Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 6/16/2008

-- Publishers Weekly, 6/16/2008

Nonfiction

Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks Out on Higher Education
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. Touchstone, $26 (288p) ISBN 9781416557197
Currently President Emeritus of The George Washington University (after 19 years as president), author Trachtenberg (Reflections on Higher Education) looks back on his years of work at GW, the University of Hartford (where he was president for 11 years) and Boston University to assess the current state of higher education. Each chapter focuses on a different subject—town/gown relations, fundraising, the rules of an effective university president—with a grounded, friendly tone and a wealth of personal anecdotes. Much of the work, however, concerns weighty matters such as defining the scope of various undergraduate curricula in the United States and parsing out the essentials of study: “[I]t makes little sense to learn about another culture while remaining ignorant about one’s own.” Refreshingly honest and conversational, whether tackling the changes he’s observed in students over the years or the influence of his parents, professors and colleagues, this will make extremely interesting reading for those in the education industry, and should be of general interest as well. (June)

Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars
Bill Berloni and Jim Hanrahan. Lyons, $16.95 (240p) ISBN 9781599213538
Animal stage trainer Berloni has been rescuing animals and putting them on the boards for more than 30 years, and his career memoir brings with it some expected charms—lovable, heartbreaking animal stories; giddy tales of Broadway success; and showbiz backbiting. His story begins compellingly when, as a 19-year-old intern on the set of the original 1975 production of Annie, he was charged with finding and coaching the dog that would play Sandy; miraculously, “[t]he dog nobody wanted... that had been run over by a truck just twelve days earlier” played Sandy for seven years. Berloni’s at his best when describing his methods or recounting theatre gossip; the chapter about the 1995 Annie revival, and the abrupt dismissal of 11-year-old star Joanna Pacitti (who won a contest), is related with real ire (Berloni was friends with Pacitti and her family). Unfortunately, much else is dully dutiful; neither Berloni nor his co-writer Hanrahan bring a particularly strong voice to the typical business of memoir. Since it focuses on his remarkable craft, it should interest animal lovers and fans of Broadway. B&w photos. (June)

Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex
Ellen Sussman. Bloomsbury, $19.99 (288p) ISBN 9781596914742
Author Sussman compiled this quasi-reference book as a corrective for not getting the “facts of life” talk that her brother received. The result is an often riveting, and occasionally shocking, essay collection that does much more than define 94 sex-related terms. With close to 100 writers (including Thomas Beller, Antonya Nelson, Pagan Kennedy, Jonathan Ames and poet Stephen Dunn), there’s a huge range of styles and sensibilities. The pseudonymous writer tackling “adultery” admits to cheating on his girlfriend with his wife: “six months in and who’s to tell whom you’re horny for anymore?” Meredith Maran’s essay on “bisexuality” has a surprise ending for all involved: Maran reveals her bisexuality to her husband at the very moment she first recognizes it herself. Some essays are romantic; Victoria Redel’s impressionistic entry for kissing begins with the delicious line, “The first surprise of your mouth and mine.” Some are goofy—Bret Anthony Johnston revives the old what’s-your-porn-star-name parlor game—and some are actually fiction—like Lucy Ferriss’s brief one-act play script, “Mile High Club”—but most are surprisingly straightforward and entirely unconcerned with shock value, even regarding the terms too dirty to print here. (June)

I Still Have It… I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It: Confessions of a Fiftysomething
Rita Rudner. Harmony, $25.95 (272p) ISBN 9780307394590
Rudner’s best known as a comedienne, appearing in films such as Peter’s Friends, and performing nightly in Vegas. It’s no surprise, then, that the crucial element missing from her latest (after Turning the Tables) is the little-girl-lost delivery she’s famous for. As it is, the actress-screenwriter-author scribes an intermittently hilarious hodge-podge on the joys of aging, and other preoccupations. Among four dozen semi-related short pieces—comprised of anecdotes, comedy routines, lists, questions and touching vignettes—some is pure filler: a chapter on her Oscar gift basket, a tedious anecdote about a mean dad at her daughter’s preschool class, “Future Reality Shows.” When she hits, however, she hits big, landing absurdist gems like her chapter on getting ready to leave the house: “Being a woman is difficult… It’s like being a female impersonator every single day.” Though she deploys a refreshingly dry eye about the aging process, some readers will find her shtick a bit too rarified, based as it is on a distinctly privileged lifestyle. (May)

Long Road Outta Compton: Dr. Dre’s Mom on Family, Fame and Terrible Tragedy
Verna Griffin. Da Capo, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 97815602509879
This memoir from Griffin, whose son became one of the driving forces behind “gangsta” rap, details the life of a single teenage mother in what might as well be the heart of the American poverty crisis, South Central L.A. Griffin gave birth to her first child, Andre, in February 1965, just four months before the Watts riots “changed the world’s perception of race relations in America,” and her story takes readers on a ground-level tour through a troubling inversion of the modern American dream. Organized more or less chronologically, Griffin has a skill for introducing readers effortlessly into the unfamiliar era of her youth: “Donald had a record player in his car, like most cool guys who had cars.” Throughout the story, Griffin’s determination, spirituality and creative abilities triumph over the setbacks that poverty constantly throws up. Though there’s much grief over constantly changing jobs and apartments, burglaries, drugs, drinking, violence and death—Griffin loses three of her five children—there’s also the joy of record collections, occasional vacations and family, and of course the eventual success of Andre’s music career. Unconcerned with prescriptive lessons or piercing insight, Griffin’s well-crafted memoir is a graceful account of difficult times for a family and a nation. (June)

River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved
Jeffrey Buckner Ford. Cumberland, $26.95 (260p) ISBN 9781581826531
“Ernie Ford was never known for having a passion to succeed,” his son deadpans in this masterfully rendered biography of the entertainer, best known for his song “Sixteen Tons,” whose lifelong alcoholism and chronic depression drove himself and his first wife to their deaths. Ambition notwithstanding, Tennessee Ernie Ford possessed a winning combination of talent and luck that made him one of the biggest stars in the country, with numerous Top Ten hits and, at the height of his popularity, a weekly television show watched by millions. The younger Ford gives readers an in-depth look behind the curtain, painting a multilayered portrait of the man who hid his pain behind a salt-of-the-earth Everyman pose. The heart of the book is Ford’s doomed relationship with his first wife Betty, who would, after more than 40 years of marriage, take her own life. Though storm clouds continually threaten, the Fords’ life wasn’t all dark; Ford includes colorful anecdotes featuring celebrities like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope, their neighbor, as well as happy family memories like Disneyland on opening day. Though Ernie recorded hundreds of songs, Ford keeps his dad’s career manageable with broad strokes, delving into minutiae only when the topic turns to mega-hit “Sixteen Tons” and the beginning of his gospel period. Ford’s ability to stay both honest and impartial make this a compulsively readable story, and a fine model for celebrity bios to come. Even readers unfamiliar with Ford’s massive body of work will find the drama, pain and success that marked his life fascinating. (May)

The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fanny Lou Hamer
Chris Myers Asch. New Press, $27.95 (384p) ISBN 9781595583321
Arch, co-founder of the U.S. Public Service Academy and a former elementary school teacher in Mississippi’s Sunflower County, chronicles the life and times of two Sunflower natives who became central civil rights figures: U.S. Senator James Eastland, scion of one of the region’s oldest plantation families, and Fanny Lou Hamer, the sharecroppers’ daughter who led the drive for voting rights in Mississippi. Hamer’s involvement began in August, 1962, when she joined a group of 17 other African-Americans registering to vote; that courageous decision got her kicked off the plantation where her family eked out an existence. After that, “the movement” literally became her home, and she worked feverishly overly the following years to challenge the status quo. As the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Eastland fought long and hard against the demands of Hamer and others, successfully watering down civil rights initiatives in 1957 and killing them outright in ’66. Asch does a commendable job illuminating mid-twentieth century cotton kingdom economics while keeping his narrative moving. Though Eastland looms larger in these pages, it’s satisfying to watch the tide of history overtake the largely unrepentant (and all but forgotten) senator, and see Hamer, famously “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” become a legend in the Delta and throughout the country. (May)

A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Watching Television
Jeff Alexander. Berkley, $15.50 paper (272p) ISBN 9780425221556
Alexander, a writer for notoriously acrid web site Television Without Pity, takes on the common wisdom that television rots your brains by examining the wealth of knowledge he’s gained through his lifelong pursuit of television viewing. Sly, wordy and tongue-in-cheek, Alexander offers commentary, insight and information that straddle the line between impassioned viewer and cagey insider. Limiting himself to pure entertainment (no public or educational television here), Alexander distills the influence that scripted dramas and comedies, past and present, have on collective views of school, life, love, jobs, medicine, cops, friends, superpowers and death. While he does raise valid, and funny, points while berating television’s glamorous, unrealistic portrayals of doctors, lawyers, cops and a particular group of city-dwelling friends, it’s always evident that he’s made his living dissecting television—something that may alienate the masses who watch television simply to be entertained, not to fuss over the differences between NBC’s fictionalized portrayal on 30 Rock and Studio 60. On the other hand, fellow television writers, industry insiders, critics and true media junkies should find some barbed laughs.(July)

When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison
Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer. New York Univ., $22.95 (208p) ISBN 9780814757024
Oberman and Meyer first sought to understand one of the most terrifying crimes in their 2001 Mothers Who Kill Their Children, creating a “comprehensive typology” of the perpetrator based on careful case studies. Taking the next step, the authors and professors interview 40 female inmates incarcerated for the crime to test their typology. What they find, disturbingly, is “a heavy truth: these mothers were not that different from any other mothers we know.” The common themes that emerge in each of these women’s stories include domestic violence, troubled relationships with parents, twisted notions of romantic love and deep conflicts about motherhood. Even more pervasive is how many of these women were failed by the social and institutional systems set up to detect and defuse problems before they become tragedies; their interaction with the health care system, the foster care system, public assistance and child protective agencies all offer insights into how these women literally slipped through the cracks. Unflinching and not for the feint, this important title should provide great insight for anyone whose job affects the welfare of mothers. (June)

LIFESTYLE

Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Artisan, $40 (376p) ISBN 9781579653019
Alford and Duguid, authors of the acclaimed Mangoes & Curry Leaves, explore the food and peoples of the outlaying regions of present-day China, historically home to those not ethnically Chinese. Part travel guide and part cookbook, this collection looks at the cultural survival and preservation of food in smaller societies including that of the Tibetan, Mongol, Tuvan and Kirghiz peoples, among others. The authors include vivid color photographs of food, people and places of cultural significance. Recipes are tantalizing and mostly simple, and ingredients are surprisingly easy to find. The book is sectioned by food type rather than ethnicity, covering everything from condiments and seasonings to fish and meats to drinks and sweets. Dishes have the hint of the familiar, such as Oasis Chicken Kebabs, Tibetan Pork and Spinach Stir-Fry, and Market Stall Fresh Tomato Salsa, while others are less common but equally tempting, including Kazakh Pulao, Steamed Tibetan Momos, and Home-style Tajik Nan. Peppered throughout are the authors’ personal stories, which provide insight into each culture. A handsome and engaging collection suitable for travelers and cooks alike, this book will delight anyone with an interest in this part of the world. (May)

Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man: The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook
Steve Graham. Citadel, $12.95 paper (176p) ISBN 9780806528687
Nostalgic for a time when kitchen counters had a container marked “grease” right next to “flour” and “sugar,” author and blogger Graham (Keep Chewing Till It Stops Kicking) offers up a rambling, tongue-in-cheek, plaque-in-artery collection of recipes and essays for those dedicated to the “Art of Lard.” Graham delights in slaughtering sacred cows with his acerbic, at times wildly inappropriate humor, but also gets a terrific amount of glee from simple bacon grease, a key ingredient in ribs, chicken fried steak, hash browns and even popcorn. Predictably dense takes on macaroni and cheese, burgers and fries dominate, though more exotic fare like Turducken and Rotis with Goat Curry are also detailed. Graham’s glib instructions can frustrate; for fatty (but incredibly flavorful) twice-baked fries, “you get your fat, and you put it in a big pot, and you put it in the oven at 250 for like a day. Then you throw out the lumps that remain,” before you add potatoes for frying. Most of his dishes, however, fall within the capabilities of kitchen novices, and he peppers sound advice throughout on everything from the proper use of ham hocks to the care of cast iron skillets. Unfortunately, his wildly uneven tone and pointless digressions kill any sense of momentum, making this a comedic smorgasbord best consumed in moderation. (June 24)

Family Activism: Empowering Your Community, Beginning with Family and Friends
Roberto Vargas. Berrett-Koehler, $16.95 paper (254p) ISBN 9781576754801
Vargas, a longtime corporate and community consultant, approaches social activism with high ideals, a positive viewpoint and, most helpfully, a practical and gratifying plan of action, based in his personal experience and cultural heritage. The “Familia Approach” treats activism not as a solo enterprise but as “a way of living so as to teach love and activate the positive power of our families and communities.” Vargas unpacks the Mexican idea of familia and finds enfolded within its notion of the extended family—”everyone you care for and who cares for you”—the American passion for social activism. Each chapter expands on this idea, including reflection questions and bullet-point “practices,” with much insight into Vargas’s own family and Latino culture in general (both modern and ancient). Though not religious, Vargas is “spiritual,” and does consider prayer and indigenous religious practices (like unity circles) important and powerful. Equally important, however, is real human understanding, for which he introduces the surprisingly complex concept of conocimento—conversation meant to deepen participants’ knowledge of each other. Vargas’s text, full of new agisms like “transformation,” “energy” and “synergy,” will strike some readers as redundant, but those ready to share in Vargas’s passion will find much to learn. (June)

On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries
Richard Reynolds. Bloomsbury, $25.99 (256p) ISBN 9781596914490
With the rallying cry, “Let’s fight the filth with forks and flowers,” this lighthearted guide is a seriously silly romp through the adventurous pastime of gardening other people’s plots. Reynolds, after five months living in a 10-story tower block in London, missed gardening and began surreptitiously cultivating the planters in front of his building, gardening in the dead of night to avoid interference. He started a blog to share his delight in illicit gardening, and discovered he was part of an international movement. Reynolds draws inspiration from pioneers of the movement: New York community gardens built on vacant lots, dispossessed Honduran Chiquita workers who appropriated abandoned banana plantation land, and Gerrard Winstanley, founder of the short-lived but influential Diggers who, in the tumultuous year of 1649, planted beans and barley on public land in Surry, England, “that every one that is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation.” He borrows techniques from more infamous guerrillas such as Che Guevera and Mao Tse Tung (“the guerrilla ‘must move with the fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind’”). Both a manifesto and a manual (tips include how to build seed bombs and deal with pests unique to the guerrilla form of gardening: authorities and landowners), the book delights with tales of exploits from the anarchic, artistic community of guerrilla gardeners. (May)

POETRY

Present Vanishing
Dick Allen. Sarabande (Consortium, dist.), $14.95 paper (96p) ISBN 9781932511642
In his seventh collection, Allen, a student of Buddhism for 50 years, wanders through a variety of topics–from the Buddha to Elvis, from frustrations with the internet to the art of buttering bread—and emerges full of gratitude. Still, meditations on mortality crop up throughout the book’s four sections, as do warnings of “real dragons, fire-breathing, vulnerable-under-the-chin dragons/ who live on horizons.” But, mostly, the simple joy of encountering a new image propels these poems: Allen hopefully proclaims “the universe is really a small delicatessen” and “I will suck the color out of Lucky Charms.” About half of these poems are set in single long-lined columns, which some readers may find too uniform, though there are lovely moments of pure musicality in the shorter poems organized in couplets or quatrains. Gracefully assuming many shapes and sizes, these poems are likely to please readers seeking incarnations of the spirits of Whitman and Creeley at their most joyful. (Oct.)

They Lift Their Wings to Cry
Brooks Haxton. Knopf, $25 (96p) ISBN 9780307268457
Haxton’s stripped-down, careful appreciations of flora, fauna and man-made things make him a reliable witness to what life gives and to what life takes away. Haxton’s upstate New York locale gives him a good look at the harsh seasons, and at the beauty their procession brings: “berries/ of a bluebeard lily, blue as sapphires,/ blue with frost and poison.” Haxton is capable of a fine wit: one poem pays comic homage to comic poet Kenneth Koch by imagining a fight between Rambo and Rimbaud. Usually, though, Haxton (Uproar) remains unadorned, thoughtful and sad. A poem called “Blast at the Attic Window” presents, “Inside a spinning cloud/ of stars, the mind/ in an intricate swirl of ice.” Another, one of many about intimacy in advancing age, imagines what happens after “Her High School Flame Retires at 65 and Moves Back into His Childhood Home.” It is not all downhill in this collection, nor is everything wintry: an unrhymed sonnet, lovely in its slight archaism, brings Haxton and his wife “Face to Face,” as flattering “Sunlight under your eyebrow knits/ the iris into a bronzen veil.” (June)

The Wave Maker
Elizabeth Spires. Norton, $23.95 (96p) ISBN 9780393066593
Quietly serious, trustworthy and often sad, this sixth collection from Spires (Worldling) finds the poet preoccupied with first and last things: death, illness, age and debility take up much of the book, while ascetic religion, in the lives of monks and nuns, occupies more hopeful poems near the volume’s end. Though only 58 years old, Spires looks back on her life as if from near its conclusion: “Like an idiot child, I piled my pretty stones,/ knowing the waves would knock them down.” One of her best new poems considers the video game “The Sims,” where “Adults never get older & old people can do/ anything young people can do.” Again and again Spires depicts the flimsiness of all human life—defining “house,” for example, as “a leaf over my head.” Some will object, understandably, that Spires’ new poems lack intellectual rigor—but they might well make up for that lack in their moving frailty, even giving us (as Spires sometimes implies) models for the later chapters in our own lives. (July)

FICTION

Bachelor Degree
Judith Marks-White. Ballantine, $14 paper (368p) ISBN 9780345492395
In this brassy sophomore effort from Marks-White (Seducing Harry), divorced New York gallery associate Samantha Krasner, 38, has always been overshadowed by her rich, twice-widowed, art collector mother, Madeleine Krasner-Wolfe. To Madeleine’s delight, Samantha hits it off with artist de jour Blake Hamilton, though she urges Samantha to put the long-distance affair on the back burner and get things brewing with much-gossiped-about hottie gynecologist Spencer Gould. Madeleine sets her sights on Spencer’s also-gyno father, and schedules appointments for them (and a niece, too, for good measure)—with unexpected results. As Blake’s debut exhibit approaches, secrets and lies are unleashed that test all concerned. Though Samantha, who narrates, is meant to be witty and acerbic, she comes off as hard. And in light of the book’s theme of looking for love in the big bad city, the third-act scandal almost seems like a tacked-on after-thought. Marks-White does do a sterling job of name-checking the hangouts and proclivities of affluent New Yorkers (“When I dipped my fork into my lobster seasoned with vanilla and set on a cauliflower puree, I actually gasped”), which brings her brand of Manhattan to life. (July)

Breaking Point: A DCI Neil Paget Mystery
Frank Smith. Severn, $28.95 (224p) ISBN 9780727866219
DCI Neil Paget investigates a missing-persons case in this workmanlike entry in Smith’s police procedural series (Acts of Vengeance, etc.). Mark Newman, a jack-of-all-trades who aspires to be a journalist, vanishes after a covert meeting in a generic English pub about a potential story. When Paget learns that Newman’s informant, Mickey Doyle, has also disappeared, he concludes that someone attempting to conceal the secret that Doyle stumbled onto has killed them both. Paget’s team’s efforts soon come closer to the truth than the National Criminal Intelligence Service would like, triggering a jurisdictional dispute that threatens to prevent justice for the missing men. A prologue detailing Newman’s failed surveillance of a secluded farmhouse leaves little suspense about his fate. In addition, instead of Paget’s uncovering the story Newman was pursuing, an NCIS official simply recounts it to him late in the book. (June)

Going Down South
Bonnie J. Glover. Ballantine/One World, $14 paper (272p) ISBN 9780345480910
Glover weaves the stories of three generations of African American women in a tale both familiar and surprising. In the early 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Jean tells her parents she is pregnant, and her father, Turk, and mother, Daisy, decide to take Olivia to Daisy’s mother’s house in Cold Water Springs, Ala., to avoid a scandal in their Brooklyn neighborhood. The plan is for Daisy and Turk to return to Brooklyn and leave Olivia in the care of her grandmother, Birdie. But Birdie insists that Daisy remain as well. Daisy is deeply resentful of her mother, who ran a bootlegging operation in their dry county when Daisy was young, but she agrees to stay, and over the next few months, all three women learn about themselves. While the arc may seem familiar, Glover does an admirable job of avoiding cliché (as when Daisy and Birdie attempt to resolve their conflicts with a wrestling match) and provides readers with an absorbing setting and a complex family. (July 29)

Rites of Spring (Break)
Diana Peterfreund. Delta, $12 paper (352p) ISBN 9780385341936
The third installment to Peterfreund’s Rose & Grave series follows the Diggers—members of Eli University’s elite, secret society Rose & Grave—on a spring break trip fraught with intrigue. Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel can’t wait for her first visit to the society’s private Florida island, Cavador Key: a prank gone awry against a rival society has loaded Amy’s spring semester with petty revenge plots. The pranking takes a sinister turn at Cavador, where Amy nearly drowns after her lifejacket appears to have been tampered with. And there’s a small band of weirdos on the periphery, as well (a disgraced government official and his family are on the island, and a gaggle of Rose & Grave conspiracy theorists are camped out on the next island over). As tension escalates, Peterfreund adds an appealing romance subplot. While the stakes are uneven and the climax is predictably soggy, the novel moves fast, packs some laughs and does its job as a light diversion. (June 24)