembered as the Union’s first big success—and as the battle in which Ulysses S. Grant held firm for Confederate unconditional surrender. Former journalist Hurst (Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography) attempts to make the case that Grant’s western theater victory at Donelson indelibly shaped his military career, as well as that of Confederate Lt. Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest, and that the battle turned the tide of the Civil War unalterably in the North’s favor. Writing forcefully and engagingly, Hurst does a thorough job of reconstructing the military aspects of the battle and never shies away from illuminating the war’s horror. His focus is on Grant, the Confederate generals who faced him (John Floyd, Gideon Pillow, Simon Buckner and Bushrod Johnson) and the ever-aggressive Forrest, best known for his battlefield viciousness and his postwar role in creating the Ku Klux Klan. It’s a stretch, though, to postulate that the 1862 victory at Donelson propelled the Union to victory more than three years later. Certainly, as Hurst says, western theater action often is overlooked in assessing the Civil War. But one can’t ignore the impact on the war’s outcome of the massive battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, Wilderness and Cold Harbor that came after Donelson. (Aug.)

Investigative reporter Loeb compassionately chronicles 10 years of grassroots efforts by citizens of southern West Virginia to protect their homes from coal-mining damage. The story centers on the efforts of Patricia Bragg, who in 1998, together with attorney Joe Lovett, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection for their failure to regulate the waste from mountaintop mining, a practice in which hundreds of feet are sliced off mountaintops and the leftover rubble is dumped into streams and narrow valleys. This case, which resulted in a ruling for a two-year moratorium on mountaintop removal by a judge who had not previously favored environmental causes, is the high point of the book. Though the judge’s ruling was later overturned on appeal, the Bragg case led to some improvements in coal-mining procedures. Unfortunately, Loeb overloads her account with too many stories of other people struggling for fair treatment by the coal company. She’s very effective, however, in pointing out the heartbreaking dilemma of these West Virginians: the industry that threatens their quality of life is also the lifeblood of their economy. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)

How to tell the difference between rage and plain, everyday anger? Anger, explains King, a life coach and management consultant, is primarily associated with a current injustice or disappointment. Rage, on the other hand, is accumulated anger from past traumas that is “locked in our bodies and minds.” Or as they say in 12-step programs: “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.” This is essentially a workbook to unlock that childhood trauma. It includes ways to understand how rage can mask itself (dominance, depression, etc.), questions to locate the rage and exercises to help process it. The book may be a valuable first step in recognizing unprocessed childhood trauma, especially for women. King speaks with insight and empathy about her own rage, rooted in a harsh childhood in South-Central L.A., and the experiences of others. And the exercises, while not new (journaling, imagining an inner rage child), can perhaps help some readers become more aware of the triggers that ignite their rage. Some women might be well advised to seek professional help, too, but King offers a starting place for women whose lives are being distorted by unrecognized rage. (Aug. 2)

The National Football League’s fifth all-time leading rusher tells of his journey from growing up on Detroit’s mean streets to playing for the 2006 Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers. As a child, Bettis wore nerdy glasses and preferred bowling. In high school, he began playing football, but also started running with a smalltime neighborhood gang that sold drugs and carried firearms. He credits his escape from crime to his high school coach and his parents for laying down the law as well as the shock of seeing a friend get shot. A highly recruited high school player, he played three years at Notre Dame before turning pro with the Rams (both L.A. and St. Louis). During the latter part of his 13-year career, he had to compete for playing time and deal with a litany of injuries. For his last pro football game, he returned triumphantly to Detroit, which hosted the 2006 Super Bowl. Writing in an easygoing, honest voice, Bettis gives readers a good look at the inside stories of college recruiting, professional contracts and the agony of NFL injuries. He also dishes out opinions on players, calling former Rams quarterback Jim Everett “soft as puppy fur” and Denver Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski a “coward” who specialized in “cheap shots.” (Aug.)

There were many ordeals—and adventures—in the tumultuous life of this emblematic 18th-century Englishwoman. At age 20 Marsh was captured by Barbary pirates and narrowly fended off the Moroccan sultan’s attempts to induct her into his harem. She married a British merchant, went through both luxurious high living and humiliating bankruptcy, followed him to India, where they remade themselves as colonial grandees, then suffered another bankruptcy. (A further “ordeal” was snagging a husband for her under-dowried daughter.) Historian Colley (Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850) styles Marsh a “female Candide” batted about by world-historical forces. Shaped by the breakdown of barriers in this age of “proto-globalization” (Colley speculates excitedly, but without evidence, that Marsh was of mixed racial background), her life was opened up by the rise of the British Empire and disrupted by attendant upheavals like the Seven Years War and the American Revolution. Still, in Colley’s account, she retains her own power: Marsh cannily leveraged family connections to the British naval bureaucracy to facilitate her voyaging, published a piquant memoir of Moroccan captivity and enjoyed a scandalous 18-month tour of India accompanied by a dashing, unmarried British officer. Colley makes of her story both an engaging biography and a deft, insightful social history. Photos. (Aug. 14)

In this deeply personal account, veteran journalist O’Connor’s decides to explore the mysteries of his childhood: “In September 1998, a year after our mother died, I finally found the courage to look inside my father’s battered, taped-together cigar box, with the brand Tampa Nugget in embossed gold lettering on a red border.” Over the course of more than 300 pages, O’Connor hints at some dark secret that drove his father to suddenly move the family from Texas to Mexico and back in the 1950s. “Rushing, almost running at the end because we could feel the breath of whatever was chasing us, Dad and I jammed our things into the back of the black-and-white station wagon.” he writes. But for all of O’Connor’s journalistic credentials—CBS News, the New York Times and NPR—the pace is sluggish as he uncoils his tales of late-night border crossings, parental double-speak and ongoing misdirection. In the end, O’Connor finds his father was a petty criminal, on the run from his own scams, and his mother was caught up in the McCarthy-era red scare. Not that every memoir must have some nearly unspeakable grotesquerie at its core, but O’Connor’s story lacks the emotional wallop to justify wading through it. (Aug.)

Settle, who died in 2005, won the National Book Award in 1978 for Blood Ties and was the founder of the PEN/Faulkner Prize. Two years before her death Settle wanted “to trace the path that led me into being the writer I have become.” This remarkable memoir is the result. Edited by Freeman, the story begins in the summer of 1938, when Settle, an independent 20-year-old, is intent on becoming an actress. After an internship at the Barter Theatre in Virginia, where she learned “some of the most valuable lessons as a writer I have ever had,” Settle moves to New York, where she lands a modeling job during the glamorous time of the World’s Fair. She vividly depicts a long vanished world, peopled with White Russians, aristocratic English women and ancient splay-footed nannies: “We were not aware yet that everything we took for granted was disappearing or changing, like a shaken kaleidoscope, not of colors but time and sound and habit and decision.” She recounts through exquisite detail and language how her roles as a wartime bride and young mother, a signals operator with the Women’s Auxiliary of the Royal Air Force, and freelance journalist, forged her commitment to becoming a writer. Filled with adventure and insight, this is a delightfully literate recounting of a life lived to its fullest. (Aug.)

Short story writer, novelist and memoirist Gordon honors her late mother, Anne. Though she died in 2002, Anne was gradually lost to senile dementia years before, stunting Gordon’s grief. Now, she explains, “I write about her because I am a writer and it’s the only way that I can mourn her.” Anne emerges as the progeny of her era—a daughter of working-class Catholic immigrants, a Great Depression survivor “plagued by the horror of waste,” a stalwart woman who provided for a long succession of family members that couldn’t (or sometimes wouldn’t) support themselves. For all her formidable strength, Anne was vulnerable—her body misshapen by polio, her mind tormented by alcoholism and despair, her tenderness of emotion only conveyed in song. Fans of Gordon’s work will recognize familiar conflicts in the people who shaped Anne’s life: sisters, friends, priests—men who served as “ancillary husbands” through her widowhood. As the title suggests, Gordon realizes that understanding Anne wholly is not easily done from any one stance, and so she opts to encircle her, weaving between the realms of memoir and biography. The result is a moving, affecting work on the tug-of-war between mother and daughter, between women and the changing world around them. (Aug.)

Tichler, casting director and artistic producer at New York’s Public Theater, has encountered the top tier of America’s actors. Writing with playwright Kaplan, she interviews 14 of them on the craft of acting. While she doesn’t shy from asking personal questions, the real meat is revelations about careers and the unique approach each artist takes to a script. While many are formally trained, Estelle Parsons sums up a shared attitude toward schooling: “Study! How can you study acting?” Lessons in voice, script analysis and body movement are helpful tools, but experience is the best teacher. As Meryl Streep notes, no one technique can help a performer tackle diverse roles. The book is best at chronicling different working methods, while revealing the life of an actor. Dianne Wiest and Patti Lupone reveal a refreshing honesty, willing to expose their failures and weaknesses. Frances Conroy and John Lithgow carry the valuable lessons of live theater into the disjointed process of film acting. Kevin Spacey, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kevin Kline describe the intensely delicate work involved in creating a character. For actors, directors and anyone who appreciates the art form, these interviews are priceless. (Aug.)

Marking how mainstream vegetarian cooking has become, the next must-have for the vegetarian cook’s shelf comes from New York Times “Minimalist” chef Bittman, an avowed meat eater. And that ensures one of this massive compendium’s many attractions: a wealth of recipes that don’t scream “vegetarian” and plentiful guidelines to make cooking vegetarian as intuitive as cooking with meat. Like his now classic How to Cook Everything, this book opens with terrifically useful, straightforward discussions of essential ingredients, appliances and techniques, which Bittman builds on throughout in to-the-point sidebars and illustrated boxes. The recipes flow thick and fast in his theme-and-variations style: Green Tea with Udon Noodles is followed by concise instructions for making it 17 different ways, while Coconut Rice gets five additional takes and Kidney Beans with Apples and Sherry four; other lists (six Great Spreads for Bruschetta or Crostini, 10 Garnishes for Pozole with Mole) abound and inspire. New vegetarians and vegetarians cooking for omnivores will appreciate Bittman’s avoidance of faux meat products in favor of flavorful high-protein dishes like Braised Tofu in Caramel Sauce and Bechamel Burgers with Nuts. Even owners of the original book will find much new to savor while benefiting from Bittman’s remarkable ability to teach foundational skills and encourage innovation with them, which will help even longtime vegetarians freshen their repertory. (Oct.)

Gullah are the hardscrabble South Carolina Low Country descendants of plantation slaves, and their meals reveal African, Jamaican and Caribbean influences. Robinson was raised on Daufuskie Island, an isolated Gullah bastion near Hilton Head. She combines a memoir of growing up with her nine siblings and down-to-earth recipes to cover each meal of the day. Most of her remembrances involve chores and the fertile life of the island, though she also includes a fine chapter on “Folk Beliefs and Home Remedies,” where we learn that ear cleaning should be done with a hen’s feather (never a rooster’s) and that a “handful of spider web” makes for an excellent bandage. As for the recipes, each could be filed under one or more of the three S’s: simple, soul food or seafood. For breakfast, there is Country Fried Fish with Grits. Lunchtime sandwiches include Fried Soft-Shell Crab, which could be paired with ’Fuskie Seafood Gumbo with a stock made from fatback bacon and pig tail. Dinner entrees come stuffed, like Flounder Full of Crabmeat, which can be grilled or steamed. All the dishes can be washed down with one of her seven homemade wines, which generally involve adding five pounds of sugar to five pounds of fruit (like persimmons or peaches) and a gallon of water. (Oct.)

This idiosyncratic though charming cookbook was first published in the U.K. in 1994 and became a runaway favorite with a second publication in 2006. Hopkinson, a founding chef of London’s Bibendum and a newspaper columnist, rejects the notion that a dinner’s merit should be judged by its number of ingredients or steps. Instead, his earthy sensibility is guided by French techniques, rich English ingredients and lots and lots of butter. Chapters are organized not by course but by Hopkinson’s favorite ingredients, such as eggplant (grilled, creamed, baked and stewed in his cayenne-spiked version of the Turkish classic Imam Bayildi); leeks (in vinaigrette, in a tart crust, vichyssoise, baked with cream and mint); and tripe (Madrid-style, Lyonnaise style, deep-fried). Each chapter begins with a bit of history and often witty personal reminiscence. He’ll chart the use of anchovies around the globe, quote fellow food writer Elizabeth David on the beauty of anchoïade and guide readers to the best canned variety in the market. The recipes themselves are designed for the intuitive cook who can gauge a dish’s doneness by its color rather than by slavish devotion to a timer. Yet Hopkinson’s recipes are true winners, inspiring confidence in the kitchen and pleasure at the table with their simple, satisfying flavors. (Sept.)

Cruz, owner of five restaurants on the West Coast, is known for her version of Latin comfort food—simple, healthy dishes influenced by the various cultures and cuisines she was surrounded by growing up in L.A. like Cuban, Mexican, Japanese and Thai. Cruz highlights such ingredients as “mangoes, limes, coconut, chile peppers, mint, ginger, and cilantro.... These are my flavor building blocks.” The “Starters” section includes Seared Tuna Wontons with Avocado Salsa Cruda, which are “a little nod to Japan but 100 percent California.” Empanadas are made with turkey for a lighter meal as are Cruz’s “Albondigas,” Latin meatballs. The “Main Courses” chapter includes fresh, healthful dishes like Steamed Red Snapper with Hearts of Palm and Ginger, and Green Chili Posole, a Mexican stew. The “Rice, Beans and Other Sides” section includes recipes for Quick Black Beans, Brown Rice with Barley, and Sweet Plantains. The “Salsas, Sauces and Marinades” are used in specific recipes throughout the book, but can be added onto almost any dish. Included are Chipotle Corn Salsa, Guava Sauce, and Red Bell Pepper Sofrito. The options are endless in this bright debut, and Cruz convinces that “Latin food can be healthy and light and still be delicious, and that today’s Latin food is a blend of the cultures that surround it.” (Aug.)

Educators Melton and Shankle offer a reasonable, nonalarmist guide for concerned parents in helping their kids navigate the wonders and perils of the cyberworld. The authors downplay the dangers of Internet predators (the statistics are actually low), while they emphasize the importance of establishing a healthy balance of virtual and real-time activities for growing kids. Cellphones, instant text messaging, online surfing (Web sites, chat rooms, blogs) and dating aren’t going to go away, and the authors give a crash course in what children are bombarded with daily, in school and elsewhere. Establishing an honor system with kids is crucial: “Keep the lines of communication open” is an often repeated dictum. The authors consider the cyberworld from the perspectives of both kids (establishing e-mail etiquette and coping with bullying, for example) and adults (inserting filters and monitors), but most helpful is the section on how intensive engagement with the cyberworld affects a child’s development, from early youth to the teen years. The authors do sing the benefits of using the Internet for research and global communication, especially for special-needs kids; however, they convincingly stress moderation and firm parental involvement. (Aug.)

Oguchi, longtime designer of Japanese gardens and author of more than 18 books on the subject in Japanese, offers English speakers both an overview and practical knowledge of this easily recognized but to many Westerners mysterious art form. Oguchi describes the Japanese garden’s relation to architecture from the ancient era to the mid–19th century, tracing its evolution from the lavish hills, ponds and waterfalls of early estates to the inward-turning, abbreviated and abstracted gardens of urban townhouses. He calls the guidelines of Japanese garden design “naturalness, studied tastefulness, and harmony,” tempered by flexibility for “site conditions, current needs and desires, and self-expression,” and presents essential “design devices” such as asymmetry, miekakure (hide and reveal). Most of the book gives concrete details on how to design and build a garden for the home or small business, using as examples the author’s designs for restaurants, homes and his traditional teahouse. With precise instructions and illustrations for building typical elements such as bamboo fences and stone bridges, the book gives Americans all the information they need to create authentic Japanese gardens. The lack of a glossary may make it hard for readers to retain meanings of the many Japanese terms strewn throughout the text. (Aug.)

Pennsylvania gardeners Ondra and Cohen (Perennial Gardener’s Design Primer) bring imaginative ideas, practical techniques and new inspiration to autumn, that often-neglected tail end of the gardening year. According to the authors, the “key players” of “fallscaping” include the multicolored foliage of trees, grasses and other plants; flashy seedheads and berries; long-blooming perennials; late-blooming sedums, coneflowers, asters and goldenrod; the surprising fall-blooming crocuses, daffodils and lilies; and vines like honeysuckle and sweet autumn clematis. Ondra and Cohen submit a number of fall-friendly garden plans, complete with shopping lists, from a “high and dry” garden of echinaceas, lavenders and feather reed grass to a vegetable, herb and flower kitchen garden of peppers and basils (to be brought inside before cold weather) and kale and chard (to carry the harvest into winter), with colorful touches of alpine strawberries, sunflowers and pansies. Interspersed throughout are “Fall Techniques,” with practical, down-to-earth information on how to divide perennials and design suggestions on planning paths, as well as more wacky ideas like spray-painting seedheads. The book ends with a “Fall Garden Care Primer,” delineating ways to evaluate your garden, improve your soil, build new beds, take cuttings, prepare plants for winter, store your tools and care for your lawn (a long section). Full of useful details and lush photographs, this book rounds out the growing year and may fill a gap in many a gardening library. (Aug.)

Khaliah, daughter of Mohammad Ali, struggled with obesity for most of her life. With a father famous for his athletic abilities (and one sister following in his footsteps) Khaliah felt insecure about her weight. She tried many diets and weight-loss programs, but hunger always got the best of her. At her heaviest, she reached 325 pounds, and even with diet and exercise couldn’t seem to get below 220. Khaliah decided to try “laparoscopic banding”—a surgery this book claims has less risk, less recovery time and better results than gastric bypass. With the help of the band (which is wrapped around the stomach), Khaliah was finally able to lose the weight and step out of her shell. Khaliah is a likable person on the page; she seems to genuinely want to help others get results. The sections written by her doctors explain the mechanics of the surgery, who should or should not have it and what to expect if you do. The audience of the book is clearly limited to those curious about the surgery or at least in the market for a way to lose a large amount of weight. (June)