Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 12/17

-- Publishers Weekly, 12/17/2007

NONFICTION

Confessions of a Carb Queen
Susan Blech with Caroline Bock. Rodale, $15.95 paper (368p) ISBN 9781594867767
Once a bodybuilder (now a motivational speaker), Blech had ballooned to 468 pounds by the time she checked herself into a Durham, N.C. weight loss clinic. In this painfully honest memoir, Blech recounts her shameful spiral into obesity, her life as a social outcast and the difficult road back to a healthy weight. Though funny and consistently entertaining, Blech pulls no punches regarding life with “The Body,” from clothing and ordering food in front of people to sex and fire department-assisted elevator extraction. Descriptions of eating binges border on the pornographic (“I’m in that sultry, full, near comotose state, surrounded by the smell of grease, salt, fish, meat…”), arguably more so than descriptions of phone sex. After a dose of reality, Blech enrolls at age 39 in the Durham-based Rice Clinic. What follows isn’t a ringing endorsement but rather a frank account of the discipline she—and, she argues, anyone who wants to overcome obesity—had to cultivate to reach her goal. The obese and their loved ones will gain practical advice, as well as a large measure of insight, from this intense, bravura memoir. (Jan.)

Do Dead People Watch You Shower?: And Other Questions You’ve Been All but Dying to Ask a Medium
Concetta Bertoldi. Harper Perennial, $13.95 paper (256p) ISBN 9780061351228
Whether readers believe what Bertoldi has to say is a matter of choice, but the charm of this “average Jersey girl who talks to the dead” goes a long way toward making this one of the more approachable titles in the recent wave of medium-authored books. It also has a format with wide appeal, more or less cribbed from the bestselling Why Do Men Have Nipples? Instead of personal health questions, Bertoldi answers queries like “Do the dead go to ball games?” (Yes) and “How meaningful are coincidences in our lives?” (Very). The book also has a dishy element, delving into the medium’s personal life (her husband’s a skeptic) and a number of celebrity encounters. Though generally fun reading throughout, questions of God, heaven and other spiritual matters are met with vague language; she’s similarly uninformative regarding practical matters like finding happiness or contacting the seemingly omnipresent dead. (Jan.)

Do Me: Tales of Sex and Love from Tin House
Editors of Tin House. Tin House (PGW, dist.), $18.95 paper (352p) ISBN 9780979419805
Though it boasts a risqué title and cunning cover art, the majority of the stories and essays collected here put the emphasis on the “Me,” rather than the “Do.” Having first appeared in the literary journal Tin House, these pieces vary widely in terms of structure as well as quality; Michel Lowenthal’s “You Don’t See the Other Person Looking Back” is one of the book’s strongest entries, an engrossing tale of a sighted gay man who embarks on a cruise with blind gay passengers, but it’s all too short. Nicholas Montemarano’s skillful metafiction “Make Believe” and Denis Johnson’s story “Xmas in Las Vegas” are two more strong points; other pieces don’t fare so well. Dylan Landis’ “Jazz,” a short story about a young girl sexually assaulted by a family friend, feels sophomoric, and Mark Jude Poirer’s “I, Maggot” seems more interested in impressing the reader with symbolism and imagery than titillating, or even telling a story. Readers interested in literary pyrotechnics and Carver-esque ruminations on the everyday will probably get a great deal out of the book, but those looking for a literary roll in the hay will be disappointed. (Dec.)

Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America
Bamo Ayi, Stevan Harrell and Ma Lunzy. Univ. of Wash., $30 paper (384p) ISBN 9780295986685
Three distinguished anthropologists take the reader into the field as they get to know one another and the Yi/Nuoso of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China. Harrell, the American, “a complete outsider,” Ayi, a “‘native’ who grew up outside the native cultural context,” and Lunzy, “who grew up within the native cultural context” form a trio of complementary, supplementary and differing perspectives. In alternating chapters that follow their separate and indirect paths to ethnography, their work together in China, and their later work in America, each tells his part. This is a jargon-free, readable revelation of the quotidian details and myriad tasks behind gathering ethnographic data, as well as the questions ethnographers must regularly ask (“Were all these facts about customs and languages and ancestors and marriage practices really important to these people, or did they just dredge them up because I was around?”). A cast of characters list, a brief Chinese and Nuoso glossary, maps and photographs of the researchers at work contribute to the ease with which the non-specialist reader can enter the work. If the title doesn’t scare off general readers, they will find a remarkably interesting, accessible account of how ethnographers work. 56 b&w photos. (Dec.)

The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand
Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner. Ignatius, $27.95 (400p) ISBN 9781586171834
William P. Clark served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of the Interior during Ronald Reagan’s two terms as President, sharing an uncanny bond with the Gipper as well as his peculiar gift for succeeding at high office with few formal credentials and little prior experience. This uncritical look at Clark posits that his apparent simplicity, like Reagan’s, belied a deep sagacity that proves how common sense and sound judgment trumps narrow intellectualism and left-wing sophistry. Author Kengor (God and Hillary Clinton) and historian Doerner make no secret of their admiration, crediting Clark for his unswerving loyalty to Reagan’s vision of communism while other of his advisors fought against the hard-line approach to the Soviets, calling economic sanctions and the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative ill-advised, and the Cold War unwinnable. These little-seen inter-administration struggles make up this volume’s most informative and intriguing parts; otherwise, this career biography offers readers a sympathetic, largely anecdotal record of the Reagan White House. (Nov.)

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks
Edited by Stephen W. Hines. Univ. of Missouri, $34.95 (336p) ISBN 9780826217714
Midwest history buffs will snatch up this collection of short essays from Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), creator of the “Little House on the Prairie” series, originally published in the Missouri Ruralist between 1911 and 1924. Written in a homey, chatty style, Wilder’s essays cover a wide array of topics, including the 1915 San Francisco Exhibition, where Wilder discovered foreign delicacies like German Honey Cake, as well as the changing roles of women at the beginning of the 20th century. In “Who’ll Do the Woman’s Work?” Ingalls writes that, since the war made it necessary for women to take up “male” jobs, “Never again will anyone have the courage to say that women could not run world affairs if necessary.” Many columns feature simple advice for saving a few cents at a time, as well as the importance of cultivating readiness and counting one’s blessings; given her often wistful tone, what Wilder does not say may be as telling as what she does. Those expecting sweet, “Little House” style family stories may be disappointed, but patient readers will discover a time and place chronicled with honesty and curiosity by a woman who was both ahead of her times and firmly rooted in the traditions of Midwest farm life. (Dec.)

Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them
David Anderegg. Tarcher/Penguin, $24.95 (276p) ISBN 9781585425907
In this intriguing treatise, child therapist and psychology professor Anderegg takes a wry and well-rounded look at the legacy of everyone’s (least) favorite schoolyard epithet, getting deep into the history of an idea as well as the nuts and bolts of childhood “stereotype acquisition.” Beginning with a “Field Guide to Nerds” (“or Why Nerds are So Gay”), Anderegg considers typical nerd traits (and includes a “Nerd Test” copied from “Deluxe NERD Glasses” package copy), parses out the subtle but important differences between “nerd” (emphasizing appearance) and “geek” (emphasizing intelligence), looks at the cultural history and rising profile of American anti-intellectualism, from Ichabod Crane and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Seinfeld and Beauty and the Geek, as well as more recent developments in nerd-related medical diagnoses like autism and Asperger’s. Knowledgeable, charming and self-deprecating throughout, Anderegg is at his best when discussing the specific cases of children he’s worked with, but readers should be happy to tag along as he occasionally wanders off point (contemplating, say, the Freudian implications of his subject). For educators, therapists and others interested in child psychology, this makes an insightful, if perhaps overstuffed, resource. (Dec.)

On Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War
Anthony W. Lee and Elizabeth Young. Univ. of Calif., $50 (128p) ISBN 9780520251519; $19.95 paper 9780520253315
Art historian Lee (Picturing Chinatown) and literary scholar Young (Disarming the Nation) deconstruct the work of Alexander Gardner’s seminal 1866 book of Civil War photos in separate, short essays. Soon after its publication, Gardner’s work became “the first book to rely so heavily on pictures for its meanings,” as Hay notes in the book’s introduction. Lee focuses on the images in his essay, “The Image of War,” and Young on the words or “sketches” in “Verbal Battlefields.” Hay offers a comparison to other photographers’ war work, concentrating on Gardner’s “commitment to the limited view and the celebration of vignette over narrative.” Young offers interpretations of Gardner’s images and words on several topics, including African Americans and President Lincoln. The book, Young contends, is “strongly shaped by racially marked character and metaphors.” The written sketches “offer alternative literary vocabularies that throw the dynamics of racial hierarchy—including its erotic connotations—into exaggerated relief, if not also providing narrative templates for their possible reversal.” As those words indicate, the essays are heavily academic and make for edifying, if less than electrifying, reading. (Jan.)

On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife
David Grazian. Univ. of Chicago, $25 (256p) ISBN 9780226305677
His interest in club life undiminished, sociologist Grazian (Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs) ventures into after-hours Philadelphia for a dishy yet savvy tell-all that brings the city’s network of pubs and hotspots fully to life, complete with a host of partiers eager to share. Populated in large part by a 100,000-plus student population, Grazian strips bare the social life of young Philly to reveal “pre-game” prep rituals (dressing, fraternizing, drinking), on-location angst (to appear cool and worldly) and wary assessment of older patrons among them (dinosaurs in their late twenties and beyond). Grazian also brings to life the “hustle” of the industry in vibrant profiles of nightlife institutions, “including the staging of… interiors, the scripting of interactions with customers, the exploitation of attractive women workers, the engineering of creative publicity and… reality-based marketing schemes,” showing how these efforts combine to produce the lucrative, exciting and often risky appeal at the heart of the scene. Taking readers to strip clubs, gay bars, the poshest of the posh and a few dives for good measure, this book is a bit like a month of free nights out: the pleasure of the hustle without any of the hassle. (Dec.)

The Price is Wrong: Understanding What Makes a Price Seem Fair and the True Cost of Unfair Pricing
Sarah Maxwell. Wiley, $29.95 (304p) ISBN 9780470139097
Professor Maxwell asks, “How do you know if a price is fair?” Ultimately, Maxwell believes, fair is in the eye of the payer. What, then, is fair? Fairness can depend on a variety of factors such as local customs. In Spain, it is considered fair to charge for unordered bread if it is eaten, yet to the American visitor paying for what was never ordered, and is typically included in a U.S. meal’s price, it seems unfair. Tipping is simply confusing and so is the flow of Maxwell’s text. Only in the last chapter does the author offer any guidance regarding what to make of the concepts, definitions and survey results related to pricing theory. There is also a brief foray into pricing history that starts with Aristotle and includes an account of 13th century pricing analysis. Despite tables, a lengthy glossary and reference list and many, many pages of footnotes, there is little insight to be gained here by those who do much paying. (Jan.)

The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World
Larry Diamond. Times, $28 (448p) ISBN 9780805078695
Political scientist Diamond (Squandered Victory), a leader in the field of democracy studies, provides a broad, authoritative survey of international trends and evolving academic thinking concerning the development and maintenance of democracies worldwide. Looking broadly at internal and external factors driving democratic movements, as well as the forces that sustain them once in place, Diamond argues democracy is not a Western anomaly, but a universal value. Diamond, who served as senior advisor to the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority, has witnessed democracy-building efforts at close range. The promotion of democracy in authoritarian regimes through either peaceful pressure or international interventions, Diamond believes, is rarely effective unless supported by outside assistance designed to strengthen internal civil societies. Democracy by force, he intones, has the poorest track record of all, and urges the U.S. and other established democracies to clean up their own houses, reasoning that “It does little good to promote freedom abroad while it gradually slips away at home.” Being generally sanguine about the nature and influence of democracies, however, Diamond tends to downplay how they might also serve to maintain exploitative social and economic relations, amongst other political complications, but there’s much to glean in this optimistic and carefully supported account. (Jan.)

LIFESTYLE

Men’s Health Muscle Chow: More Than 150 Meals to Feed Your Muscles and Fuel Your Workouts
Gregg Avedon. Rodale, $18.95 (288p) ISBN 9781594865480
You don’t have to be a gym rat to appreciate what certified personal trainer and Men’s Health cover model Avedon has to say in this sensible, easily customizable approach to nutrition and fitness. Unsurprisingly, Avedon’s technique boils down to eating a series of small meals throughout the day, emphasizing lean meats, whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Some recipes, most notably protein shakes, call for protein powder and/or other nutrients requiring a special trip to the health food store, but most other ingredients are easily sourced. The most jarring adjustment for those following Avedon’s program will likely be the absence of salt and refined white sugar in virtually all of his 150-plus recipes: sweet dishes like Raspberry Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies and Peach Cobbler use stevia or a similar sugar substitute. Once readers get past that hurdle they’ll find plenty of easy-to-prepare recipes that taste as good as they sound. Avedon has thoughtfully weighted the book in favor of familiar classics like deviled eggs, chili, meatloaf, lasagna and key lime pie, as well as familiar health-food staples like baked squash and steamed fish. (Dec.)

The Secrets of Happily Married Women: How to Get More Out of Your Relationship by Doing Less
Scott Haltzman and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo. Jossey-Bass, $22.95 (224p) ISBN 9780787996123
Haltzman’s promise of stress-free marital bliss is attractive, but his advice grates, recalling the worst sort of paternalistic misogyny. After explaining that men’s worst communication habits are the result of genetics, Haltzman goes on to say that men need to be nurtured, require acknowledgement for their efforts and only get married for sex. So much for wives “doing less”! Once readers recover from their shock, they’ll begin to notice that whether Haltzman is focusing on arguing efficiently, spicing up your sex life or learning to recognize nonverbal expressions of love and remorse, the lesson is the same: a wife should always love and accept her husband for who he is and always has been, even after the initial throes of romantic love fade away. That core is sound, but it’s hard to say who Haltzman treats less kindly on the way there: men, who are described as intractably difficult, or women, who are told to put up with them anyway. (Jan.)

ILLUSTRATED

Books of Nudes
Alessandro Bertolotti. Abrams, $50 (280p) ISBN 9780810994447
Italian television producer and photographer Bertolotti has amassed one of the world’s largest book collections devoted to nude photography; in this anthology of sorts, he presents the cover and a few revealing pictures from more than 160 volumes, often in their original layouts. Bertolotti organizes his own book by themes, while generally adhering to a rough chronology of the genre: beginning with nudes posed in formal academies at the end of the 19th Century, he then moves through the last 100 years, illustrating the subject’s evolution and enormous breadth, as well as how the aesthetics of the body reflect the timbre of their historical eras or the agendas of certain political ideologies. For example, a chapter on works published under the Weimar Republic show a fascination with the messy, exotic and sometimes kinky; the following chapter on Nazi-era German books show God-like reverence for healthy, clean Aryan nudes. Vivid images and familiar names—like Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andre Kertesz—abound, but the volume’s encyclopedic scope, buttressed by Bertolotti’s socio-cultural overview, makes it more a useful reference rather than a lavish art book. (Dec.)

The Ministry of Truth: Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea
Eva Munz and Lukas Nikol, introduction by Christian Kracht. Feral House, $22.95 (134p) ISBN 9781932595277
In his introduction, celebrated German writer Kracht argues that under Kim Jong-Il’s rule, North Korea has essentially become Jong-Il’s “three dimensional stage-set,” a country based entirely on simulations projected by the government to convince the world, as well as a number of its own citizens, that the socialist nation is happy and thriving. Though foreign guests “see only what the regime wants them to see,” the rich, full-color images of North Korea’s capital city Pyongyang captured by international photographers Munz and Nikol contain a surreal beauty, often monumental and sparsely populated, that inspires a vivid sense of isolation and uncertainty. A lack of captions and frequent interruption by quotes from Kim Jong-Il’s book on film production, The Art of Cinema (“Artistic generalization is effective… because it creates a hundred facts with one stroke”), turn the images into a kind of challenge, daring readers to parse the “real” North Korea from the infamous leader’s staged tableaus of normal life; Kracht describes, for example, empty subway trains run for the benefit of visitors, and a trip to a film shoot at which the camera isn’t even plugged in. This slim book provides rare glimpses into the “world’s first postmodern country,” each as illuminating for what it shows as for what it hides. (Dec.)

One Hundred Young Americans
Michael Franzini. Collins Design, $29.95 paper (256p) ISBN 9780061192005
Photographer and Emmy-winning director Franzini explores the lives of the “instant access generation” by profiling 100 teenage Americans in this dynamic, brilliantly colored volume. Consulting census data and conducting research to find the “top 50 niches in youth culture,” Franzini selects a group of teenagers that effectively represents the diversity of American youth, encompassing “cheerleaders, jocks, student body presidents, prom queens, nerds, band geeks, gamers, skaters, stoners, goths, punks, druggies and kids who defy all labels.” Each teen is photographed in the setting and pose of his or her choice, often to revealing effect, while the text provides information on subjects’ lives, struggles and dreams: 18-year-old Kammie is an anime-loving college freshman who lost a cat to Hurricane Katrina; 15-year-old Josh from South Dakota describes the difficulties of being openly gay in high school; April Luv, the youngest prostitute at the World Famous Bunny Ranch, wants to start her own business someday; 16-year-old Joel “says his mother wants him to spend more time with girls and less time with robots.” Other profiles reveal tales of foster home hopscotch and meth addiction as well as unimpeachable high school popularity and Beverly Hills designer living. Funny, heartbreaking, inspirational and illuminating, this countrywide cross-section provides one of most complete, accesible and stereotype-defying looks at American youth yet produced. (Nov.)

POETRY

Nettles
Venus Khoury-Ghata, trans. from the French by Marilyn Hacker. Graywolf, $14 paper (120p) ISBN 9781555974879
Mournful, erotic, bewildering, often shocking, and always passionate over losses public and private, the Lebanese Francophone poet Khoury-Ghata’s five new verse sequences—brought into convincing English by the Paris-based Hacker—should win her some American recognition. A prolific novelist as well as a poet, Khoury-Ghata here uses her talent for narrative together with her post-Surrealist sense of description and line. The first two sequences react at once to the deaths of the poet’s husband, brother and mother, and to the wider dilemma of diaspora and refugees in and out of the Arab world. Khoury-Ghata (herself long resident in France) depicts a symbolic family as if in a vivid dream: “The mother arranges the marbles by size and sadness/ the child will play with them when he’s less dead.” The longest sequence follows the life of a village, and of a woman who leaves it, portraying scenes at once recognizably Near Eastern and hauntingly placed outside time. Shorter, but no less fiery, closing sequences pursue metaphors from nautical life and address recent Lebanese refugees. Khoury-Ghata’s recent works are a cluster of cyclones in a world of light breezes and some readers may argue over how they fit together . (Jan.)

FICTION

House Infernal
Edward Lee. Cemetery Dance (www.cemeterydance.com), $40 (482p) ISBN 9781587671692
Lee’s vividly imagined third Infernal dark fantasy, like its predecessors City Infernal and Infernal Angel, should please those who like their horror to push the bounds of good taste. Divinity student Venetia Barlow has taken work at St. John’s Prior House in New Hampshire while contemplating her future as a nun when she begins receiving psychic communications from someone warning of grave danger to her soul. They prove to be the frantic pleas of Thomas Alexander, a disgraced Catholic priest trapped in Hell, who knows that the house where Venetia works is a front for Satanists, and that she’s destined to become the next blood sacrifice in a scheme being engineered by Pope Boniface VII, one of Satan’s chief lieutenants. Venetia’s frightening ordeal includes provocative discussion of theology, church history and occult lore, but Lee devotes his greatest powers of invention to scenes set in Hell, where towns made of rot, oversexed succubi and gory episodes of creative dismemberment are de rigeur. This novel is definitely not for the squeamish. (Jan.)