Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 7/7/2008

The sea has always inspired tales of adventure and discovery in the face of a vast, unpredictable unknown. Prager, chief scientist at the undersea research station Aquarius Reef Base, in the Florida Keys, uses adventure to frame this collection of firsthand accounts about the challenges faced by marine scientists. But adventure is a far cry from glamour: research often means close quarters on a small ship, usually with bad food, infrequent showers and changeable weather, as well as long days of collecting data. With tongue only slightly in cheek, Prager offers advice for any field scientist: “always bring spare pencils” and be prepared for things to go wrong, from pirates to valuable equipment getting lost or damaged. In exchange, scientists look forward to the sense-of-wonder moments: swimming with whale sharks, seeing St. Elmo’s Fire dance along the rigging. Focused on adventure rather than in-depth science, this entertaining book will appeal most to casual and younger readers. 4 color and 28 b&w illus. (Oct.)

In this gripping account, Finch (F2F) narrates a disastrous attempt to recover a body nearly 900 feet underwater in a South African crater named Bushman’s Hole. David Shaw, an Australian pilot for Cathay Pacific, became obsessed with diving in his early 40s and quickly became a world-class deep diver. In South Africa, Shaw trained with renowned diving instructor Don Shirley, and the two men grew close. Shirley was a proponent of diving “rebreathers,” sophisticated pieces of equipment that allow divers to reach greater depths while using less equipment. In 2004, Shaw dove to the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, where he discovered the corpse of a diver that had lain there for a decade. Together, Shaw and Shirley decided to try to raise the body. Finch seamlessly weaves together the various strands of his story, from the character biographies to the dangers and arcane technologies of deep diving. An experienced cave diver himself, Finch brings the reader into a strange and hermetic underworld that few have ever experienced firsthand. In deep diving, he demonstrates, even the smallest breakdown in judgment or equipment will bring catastrophe. Although the outcome is never in doubt, Finch manages to build suspense to fevered intensity. (Oct.)

Norman (Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation) offers a grand, comprehensive, yet sprightly biography of the late Beatle. His sympathetic but sharp treatment captures Lennon’s charm and charisma, but also his cruelty to loved ones, his rebel posturings, his resentment of Paul McCartney’s matchless songwriting powers and growing dominance of the band, his debaucheries, his drunk and disorderlies, his shoplifting and his Oedipal yearnings. Norman is a smart analyst of pop music and its cultural setting and a scintillating miniaturist of Beatlemania. (He likens the band’s trademark shriek-inducing hair-shakings to “manic feather-dusters.”) He manages the difficult trick of loving Lennon’s music without swooning over it, pronouncing “Strawberry Fields” both a great song and “crafted druggy gibberish.” Lennon emerges as a bright, troubled, insecure man who grasped at profundity and occasionally touched it; from Norman’s portrait, we see why so many consider him a soul mate. Photos. (Oct.)

Baker, a former columnist for the online magazine Literary Mama living in Madison, Wis., is busy on her novel—with a protagonist she happens to have diagnosed with breast cancer—when real life intervenes. Shocked by a diagnosis of breast cancer herself, the 45-year-old mother of three begins a yearlong struggle to combat and comprehend the turn her life has taken. Baker and her radiologist husband trek to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Though her cancer has not metastasized and she’s spared chemotherapy and radiation, Baker nevertheless faces the fear that the disease may return. As Baker grapples with the demands of motherhood and marriage, she also begins a relentless search to find the cause of her disease and head off its recurrence in the future—turning to organic foods, whipping up batches of organic face creams in her kitchen and avoiding electromagnetic fields. In this heartfelt memoir, Baker proves to be both humorous (she compares waiting for her follow-up mammogram results to a “call back” for an acting audition) and compassionate, as when a friend is diagnosed with colon cancer. (Oct.)

In this sweeping treatment of scandal, sociologist Adut considers “previously misunderstood aspects of the contexts in which [scandals] have erupted,” however “ephemeral and frivolous” those scandals may seem. Her book is a scholarly probe for an understanding of “when wrongdoings generate scandals and when they do not.” She examines the effect of scandals involving the American presidency, French political corruption and modern art. Transgression is the key for the perceived or actual moral disturbance and distinguishes scandal from its cousins, gossip and rumor. The meaningful academic distinction between constructivist and objectivist sociologists informs, but sometimes impedes, the general reader’s grasp. However, the questions Adut addresses (“why did society ostracize [Wilde] so mercilessly for something that was hardly news?”; how did a “flubbed burglary” become the “famous [Watergate] scandal”?) make persisting through the jargon intellectually worthwhile and occasionally entertaining. (Oct.)

A leading expert on terrorism and a senior adviser at the RAND Corporation, Jenkins (Unconquerable Nation) addresses the contentious issue of nuclear terror in this exhaustive study that seeks to “separate what we fear from what we might reasonably expect.” The author traces the debate over nuclear terror from the Cold War to its contemporary nexus with al-Qaeda, noting that 9/11 “renewed all the old debates” and significantly “altered our perceptions” of what was plausible. Furthermore, the Bush administration’s “saber-rattling” and the relentless media coverage exaggerated the threat and left the nation “intentionally terrified.” While acknowledging al-Qaeda’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, Jenkins points out that the evidence “confirms... ambition, not capability” or the knowledge “to fabricate a nuclear device.” Finally, the author invites the reader to assume the role of president in a frightening scenario that begins with a nuclear blast in Manhattan. Jenkins’s ambitious goal seems to be not to downplay the nuclear threat posed by terrorists but to get Americans to address it logically and dispassionately; his thoroughly documented and carefully reasoned study is an important step in that direction. (Sept.)

In this timely critique drenched in classical philosophy, Flynn, renowned intelligence researcher and discoverer of the “Flynn Effect” (which shows that IQ scores rise over generations), inveighs against racial inequality, working-class marginalization and a growing propensity for militarism as symptoms that America has gone astray—in discourse and praxis—from its Jeffersonian, egalitarian roots. The author examines the long lineage of American idealism, delivering enlightening analysis of Plato and Aristotle’s social philosophies. Invoking Eugene Debs and sociologist William Graham Sumner, Flynn launches a respectful rebuttal of Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve, providing a wealth of statistics suggesting that environmental factors (the “imminent after school experience” of incarceration as opposed to higher education)—not genetic differences—account for the IQ gap between blacks and whites; one fascinating study reveals that the gap disappeared in Germany, suggesting a set of particularly pernicious challenges facing blacks in America. While Flynn’s number-based approach can be dense, his contention that blacks are disadvantaged in American society strictly due to group membership is convincing, and his argument for a meritocracy with “humane-egalitarian” principles and a foreign policy directed primarily toward securing peace in the world is surprisingly pragmatic. (Sept.)

Proclaiming that “American political life has always been a feeding frenzy of delusion, uplift, and fantasy,” blogger and satirist Perrin (Mr. Mike) focuses his attack more narrowly on the Democrats, arguing that from Andrew Jackson on, they have “robbed, cheated and lied to their constituents” in order to consolidate power and maximize “mega-profits.” The book moves from a historic overview to a contemporary critique of the Democratic support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, skewering such Democratic heavyweights as JFK, FDR, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, “America’s most underrated imperialist.” The final chapter offers a blow-by-blow account of the liberal blogger convention YearlyKos, an event that the author uses to illustrate his conviction that “the Dem [sic] elites will continue to gorge on corporate money and favors.” Perrin undermines himself with his reliance on ad hominem attacks and joyless one-liners (JFK was “smoked,” genocide in Bosnia is an “Ian Fleming scenario,” “the Iraq era had been satirically deficient”). The result is a combination of self-righteousness and puerility. (Sept. 18)

In this succinct and damning critique of the pitfalls of public opinion reporting, Moore (How to Steal an Election), former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, argues that today’s polls report the whims rather than the will of the people due to an intrinsic methodological problem: poll results don’t differentiate between “those who express deeply held views and those who have hardly, if at all, thought about an issue.” Thus, respondents are compelled to provide an ill-considered, “top-of-mind response” because the method does not offer the option of expressing no opinion. In Moore’s view, forced-choice polls not only distort public opinion, they create a “legitimacy spin cycle,” which damages U.S. democracy by “manufacturing a public consensus to serve those in power.” Keen and witty throughout, his prose turns bitter as he condemns journalists, insisting they are fully aware of the polling flaws but turn a blind eye because “they like sharply divided groups and extreme reactions.” However correct his claim and justified his outrage, his proposed antidote—that the media ought to enlighten its audience to its own ignorance—feels more like a pipe dream than a practical prescription. (Sept.)

In this incisive investigation of the global political and economic forces creating migration, journalist and former labor organizer Bacon offers a detailed examination of the trends transforming, for example, Mexican farmers into California farm workers. Bacon condemns efforts to criminalize illegal immigrants, noting that Congress’s immigration proposals and debates take place outside any discussion of its own trade policies that displace workers and create migration in the first place. “The whole process that creates migrants is scarcely considered in the U.S. immigration debate,” argues Bacon, who posits that displacement and migration are two perennially necessary ingredients of capitalist growth. According to the author, the “same system... produces migration needs and uses that labor” while the vulnerable undocumented or guest-worker status keeps that labor controllable and cheap. Readers disinclined to consider economic rights as human rights may balk at the general direction, but Bacon’s timely analysis is as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America’s hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action. (Sept.)

This is a unique contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Iraq war, analyzing the day-to-day performance of a U.S. brigade in Baghdad during 2004-2005. Mansoor uses a broad spectrum of sources to address the military, political and cultural aspects of an operation undertaken with almost no relevant preparation, which tested officers and men to their limits and generated mistakes and misjudgments on a daily basis. The critique is balanced, perceptive and merciless—and Mansoor was the brigade commander. Military history is replete with “command memoirs.” Most are more or less self-exculpatory. Even the honest ones rarely achieve this level of analysis. The effect is like watching a surgeon perform an operation on himself. Mansoor has been simultaneously a soldier and a scholar, able to synergize directly his military and academic experiences. He presents an eloquent critique of the armed forces’ post-Vietnam neglect of counterinsurgency and makes a strong case for integrating military forces with civilian experts who can aid reconstruction in counterinsurgency operations. Above all, Mansoor reasserts the enduring impact of “fog and friction” on war. There is never an easy solution, he says—or an easy exit. Maps. (Sept.)

Columbia University historian Mazower (Inside Hitler’s Greece) is a knowledgeable guide to the dynamics of Nazi domination of Europe. His focus is on the ambitions and foibles of the Nazi leaders, who believed that all of Europe could be made to serve German interests. As Mazower shows so well, almost nothing about the occupation had been planned beforehand. The Nazis improvised as their armies raced through Poland, the Soviet Union and the Low Countries, and Nazi generals and old-line bureaucrats fought among themselves for power and spoils. Mazower’s most interesting commentary comes at the beginning, when he compares the Nazi imperium to other European empires, and at the end, when he demonstrates its long-lasting consequences. The breadth of Mazower’s study is remarkable, but while not diminishing the toll of the Nazi anti-Semitism, he claims, contrary to many scholars, that core of the Nazi worldview was not anti-Semitism, “but rather… the quest to unify Germans within a single German state.” Pulitzer Prize–winner Saul Friedländer’s coinage of “redemptive anti-Semitism” is far more effective at evoking the realities of Nazi rule than any of Mazower’s formulations. Maps. (Sept.)

Schoonover, professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette, charts the brief career of the “minor and ineffective” Nazi spy Heinz Lüning, whose arrest and subsequent execution were “hyped and distorted” by Cuban, American and British officials as a major coup for the Allies. Sent to Cuba to collect information concerning Allied naval maneuvers and commerce in the Caribbean, Lüning was a drinker and a womanizer with “a brief training period, narrow and personal interests, modest intelligence, and no desire to serve Germany.” The story of how this hapless, largely incompetent man found his way to the Americas and, eventually, the international limelight is at once strange, humorous and pathetic, if drily rendered. The final chapter, in which Schoonover makes a case for Lüning as the model for the character James Wormold in Graham Greene’s 1958 novel, Our Man in Havana, is somewhat disconnected from the preceding sections, though it’s a provocative if unusual conclusion to what is otherwise a straightforward work of military history. 32 photos. (Sept.)

The commonplace view of Cuba’s prerevolutionary business establishment as a corrupt kleptocracy is revised in this intriguing history of the Bacardi rum company and its involvement in Cuban politics. NPR correspondent Gjelten (Sarajevo Daily) paints the 146-year-old distiller, once an icon of Cuban industry, as a model corporate citizen—efficient, innovative, socially responsible and union-tolerant. Its leaders were pillars of nationalist politics, he contends: company president Emilio Bacardi was a leader of Cuba’s rebellion against Spain, and in the 1950s CEO José Bosch helped fund Castro’s insurrection. (After Castro nationalized Bacardi’s Cuban holdings, Bosch started funding anti-Castro exiles.) Bacardi’s image as Cuban-nationalism-in-a-bottle becomes farcical when the company, now a multinational behemoth, fights an absurd court battle with Cuba’s state rum company over the “Havana Club” trademark. But Gjelten’s account of a liberal, progressive Cuban business clan complicates and enriches the conventional picture of a society torn between right and left dictatorships. (Sept.)

According to Man, in his second book this year after Terra Cotta Army, China’s Great Wall is really a series of walls, part stone, part rammed earth, that were built in different eras and do not form a continuous line. Traveling the wall end to end from Mongolia to Lanzhou, the capital of China’s Gansu province, Man learns that the first Great Wall sprang from the towering ambition and brutal policies of the first emperor, Zheng, who around 214 B.C. repaired and joined up a collection of little walls totaling 2,500 kilometers in length. In 1138, China’s Jin rulers built 4,000 kilometers of wall, but the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, burst through the wall in the 13th century and stayed for 150 years. To ensure that they never returned, the 15th-century Ming Dynasty built its wall. Mao co-opted the wall, which no longer served any defense purpose, as a symbolic monument to the achievement of ordinary, suffering people. This engrossing and well-researched history of China’s most famous architectural project whets the reader’s appetite to tread in Man’s footsteps. Photos, maps. (Sept.)

Grand unification theories have long been a holy grail in science. Nobel Prize–winning physicist Wilczek, who has himself made notable contributions in this field, offers a survey of everything in the universe from quarks to black holes, elucidating the current scientific thinking on how matter and energy interact. The two main concepts are the “Grid” and the “Core.” Wilczek says the grid is a conceptual descendant of ether, that mysterious substance scientists once believed filled empty space. Now some physicists theorize that space is highly structured by the grid, which is the “primary ingredient of physical reality” and the substance from which all physical matter is formed. Core theory, on the other hand, provides a “theory of everything,” reconciling gravity with electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Wilczek reports a couple of problems with core theory: it’s not very elegant (scientists love elegance in their equations), and it hasn’t been reconciled with string theory. This book is not for most general readers, but will be a hit with hard-core science buffs. Photos, illus. (Sept.)

A physician, medical historian and bioethicist, Martensen pulls no punches: beyond the marvels of modern medical technology “lies a treacherous morass of ethical, moral and spiritual dilemmas most of us are not ready to even consider: whether to opt for aggressive treatments, when to stop them, and how to die “well.” Too often the choice of aggressive treatment and heroic measures becomes an extended “death by intensive care”’ in grim hospital units designed more like prisons than places of healing. Thoughtful and compassionate, Martensen narrates poignant case studies, such as that of Marguerite, who undergoes ineffective surgeries and drug trials for advanced breast cancer but has debilitating side effects. The author lays blame across the board, from patients with unrealistic expectations and doctors who don’t explain treatment options fully, from profit-driven hospitals to an insurance bureaucracy that spurns routine health maintenance. Martensen makes his case with clear, compelling writing that never flinches from his conclusion that some things you just can’t “win the battle against”; you can only hope for quality of life until the end. (Sept.)

In these exquisitely rendered essays, Dodd (Archetypal Light) explores the intersections of the arts and the natural world, often coming up with unexpected and insightful conclusions. Dodd serves as an inviting guide to everything from the ancient mammoth cave paintings of Chauvet in France to the joys of owning a wood-stove. Drawing from various sources, Dodd creates a cohesive network of connections between mediums and ideas, as in the essay “Cañonicity,” which smoothly interweaves personal reflections on the southwestern landscape with an analysis of Georgia O’Keeffe’s early paintings of that region. Dodd’s adventures and reflections often center on the desire to understand the world inhabited by our primitive ancestors. In essays such as “Aspects,” in which she searches for a mastodon cave drawing in Moab, Utah, she ponders the past with an acute melancholy. Dodd displays her English professor chops in the essay “Cold Meditations,” which contemplates the world of Beowulf in relation to the author’s personal isolation and study of nature. Most characteristically, “In Situ” combines a stirring travelogue through Colorado with prolonged meditations on the wider meanings of art. (Sept.)

Virginia Woolf is a feminist icon, and her husband, Leonard, was a committed socialist and supporter of workers’ rights. Yet, says Light, in this fresh take on Bloomsbury, the couple perpetuated the class system by paying a pittance to their charwoman. In her attempt to restore the servants to the Bloomsbury story, Light also ruminates about whether the dependence of Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell, on their assorted live-in maids and cooks plays havoc with the idealized image of them as “bohemian, free women creating a new kind of life.” Light also dissects Woolf’s fictional servants as a window into contemporary social class prejudices and delves into the personal histories of Woolf’s servants in context with their peers. British scholar Light (Forever England), the granddaughter of a live-in domestic, often seems to be pushing a personal agenda, and her insistence that without the hard work of the servants there would have been no Bloomsbury is unconvincing, yet her analyses of both the Bloomsbury notables and the servant class of their time are deft and engrossing. Illus. (Sept.)

This look at America’s aspirations, challenges and achievements as depicted on commemorative postage stamps is delivered in elegant layouts. Since 1847, more than 4,000 stamps have celebrated 500 years of American history, and the selection here is displayed in 300 color reproductions. Almost every stamp is substantially enlarged to show details and they are thematically organized, e.g., “Discovery and Exploration” (the New World and the 13 colonies), “Manifest Destiny” (how pioneers pushed westward) and “These United States” (a stamp for every state). Historical highlights span centuries, from Columbus’s voyage to the moon landing, with stamps honoring everything from steamships to Elvis. Interspersed throughout is a feature, “The Story Behind the Stamp,” looking at particular stamps in depth. Curiously, only a few illustrators of what the U.S. Postal Service’s stamp development manager McCaffrey calls “miniature masterpieces” are identified. However, the first-class packaging and presentation could prompt tourists at Washington’s Union Station to step across the street and visit the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, the main source for the stamp images in this beautiful book. (Sept.)

In this well-researched and eminently readable study, journalist Scarf (Intimate Partners) plunges into the lives of married people between the ages of 50 and 75, inquiring how their partnerships have changed, been renegotiated, reframed and refreshed as increased longevity has added up to three decades to the span of an average marriage. Conducting in-depth interviews with seven couples, the author poses perceptive and challenging questions to her subjects, asking how they have weathered difficulties, affairs, health problems, how they have “disappointed or surprised each other over time” and what are the “major sexual issues that emerge at this time of life.” The results, though hardly surprising (financial worries, lack of sexual desire and compromise are all recurring themes), are nonetheless stimulating, not least because these couples are so open, a testament to Scarf’s skills as an interviewer. Her case studies are interspersed with chunks of data and interpretations that lend welcome empirical backup to her claims and add authority to this fascinating overview of an unexplored topic that should appeal to couples of all ages. (Sept.)

The authors of this “anti-dating dating book” start out by trashing their competition, the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus/eHarmony dating industry, which, they claim, “are mixed drinks made with equal parts hubris and phoniness” and flatter and delude rather than providing a dose of tough love. Instead, Holloway and Robinson help the reader navigate the tricky world of dating (that “unfortunate yet necessary social endeavor”) without facile advice, adopting a wry, sardonic tone in chapter headings such as “The Death of Romance (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Paying Half As Much Rent” and “It’s Not Me, It’s You—and Your Erectile Dysfunction.” Their approach is refreshing, and they address every aspect of romantic etiquette—from online seduction to foolproof breakup lines. Though the hip older sibling shtick begins to grate by the book’s end, there is more than enough solid content to guide even the most timorous dater back into the fold. (Sept.)

A fall from a loft bed left author Shulman’s 75-year-old husband with traumatic brain injury and utterly dependent on his wife, as she recounts in this deeply affecting memoir of their ordeal together. The fall in the summer of 2004 in their Maine seaside cottage inflicted numerous broken bones, internal bleeding and blood clots to Scott York’s brain, causing damage that Shulman gradually learned would take years to heal and probably cause permanent memory loss. Advocating for the best treatment, therapy and eventual care back in their New York City loft became the author’s “calling” for the next year, though to her growing dismay she recognized that her once brilliant husband, a sculptor and former financier, would never make art again or even be able to hold an intellectual conversation. His impairment is rendered particularly poignant as Shulman (Drinking the Rain and Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen), moves backward in time over their 50-year relationship, first as college lovers in 1950, meeting up again in 1984, when as divorced adults in their 50s they rekindled their passion and mutual interests and got married. Carving out time for herself and her writing kept her from having a nervous breakdown, and while her hope at times flagged, Shulman’s devotion never faltered, as demonstrated by her candid account. (Sept.)

Everitt’s mother, Sylvia, was grieving after the death of her second husband in 2000, when an acquaintance sent her a clipping about the WWII death of her first husband, Sam Kramer. Everitt (A Shadow of Red) had never known much about his mother’s first love, but suddenly found himself curious. Fortunately, Sylvia, who was willing to reminisce, had a well-preserved cache of Sam’s letters, enabling Everitt to piece together the bittersweet story of this wartime romance. After the war broke out, Sylvia, a Brooklyn College graduate, took a job in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she met Sam. Tight budgets meant a lot of dates with long walks and conversations; they came to know each other very well. When Sam was called up for military training in October 1943, they decided to marry. A year later, Sam shipped out to the European theater, and was killed in an ambush just days before the German surrender. Sylvia was shattered, but went to work with the Red Cross rehabilitating blinded veterans, where she met the man who became her second husband. In the end, Everitt has told a brief though sweet story. (Sept.)

Translated into English after more than 60 years of near-obscurity, Humbert’s firsthand account of her work for the resistance in occupied Paris and her subsequent arrest and deportation to a forced-labor camp in Germany is an invaluable addition to works highlighting the role of women during wartime. At the fall of Paris, Humbert verges on despondency until she hears de Gaulle’s broadcast calling for all Frenchmen to carry on the struggle. Prompted to action, she begins networking, bringing together some of the key figures of the resistance, including Boris Vildé and Pierre Brossolette, with whose help she and others produce the underground liberation newspaper, Résistance. But the indelibility of the human spirit is most fully revealed in Humbert’s account of her imprisonment, during which she retains her dignity amid the humiliating circumstances through small, individual acts of resistance such as sabotaging the work she does in the labor camps. She also provides heartfelt testament to numerous other women in the prison, many of whom were arrested for helping French and British soldiers escape. In a fair-minded account, Humbert relays the atrocities of the Third Reich as well as the sympathy of some of the camp inmates’ captors (Sept.)

When Bill Walsh took over coaching duties for the San Francisco 49ers in the late 1970s, the team was arguably the worst in the NFL—and he was stuck trying to shake a rep that he lacked what it took to lead a pro team. Within two years, the 49ers had won the Super Bowl (against Walsh’s former employers, the Cincinnati Bengals, no less) and were well on their way to becoming the “team of the ’80s.” Harris’s biography is grounded by extensive interviews with Walsh, but the players and others who were there bring nuance to the portrait, revealing that the “Genius” who was admired for his confident demeanor on game day could also be a brittle, insecure personality off the field. While game highlights do appear, equal attention is paid to Walsh’s team-building skills, with lengthy analyses of his selections from the college draft pool—including Joe Montana, an underappreciated college quarterback who became one of the game’s all-time greats. Harris clearly knows his football, but the personal drama of Walsh’s career is told with such verve that even nonfans will be riveted. (Sept. 2)

Capouya (Real Men Do Yoga) affectionately chronicles the life of the infamous “Gorgeous George” Wagner. Born in 1915, Wagner learns the ropes as a grappling carny at Sylvan Beach Amusement Park near Houston. During a stint on the “grunt-and-groan” circuit in Oregon, the wrestler meets his future wife Betty Hanson, whose handiness with textiles and hair dye transforms the likable “babyface” into a gender-bending aristocrat of the ring, a “heel” whom crowds love to hate. His antics off the mat (Wagner holds all his press conferences in local beauty shops where he has his tresses “marcelled” before matches) and on (George takes 10 minutes to fold and refold his robe between perfumings) whips jeering crowds into frenzies. The histrionic, inexpensively staged sport proved, between 1948 and 1955, to be a perfect fit for the new medium of television. Although some of his psychoanalysis feels gratuitous, Capouya vividly portrays the ins and outs of wrestling and his own struggle to maintain the “Gorgeousness” of a public life in his private life as well. (Sept.)

The mundane tasks and indignant exchanges with impossible customers are hilariously captured in this collection of personal essays by a cross-section of writers and humorists. Some, like a spa attendant’s dishy tale, are spun with a catty flair and flirt with a mild contempt for frivolous consumers; others, like Wendy Spero’s turn as a door-to-door knife seller, are outrageously funny and incorporate life lessons in the litany of humiliations. Breezy and occasionally creepy musings on everything from guilt over serving fattening Swedish pancakes to seniors to the horrors of working at Sears may provide some nostalgic chuckles and perhaps even some unpleasant flashbacks as this collection elevates retail selling to a rite of passage. Two stories in particular that have less to do with the frustrations of the job and more about the impact of the experience on future endeavors: Hollie Gillespie recounts her days as an industrious child entrepreneur and maintains her steadfast optimism in humanity, and the memories of writer and one-time drummer Jim DeRogatis, who passed the time—but never worked—in a local music store reveals the enduring influence of a mentoring shop owner and achieves true poignancy. (Sept.)

Palmisano, an attorney and physician, uses historical and modern-day leadership examples—both good and bad—to show that effective leadership can be taught. He focuses on characteristics he believes to be the essential elements of true leadership—persistence, creativity, decisiveness, skillful utilization of information technology—and he offers a set of easy-to-follow steps to becoming a successful leader based on principles gleaned from personal experiences and the leadership failures and successes of prominent individuals (Rudy Giuliani) and events (Hurricane Katrina). Particularly helpful are the chapters on various forms of communication—written, with media, in meetings and public speaking—and interpersonal relationships, the latter centered on learning to listen, dealing with people in top positions and selecting members of a team. Each chapter includes a “Lessons Learned” section in which key points are distilled for easy reference. Additional topics include using the past as a foundation for success, courage and truth. Informative and well-written, this book will appeal to managers at all levels looking to become effective leaders and will be especially helpful to those just entering the management arena. (Sept.)

More than a cookbook, this debut from acclaimed Philadelphia chef/restaurateur Vetri is a guide through the particular Italian cuisine and culture on which he has based his career. In brief memoir-style essays, Vetri describes the Lombardy taverna education that transformed a struggling jazz guitarist with a keen interest in his family’s native cuisine into the creator of what some critics have called America’s best Italian eateries. Repaying the generosity of his mentors, Vetri opens up his kitchen, too, including his signature dishes: impossibly light spinach gnocchi, sweet onion crepes and rustic stewed rabbit over polenta. Trusty sommelier Jeff Benjamin provides wine notes for each. While Vetri presumes that the reader has a fairly sophisticated palate and an expansive amount of free time to cook, Prep Ahead and Improv tips included for many dishes invite creative variations and allow for the occasional skipped step. And as exotic as veal sweetbreads with rhubarb and crispy brain Milanese might sound, dishes like a cucumber salad spiked with ribbons of preserved lemon or salt-baked whole fish lavished in a truffle-butter sauce are relatively simple. Amateur chefs may have only dreamed of having a culinary journey like Vetri’s, but with this book he has given them a reliable key to turning dream into reality. (Oct.)

While many Americans have encountered the French term prix fixe, the similar, Spanish concept of Menú del Día may not be as familiar. Traditionally a midday meal of three courses (including dessert), the Menú del Día is offered at many Spanish restaurants for a set price. Daft loosely translates the concept for the home cook, offering five solid chapters (including first and second courses and desserts, along with helpful sections covering ingredients and condiments) that include plates that can be mixed and matched, or served solo. Recipes begin with extensive headnotes, chock-full of Spanish culinary and cultural information showing the author’s expertise and passion for his subject. The usual yet well-loved first-course suspects—gazpacho and paella—are mixed in among dishes that may be new to the American cook, such as Alboronía (quince, squash and eggplant in tomato sauce), and Ajo Blanco (cold almond and garlic soup with grapes). Second courses offer recipes for pigeon, oxtail and partridge (along with instructions for killing a live spiny lobster) that may intimidate beginning cooks, yet a range of recipes ensures there’s something for all skill levels. Quirky yet sophisticated illustrations and a gift-appropriate size make this a worthy international culinary title. (Sept.)

The authors (Levin is a professor of education; Kilbourne, an authority on the effects of advertising) accuse the media of sexualizing children. Constantly, American children are exposed to a barrage of sexual images in television, movies, music and the Internet. They are taught young that buying certain clothes, consuming brand-name soft drinks and owning the right possessions will make them sexy and cool—and being sexy and cool is the most important thing. Young men and women are spoon-fed images that equate sex with violence, paint women as sexually subservient to men and encourage “hooking up” rather than meaningful connections. The result is that kids are having sex younger and with more partners than ever before. Eating disorders and body image issues are common as early as grade school. Levin and Kilbourne stress that there is nothing wrong with a young person’s natural sexual awakening, but it is wrong to allow a young person’s sexuality to be hijacked by corporations who want them as customers. The authors offer advice on how parents can limit children’s exposure to commercialized sex, and how parents can engage kids in constructive, age-appropriate conversation about sex and the media. One need only read the authors’ anecdotes to see why this book is relevant. (Sept.)

Riley (The Defiant Child and The Depressed Child) offers answers as to why some children are especially prone to violent meltdowns, paired with techniques that train a child to avoid such outbreaks. According to Riley, a clinical psychologist, there are several reasons a child may explode: a kid with “road map issues” may become unglued when confronted with anything unexpected, while a child with unknown allergies can be adversely affected by certain foods. A child may be defiant and in need of discipline, or suffering from ADHD and in need of special handling. Once parents determine why a little one explodes, the book offers appropriate solutions for modifying the behavior. Riley’s approach for dealing with explosive children is sympathetic without being overindulgent. A certain amount of hard work is required by the parents, who will generally have to change the way they respond to their offspring’s outbursts. That said, Riley is not a particularly charismatic writer; even his case studies of epically explosive children read rather drily. Still, his sensible, well-structured, age-appropriate advice may be able to help many frustrated parents. (Sept.)

Bernstein, a neurologist who suffered her first migraines in her 20s, teaches at Harvard Medical School and is on staff at the Cambridge Health Alliance, where she founded the Women’s Headache Center. With journalist McArdle, she presents a clear and comprehensive analysis of the migraine brain. Noting that there are about 30 million migraine sufferers in the U.S., Bernstein reveals that migraine is a complex neurological disease that affects the central nervous system. A severe headache is just one of its symptoms: others may be nausea, vomiting, visual changes or sensitivity to light or sound: the authors help readers identify the triggers that can bring on an attack (such as stress, insufficient sleep, menstrual periods or a host of other factors). Bernstein then helps the “migraineur” develop a personalized plan to “prevent, abort, or rescue.” The authors include research on the new “triptan” meds, which can interrupt the neurochemical reaction of an attack and halt a migraine in its tracks, as well as info on preventive medications (i.e., beta-blockers and antidepressants) and such alternative methods as biofeedback and acupuncture. Bernstein approaches the reader as she might patients—“creatively, scientifically and sympathetically”—offering a range of tactics and treatments to help migraine sufferers control and mitigate their pain. (Sept.)

Eden (Energy Medicine) conducts workshops and lectures on the ancient practice of healing the body via its own energy systems. The first two chapters of her latest book serve as a primer, introducing nine basic energy systems, including the chakras, the meridians and the aura. Eden explains how keeping these energy systems balanced and flowing can help prevent illness, promote well-being and aid the body in self-healing. She also notes that while energy healing has been labeled an alternative method, its influence and importance has been increasingly recognized by research scientists and mainstream physicians. Eden then delves into a fascinating chapter-by-chapter discussion of health issues of interest to women, ranging from hormones, menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy and fertility to menopause and weight management, with accompanying energy “exercises” related to each topic. Included are tips to relieve PMS symptoms and hot flashes, techniques that get sexual energy flowing and a variety of movements designed to maintain overall energy balance. Proponents of energy work will no doubt welcome Eden’s new book, and open-minded readers unfamiliar with the concept of energy medicine may be lured by methods that are noninvasive, free of charge and freely available at one’s own fingertips. (Aug.)

When Niedzinski, a suburban Michigan housewife and mother of six, moved into a century-old country farmhouse, she naïvely ordered a flock of Columbia sheep to match her New England Countryside decorating theme. Thus began 16 years of indoctrination into the finer arts of sheep care that included breeding rams, flushing, and the snip, dip, and clip ritual. To her children’s dismay, Niedzinski used the dinner hour to regale her family with the grittier details of shepherding, including cutting off newborns’ tails, adopting “bummer” rejected lambs into her blue-carpeted home and accepting that a sheep’s destiny is the slaughterhouse. But this is a Christian living book, not a farmer’s almanac. To that end, each chapter winsomely approaches the similarities between shepherding and its spiritual parallels found throughout the Bible, where a loving shepherd is needed to guide, protect and shelter humanity. Niedzinski so beautifully depicts her foray into shepherding that readers might be tempted to order a flock for their own spiritual instruction. (Oct. 14)

In the 1960s Stephen (Order of St. Helena) gave up the trappings of urban life to become an Episcopal nun. Forty years later, she recounts her spiritual journey within the context of an order in transition. While the impact of Vatican II on Catholic religious is well documented, that turbulent era’s influence on Anglicans is less familiar. Writing that “coming together and drawing apart are two main characteristics of the religious life,” Stephen gives us an unsentimental but loving glimpse of what it’s like to make a lifetime commitment to seeking God. The familiar topics of spiritual memoir are embedded in discussions of the purposes and practices of such an unconventional “lifestyle.” Balancing prayer and work; keeping the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; and living with companions one did not choose all draw her attention. Characterizing herself as a “truth-seeker,” Stephen is clear about some areas of her life and reticent about others (like her five years in an enclosed order). These reflections don’t fall into the mainstream of spiritual writing and are perhaps of most interest to those curious about contemporary life in a women’s religious community. (Oct.)

It’s difficult to associate the loneliness and downright mournfulness of the blues with the joyful teachings on salvation that often characterize the Christian religion. Yet in this splendid little book, theologian Nichols engagingly reminds us that the musical genre of the blues helps us to understand what theologians call redemption. Drawing on a wide range of blues singers and their lyrics, he blends the strains of the blues into the harmonies of theology and scripture in order to compose a new song about the powerful manner in which the blues prepare us for understanding the mercy and love of God. In songs such as Mississippi John Hurt’s “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” for example, the blues record the loneliness and the desolation the singer feels, and Nichols compares this to the desolation that Christ felt when God forsook him on the cross. Finally, in his mournful songs, Blind Lemon Jefferson juxtaposes the despair of failure with the hope that such failures can be overcome. Nichols’s elegant study offers fresh insights into the blues and their meaning for religion. (Sept.)

Meszler, rabbi of a Reform congregation in Sharon, Mass., has been interested in the role of men in Judaism since he first led a men’s study group as a newly ordained rabbi. This book is based on his experiences with such groups, mingled with modern psychology and Jewish teaching. He devotes a chapter each to Jewish men as sons, fathers and marriage partners, the term he prefers to “husband” since it reflects his belief that men and women ought to be equal and balanced in marriage. He argues persuasively that the roles of Jewish men can be greatly enhanced when hackneyed conventions yield to contemporary demands without abandoning basic Jewish tradition. Meszler concludes with two thoughtful chapters on the roles of men in the synagogue and in the Jewish community. He acknowledges what he calls the problem of “male flight” and recognizes that synagogues need to do more to persuade men to accept social responsibility within the Jewish community while maintaining their engagement in more general causes. Each chapter ends with a useful series of provocative questions. (Sept.)

This is not a book about the stages of grief, or the 10 steps to overcoming it. In fact, it’s more about suffering in general than bereavement in particular. Garrett (The Gospel According to Hollywood) draws on a summer he spent doing clinical pastoral education—a kind of boot camp for hospital chaplains—to discuss the age-old theodicy questions. The book challenges certain myths that American Christians have swallowed about God—e.g., that God is a transactional ATM who is obligated to dispense good things to the faithful, or that it’s Satan, not God, who makes rotten things happen. Some of these myths are eloquently debunked, while others—such as Americans’ persistent faith in consumerism and their ability to “buy” health and happiness—deserve more ink. Garrett scores points with the powerful stories of the hospital patients he prayed alongside of as well as his own autobiographical discussions of dealing with severe depression. Christians who are looking for theologically nuanced ways of thinking about suffering can learn much from this brief book. (Sept.)

Social psychologist Myers adds to the numerous apologetic texts that have emerged since the neoatheist movement began. But this quick jaunt into potentially dangerous waters is head and shoulders above the rest. The author admits that many people throughout history who have claimed to believe in God have caused much evil in the world. He is respectful of his atheist interlocutors, like Richard Dawkins, preferring to discuss how “Surely, in some ways I’m wrong, you’re wrong, we’re all wrong.” Believers and skeptics could learn much from each other, and the author’s willingness to build a bridge between two sometimes hostile territories is what makes his work so welcome. Myers’s psychological training enables him to grasp the human person in a unique way, and he is able to introduce an intellectual element into the God debate. While never attempting to prove that God exists, Myers works to show that religious people can be faithful and psychologically healthy. (Sept.)

Arterburn (Every Man’s Battle series) and Shore (I’m OK—You’re Not) have designed a thoroughly comprehensive and refreshingly engaging primer on foundational Christian tenets. Readers from across the spectrum of Christian experience (newbies, veterans and seekers alike) will find this biblical question-and-answer format compellingly practical. Although it is written from an evangelical perspective, other Christians will learn from it, too, and appreciate the authors’ clear approach. The book addresses specific, often thorny questions: how is God simultaneously Father, Son and Spirit? Why does God allow evil to exist? Why must Christians pray for their enemies? How are they to understand “fallen” Christian leaders? What is original sin? And how do confession, repentance and Christ’s atonement and resurrection play into the Christian’s daily faith journey? Arterburn and Shore further enhance their excellent guide with wit, humor and gentle pokes at the church’s foibles. Whether individuals are just wondering about God or serious in their religious pursuit, this book is a valuable resource. (Sept.)

The seven deadly sins and the New Testament’s seven beatitudes spoken by Jesus play against each other in this philosophy professor’s first book. Although both the beatitudes and the seven deadly sins are well-mined territory, the contribution of this book is the curious way they serve as foils for one another. They are “two realities, each vying for our affection.” Cook offers unique pairings throughout—envy and the mourner, gluttony and the persecuted, for example—as well as discussion that goes far beyond platitude and easy explanation. Greed isn’t about money, Cook says, but about “accumulation”; mercy, conversely, is “breathing out.” Lust is a substitute for real life, while purity is about freedom. Readers will find new ways to think about sin and its “summons into a dead life,” as well as the beatitudes and their invitation to life. Cook overwrites occasionally, making readers decipher his meaning, but overall he creates a unique comparison between living a life of hell and living a life of heaven. Study questions are provided. (Sept.)

Raised as an Orthodox Jew in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Shoshanna always struggled with the structure of not only her religion but her lifestyle. When a teacher exposed her to Zen in high school, she found happiness, then confusion, and then of course guilt. After a lifetime of studying Zen and returning in fits and starts to a devout Jewish observance, she has found a way to balance the contradictions of a religion that covets community and devotion to God with one that centers on the individual and the quest for the essential self. The story of her struggle, while interesting—and in some cases, deeply personal—lacks consistency. Despite chapter sections on “practice,” there are few tangible prescriptions, and readers looking for the how-to guide that’s promised in the subtitle may feel cheated. Shoshanna never quite finds the balance in writing for the casual seeker versus one already familiar with both Orthodox Judaism and Buddhism—and who wants, like her, to maintain a deep connection to both traditions. (Sept.)

Rabbi Wolpe (Making Loss Matter) joins the throngs of authors responding to the new atheists with defenses of faith. Yet rather than tense up about atheism, its defenders and their dismissive attitudes about people of faith, Wolpe answers these challenges with such kindness and thoughtfulness that even the heart of Christopher Hitchens might find itself warmed. Wolpe does not make his case for faith by hiding the darkest moments of Western traditions. Rather, he shines a light on religion’s deepest scars—for instance spending a good deal of time discussing the relationship between religion and violence—while at the same time showing how religions have also (almost) always been a force of good in the world. (Take Christianity’s extraordinary response to the tsunami in Indonesia, Wolpe explains.) With gentle, wonderfully engaging prose, Wolpe scrolls through history and shows how faith traditions don’t offer easy, simplistic answers for the intellectually weak, as the New Atheists imply. More often than not, religion sparks believers to ask even more difficult questions, while at the same time building a platform on which to live under a canopy of hope. (Sept.)

Trachtenberg (Seven Tattoos) wryly observes: “Everybody suffers, but Americans have the peculiar delusion that they’re exempt from suffering.” He shared in this denial until a friend died of cancer, and then he began to ask questions. “Most of these are unanswerable,” he admits. Why me? How do I endure? What is just? What does my suffering say about me? about God? And what do I owe those who suffer? This book is “a layman’s response” to unimaginable anguish, a collection of powerful stories rather than a philosophical treatise. Writing movingly about victims and survivors of natural disasters, war, genocide, domestic violence, addiction, illness, suicide and injustice, he deftly intermingles their stories with observations from religion, philosophy and literature. Not everyone will want to face this much misery, and Trachtenberg offers no easy solutions. His book, however, like Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, succeeds because it asks the right questions, calls on the experience of articulate witnesses and—through skillful narrative and trenchant observation—beguiles the reader into facing heartbreaking reality. (Aug. 27)

“America is coming to a tipping point, a critical crossroads after which no one will be able to avoid dealing with our growing religious diversity.” So writes Heckman, a seasoned director of interfaith programs and former executive director of Religions for Peace–USA. This book, which brings together five original essays filled with case studies on interreligious dialogue, serves as a primer to those who may be new to the movement or find themselves in need of fresh ideas. Its basic premise is that the elements of commonality between religions are greater than their differences. Heckman starts out with a glossary of important terms, which are followed by essays on different ways to facilitate engagement. Eboo Patel, who is called a “rock star” of the movement, contributes a piece on his Interfaith Youth Core. The volume closes with a brief review of the dozen or so most common world religions, a thorough list of interfaith organizations and a comprehensive bibliography. This book should be required reading for clergy and anyone else interested in furthering the cause of pluralism. (Aug.)

Signature

Reviewed by Edward Dolnick

Forgery is a strange crime because, until the police show up, the victims never know they’ve been done wrong. Muggings and thefts leave no such doubts.

Even so, forgers themselves are seldom captivating figures. Reliant on the artists they imitate, they give off only reflected light. Lee Israel specialized in forged letters. Over the course of two years (1991–1992), she churned out hundreds of brief letters supposedly written by the likes of Noël Coward, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and a host of lesser names from the suburbs of celebrity.

Most of the letters are mundane. That sounds like trouble, but Israel knew better. Her buyers didn’t mind. They didn’t want art; they wanted the whiff of authenticity. A few homey sentences only strengthened the illusion. Once Israel had tossed in a tiny joke and added a bold signature, she was home free. “I loved your flowers, thoughtful boy,” Edna Ferber supposedly wrote to an unnamed acquaintance. “They were waiting impatiently for me when I returned from Main Chance.”

But Israel overreached. When she turned from peddling her own fakes to selling genuine letters she had stolen from libraries (after substituting her forgeries), the FBI came calling. She tells her story briskly—at 128 small pages, the book is thin to the point of anorexia—and devotes more time to self-mockery than self-justification. Israel had learned to recognize a grabby letter in the course of researching celebrity biographies. She produced books on Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Kilgallen and Estée Lauder, then fell on hard times. She conned her way back to financial respectability by peddling gossipy, scandalous forgeries to “spectacularly incurious” dealers.

Crime hardly gets more small-time. Israel sold her letters for $100 each. The most famous literary forgers, like Clifford Irving, played for million-dollar stakes. Israel stuck to smaller game. She needed hardly any equipment beyond some vintage typewriters from a secondhand shop and a stack of biographies and collections of published letters. Then she plucked out the best lines, added a few innocuous sentences as padding and occasionally threw in one-liners of her own. “Can you ever forgive me?” is a line she put in the mouth of Dorothy Parker.

Two of Israel’s fakes made it into The Letters of Noël Coward, published in 2007. So she tells us, at any rate, and probably it is true. Israel reprints both letters; she might have copied them from the Coward volume, but that seems like a lot of trouble.

But who can be sure? The hard fate of forgers is that, even when they tell the truth, they find themselves caught like the boy who cried wolf. Illus. (Aug.)

Edward Dolnick won an Edgar award for The Rescue Artist. His new book, The Forger’s Spell, was just published by Harper.

Al Silverman recalls the days when books were books (not products or digital downloads).

From upstarts like Barney Rosset’s Grove Press to stalwarts like Harper (in various incarnations) under the decades-long direction of Cass Canfield, the great houses of what Silverman sees as publishing’s heyday are nostalgically portrayed, from the end of WWII through the early 1980s. Silverman, former longtime head of the Book-of-the-Month Club, calls his book a “love letter” to editors, and though he’s frank about people’s foibles (like Alfred and Blanche Knopf’s mercurial tempers), the tone is largely sentimental. Based on interviews with all the principals, he recounts feats of editorial genius, like how Tom McCormack made All Creatures Great and Small a blockbuster, which also made St. Martin’s a publishing force. And there are stories about the ones that got away (Simon Michael Bessie passed on Lolita), the struggles of women to move up the editorial ladder and the dissolution of great editorial teams as money got tight and houses were sold. It’s difficult to see the book’s appeal to industry outsiders, but for insiders in a difficult publishing era, it’s a delight to share these recollections of the days before Wall Street ruled Publishers Row. (Aug.)