Nonfiction Reviews

In 1948, three civilian engineers died in the crash of an air force B-29 bomber that was testing a missile guidance system; in their widows’ lawsuit, the Supreme Court upheld the air force’s refusal to divulge accident reports that it claimed held military secrets. But when the declassified reports surfaced decades later, the only sensitive information in them involved the chronic tendency of B-29 engines to catch fire, egregious lapses in maintenance and safety procedures, and gross pilot error. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Siegel (Shades of Gray) ably recounts the case, a scandal and cover-up with grave constitutional implications. The 1953 Supreme Court decision gave the executive branch sweeping authority to conceal information under national security claims without judicial review, a precedent confirmed when the Court refused to reopen the case in 2003. (The author notes the influence of Cold War anxieties and the 9/11 attacks in these rulings.) Siegel insists on decorating the story with often extraneous human-interest profiles of everyone involved. But his is an engrossing exposition of the facts and legal issues in the case, which produced a disturbing legacy of government secrecy and misconduct still very much alive. (June)

In these rich essays, Hurd (Stirring the Mud) wanders the shoreline in search of meaning. Meandering along beaches from Massachusetts to Morocco, she sifts through shells, flotsam and driftwood, finding mythology and metaphor almost in spite of herself. “Am I looking for clues?” she asks, “I’d like to think not.... Yet it’s hard to resist: we’re doomed, it seems to try to make meaning.” Examining a moon snail, a gastropod that surrounds a clam with its oversized foot and invades it with its tongue, she finds its proportions “unseemly” and concludes that “a certain beauty recedes when hunger and threats intensify.” Walking a beach of glass pebbles beaten smooth by the waves, she admires the sea’s ability to transform human carelessness and reflects, “If there is such a thing as transformation, perhaps the smaller manifestation is the more reliable.” While Hurd’s careful depictions of found objects are delightful, her attempts to relate them to human affairs are occasionally hackneyed. Still, this lyrical book with its scrupulous attention to language and the world will please poets and naturalists alike. (June)

This comprehensive study of conservative politics from the post-WWI era to the present is replete with clear analysis and good nuggets of information. Lichtman (The Keys of the White House) profiles the behind-the-scenes operators who have crafted the marching orders for right-wing Americans in the last half-century—financiers like J. Howard Pew, Frank Gannett and the Du Ponts, direct-mail kingpin Richard Viguerie and drawing-room conservatives like William F. Buckley and Bill Kristol. Lichtman observes how a clique of probusiness, mainly Protestant, Americans chaffed at the birth of the welfare state under Democratic administrations and built a network of organizations to resist social engineering and encroaching federal power. The book argues that in postwar America, rising fears over immigration, desegregation and sexual egalitarianism gave bloom to an ethic of Anglo-Saxon supremacy—but Lichtman ignores the deep roots such ideas have in American culture. Lichtman also neglects the transformation in the post–civil rights era, when the conservative movement tried to shed its extreme racial and cultural doctrines and began attracting minority voters and politicos. As a structural blueprint of conservative political power, however, this book is without peer, giving readers a wonderful historical survey of the last 80 years of conservative politics. (June)

This is not your usual get-rich-quick manual. Though Dennis, a poet (When Jack Sued Jill: Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times) and the founder of a publishing empire (including Maxim magazine), wants to help the reader rank at least among the “lesser rich” (equal to a net worth of $30 million–$80 million by his definition), he isn’t himself motivated by money. With his own fortune estimated at between $400 million and $900 million, he doesn’t have to be. Instead, Dennis wants to demystify the money-getting process, and his straight-talking, honest advice makes a refreshing change in this oversaturated field. Using humorous examples from his own business life, Dennis’s advice, from “The Five Most Common Start-Up Errors” to “The Power of Focus,” might sound like conventional fare, but delivered in his signature bawdy, British style, it’s altogether more entertaining—and more practical. Dennis highlights the right strategies and mindset to get readers their millions, but he won’t air-brush his story or soften the bitter truth along the way. As he says, when it comes to acquiring wealth, “being a bit of a shit helps.” (June)

On September 30, 1919, a group of white planters tried to shut down a black sharecroppers’ meeting in Arkansas; a sheriff was killed in the melee, and the next day hordes of whites traveled to the county. Thus began the Elaine Massacre, the “indiscriminate hunting down, shooting and killing of Negroes,” as one white witness described it. Whitaker (The Mapmaker’s Wife) reconstructs the “killing fields” where by October 3, five white men and over 100 black men, women and children were killed. Hundreds of black sharecroppers were arrested; after torture-obtained confessions, 74 men were convicted and 12 received the death penalty. Whitaker examines the trial, the ensuing appeals and the heroic—ultimately successful—efforts of the lawyer and former slave, Scipio Africanus Jones and the 12 defendants who were finally set free in 1925. His research is thorough, particularly in his use of Arkansas resources; the arrangement of his documentation, however, makes tracking his sources a put-the-jigsaw-together exercise for the reader. Whitaker’s balanced report of what are, at times, diametrically opposed versions of events illuminates a dismal corner of American history. (June)

United in their obsession with a grisly Italian serial murder case almost three decades old, thriller writer Preston (coauthor, Brimstone) and Italian crime reporter Spezi seek to uncover the identity of the killer in this chilling true crime saga. From 1974 to 1985, seven pairs of lovers parked in their cars in secluded areas outside of Florence were gruesomely murdered. When Preston and his family moved into a farmhouse near the murder sites, he and Spezi began to snoop around, although witnesses had died and evidence was missing. With all of the chief suspects acquitted or released from prison on appeal, Preston and Spezi’s sleuthing continued until ruthless prosecutors turned on the nosy pair, jailing Spezi and grilling Preston for obstructing justice. Only when Dateline NBC became involved in the maze of mutilated bodies and police miscues was the authors’ hard work rewarded. This suspenseful procedural reveals much about the dogged writing team as well as the motives of the killers. Better than some overheated noir mysteries, this bit of real-life Florence bloodletting makes you sweat and think, and presses relentlessly on the nerves. (June 11)

“Eminent Imperialists” might be a better title for this sprightly episodic history of Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East, from the 1882 British invasion of Egypt to the current Iraq War, told through profiles of the officials who spearheaded those policies. Journalists Meyer and Brysac (Tournament of Shadows) spotlight well-known, flamboyant figures like T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) and British Arabist Gertrude Bell. But they focus on unsung toilers in the trenches of imperial rule like A.T. Wilson, the British colonial administrator whose idea it was to cobble Iraq together out of three fractious Ottoman provinces, and Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who choreographed the 1953 ouster of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq. Policy continuities—securing the approaches to India and access to oil—sometimes get overshadowed by the authors’ biographical approach, but in a sense that’s the point. Their imperialism is marked by idiosyncrasy, improvisation, unforeseen circumstances and unintended—usually tragic—consequences. Policy was very much driven by the personalities who constructed it: their Orientalist enthusiasms, knee-jerk assumptions of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, arcane Straussian precepts and stubborn maverick streaks loom as large as cold geostrategic calculations. The result is a colorful study of empire as a very human endeavor. 30 illus., 2 maps. (June)

First-time author Pols fashions an earnest, endearing memoir about how she hit her late 30s without a mate, but still managed to beat her biological clock. Finding herself pregnant at 39 after picking up a cute 29-year-old named Matt at a Bay Area bar, the author, the youngest of a large Catholic family from Maine, resolved to make a go at single motherhood. A successful film critic, if not exactly rich, she nonetheless figured out (with the help of her devoted circle of friends and family) a plan to live and raise the baby, including residing for a spell in a friend’s trailer while pregnant. She barely knows her “baby daddy,” whom she portrays as sweet, if mostly directionless and unemployed. Her book good-naturedly traces some of the early hurdles of her experience, such as “telling the Grinch” (her father), finding out the sex of the baby and trying to sneak into a film screening with her infant. Candid and unaffected, Pols provides an important lesson about not being willing to compromise herself, and that being brave can bring the richest rewards. (June)

Joseph Needham (1900–1995) is the man who “made China China,” forming the West’s understanding of a sophisticated culture with his masterpiece, Science and Civilization in China, says bestselling author Winchester. In a life devoted to recording the Middle Kingdom’s intellectual wealth, Needham, an eccentric, brilliant Cambridge don, made a remarkable journey from son of a London doctor through scientist-adventurer to red scare target. In Winchester’s (The Professor and the Madman) estimable hands, Needham’s story comes to life straightaway. From the biochemist’s arrival in WWII Chongqing (“the smells, of incense smoke, car exhaust, hot cooking oil, a particularly acrid kind of pepper, human waste, oleander, and jasmine”) to his steely discipline when crafting his research into prose (to an old friend: “I am frightfully busy. You come without an appointment, so I am afraid I cannot see you”), Winchester plunges the reader into the action with hardly a break. As the author notes in an outstanding epilogue—a swirling 12-page trip through the kaleidoscope of contemporary China—he is at pains to place Needham front and center in our understanding of the nation that now plays such a huge role in American life. B&w photos, maps. (May)

Historian Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World) paints a forceful portrait of the emergence of the postcolonial era in the fateful contrast—and surprising affinities—between two historic figures on opposite sides of the struggle for Indian independence. Churchill and Gandhi, both elites in their respective milieus, began their careers with remarkably similar perspectives and trod intersecting paths across India, South Africa and England. They shared an obsession with physical courage (albeit channeled in different ways) that tied conceptions of masculinity to larger ideas of racial identity and moral superiority—and India loomed large in their triumphal careers, ultimately frustrating both men’s idealism. While Herman’s dual biography artfully depicts the personalities of the two men, he gives short shrift to the more complex forces of British imperial decline, Indian nationalism and the emergence of the postwar order (for example, Herman helpfully but also too neatly explains the dogged centrality of India and the British raj in Churchill’s worldview as an act of filial loyalty to his beloved father) But the author also takes careful account of the constellation of modern and antimodern currents of late Victorian thought in situating these vastly influential figures in a fascinating narrative of their times. (May)

The Nazis’ use of bureaucracy to achieve their genocidal aims comes through clearly in this historical tour de force. The Nazis attempted to “re-engineer” the Polish city of Lódz, home to more than 230,000 Jews (one-third of the city’s population) before the war, into a model—and Judenfrei—German city embodying health and beauty they called Litzmannstadt. This required forcing the Jews into a ghetto with the help of Jewish leaders, especially the arrogant, dictatorial and reportedly lascivious industrialist Chaim Rumkowski. With a graceful style rare in academic history, Horwitz, an associate professor of history at Illinois Wesleyan University, marshals a host of primary sources to highlight the gradual destruction of the ghetto. Rumkowski and many ghetto residents hoped that by providing labor for the Nazi war effort, the Lódz Jews would be kept alive until the defeat of the Germans. At the same time, Horwitz employs eyewitness accounts to show how the Jewish community coped with starvation and disease, and tried to make sense of its terrible conditions. Horwitz’s understated prose helps put into relief the full horror of these events. 20 color and 12 b&w illus., 2 maps. (May)

Only after Bart’s father died did he learn that his parents, Leizer and Zenia, Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, had also fought in the Resistance. With his mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, Bart cobbles together their story, which he and coauthor Corona, a professor of English and humanities at San Diego City College, relate along with the larger story of the Vilna ghetto. Leizer and Zenia’s romance is unusually poignant against the background of the privations of the ghetto; the old social distinctions between Zenia’s upper-class Lithuanian family and Leizer’s poor Polish origins were brushed aside within the ghetto’s confines. The young couple fled the ghetto in its waning days to fight in a part of the Resistance known as the Avengers. The group is best known for its controversial postwar activities, which the Barts declined to participate in, partly out of concern for Zenia’s health. (The group’s story was told in more detail in Rich Cohen’s Avengers.) This is a powerful tale of the triumph of love under extremely difficult conditions. 106 b&w photos, 2 maps. (May)

Perlstein, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, provides a compelling account of Richard Nixon as a masterful harvester of negative energy, turning the turmoil of the 1960s into a ladder to political notoriety. Perlstein’s key narrative begins at about the time of the Watts riots, in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson’s overwhelming 1964 victory at the polls against Goldwater, which left America’s conservative movement broken. Through shrewdly selected anecdotes, Perlstein demonstrates the many ways Nixon used riots, anti–Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and other displays of unrest as an easy relief against which to frame his pitch for his narrow win of 1968 and landslide victory of 1972. Nixon spoke of solid, old-fashioned American values, law and order and respect for the traditional hierarchy. In this way, says Perlstein, Nixon created a new dividing line in the rhetoric of American political life that remains with us today. At the same time, Perlstein illuminates the many demons that haunted Nixon, especially how he came to view his political adversaries as “enemies” of both himself and the nation and brought about his own downfall. 16 pages of b&w photos. (May)

Campbell and Jamieson argue that the powers and parameters of the presidency are negotiated through rhetoric. “The institutions of our government constitute an experiment in rhetorical adaptation in which the initiatives of any one branch can be modified and refined by the reactions of the others,” write the authors, providing fascinating examples of how each president has expanded or contracted the powers of the executive branch. In this updated version, the authors have made significant structural changes to their 1990 book, adding sections on national eulogies, Clinton and Bush’s oratory, and “de facto item vetoes” (presidential statements that accompany and modify legislation passed by Congress). The authors tie together overarching themes and functions of various “genres” of presidential rhetoric (inaugurations, presidential pardons, state of the union addresses), dwelling on specific speeches (Lincoln’s first inaugural, Bush’s national eulogy after 9/11) with depth and clarity. While the passages on inaugurals and the state of the union are more descriptive than insightful, the chapter on veto messages is original and offers fresh perceptions on a newer political trend. A comprehensively researched and stimulating read in an election year. (May)

We’ve all seen it—the tiny T-shirts with sexually suggestive slogans, the four-year-old gyrating to a Britney Spears song, the young boy shooting prostitutes in his video game—and University of Iowa journalism professor Durham has had enough. In her debut book, she argues that the media—from advertisements to Seventeen magazine—are circulating damaging myths that distort, undermine and restrict girls’ sexual progress. Durham, who describes herself as “pro-girl” and “pro-media,” does more than criticize profit-driven media, recognizing as part of the problem Americans’ contradictory willingness to view sexualized ad images but not to talk about sex. Chapters expose five media myths: that by flaunting her “hotness” a little girl is acting powerfully; that Barbie has the ideal body; that children—especially little girls—are sexy; that violence against women is sexy; and that girls must learn what boys want, but not vice versa. After debunking each myth, Durham offers practical suggestions for overcoming these falsehoods, including sample questions for parents and children. In a well-written and well-researched book, she exposes a troubling phenomenon and calls readers to action. (May)

Psychotherapist Safer appears to be targeting surviving adult children of dysfunctional parents when she claims, “The death of your parents can be the best thing that ever happens to you.” Safer (The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling) describes her own mother as an unhappy woman who viewed her daughter as an extension of herself; she also relates anecdotes from patients and 60 interviewees whose parents were critical or rejecting, or who significantly impeded their children’s happiness and personal growth. In other cases, parents dominated their children’s lives because of prolonged illness. Safer offers some perspective along with helpful exercises for adult children to begin to heal from emotional wounds inflicted by their parents. For instance, just as one sorts through a parent’s physical possessions and keeps some while discarding others, one can do the same with parents’ emotional legacy. Some will be shocked by the central idea of Safer’s book; others seeking to free themselves from ties that have bound too tightly will welcome Safer’s message: there’s no need to feel guilty about a sense of freedom and finding one’s true self after a parent’s death. (May)

This slender inspirational book is a candid self-portrait of a woman in transition. A longtime NBC anchorwoman, Shriver was thrown into a tailspin when asked to resign after her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected governor of California; she writes, “My career was gone, and with it went the person I’d been for twenty-five years.” With a combination of self-deprecation and chutzpah, Shriver describes herself as the consummate overachiever, a “people-pleasing, legacy-carrying, perfection-seeking Good Girl,” now realizing that “asking ourselves not just what we want to be but who we want to be is important at every stage in our lives, not just when we’re starting out in the world. That’s because, in a way, we’re starting out fresh in the world every single day.” Reprinted in full in this book is the speech Shriver made at her nephew’s high school graduation—a humorous meditation on fame, achievement and self-worth—that inspired the writing of this book. Shriver’s earnest self-inquiry and her humility and readiness to regard herself as a 50-year-old work-in-progress make for a charming and genuinely inspiring read. (May)

Bordewich (Bound for Canaan) depicts how some improbable and unwelcoming terrain on the Potomac came to be chosen in 1790 as the site for the nation’s capital. Bordewich likewise narrates the graft, inefficiencies and myriad injustices that went into the design of the new capital and the construction of the first state buildings. As the author emphasizes, slavery affected everything about the genesis of Washington: the politics of selecting a site that was nominally Southern to placate Jeffersonian Democrats; the construction of such buildings as the White House and the Capitol—projects that exploited slave labor. Bordewich also reveals the backroom politics wherein the conservative Northern Federalist Alexander Hamilton made a deal regarding federal fiscal policy and the siting of the so-called “Federal Territory.” Bordewich is especially strong in painting portraits of such memorable characters as city planner Peter Charles L’Enfant as well as the brilliant black mathematician, astronomer and surveyor Benjamin Banneker, who did essential work on the first survey of the city, along with various piratical speculators whose greed nearly sank the grand project more than once. In sum, Bordewich tells a fascinating tale, and tells it well. (May 6)

This broad survey distills the history of American children’s publishing and librarianship, from colonial times to British interloper Harry Potter, including children’s periodicals, major publishers and changes in printing technology. While Marcus, a veteran historian and critic of children’s publishing (Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon), gives founders like editor Mary Mapes Dodge due respect, he is most in his element chronicling the 20th century: the influence of librarian Anne Carroll Moore, the educational reforms of Lucy Sprague Mitchell, the foresightedness of Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom and the careers of author-illustrators like Maurice Sendak. Devotees of prewar classics may be disappointed that Marcus devotes just two pages to Baum and Denslow; that he says W.E.B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking The Brownies’ Book failed to reach its audience; and that he skips whole generations almost entirely (e.g., 1905–1918). Marcus succeeds best at discussing the subjects of his past research, including Children’s Book Week and the Golden Books series; to his credit, he also builds on Nancy Larrick’s work on how white middle-class prejudices determined children’s books’ lack of racial and ethnic diversity. Drawing upon Horn Book Magazine articles and behind-the-scenes accounts of feuds and trends, Marcus’s history is ideal for industry insiders. (May 7)

In 75 exuberant essays written for the New Yorker during the past 10 years, art critic Schjeldahl covers works from antiquity to the present. Many of his longtime favorite artists, including Fra Angelico, Manet, Eakins, Calder and Brice Marden, come in for praise. But one of Schjeldahl’s virtues is that he can change his mind, as he does in enthusiastic reappraisals of Tintoretto, Chardin, Winslow Homer, John Currin and Christo’s The Gates. He scolds connoisseurs who turn up their noses at shows like the Guggenheim’s “1900: Art at the Crossroads,” which consisted of paintings that were too popular for “sober-sided intellectuals.” In “Varieties of Museum Experience,” he offers a trenchant critique of various types of museums and praises Munich’s new Pinakothek der Moderne, which offers “a treat rather than a treatment.” Controversy, like that surrounding the 1999 show “Sensation” at the Brooklyn Museum, delights him, and he is not afraid to be charmed by art that is out of fashion, such as the “Victorian Fairy Painting” exhibit at the Frick in 1998. “We need to recover the pleasure principle in our experience of art and in our public talk about it,” Schjeldahl says. (May 27)

Fuller, author of the bestselling Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, narrates the tragically short life of Colton H. Bryant, a Wyoming roughneck in his mid-20s who in 2006 fell to his death on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy. A Wyoming resident herself since 1994, Fuller is expert in evoking the stark landscape and recreating the speech and mentality of her adopted state’s native sons. Along the way, she sheds light on the tough, unpredictable lives of Wyoming’s oilmen and the toll exacted on their families. Though the book is wonderfully poignant and poetic and reads more like a novel than biography, Fuller acknowledges that she has taken narrative liberties, composed dialogue, disregarded certain aspects of Colton’s life and occasionally juggled chronology “to create a smoother story line,” leading readers to wonder what is true and what invented for dramatic purposes. As such, it is difficult to assess Fuller’s simplistic conclusion that the company’s drive to cut costs killed the young man, though she is right to highlight the strikingly high number of fatalities in the industry. As a touching portrait of a life cut short and a perceptive immersion in the environment that nurtures such men, Fuller’s volume excels, but in terms of absolute veracity it should be read with caution. (May 6)

Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern (Lawyers’ Poker: 52 Lessons That Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players) tackles a series of subtle and thorny ethical questions that lawyers and judges face each day. These questions can challenge their integrity, determine their effectiveness and affect how the public views the legal profession. Lubet chooses a few notorious examples to showcase his points, such as the ethical questions raised by Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s duck-hunting trip with Vice President Cheney (should the justice have recused himself in Sierra Club v. Cheney?) and Bill Clinton’s infamous Monica Lewinsky deposition (did he lie to his lawyer?). Many of Lubet’s examples are about less public conundrums, such as what lawyers should do if they make a mistake and the problem of judicial bullies. Lubet’s central concern, which he mines adeptly, is with actions that are arguably legal but may also be strategically or morally wrong. Lubet’s writing is a great strength: straightforward, funny, intelligent and devoid of legalese. Like a good color analyst, he conveys an insider’s knowledge in an entertaining and informative way. (May)

Although even a cursory glance at a newspaper reveals some new incident of corporate malfeasance—predatory lending, shady deals between private defense contractors and the government, industrial pollution—Columbia Business School professor Heal argues that “there is a cost to anti-social corporate behavior.” Heal points out that the most pernicious lenders have gone bankrupt; a defense contractor executive has been fired; and corporations can generate higher profits and more social good if they can align their interests with society The book presents case studies of corporations “doing well by doing good” (Toyota, British Petroleum, Starbucks) and surprisingly diverse and effective economic incentives for business people and organizations to act responsibly. Useful sections delineate the challenges—and rewards—of ethical outsourcing and clarify the important distinctions between genuine social responsibility and the public relations techniques that masquerade as philanthropy. Readers conversant in economics will find a wealth of fascinating analysis, whether or not they agree with the author’s optimistic middle ground between unfettered capitalism and intrusive regulation. (May)

The human race has come a long way in the 1.5 million years since Homo erectus rose up and walked on two feet. What will humans look like in another million years (if we’re still around)? Where will we live and what will we be doing? In this collection, Broderick, an Australian writer and science fiction editor, and a dozen-plus contributors let their imaginations run wild. At times they sound like a bunch of dudes tossing around what if’s, but they’ve come up with truly funky ideas. The concept of a “Matrioshka brain” crops up more than once—a gigantic system of solar-orbiting structures to trap the sun’s energy. Other authors stay more down to earth. Dougal Dixon speculates on continental drift and changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Steven Harris discusses why deuterium may take the place of oil and gas as our primary energy source in a few millennia. Several chapters read more like science fiction than sound scientific speculation, and a few wander off topic, but it’s all great fun. (May)

Even James Bond is temping these days. According to investigative journalist Shorrock, the CIA and other intelligence agencies now have more contractors working for them than they do spies of their own. Often former staff hired back at double or triple their former government salaries, these private contractors do everything from fighting in Afghanistan to interrogating prisoners, aiming spy satellites and supervising secret agents. Shorrock gives a comprehensive—at times eye-glazing—rundown of the players in the industry, and his book is valuable for its detailed panorama of 21st-century intelligence work. He uncovers serious abuses—contractor CACI International figured prominently in the Abu Ghraib outrages—and nagging concerns about corrupt ties between intelligence officials and private corporations, industry lobbying for a national surveillance state, the withering of the intelligence agencies’ in-house capacities and the displacement of an ethos of public service by a profit motive. However, the bulk of the outsourcing Shorrock unearths is rather pedestrian, involving the management of mundane IT systems and various administrative services, and this exposé insinuates more skullduggery than it demonstrates. (May)

In chronicling Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories—from road blocks to curfews, economic chaos to health care crises—UCLA professor Makdisi sketches a powerful, relentlessly heartbreaking account of a reality few Westerners know. According to Makdisi, the global media rarely covers the “routine” destruction of the occupation; rather than assessing the hermetic sealing of the Gaza Strip or the slicing up of West Bank communities for the sake of Israeli settlements, the media focuses on violence—eclipsing the “deadly effects of the Israeli apparatus of bureaucracy and control.” Makdisi unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, and acknowledges the many Israelis working toward conflict resolution (indeed, much of his data comes from Israeli human rights organizations), but his scholarship occasionally fails when surveying Israeli society: Jews who fled Arab lands don’t generally consider themselves “Arab Jews,” for instance, and Zionism is a 19th-century nationalist movement, not a reaction to the Holocaust. Yet this doesn’t detract from the urgency of Makdisi’s work. The combined weight of personal stories of abject suffering, harsh statistics (in the past seven years, Israeli military operations have killed 854 Palestinian children) and facts on the ground make Makdisi’s case that the occupation is destroying the Palestinian people, and possibly any chance for peaceful coexistence. (May)

Tillman, the mother of the late professional football player and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman, and former journalist Zacchino collaborate for this disturbing story of a mother’s desperate search for the truth of her son’s death. Pat Tillman constantly defied expectations; following 9/11, he shocked his family and football fans everywhere when he quit the NFL and joined the army rangers. On April 21, 2004, while on a combat mission in Afghanistan, Pat was killed in a firefight. Although commanders knew almost immediately that “friendly fire” was the likely cause of his death, the family wasn’t told for weeks. Her suspicions aroused, his mother demanded answers, and the more she learned about the army’s inept handling of her son’s death, the more she was convinced that there was a conspiracy. Bereft, besieged by suspicions that the “administration orchestrated [Pat’s] death,” Tillman recounts her story bravely, but her obsession with fixing blame and her recourse to conspiracy theories compromises her credibility. The result is a troubling, uneven account that raises serious questions, but offers little in the way of insights or answers. (May)

In his introduction, Janjigian notes that “to become a successful investor you must be an educated investor, and the best place to start is by examining Buffett’s strategies.” The author—vice president and executive director of the Forbes Investors Advisory Institute—doggedly follows Buffett’s investment trail, scrutinizing the successes and failures of the world’s pre-eminent investment celebrity. Janjigian’s readable, engaging style carries the reader painlessly through the fundamentals and finer points of investing, assaying Buffett’s buying strategies and research methods, while clarifying investment terms and summarizing key points. Although frankly admiring, Janjigian is never fawning and takes pains to make his material clear and compelling; his book is a rounded evaluation of the investment guru’s strategies and a useful primer for business neophytes. (May)

According to Tungate (Fashion Brands), while women see shopping as a leisure activity, men consider it a dull necessity—making them hard targets for eager advertisers. Citing changing historical ideals of masculinity, from the scruffy cowboy to the metrosexual, Tungate describes how men typically engage with brands, using the course of a typical day as framework—from grooming to clothing, car and sex. Male consumer patterns are rapidly changing; sales of grooming products for men in Europe and the U.S. are estimated to jump significantly in the next few years, from $31.6 billion in 2003 to $40 billion in 2010, and the “Branded Toolkit” wrap-ups at the end of each chapter offer tips for marketing products from alcohol to hotels to these increasingly keen shoppers, paying close attention to the factors that tend to attract men: functionality, authenticity, status and “cool.” Tungate can’t quite decide if he wants to be writing a sociological study or a guide for marketing professionals; he muses at length about the histories of male habits and social behavior, but deviates fleetingly, and almost as an afterthought, into individual branding strategies from companies like Ikea and Dunhill. The book displays useful information, but its absurdly high price and concentration on specifically British consumers might make this a tough sell to the very audience Tungate is trying to reach. (May)

Comedian and actor Nealon (best known for his characters on Saturday Night Live and his role on Weeds) makes his print debut with comedic content so potent readers will surely demand future books. Nealon is a first-time father with his second wife, actress Susan Yeagley, and detailing the male point of view on pregnancy, he writes about the events that led to the birth of their son in 2007. The 53-year-old Nealon considers becoming a father while also anticipating death: “It wasn’t over for me yet, but I felt I was 'circling the drain’.” However, at age 34, Susan was still “pregnantable,” as he puts it. Thus the merry parental dance began. Beneath the jokes, Nealon swims in poignant undercurrents, discussing his relationship with Susan, recalling his childhood and reflecting on life in general. Digressions lead to such jests as: “Why do some people get their stomach stapled? What if you wanted to just lose a little weight? Could you paperclip your stomach?” Fellow humorists Benchley and Thurber would probably nod in admiration at Nealon’s ability to insert a bon mot or clever phrase into almost every paragraph of this very funny navigation from pregnancy to parenthood. (May)

Chris Farley’s older brother Tom is director of the Chris Farley Foundation, an institution dedicated to educating young people about addiction and inspired by the tragic early death of his comedian sibling. Farley has teamed up with Colby (coauthor of Belushi: A Biography and also a National Lampoon Radio Hour head writer) for this rip-roaring memory mosaic, talking to “all the people who either knew Chris the best or were there at the important moments in his life.” The interview quotes have been rearranged into a chronological narrative, which starts with Farley’s childhood pranks in Madison, Wis., and moves on to the Marquette University theatricals that revealed Farley’s flair for improv. Chicago’s Second City catapulted him to Saturday Night Live, where he performed many well-remembered characters. Next came movies, but drugs, alcohol and rehab lurked in the background of his rise to fame. Molly Shannon recalled: “He was just indulging in everything: girls, Chinese food, drugs, booze, cold syrup. Everything.” With talents such as Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien and David Spade analyzing his humor and detailing Farley’s escapades and hijinks, this is a boisterous book the comedian’s fans will want to buy, borrow or steal. (May)

This addition to Gierach’s long list of fishing books is perhaps not of trophy quality, but it’s definitely a keeper. Gierach gets back to the basics of fishing in a collection of personal essays in which he contends that fishing is as much about being outdoors with a few friends who share the same passion as it is about catching fish. Of course, he still thrills at the fish’s strike and he lands his fair share of them, but he spends as much time describing other aspects of the sport: getting there, what to do in foul weather, camping etiquette and predicting hatches. He even spends some time ruminating on hunting and the business of rod making. With the simple grace and native wisdom he is known for, Gierach always gets back around to fishing and pays special tribute to the fish themselves, sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of North American fish, their feeding habits and their exquisite colorings. Occasionally, he comments on environmental issues such as the effects of logging and housing developments on local streams, but he seems resigned to such encroachments, claiming that he can live with change as long as the fish are biting; such, he confesses, is his “fool’s paradise.” (May)

Though new to American readers, Yates is well known in the U.K. as a journalist and TV presenter, and also for catching what was, in 1980, the biggest fish in the history of English fishing. In his new book, Yates has set out to capture the thoughts and stories that came to him as he sat on the riverbank and waited for a bite. Among fishermen in the U.S., philosophy and poetry are usually the domain of trout fly fishers, but Yates applies these two abstractions to bait fishing for such unrefined-sounding fish as chub, barbell, gudgeon and perch. In his accessible and occasionally lyrical prose, Yates sums up a year on a river in chapter-long musings on a host of fishing and non-fishing topics, such the topography of a river, the weather, his youth, the “bird-like” beauty of a perch and the essentially British notion of the restorative powers of tea. The book is also filled with practical and tactical advice about how best to land a “whale of a perch.” Because of Yates’s intelligent observations and his pure dedication to his sport (it is his belief “that man was born to fish”), this book will be of interest to anglers on both sides of the Atlantic. (May)

A former journalist and college professor, Willis delivers a moving memoir of his struggle with breast cancer, shining a light on a diagnosis that is given to approximately 2,000 men each year. Once diagnosed, he doesn’t shy away from accepting that he needs an immediate mastectomy and painful chemotherapy treatment. His journalistic training allows Willis to clearly and concisely tell his story—from the initial discovery of a lump on his chest through to surgery and treatment and on to the mental changes that he still feels today as a result of the chemotherapy: “The nightmarish aftereffects shocked my system like nothing I had ever experienced.” Willis chronicles his physical deterioration in excruciating detail, but he also offers a unique perspective, while never forgetting that women have struggled with the physical and mental impact of the disease for years. His writing skill also keeps him from overplaying his story’s importance: he lets Hollingsworth—the founding medical director of the University of Oklahoma Breast Institute—state in his foreword that “until now, no male breast cancer patient has tackled the shock of being diagnosed with 'a woman’s disease’ through a book-length chronicle of the experience.” (May)

Funderberg’s memoir continues the exploration of her mixed-race identity (started in her first book, Black, White, Other) through the story of her black father, George. When George’s prostate cancer resurfaces after 15 years in remission, the author repeatedly makes the trip from Philadelphia down to Georgia with him to the farm he bought in 1985 in his home town of Monticello. The farm is next to the land his own father rented years before. Despite having to undergo chemotherapy and the re-emergence of painful memories, this time on the farm proves to be George’s happiest, as he shares with the author stories from his youth; reconnects with his local peers, Bubba and his brother Troy; and plans a colossal family pig roast. The author cuts back and forth in time from her father’s early migration North to find work to his father’s career as a Columbia University–educated doctor who originally moved back to Georgia to practice medicine among the poor community. The memoir perhaps dwells overly long on the final, clinical details of George’s faltering condition, so that the power of this multiracial story is sadly diffused among the many threads. (May)

Journalist Cooper has a compelling story to tell: born into a wealthy, powerful, dynastic Liberian family descended from freed American slaves, she came of age in the 1980s when her homeland slipped into civil war. On Cooper’s 14th birthday, her mother gives her a diamond pendant and sends her to school. Cooper is “convinced that somehow our world would right itself.” That afternoon her uncle Cecil, the minister of foreign affairs, is executed. Cooper combines deeply personal and wide-ranging political strands in her memoir. There’s the halcyon early childhood in Africa, a history of the early settlement of Liberia, an account of the violent, troubled years as several regimes are overthrown, and the story of the family’s exile to America. A journalist-as-a-young-woman narrative unfolds as Cooper reports the career path that led her from local to national papers in the U.S. The stories themselves are fascinating, but a flatness prevails—perhaps one that mirror’s the author’s experience. After her uncle’s televised execution, Cooper does “the same thing I would do for the rest of my life when something bad happens: I focus on something else. I concentrate on minutiae. It’s the only way to keep going when the world has ended.” (May)

When Spitz ( The Beatles) finds himself at a convergence of personal and professional crossroads, he finally decides to take a long anticipated trip to Europe to learn to cook, with an itinerary of placements across France and Italy that he hopes will bring a sense of soul into an earnest but uneducated attraction to braises and sautés. The trip begins with Spitz as the first and only trial client of the Robert Ash Cookery School in southern Burgundy, an experience that proves positive. With a soufflé, he saves the honor of the stern taskmistress at one school and he perfects his quenelles at another in Cannes. Although Spitz pins his culinary adventure to a personal story arc involving his on-again-off-again relationship with a woman in New York, this mixed grill of a book isn’t quite as entertaining as it might have been. The author works hard at being earnest and honest about his personal shortcomings as well as his culinary misadventures, but one frequently gets the sense that he was more focused on cooking than life experience. With recipes and b&w photos. (May)

Former congressman Siljander began his career as a zealous evangelical Christian, convinced that the Qur’an was “devil’s work.” In this memoir, Siljander recounts his “paradigm crash” after discovering that much of what he’d been taught about his faith was nowhere in the Bible, and that the Christian and Muslim religious texts are surprisingly compatible when studied in their original languages. He has since made it his life’s mission to find common ground between Christian and Muslim worlds, meeting with a dizzying list of political and religious leaders in the process. The result is an engaging story (despite somewhat stilted dialogue) sure to surprise and inspire many. Though he has no formal background in linguistics or religious studies, Siljander is deft at providing balance when discussing controversial subjects, and careful to show support from academics. Though his theological argument is based almost exclusively on the study of Muslim and Christian scriptures, in the current atmosphere it’s hard to argue with his dictum for what’s needed: “Making friends with the people you thought you hated. It’s that radical, that simple and that necessary.” (June)

It is possible to be ill or live with a disability and still be well, according to theologian, educator and speaker Dawn. She should know. As a person with a variety of serious physical challenges, and who has grappled with emotional and bodily issues as well as theological and biblical questions, Dawn is a powerful guide for those who want to be well in spite of their medical conditions. While she has written about her disabilities in previous books, this one is a complete and helpful analysis of the implications of physical challenges, along with concrete spiritual, theological and practical suggestions for dealing with them. Each chapter names one particular aspect of illness, such as loneliness, boredom, physical pain, regrets, bitterness or meaninglessness, and offers strategies for coping with them without sugarcoating or belittling the real struggles people face. Dawn also looks past the individual to offer a global perspective, making suggestions for addressing governments and health systems that further oppress those who are ill. Stories from the author’s and others’ experiences offer readers the sense of being graciously companioned along a very difficult road. (June)

Following on the heels of Live Like You’re Blessed, Cook, the first woman president of the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference, advocates a can-do approach to life. Using the example of the daughters of Zelophehad (known for claiming what was rightfully theirs, though their father died without a male heir), she encourages readers to stand up, speak up, look up, book up, kiss up, listen up, hang up, make up, wake up and cheer up. Other biblical references and personal anecdotes fill out the pages—complete with suggested exercises for re-energizing commitments to self, community and God. Individual chapters read much like a Sunday sermon, and some, particularly early in the book, are imbued with the oral tradition of message repetition. Especially strong are the chapters on hanging up (finding the “clear beginning and... clear end” of the seasons of relationships) and making up (refusing to stay offended and practicing forgiveness). Christian readers who are already familiar with her work and those looking for fresh inspiration will find her enthusiasm contagious.(May 6)

At age 23 Gall walked away from a lucrative advertising job, determined to uphold his ethical standards while revolutionizing the world and the church. Five years later, after dropping out of seminary and quitting jobs with a rehab program, a community center, a home for developmentally disabled men, Bud’s Warehouse and a plumbing distributor, he returned to his Midwestern family, musing, “What do you call someone who leaves the ordinary world on a hero’s journey, but fails?” Like Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis) and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz), Gall is edgy the evangelical way: he keeps sex and swearing mostly offstage, but, like other good guys, drinks, doubts and unleashes scathing sarcasm at the conservative Christian subculture.Now in his mid-30s, Gall mocks his younger self throughout: a “fat blond guy” with “no car, no cash, no direction, no prospects, no discipline.” Relentlessly ironic, he may invite misunderstanding: do his harsh criticisms reflect his present view of evangelical reality, or are they meant to show his postadolescent pomposity?Nevertheless, his themes are clear: God doesn’t need an image consultant; it is better to be authentic than great; and to achieve authenticity we must forsake “our deepest sin and our love for our most beautiful idol: to be our own god.” (May)

Diagnosing the human soul with a longing for peace in the face of fear and fragmentation nurtured by global political forces and fundamentalisms, Newell offers the ancient traditions of Celtic Christianity as a way forward in healing humankind and the earth.An international retreat leader who is the former warden of Scotland’s Iona abbey, the author of Listening for the Heartbeat of God argues we discover unity as we become connected to one another and “allow ourselves to be surprised by the Presence that is within creation and within the human soul.” Drawing on ancient and contemporary sources both within and outside the conventional Christian canon, Newell is critical of, and offers alternatives to, ancient Christian doctrines like creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), original sin and substitutionary atonement. Although the volume has some winning and touching anecdotes about the writer’s own spiritual journey and heroes, it is frustratingly gauzy in parts. Written with an inviting sensitivity to other faith traditions, this introduction to a “Celtic Christ” will most likely appeal to those who find Christ-tinged creation spirituality in an interfaith context appealing. (May)

Religion reporter Wicker (formerly of the Dallas Morning News and author of Lily Dale) proffers a tendentious, confused book about the alleged demise of conservative evangelicalism.She makes a few lucid points, as when she deftly takes apart the many competing statistics about how many Americans are evangelical.But overall the book has a shrill feel, thanks to the regular use of terms like “threat” and “death knell.”Some of the chapters, which seem like filler, are journalistic accounts of aspects of evangelical life—e.g., a portrait of a grieving widow who says she wouldn’t give up Jesus to have her husband back—and are not closely related to the overarching argument.Wicker argues that some of the “threats” to evangelicalism come from evangelical institutions themselves.For example, she asserts that megachurches carry a lot of debt—a fascinating claim that should be bolstered by more rigorous research and source citation. However, merely establishing that megachurches are “vulnerable” because they cater to the tastes of boomers and depend on the personality of their leaders doesn’t tell us that evangelicalism is dying; it just suggests that evangelicalism, ever protean, will once again change.(May)

Skye’s follow-up to her enthusiastically-received debut Goddess Alive! provides advanced practitioners with additional rituals, spells and guided meditations. In each of 12 chapters, she tells the story of a goddess from mythology, drawing on medieval collections of myths such as the Celtic Mabinogion and the Norse Skaldskaparmal. These are complicated texts, and Skye’s introductions to each goddess can read like a doctoral dissertation. What follows, however, is worth the extra effort. As in her earlier volume, Skye demonstrates a truly inspired talent for writing guided meditations. In one, readers will confront their fear of drowning as they pursue Welsh goddess Cymidei Cymeinfoll to her lair at the bottom of a lake. In another, they will experience the sights and sounds of a medieval Viking hall in the presence of Sif, Norse goddess of family and harvest. These scenes are so vividly imagined that there may well be crossover appeal to fans of fantasy fiction. At the same time, readers may want to have a fellow practitioner at hand to read the meditations out loud, since it is nearly impossible to do them by oneself. Skye’s approach remains refreshingly original. (May)

Chan, senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Calif., offers a radical call for evangelicals to consider and emulate in this debut guide to living “crazy” for God. Chan’s own life compels him to live with urgency, and with good reason. His mother died giving birth to him, his stepmother died when he was nine, and his dad when he was 12. As a pastor, Chan says that conducting weekly funerals for people younger than himself has likewise sobered him to life’s unexpectedness and frailty. Chan writes with infectious exuberance, challenging Christians to take the Bible seriously. He describes at length the sorry state of “lukewarm” Christians who strive for a life characterized by control, safety and an absence of suffering. In stark contrast, the book offers real-life accounts of believers who have given all—time, money, health, even their lives—in obedience to Christ’s call.Chan also recounts his own attempts to live “crazy” by significantly downsizing his home and giving away his resources to the poor.Earnest Christians will find valuable take-home lessons from Chan’s excellent book. (May)

Ford would seem an unlikely candidate to write a gentle, moving introduction to traditional monastic spirituality. As Billy Graham’s brother-in-law and frequent stand-in, Ford’s evangelical bona fides are unquestionable. Yet he describes the details of life at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, with the eye of the avid amateur painter he also is. Reading this book you’ll find yourself scribbling down prayers from obscure medieval figures like a certain St. Fursey. Ford is also appealing as he describes odd gestures he’s willing to make in search of the God who’s present in the everyday: hugging a tree, hugging himself in an airport with passersby all around, revealing his own struggles with his image and how to pursue God rather than his own self-aggrandizement. He does make a distinctly Protestant addition to the tradition of monastic spirituality, insisting that the most rigorous of spiritual practices are for all believers. The few missteps are slight: Ford’s references to his heavy travel schedule and frequent vacations do threaten to make this feel like a spirituality for the upper-middle class only, and his readings of scripture tend to the emotive and literal. (May)

What can one person possibly do to change the world? Rabbi Weiss, a Jewish activist par excellence who has participated in hundreds of demonstrations, marches, vigils, hunger strikes and acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, outlines his answers clearly in this handbook. Activism is not reckless or impulsive behavior, he writes.Its goal—to help others and thereby to help repair the world—is based on a serious analysis of moral, political and logistical issues, bound by Torah. Weiss describes the foundations of spiritual activism and delineates its principles: choosing the cause, making partners, designing the strategy, leading other people and seeing the big picture. He expands and elucidates each facet with personal examples, from his efforts to free Soviet Jews to protesting Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize and installing handicapped ramps in his synagogue. Though the book has a Jewish focus, its principles are universal.Readers may not agree with all of Weiss’s choices, but it is hard not to be moved when he asks, “For me the question is not, Why go to the end of the world to help another Jew? But rather, How can one not go to the end of the world to help another Jew?” (May)

For decades Rennebohm, a Protestant pastor, has walked the streets of Seattle, making contact with mentally ill homeless people and slowly drawing them into “circles of care” so they can find safe housing, receive medical and psychological help and rejoin the human community.In this collaboration with Paul, Rennebohm interweaves themes of the Spirit working in desperate lives, the unshakable dignity of human souls and the necessity of companionship for healing as he vividly portrays the lost people he encounters.Always recognizing that medical treatment of mental illness is an essential part of the movement toward spiritual wholeness, Rennebohm is also sensitive to the vulnerability of the mentally ill to disordered religious ideas.The book’s title, a response to Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” reflects Rennebohm’s approach of gentle compassion toward people others reject.His call to find a better path leads him to Europe to study community-based approaches to treating mental illness and to initiate these in Seattle.As well as a guide to how others can help be healing presences to the mentally ill, this hopeful book is a meditation on faith in a broken world. (May)

It’s “a vision so old it looks new,” writes Wilson-Hartgrove, a 20-something North Carolina pastor who is part of New Monasticism.New Monastics, he says, are a loosely confederated group of Christians who choose to live in intentional communities, often in blighted areas.It’s age-old monasticism, but with new twists: some practitioners are celibate singles, but many others are married with children; some communities hold all goods in common and pool their economic resources, while others retain individual ownership.The book’s more coherent and invigorating second half explores the marks of New Monasticism, including geographic relocation, redistribution of wealth, ecumenism, peacemaking and submission to the church.These chapters, which offer a treasure trove of concrete examples and stories of real communities that practice these values, eclipse the book’s unfocused first half, which mires down in broad descriptions of American Christianity’s complex problems and an obligatory dose of monastic history.Readers who are serious about putting New Monastic ideas into practice may want to skip the first 75 pages in favor of life-changing practices like relational tithing (maintaining no more than one degree of separation between the giver of charity and its receiver).(May)

Author, psychologist and pioneering Buddhist teacher Kornfield writes his best book yet (and his previous ones were pretty good). His newest uses the same sweet narrative voice, provides convincing and illustrative anecdotes and stories, and reaches into world traditions and literature as well as contemporary scientific research. This book offers a systematic and well-organized view of Buddhist psychology, complete with occasional diagrams. Concepts and practices are placed in a framework that explains and connects them. It’s all done with an eye toward application; most chapters end with exercises. Kornfield has been practicing Buddhism for close to 40 years, a lasting discipline that has produced this masterful book and a seasoned view of life that acknowledges a lot of oopses. As a mediator and psychologist, he has also witnessed some serious angst, including his own, and draws on it for illustrative power. Not everything here is new, least of all the title, but then the Buddha isn’t either. The best is left for last: joy you can seek for yourself and others. Just keep your meditative seat, and this book by your bed. Kornfield comes across as the therapist you wish you’d had. (Apr. 29)

There’s nothing new or earth-shattering about Meyer’s latest self-help book for Christians, but naysayers may be won over by her can-do attitude despite the unoriginal content.A bestselling author and Bible teacher with a popular daily television program, Meyer wants readers to be happy—not because they have enjoyable circumstances, perfect health, fat wallets or other enviable externals, but simply because they choose to be happy.Happiness, according to Meyer, is a decision to trust in God’s power, not merely in the power of one’s own positive thinking.(She does, however, emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and surrounding oneself with others who do the same.)In short chapters, she discusses issues like habits, discipline, simplicity, creativity and health.She helpfully distinguishes between being busy and being “fruitful,” urging readers to embrace fruitfulness and productivity.As with her other books, each chapter opens with a joke or light anecdote, then delves a little deeper with biblical examples and stories from Meyer’s life, including her recovery from sexual abuse and her own struggles to be happy.(Apr. 29)

Signature

Reviewed by Robert Sullivan

As opposed to the Pilgrims, Tony Horwitz begins his journey at Plymouth Rock.

Plymouth Rock is a myth. The Pilgrims—who, Horwitz notes, were on a mission that was based less on freedom and the schoolbook history ideas the president of the United States typically mentions when he pardons a turkey at the White House and more on finding a cure for syphilis—may or may not have noticed it. In about 1741, a church elder in Plymouth, winging it, pointed out a boulder that is now more like a not-at-all-precious stone. Three hundred years later, people push and shove to see it in summer tourist season, wearing T-shirts that say, “America’s Hometown.” Which eventually leads an overstimulated (historically speaking) Horwitz to come close to starting a fight in a Plymouth bar. “Not to Virginians it isn’t,” he writes. “Or Hispanics or Indians.”

“Forget all the others,” his bar mate says loudly. “This is the friggin’ beginning of America!”

A Voyage Long and Strange is a history-fueled, self-imposed mission of rediscovery, a travelogue that sets out to explore the surprisingly long list of explorers who discovered America, and what discovered means anyway, starting with the Vikings in A.D. 1000, and ending up on the Mayflower. Horwitz (Blue Latitudes; Confederates in the Attic) even dons conquistador gear, making the narrative surprisingly fun and funny, even as he spends a lot of time describing just how badly Columbus and subsequently the Spanish treated people. (Highpoint: a trip to a Columbus battle site in the Dominican Republic, when Horwitz gets stuck with a nearly inoperable rental car in a Sargasso Sea of traffic.) In the course of tracing the routes of de Soto in, for instance, Tennessee, and the amazing Cabeza de Vaca (Daniel Day Lewis’s next role?) in Tucson, Ariz., Horwitz drives off any given road to meet the back-to-the-land husband-and-wife team researching Coronado’s expeditions through Mexico; or the Fed Ex guy who may be a link to the lost colonists of the Elizabethan Roanoke expedition.

Horwitz can occasionally be smug about what constitutes custom—who’s to say that a Canadian tribe’s regular karaoke night isn’t a community-building exercise as valid as the communal sweat that nearly kills Horwitz early on in his thousands of miles of adventures? But as a character himself, he is friendly and always working hard to listen and bear witness. “I hate the whole Thanksgiving story,” says a newspaper editor of Spanish descent, a man he meets along the trail of Coronado. “We should be eating chili, not turkey. But no one wants to recognize the Spanish because it would mean admitting that they got here decades before the English.”

Robert Sullivan is the author of Cross Country, How Not to Get Rich and Rats (Bloomsbury).