Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 1/14/2008

Thomas Jefferson's betrayal of a loyal friend, the great Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko, is at the center of this book by Nash (The Unknown American Revolution) and Hodges (Anna May Wong). Jefferson had promised to use Kosciuszko's American estate to free some of his slaves. He reneged on that pledge, torn as always between his principles, his benefits from slavery and his debts. Kosciuszko, a skilled engineer who greatly contributed to the American military in the Revolution and was more deeply opposed to slavery than most Americans (it was a free African-American from Massachusetts who proved to the Pole the worth and humanity of black people) could not move his friend to free his slaves. Agrippa Hull—the third man in this fascinating story—was an army orderly who served Kosciuszko and the nation of his birth. Hull seems somewhat peripheral to the main story line, but the authors' telling of his life puts yet another man previously lost to history onto the historical record. All in all, this is a wonderful book, an outstanding example of how a scholarly monograph can be readable, moving and sobering all at once. (Apr.)

Dunwell, who has worked for 30 years to conserve the Hudson and its cultural heritage, tells the story of the magical river that has been central to New York's power and to the history of the United States. Beginning with the Native Americans who lived near the Hudson, Dunwell follows the river through the centuries, describing the painters—like Thomas Cole—who found in the river inspiration for great art and the Civilian Conservation Corps's work to build recreational facilities during the Great Depression. Covering the Hudson through space as well as time, Dunwell ranges from the building of the Erie Canal to the erection of the Statue of Liberty, and the Gilded Age estates of J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould. She pays particular attention to the tension between harnessing the Hudson's economic potential and preserving its natural beauty. Dunwell indulges in grandiose statements (the river's forts “assume the importance of Grecian temples”) and boosterism (“Can a person make a difference? The answer is yes”). But with the book's dozens of illustrations and a moving foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as bonuses, people who love the Hudson will love this book. (Apr.)

From the late 1950s until her death in 1971, renowned photographer Diane Arbus took pictures of oddball performers at the now-forgotten Hubert's Museum, a typical freak show in New York City's seedy Times Square. One frequent subject was Charlie Lucas, first a “freak” himself, later an “inside talker.” In 2003, Bob Langmuir, an anxiety-ridden, pill-popping, obsessive antiquarian book dealer from Philadelphia, unearthed a collection of photographs and memorabilia, including Lucas's journals and what he thought were Arbus's photos. This trove of genuine American kookiness came to dominate his life. Following Langmuir's quest—from the slums of Philadelphia to the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—as he gathered, priced and ultimately came to understand this collection, author Gibson (Gone Boy: A Walkabout), himself an antiquarian book dealer, effortlessly twists these strands together with an emotional wallop. “His toil in Hubert's vineyard,” Gibson writes of Langmuir, “amounted to no more or less than the continuing archaeology of the old, weird America.” Gibson's laser focus on Langmuir's shifting state of mind as he struggles to master his personal demons and navigate the pitfalls of his own obsession gives this story its heart and opens a window onto a lost part of the American soul. 21 b&w photos. (Apr.)

Demetz (The Air Show at Brescia, 1909) takes a creative approach to this account of wartime Prague, as another subtitle indicates: “Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War.” Interspersing political and cultural history with snippets of memoir of his own wartime experiences and those of other Czechs, Demetz, whose mother was Jewish, focuses on politics and culture to explain how the Nazis ruled his home country and how the Czechs tried to hang on to their vivid prewar cultural life. Without avoiding the issue of collaboration with the Nazis, Demetz takes great pride in Czech resistance, both political and cultural, such as honoring the late president Masaryk on Hitler's birthday, on April 20. Demetz also focuses on individuals like Milena Jesenska, Kafka's onetime lover turned political writer, who was sent to Bergen-Belsen for helping Jews and others escape from Czechoslovakia . This history is both vivid and compelling, especially Demetz's personal stories. Some of those passages, particularly how a young Demetz dealt with romance and sex in a country ravaged by war, are achingly beautiful. (Apr.)

As a struggling writer, novelist Peacock (Life Without Water) took all kinds of jobs to support herself, fantasizing about the day she'd be published and could write full-time. But after two critically acclaimed novels, not only could she not afford to quit cleaning houses for a living, she wasn't sure she wanted to. She hadn't yet developed the confidence, “the strong foundation,” to write full-time, and cleaning houses provided her with “the two things writers love more than anything else... solitude and gossip.” But Peacock offers an honest and refreshing look at what life is like for most writers, few of whom can expect to crack the bestseller lists or make it to Oprah's Book Club. She also offers an insider's look at housecleaning that may lead readers to start cleaning their own houses or, at least, be more careful about the messes they leave for their cleaning people. Peacock no longer cleans houses for a living (it began to wear her down physically); now she supplements her income by teaching. If you can't make it to North Carolina for one of her classes, she offers plenty of useful lessons here. (Apr.)

Andrews, who has written several children's books (The Great American Mousical; Mandy), both solo and with her daughter, now dances in a different direction with this delightful remembrance of her own childhood and engrossing prelude to her cinematic career. Spanning events from her 1935 birth to the early 1960s, she covers her rise to fame and ends with Walt Disney casting her in Mary Poppins (1963). Setting the stage with a family tree backdrop, she balances the sad struggles of relatives and hard drinkers with mirthful family tales and youthful vocal lessons amid rationing and the London Blitz: “My mother pulled back the blackout curtains and gasped—for there, snuggly settled in the concrete square of the courtyard, was the incendiary bomb.” A BBC show led to a London musical at age 12: “My song literally stopped the show. People rose to their feet and would not stop clapping.” Her mother's revelation of her true father left her reeling when she was 15, but she continued touring, did weekly BBC broadcasts and was Broadway-bound by 1954 to do The Boyfriend. The heart of her book documents the rehearsals, tryouts and smash 1956 opening of My Fair Lady. Readers will rejoice, since Andrews is an accomplished writer who holds back nothing while adding a patina of poetry to the antics and anecdotes throughout this memoir of bittersweet backstage encounters and theatrical triumphs. (Apr. 1)

TV writer Queller (The Gilmore Girls) was 31, single and healthy when her mother succumbed to ovarian cancer at the age of 58, having battled breast cancer six years earlier. Queller chronicles her mother's long and anguished struggle in vivid detail. After her mother's death, at the suggestion of an acquaintance, Queller opted to discover whether she carries the breast cancer gene; indeed, she tested positive for the BRCA-1 gene mutation, which gave her an 87% chance of breast cancer before age 50 and a 44% chance of ovarian cancer in her lifetime. With this knowledge in hand, Queller began the journey toward her pivotal choice: a prophylactic double mastectomy at age 35. Along the way she traveled between the West Coast and New York City, seeking medical opinions, information and unsuccessfully—but not for lack of trying—a man she can love who will father her children before she follows up with voluntary surgery to remove her ovaries. This Hollywood writer's story is seamless and gripping; readers will be rooting for Queller and her heroic decision to confront her genetic destiny. (Apr.)

Journalist and author Benjaminson (The Story of Motown) attempts valiantly, painstakingly to resurrect the reputation of founding Supreme member Florence Ballard, who left the group early on and descended into litigiousness and alcoholism. Then a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, Benjaminson interviewed Ballard a year before her death in 1976 and elicited a sad story of a starry-eyed, single-minded high school dropout whose dream, and fortune, was co-opted by Berry Gordy's Motown empire. Growing up together in Detroit's black working-class Brewster Projects, gospel-singing Ballard and Mary Wilson first formed the Primettes, joined by Diane (as she was then known) Ross and Betty McGlown, who eventually dropped out. In 1961, the teenagers auditioned for Berry Gordy, who kept them doing backup as they matured, touring with the Motortown Review across country by bus until the newly configured Supremes (Ballard chose the name) had their first hit in 1964 with “Where Did Our Love Go?” The boom-boom beat coupled with the nasaly sound of Ross's voice prompted Gordy to promote Ross rather than Ballard as lead. Over the Supremes' several heady years in the spotlight, Benjaminson explains in this engaging biography, gobs of money vanished through flimsy contracts and the fingers of unscrupulous managers, costly clothes and glamorous acquaintances, and Ballard's resentment of Ross's ambition and Gordy's manipulation got her fired. (Apr.)

Passionate and troubling, this study by Columbia University historian Connelly (A Diplomatic Revolution) tells the story of the 20th-century international movement to control population, which he sees as an oppressive movement that failed to deliver the promised economic and environmental results. According to Connelly, some proponents of the movement thought it was the key to women's health and well-being; others saw it as a way to eliminate the poor population; still others believed it would protect the environment. But Connelly also shows how larger economic and social contexts shaped the movement. For example, during the 1930s international Depression, ordinary people increasingly felt that couples planning families should focus on financial considerations; at the same time, as the state offered increased economic aid, it became acceptable to believe the state should also have a role in regulating reproduction. Far from disinterested, Connelly challenges many of the population control movement's claims: to those who argue that the slowed population growth in Asia has helped save the planet, Connelly notes tartly that “if Asians have 2.1 children, but also air conditioning and automobiles, they will have a much greater impact on the global ecosystem than a billion more subsistence farmers.” Ambitious, exhaustively researched and clearly written, this is a highly important book. 22 b&w illus. (Mar.)

Rasmussen, who has taught life sciences and medicine at UCLA and other universities, examines amphetamine as a case study on the place drugs occupy in our culture and our fantasies (of miracle cures and elixirs). The story begins with chemist Gordon Alles's creation of amphetamine in 1929 and continues through its use for weight loss, attention deficit disorders and today's crystal meth craze. Smith, Kline & French (now GlaxoSmithKline) bought the rights for use of the drug and marketed it to treat depression. During WWII, British and American soldiers developed an amphetamine appetite as RAF medics distributed “wakey-wakey” tablets to bomber crews. At the book's core is an outstanding chapter, “Bootleggers, Beatniks and Benzedrine Benders,” describing how Benzedrine inhalers, available without a prescription, could be cracked open for a “totally new kind of amphetamine experience,” exerting a potent influence on music and literature, from Charlie Parker to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Rasmussen has mined magazines, books and newspapers in addition to extensive explorations through U.K. and American archives. He concludes by calling for “strong and immediate action” to curb the widespread, dangerous use and abuse of amphetamines, emphasizing treatment and harm reduction (like needle exchange) rather than punishment, and better regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. 37 illus. (Mar. 1)

No one can describe a journey better than someone who's made the trip, and insomniac Greene's exploration of the disorder is both fascinating and disturbing. Many people, including doctors and insomniacs themselves, believe that sleeplessness is the patient's fault: too much caffeine and stress, irregular bedtimes, lack of exercise. In fact, no one knows what causes it, but the effects of insomnia are clear: as Greene, a professor of literature and women's studies at Scripps College, shows, sleep deprivation kills creativity, reduces levels of the hormones needed to repair cells and is directly linked to weight gain and memory loss, high blood pressure and diabetes. Insomniacs are usually referred to mental health practitioners or the growing number of sleep labs offering behavior modification or drugs (which, for Greene, have always “buil[t] tolerance, and rapidly,” necessitating ever-larger doses). “This is a somewhat cranky book,” Greene admits, and rightly so. “You can't live with this problem as long as I have, you can't be blown off and written off as many times as I have, and not get cross.” Supplementing her own experience with that of other chronic insomniacs and a look at the science of sleep, Greene offers an enjoyable and informative account that will provoke even readers who get their full eight hours a night. (Mar.)

For three summers, field biologist Norment (In the North of Our Lives) lived in a stand of spruce called Warden's Grove in the Canadian Northwest Territories, studying the breeding habits of a songbird known as Harris's sparrow. In this affecting book, he meditates on the desire for wilderness and solitude that drew him to such a remote place, and he tells what it's like to be alone for hours in a silent, forbidding environment observing an animal in its natural habitat. For him, scientific research can “contribute as much to an emotional, subjective relationship with the natural world as do art, literature, music, and poetry”; even taxonomy, often considered nothing more than the prosaic science of naming and classifying living things, has poetry. The official Latin name for Harris's sparrow, for example, means “the banded thrush with the whistle-like song,” which beautifully evokes the essence of this little bird. As he reports on what he learned from his patient observation and reflects on the months he spent attempting to understand the birds' minds as well as his own, Norment eloquently affirms the beauty of biological fieldwork as a vital way “to pay attention to the world” and be connected with something outside the self. (Mar.)

A professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lavin gathers seven personal essays by writers, artists and activists that probe divorce, remarriage, friendship, parenthood, illness and death as they celebrate the richness of midlife experience. William Davies King opens up about his painful divorce and his effort to understand how his bizarre habit of collecting tuna-fish can labels and cereal boxes speaks to both his self-hatred and creativity. Kim Larsen relates how middle age was the end of the road for an opinionated and prickly friend who lost first her tongue and then her life to cancer at 46. Giving hope to even the most jaded, Lavin and Locke Bowman tell how they revived a college romance into an e-mail love affair and then a marriage 22 years after first breaking up. Peggy Shinner goes to her accountant because he reminds her of her late, rough-edged, self-made Jewish father; and self-mutilating, sexually precocious teenager Alice puts mom Ellen McMahon through the wringer. Although most of the essays suffer from long-windedness and affectation, the sentiments expressed are genuine, moving and brave—and will be eminently recognizable to baby boomers. (Mar. 13)

Venezuelan TV producer Rondón documented salsa music from the 1950s to the 1970s in this survey, first published in Spanish in 1980, but not available in English until now. With an added update to the present, the comprehensive chronicle traces salsa's evolution, beginning with the 1940s merger of jazz and Cuban rhythms by Machito and his Afro-Cubans. The popularity of that group, along with the bands of Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez, led to the revitalization of New York's declining Palladium ballroom in 1947. Crossing continents, from New York City and Puerto Rico to Venezuela, Rondón examines salsa's working-class origins, conceived, nurtured and developed in the urban barrio as a type of music “produced not for the luxurious ballroom but for hard life on the street,” and he relates the difficulties of marginalized barrio life to the music's international appeal. Along with insightful analyses of styles, music, movements. performances, production and marketing, the book offers detailed coverage of such highly influential talents as Willie Colón, Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto. The concluding “Basic Discography” serves as a great collecting guide. (Mar. 10)

In this blasé memoir, Seattle author Mathews (Ambassador to the Penguins) recounts her journey from kitchen amateur to winner of the million-dollar 1998 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Mathews, a married graphic designer, had been halfheartedly entering and winning recipe contests since 1980, such as one for REI recreational equipment, in which she had to combine packets of freeze-dried food into a semblance of a meal, or the state Beef Cook-Off, where she placed second for Siberian Beef. However, the Pillsbury Bake-Off is the mother of all recipe competitions, and Mathews cannily reworked a tried-and-true halibut recipe using the company's Old El Paso salsa and some chicken thighs and came up with the reliable Salsa Couscous Chicken. Summoned to Orlando, Fla., where the finalists are royally and publicly pampered, Mathews dutifully re-created her “30-Minute Main Dish” and was stunned to be singled out by host Alex Trebek as the winner of $1 million. Her memoir has a curiously unimpassioned quality, padded with details about visiting Disney World with the other contestants, choosing presentable outfits and becoming a grandmother. (Mar.)

Turner has starred in films as diverse as Body Heat and Romancing the Stone; she's had rave reviews for her stage performances in The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Now Turner, with the aid of Gloria Feldt, bares her heart to readers in an upbeat account of her life and work. Turner discovered the theater when she was a teenager living with her Foreign Service family in London; from then on, she took every opportunity to study acting and to perform. Eventually, she landed the steamy lead in Body Heat. Playing such a sexually voracious female role might have typecast her, so she followed it with a comedy, The Man with Two Brains. As she discusses the other acting roles she's chosen, she's emphatic that “the selection of material and characters I play reflects my values.” She's also been deliberate in her offstage life—her decision to marry, to have a child and to divorce. With great candor, she details some of her worst struggles, battling both rheumatoid arthritis and alcohol. In the end, she's realized it comes down to “taking the lead role” in her own life. While she may indulge in swear words a bit much for some readers, Turner's vision of life's many possibilities—even as she gets older—is surely inspiring. (Mar.)

Readers may find it hard to sympathize with Winder, who manages to graduate from West Point, gain an honorable discharge from the military and get accepted into one of the top law schools in the nation—all while maintaining a daily regimen of alcohol, GHB, LSD, cocaine and prescription drug cocktails. But that is the point of his memoir: to dispel the myth that addicts are necessarily “losers and failures.” Emphasizing the episodic in straightforward narrative, Winder vividly captures defining moments in his life as an addict, describing how his abuse of alcohol to escape the pressures of school escalated to a full dependence on drugs to compensate for his feelings of social and physical self-consciousness. At one point, he was using cocaine and Hydroxycut to battle the chronic fatigue of his alcohol binges; Xanax for the shaking and anxiety of the cocaine and Hydroxycut; Prozac for depression; steroids for energy and motivation to stay in shape; and Valium for sleep. While the picture Winder paints of himself is not pretty, it succeeds in capturing the self-centeredness and paranoia of an addict's life. (Mar.)

When Winter, a 22-year-old college graduate from Texas, suddenly found himself in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2000 with no job and about $2,000 of savings, he never thought the importance of the tango, a century-old dance, would reshape his life as a man and as a writer of this insightful, comic memoir. He falls under the influence of the regulars of Niño Bien, a ramshackle milonga, a club where the tango is danced amid laughter, flirting and the raucous music of the bandoneón and the guitar. In his colorful, energetic descriptions of characters like Luis, the club owner, and El Tigre, a sailor turned tango instructor, Winter connects the dots between the social and political history of Argentina and tango music, chronicling the faithful bond between the pair. One element of the travelogue that captures interest is the strict code governing tango society, as El Tigre advises the author: “The first thing you have to know [is] that in the tango, the man controls everything.” Along with a hit-and-miss flirtation, Warner learns about the passion, lust and romantic nature of the tango that seduced a country. Winter, now an editor at USA Today, provides readers with an outrageously funny tale of dance steps and travel. (Mar.)

A former admissions officer at Dartmouth, Jager-Hyman decided to select five “promising” high school seniors and follow their progress through the college application process. She'd been concerned with what she calls “fat envelope frenzy” (“fat envelope” refers to the fact that acceptance brings many pages of info and forms to fill out, while rejection is just a single-page letter) and an obsession with accomplishment “predicated on the myth that college admission is contingent solely on merit.” On the contrary, Jager-Hyman says, colleges have many conflicting admissions objectives, making their policies “confusing.” Jager-Hyman then introduces the five high school students she's chosen to follow. Four of the five are incredible overachievers: in addition to nearly perfect grades and test scores, one's an Olympics-bound gymnast, one's a world-class pianist, one's a talented engineering student, and another's an Ethiopian-American math whiz. The fifth, a plucky Dominican-American, has lower scores and grades; her struggle for admission to the Ivies is more complicated, but potentially more instructive. Jager-Hyman follows all five through the emotional high points of the process—deciding where to apply, writing essays, going for interviews, awaiting the fat envelopes and then deciding which to accept. There are few surprises; all these talented students end up going to great schools. In the end, Jager-Hyman's book is padded with too many asides, and she offers little “insider” admissions advice. (Mar.)

One August afternoon on his farm, North Dakota poet laureate and horse farmer Woiwode makes a novice farmer's mistake and almost loses his life in a farm accident. Using this near-death experience as his Proustian madeleine, Woiwode (Beyond the Bedroom Wall) brilliantly weaves strands of his writing life, his teaching life and his family struggles into a colorful chronicle of his journey from childhood to adulthood. In rich detail, he recalls his early days as a struggling writer in New York and his move to North Dakota in order to discover the mystery of nature and the mystic nature of place and its role in writing. As a young writer, when he read a novel a day, Woiwode remembers waking to the air of a Turgenev hunt, shaving with a razor like a character from Cather and brewing thick black coffee in honor of Colette. Woiwode regales readers with tales of parties with Roger Straus, Robert De Niro, Susan Sontag and John Cheever. At the center of these sparkling recollections of a writer's life, however, lies the relationship of the father to the son, and Woiwode addresses his memoir to his son, Joseph, as a way of coming to terms with his failures to recognize how deeply his own father's identity has become his own. (Mar.)

Currently NBC news bureau chief in Tel Aviv, Fletcher offers a vivid account of his 30-year career as a war correspondent in the hot spots of the globe. At age 25, Fletcher grew bored with his BBC desk job and grabbed a position as a cameraman with a video news agency. Five days after he arrived in Israel for his second assignment, Egypt and Syria invaded. With no experience under fire, Fletcher found himself dodging bullets on the front lines—and loved it. Over the following decades, wherever there was a conflict—Rhodesia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, South Africa, the killing fields of Rwanda, the first and second intifadas—Fletcher covered the scene. While documenting his adventures, Fletcher also gives a riveting portrayal of the suffering around him and of the macho adrenaline junkies who make up his profession. Fletcher has a clear understanding of the ambiguities of his position as a purveyor of misery and death—for one story, he finds a Somali refugee near death and films her until she stops breathing. Fletcher's engagement with his own family's suffering in the Holocaust adds complexity to a narrative that is both fast-paced and moving. (Mar.)

In less than a decade, friends Tom Breitling (the conservative one) and Tim Poster (the risk taker) founded a successful Internet travel business and sold it for millions. Then in 2003, the pair bought the legendary and past-its-prime Golden Nugget casino for $215 million. “Las Vegas has always been a magnet for anyone who wanted to take his life to a new place,” Breitling explains. “It embraced anyone who wanted to take a risk and wanted to make it better.” His account of those heady, hardworking times features a doomed reality show; an arrogant, very lucky gambler dubbed Mr. Royalty; and appearances by the likes of Steve Wynn and Andre Agassi. It's astounding, with such volatile circumstances and a Vegas backdrop, that Breitling's book is so bland. His average-guy approach loses its flavor quickly as his narrative trades insight for clunky, oft-repeated metaphors in which the author compares himself to a point guard in basketball. What should be a story of two young guys trying to steer a risky business in America's playground reads too often like a business seminar transcript with hint of a scandal. (Mar.)

This volume, which accompanies an exhibition in Chemnitz, Germany, contains new versions of Bob Dylan's pencil and charcoal sketches originally published in a book called Drawn Blank; here they are reproduced along with color versions, digitally transferred to fine art paper and reworked in watercolor and gouache. In Drawn Blank, Dylan described his drawings as an effort to “refocus a restless mind,” a statement that captures the atmosphere of the drawings,. They seem to be the work of a man who sees many new cities, hotel rooms and other people's houses. Color, however, brings very little to them, despite the inflated claims for their high artistic value made by the four contributing essayists. Jens Rosteck, a Dylan biographer, places him among a group of “multi-talents” who range from Goethe to Jean Cocteau, but the comparisons run up against the indifferent quality of most of the 170 color reproductions. While Dylan's interior studies can be intriguing and psychologically fraught, his portraits and nudes seldom come off as more than earnest imitations of the Expressionist works he admires. Such judgments, however, may be beside the point for the “Dylanologists,” as Rosteck describes them, to whom the book will appeal. (Feb.)

When Larkin was a college student, she took a job as a gardener—something she says she knew absolutely nothing about. Now more plant savvy, the former management consultant–turned–Buddhist priest and author (The Chocolate Cake Sutra) uses gardening and Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva to mine themes for her text. Her points are simple: see clearly, become more intentional, tame your mind, give generously and live with “a wide-open heart.” While advocating passion and enthusiasm, Larkin has learned the hard way that the best gardeners are patient. When we slow down, she writes, then “chaos becomes beauty, lethargy energy, insolvable problems solvable.” Her spare but pithy prose, common sense and laugh-out-loud humor emphasize her points. Other lessons also resonate: Learn to lose. Let go of mistakes. Forgive. Be kind. And don't worry, for anxiety will block your joy. Larkin is at her best when she shares personal experiences and insights, rather than stories about others, and the few recipes seem random. Although Larkin's book is clearly aimed at Buddhists, at its heart is a lesson about staying awake and paying attention to life, which is good advice for readers of any religious stripe. Readers will find Larkin's central promise—“We can be happy. Right here. Right now”—difficult to resist. (May)

This is a brilliant pairing of writer and subject. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, for more than 30 years, thanks to a long-ago connection between the writer's father, an Oxford don born in India, and a young Dalai Lama. And so the acute global observer Iyer, a travel writer, essayist and novelist, has long followed the fortunes of the astute globalist Tibetan Buddhist, who travels the world but can never go home to his Chinese-occupied country. This is not a biography but an extended journalistic analysis of someone deep enough for several lifetimes, as Tibetan Buddhists believe. Iyer organizes his observations by smart descriptions of aspects of the Dalai Lama's work and character: icon, monk, philosopher, politician. This allows him to plumb different sides of His Holiness, whom he demythologizes even as he expresses a clear-eyed respect for the leader's achievements. Iyer reminds readers of paradoxes: the Dalai Lama is highly empirical, yet holds beliefs such as reincarnation that defy observation. He is a public figure who is diligent about elaborate and private religious practices. Like its subject, the aim of this book is ultimately simple: behold the man. (Apr. 3)

Although the 16-year reign of the patriarch of the Orthodox Christian communion has largely gone unnoticed in America, this new book should serve to raise his profile considerably. Like some of his Western counterparts, the popes of Rome, Bartholomew has used his position to speak out against the ravages of the global economy and has been an eloquent advocate for environmentalism. In his new book, he mines the mystical theology of Orthodoxy, which relies heavily on saints like Gregory of Nyssa and the New Testament, to paint a picture of a world transformed and renewed by Christianity. The chief principles that underlie this world are prayerfulness, asceticism and humility. Bartholomew understands the cultivation of virtue as having both personal and global dimensions, as when he writes, “[L]et us treat everything with proper love and utmost care. Only in this way shall we secure a physical environment where life for the coming generations of humankind will be healthy and happy.” As a citizen of Turkey, Bartholomew has also been committed to Christian-Jewish-Muslim dialogue and is believable when he says, “[I]t is not religious differences that create conflict between human beings.” More than anything else, this book shows that all who are committed to social justice have a friend in the Orthodox patriarch. (Mar. 18)

Hamilton has led a remarkable life as a neurosurgeon. There are moments in this spiritual memoir when readers will wish he were their personal guide for the scariest of surgeries. In many ways, this is a story about “real” doctors as Hamilton understands them—people with exemplary bedside manners who not only make life-and-death decisions for the most vulnerable of the sick, but who have the vision (sometimes literally) to sit and listen as long as it takes, to take patients' hands, dealing with their questions and fears with the utmost gentleness and an eye toward the transcendent and supernatural. Readers will be moved by stories of former patients like “Thomas,” a child burn victim with such a gift of spirit that he could manage joy despite his tragic condition, and “Donald,” a brave man determined to live life to the fullest despite a vicious brain tumor. Hamilton's voice soars when he reflects directly on his experience as a brain surgeon, the bulk of which occurs (unfortunately) in the book's second half. In light of these high points, Hamilton's occasionally stumbling and awkward prose when straying from his patients' sides can seem jarring. (Mar. 13)

Langford taps into a renewed interest in such practices as solitude, meditation and spiritual direction in this handbook, which employs a gardening theme. Grouping the practices into three metaphorical parts—seeds, roots and branches—the author and director of communications for the Chicago Province of the Jesuits elaborates on tools that, he writes, “help prepare the soil of our lives to receive and nurture God's seeds of faith.” Langford calls this “soul gardening,” a term employed by a friend who is a minister and gardener. In assembling this guide, Langford quotes extensively from other writers such as Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline), but he also writes as one who is familiar with the practices he explains. For example, he tells about how he has used a spiritual director, and in the chapter on walking with the saints, he shares a moving story about praying in the cave in Spain where St. Ignatius went to discern his life's direction. Besides writing about various practices, Langford includes a list of reflective questions and things to do at the end of each chapter that may be especially helpful for groups reading the book together. (Mar.)

A former teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, Ortberg presents a candid compilation of personal essays on finding God in the most unlikely times and places. Ortberg, wife to bestselling author and pastor John Ortberg, opens her highly amusing and refreshingly transparent text reminiscing about bygone years as a young mom who couldn't make time for a “quiet time.” Recalling those nonstop, hectic early parenting seasons, Ortberg admits to feeling guilty pressure from the church at large until she experienced God's presence while sitting on a park bench, watching her kids play. She realized that particular God encounter “counted” as much as any quiet time did. From that moment on, Ortberg discovered a multifaceted God who delights in creating and displaying diversity from one end of creation to the other. Ortberg challenges Christians to examine their tendency to compare themselves with others, teaching them to have the courage to reach out to others selflessly and to view work as a blessed conduit to excellence. Every single offering Ortberg presents feels both beautiful and true. Christians will find themselves inhaling these fragrant written reminders of God's intimate care only to then exhale Christ's love to others in holy response. (Mar.)

Jones (The Sacred Way) provides the single best introduction to the Emergent Church movement, of which he is a prominent leader. The mainline denominations are dying, and the hyperindividualism of evangelicalism is unsatisfying, so many young evangelicals, Jones explains, have decided to recreate church for postmodern times. Jones credits Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian with raising important questions about sounding the Gospel in an era beset by questions about foundationalism, epistemology and how to read Scripture. He passionately defends the emergent movement from criticism. In particular, critics are wrong to claim that emergents don't really believe in the Bible; emergents passionately love the Bible, says Jones, but also know that finite human beings cannot definitively articulate truth. The strongest sections put flesh on these theoretical bones by taking readers into actual emergent churches, like Jacob's Well in Kansas City, Mo., where the pastor draws on Catholic practice, engages the visual arts and sees the church's job as assisting people on their “pilgrimage” of faith. Jones's writing is brisk and conversational, but the book gets poor marks for design. Call-out boxes, pull quotes and frequent font changes, which might be thought to appeal to a younger audience, in fact make for distracting and disjointed reading. (Mar.)

In a dazzling display of erudition, this book presents a cogent argument for secular liberalism. Dacey, a philosopher who teaches at Polytechnic University and the State University of New York at Buffalo, claims that values and ethics—defining what is right and wrong, good and bad—are not the sole domain of theologians. To contribute to our understanding of enlightened secularism, he cites like-minded thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Dewey, Adam Smith, John Rawls, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Plato, John Locke and Baruch Spinoza, among others. Dacey's presentation is especially timely in view of the emphasis by some current presidential candidates on their religious identity. Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy, as a Roman Catholic, argued for church-state separation, has the issue of secularism versus religion been so prominent in a national election. Dacey's analysis helps to put this question into the larger perspective of liberty and conscience. Dacey advocates for democracy over authoritarianism, not hesitating to challenge theocratic Islam, for example, as a “new totalitarianism.” He calls on secular liberals to stand up for “reason and science, the separation of religion and state, freedom of belief, personal autonomy, equality, toleration, and self-criticism.” This is a thoughtful, well-reasoned argument for progressive secularism. (Mar.)

In this collection of idiosyncratic and variegated perspectives on contemporary Christian faith, Wood blends narrative and homily to illuminate the intersection of Christian faith and contemporary life. The author of a previous book of meditations (One Hundred Tons of Ice and Other Gospel Stories) and an ordained minister, Wood has a keen sense of the evocative anecdote and a spare way of telling a story that allows his readers to draw their own conclusions. As in his previous collection, many of the subjects of his narrative reflections, from the 18th-century composer Georg Friedrich Handel to 20th-century con artist Walter Scott, are quite odd—not unlike characters out of a Flannery O'Connor story. Not afraid to apply the same gentle but probing lens to his own life and calling, Wood has an unusual talent for being incisive without being offensive. Pairing his well-told tales with meditations on a parable, a psalm or an episode from Jesus's life, Wood nimbly tackles subjects like the mystery of grace, vocation or suffering. As is probably inevitable in a collection of 32 tales, some are more insightful and compelling than others. But more often than not, Wood accomplishes what every Christian raconteur hopes to achieve: finding fresh and provocative ways to tell an ancient story. (Mar.)

Kemsley, an accounting professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, posits that “the journey to know Christ is the journey to know the deepest, best element of ourselves.” In this brief book, Kemsley draws on personal experiences and anecdotes to demonstrate how he came to know Christ. His experiences are not miraculous or earth-shattering, but ordinary and real: seeing Christ reflected in a newborn, for example, or an act of service. As a father of nine children, many of these acts of service are unseen and unthanked late-night feedings or diaper changes; though they did not seem significant at the time, Kemsley now realizes that such simple deeds mean everything. Although Kemsley is a Mormon and the book is from an LDS publisher, it has a deeply ecumenical tone. The focus throughout is on knowing and loving Christ, not emphasizing denominational differences. Although it lacks the poetic nature of some other memoirish devotional books of this type, such as The Quantity of a Hazelnut, there is a simple honesty to this volume that makes it refreshing and quietly lovely. (Mar.)

Organized as a series of conversations, this book explores the “lively edge” of Christianity in the U.S. and the U.K. Sine, who wrote The Mustard Seed Conspiracy in the early 1980s, has always championed Christian subversives and exiles who act in small but significant ways to care for the poor and marginalized. This book begins by delineating four streams of Christian expression that greatly challenge the norms and assumptions of traditional churches. These streams—emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic—frequently flow into one another, and Sine does a fine job of defining them as separate but interdependent entities. Sine looks to these streams for tentative answers to several difficult questions, such as “Did we get what it means to be a disciple wrong?” and “Did we get what it means to be the church wrong?” As he explores these questions, Sine considers the context, particularly what he calls “the global mall,” in which the church must define and distinguish itself. Sine is unflinching in his assessment of Christian consumerism, but his tone is never angry. Rather, he exudes childlike enthusiasm as he shares example after example of Christians all over the world who are expressing their faith through profoundly countercultural acts of mercy, justice, love and compassion. (Mar.)