Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 10/13/2008

-- Publishers Weekly, 10/13/2008

Dog Talk: Lessons Learned From a Life with Dogs
Harrison Forbes. St. Martin’s, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 9780312378738
In the newest life-with-dogs memoir, veteran dog trainer and radio show co-host Forbes forgoes the maudlin for some genuine insight into dog behavior and psychology. Beginning with Lex, a German Shepherd that attacked its owner’s wife, Forbes chronicles the challenges and victories of rehabilitating and living with aggressive dogs that others would have given up on. Forbes doesn’t offer a program for dog training, but readers will benefit from his insights on the importance of a consistent training regimen and his approach to managing aggression. Arguing that dogs' behavior is 75 percent genetic and 25 percent environmental, Forbes doesn’t offer any pat answers to handling a challenging dog besides a lot of patience and hard work. Still, those interested in the hows and whys of dog attacks and aggression will find the book useful, and Forbes’ tone of love and respect for his charges is itself both instructive and encouraging. (Oct.)

A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
Alex Beam. Public Affairs, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 9781586484873
Before the dawn of the television age, in an ambitious effort to enlighten the masses via door-to-door sales, Encyclopedia Britannica and the University of Chicago launched the Great Books of Western Civilization, “all fifty-four volumes of them… purporting to encompass all of Western knowledge from Homer to Freud.” Led by the “intellectual Mutt ’n’ Jeff act” of former University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins and his sidekick Mortimer Adler, the Great Books briefly, and improbably, caught the nation's imagination. In his discussion, Boston Globe columnist Beam looks at how and why this multi-year project took shape, what it managed to accomplish (or not), and the lasting effects it had on college curricula (in the familiar form of Dead White Males). Beam (Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital) describes meetings endured by the selection committee, and countless debates over Euripedes, Herodotus, Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens and Whitman (“When it comes to Great Books, no one is without an opinion.”), but tells it like it is regarding the Syntopicon they devised—at “3,000 subtopics and 163,000 separate entries, not exactly a user-friendly compendium”—and the resulting volumes, labeling them “icons of unreadability—32,000 pages of tiny, double-column, eye-straining type.” By lauding the intent and intelligently critiquing the outcome, Beam offers an insightful, accessible and fair narrative on the Great Books, its time, and its surprisingly significant legacy. (Nov.)

Holy Roller: Growing Up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus: A Childhood Memoir
Diane Wilson. Chelsea Green, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 9781933392820
In her latest, shrimper and memoirist Wilson (An Unreasonable Woman) unspools the tale of her 1950s small-town upbringing along the Gulf Coast of Texas, the daughter of third-generation shrimpers. As in her first book, Wilson writes with a stylized cadence, sans extraneous punctuation, that readers will either take to or not: “Grandma ate Fritos in a glass of buttermilk for dinner and supper and that plus giving the radio evangelist all her shrimp-heading money was driving two of her daughters batty and two not so much.” Her father, “a man’s man [who] didn’t talk unnecessarily to women,” and is always off shrimping, leaves her to be raised by her eccentric mother and grandmother (“the original Waste Not Want Not-er… nothing was so low that it didn’t get cooked into something else”), who nevertheless imbue her with strong, transcendent values. Meanwhile, a cast of characters that includes her Pentecostal Aunt Silver (“Pentecostals had faith and faith was the absence of planning”) and a snake-handling Brother Dynamite lead her through a clash between the Church of Jesus Loves You and an upstart backwoods congregation. Wilson’s distinctive voice makes for some whip-smart passages, and her southern Gothic world, a colorful and unpredictable place, is fully identifiable in its commitment to vice-tight family love and responsibility to some higher power. (Oct.)

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America
Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27.95 (448p) ISBN 9780374166854
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World Is Flat) is still an unrepentant guru of globalism, despite the looming economic crisis attributable, in Friendman’s view, to the U.S. having become a “subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity.” Friedman covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the “most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation…. There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit.” While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a “floor price for crude oil or gasoline,” and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: “America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble.” To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to “outgreen” China, modeled on Kennedy’s proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of “petrodicatorship” and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman’s earlier books. (Sept.)

The Hurricanes: One High School Team’s Homecoming After Katrina
Jeré Longman. PublicAffairs, $26 (368p) ISBN 9781586486730
A year after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the lower end of New Orleans’ Plaquemines Parish, a peninsula housing one of the nation’s most isolated and vulnerable counties, students from several demolished area schools set aside their rivalries at newly created South Plaquemines High. Cyril Crutchfield Jr., former coach at Port Sulphur High, took over the new school’s football team—called, naturally, the Hurricanes—and led a ragtag group of players, living in FEMA trailers and lifting weights in a crumbling gymnasium, to the 2006 state playoffs. In 2007, the Hurricanes made another bid for the state championship, and New York Times sports writer Longman (Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back) was granted exclusive access to every down. The result is an unflinching and often unflattering chronicle that reads like the series of newspaper articles it began as. It’s clear that Longman, a native Louisianan, immersed himself in the local culture, and his insistence on providing political and social context makes this much more than a sports book. Unfortunately, Logman gets bogged down in that context ( as in nearly 20 pages on oyster farming), trying to make a big story—full of heart, sacrifice and the kind of American stories for which “inspired by” movies are made—even bigger. (Sept.)

I Was a Potato Oligarch: Travels and Travails in the New Russia
John Mole. Nicholas Brealey, $17.95 paper (352p) ISBN 9781857885095
In this funny travel memoir, entrepreneur Mole (It’s All Greek to Me!) recounts his adventures as an “international development consultant” in post-Soviet Russia. Ever chasing the next “Big One,” Mole finds himself hawking a stuffed baked potato fast food franchising scheme in the midst of an economic meltdown. Along with Russian pals Misha and Oleg, Mole learns that finding a decent potato in Russia is nearly as hard as securing financing there. Mole drinks, bluffs and bribes his way across missile bases, spud farms, and the business lecture circuit. While often witty, Mole, it becomes apparent, does sympathize with the various average Russians he meets struggling to make a living: one older woman from Yekaterinburg trying to sell a single possession—a left shoe; a biochemist dedicates his life “to one little bug” while working on a “couple of wooden tables, a few test tubes and other bits and pieces out of a decent chemistry set.” (Oct.)

In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension
Dan Falk. St. Martin’s, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 9780312374785
Beginning with a 5000-year-old tomb in Drogheda, Ireland, illuminated only at the winter solstice, science writer Falk asks the question,“What is time?... the stuff that flows… [or] a dimension, like space?” Falk (Universe on a T-Shirt) explores the origins of calendar time, from primitive astronomical observatories to the precision clocks of today. Though the movement of the heavens provided the basis for years, months, days and even the seven-day week, it wasn't until the Catholic Church needed to date important events like Easter that reconciling the lunar and solar calendars became a major concern; as such, the Church became “one of the strongest supporters of precision astronomy and timekeeping.” Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations (“Chaucer had no notion of the length of a minute; Shakespeare did but nowhere does he mention the second”) and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time. Rounding out his multi-course feast, Falk contrasts Newton’s notion of “[a]bsolute, true, and mathematical” time with Einstein’s final words in 1955, “the distinction of past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,” to present modern speculations on black holes and the universe's future. (Oct.)

Maybe Baby: An Infertile Love Story
Matthew M.F. Miller. Health Communications, $14.95 paper (224p) ISBN 9780757307485
For as long as he could remember, Miller had wanted to be a father, “wanted something better for something that would be a part of me.” Based on a blog of the same name, this memoir charts the ups and downs as Miller and his wife, Constance, attempt a conception. In broad but deft strokes, Miller chronicles their faithful attempts at baby-making, writing about their decision finally to forgo birth control, the string of negative pregnancy tests, the promise and frustration of fertility treatments, the grasping for answers: “Nine months and nine menstrual cycles had now passed… we knew that morning intercourse could no longer be deemed a fail-safe solution for our inability to conceive.” Miller’s anxiety to become a father—as opposed to anxiety over having to be a father—is refreshing, and he generates significant sympathy. As in life, however, month after month of unsuccessful attempts can become repetitive and discouraging for readers, who probably could use a tighter edit. (Oct.)

When I Grow Up: A Memoir
Juliana Hatfield. Wiley, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 9780470189597
From her humble beginnings as a Berklee College of Music piano student to her brief critical success in the 1990s alternative rock explosion to her latest side project, Some Girls, first-time author Hatfield chronicles more than three storied decades in professional music. Alternating between a present-day cross-country tour and recollections from earlier years, the result is a mixed, overstuffed bag. Hatfield, raised, trained and tested (first as pop trio Blake Babies) in Boston, charmingly recollects her experience as a serious female musician with no desire to appear sexualized before her audience; readers will cringe alongside her as she awkwardly rejects a hotel room photo-shoot suggestion: “Why did they always want me to jump up and down on the bed? Were photographers constantly nudging Kurt Cobain to jump up and down on beds?” Hatfield makes a compelling witness to the alternative rock boom ushered in by Nirvana’s success, and is both lucid and thorough explaining the bureaucratic minutiae of the music industry’s new world order, dominated by the massive influence of star-maker Clear Channel. As a writer, Hatfield is humble and personable, if at times tedious; a clunky, symbolic prologue—about being unable to buy a pre-show shot of Patron with her club-issued drink tickets—is an early indicator of the book’s need for further edit. Still, fans of Hatfield’s bratty, bedeviled pop stylings should enjoy these glimpses into her life. (Sept.)

LIFESTYLE

Chef Jeff Cooks: In the Kitchen with America’s Inspirational New Culinary Star
Jeff Henderson. Scribner, $27 (288p) ISBN 9781416577102
In his bestselling memoir Cooked, Henderson chronicled his improbable rise from drug dealer to professional chef; here, he returns to his favorite topic—himself—for a cookbook-paean to home cooking, fortunately filled out with family-pleasing recipes. Though happy to name-drop the great restaurants he’s cooked for, Henderson shares virtually no fine dining recipes, instead focusing on classic home cooking: Big Mac’s Meat Loaf, peanut butter cookies, pineapple upside down cake and a handful of simple but flavorful sandwiches and salads. When he lets the food do the talking, Henderson is a patient and insightful teacher, ideal for those new to the kitchen and complete with ideas for stretching budgets and pantries. A doting parent, Henderson frequently lightens up entrees by substituting, for instance, ground turkey for beef in his chili or soy yogurt for a parfait. Other kid-friendly favorites like Macaroni and Smoked Cheddar Cheese, grilled corn and a simple fruit salad should please. When he does stray from the standard, results are usually interesting, as in his Sweet Corn Vinaigrette dressing and a rich and velvety sweet potato soup (though readers should pause before drizzling ketchup atop his ground beef tacos). Those looking for an introductory cookbook or some simple family-pleasing meals will find them in these flavorful, to-the-point recipes; Henderson’s self-aggrandizing shtick, however, remains tiresome. (Oct.)

Deep Dark Chocolate: Decadent Recipes for the Serious Chocolate Lover
Sara Perry with Jane Zwinger. Chronicle, $18.95 paper (196p) ISBN 9780811860895
Veteran cookbook author Perry (Holiday Baking, Everything Tastes Better with Bacon, The New Tea Book) returns with a winning take on everyone’s favorite sweet. Chocolate lovers can start their day off with the indulgent, gooey Chocolate Sticky Buns or Chocolate Dream Scones with Mascarpone Spread before breaking out the Vin Santo and Brioche Chocolate Bread Pudding at brunch and snacking throughout the day on various cookies and bars. Desserts are where chocolate really shines, and Perry doesn’t disappoint with dishes like a Chocolate Gingerbread with Cacao Nib Whipped Cream cake, “Baby Loves,” a chocolate-filled macaroon, as well as Good Ol’ Fudgy Brownies and the “It’s My Party” Birthday Cake. Eschewing time and labor-intensive recipes, Perry offers an easy greatest-hits list, with 6 variations for hot chocolate, a fondue for every season and simple Mom’s Frozen Fudge Pops for summertime. While there are already more than enough cookbooks devoted to the topic, the approachability and breadth of Perry’s sweet, inventive collection make it worth the indulgence. (Oct.)

The Illustrated Kitchen Bible: 1,000 Family Recipes from Across the World
Edited by Victoria Blashford-Snell. DK, $35 (544p) ISBN 9780756639747
Veteran UK cookbook author and caterer Blashford-Snell (Diva Cooking, One Year at Books for Cooks) shares over a thousand recipes in this colossal “category-killer” dedicated to everyday food. Given the full-color, highly-informative DK treatment, each recipe is accompanied by a photo of the finished dish as well as at-a-glance information boxes with serving yields and approximate times. Those intimidated by the kitchen will find help in clear but detailed steps and straightforward, illustrated instructions for techniques like cutting up a whole chicken, prepping artichokes and making sauces. Blashford-Snell’s catering experience is on display in the book’s imaginative appetizer and “party bites” section; Wild Mushroom Tartlets, Chicken Liver Pate, Herbed Shrimp and Goat Cheese Wraps and multiple riffs on Croustades, a bite-sized bread cup filled with various savory creations, are easy to prepare and surefire hits. Every food group and cuisine is represented—from bread-making to burger-grilling to pad thai to Chocolate Bavarian Creams—and it’s rounded out with tips on making grilled sandwiches and omelets, “cooking for a crowd” and working with leftovers, making it a fine choice for a first cookbook. Once they’re comfortable, cooks should be tempted from their comfort zone with tasty variations, making this a go-to staple and a volume to grow with. (Oct.)

The Science of Good Food: The Ultimate Reference on How Cooking Works
David Joachim and Andrew Schloss. Robert Rose, $37.95 paper (624p) ISBN 9780778801894
Though it doesn't quite live up to the "ultimate reference on how cooking works" claim, Joachim and Schloss' encyclopedic guide to all things food is a welcome culinary reference. Alphabetically arranged, cross-referenced entries like “citrus,” “game,” “juice,” “roasting” and “sweeteners,” allow readers to navigate deftly the book’s trove of information. The authors explain not only how techniques like frying work, they also give readers the chance to make Perfect French Fries with their newfound knowledge. Over 100 recipes bring scientific data to life, most dramatically in examples like Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream and Coconut Sweet Potato Foam, more practically in gluten-free flour and low-fat brownies (substituting dried plums for butter). Armchair chefs will enjoy learning why a whole potato cooks more quickly in boiling water than in a 500 degree oven, the difference between wet and dry-cured hams, and the secrets to making a smooth, creamy custard. The book's range is admirable, but its depth erratic; the entry on bacteria and food contamination is much too brief, and readers are sure to find that their favorite fruit/ingredient/technique doesn't get the attention they feel it deserves (hoisin, for example, merits an entry, but soy sauce is an afterthought; teriyaki and ponzu are absent). Still, this admirable endeavor deserves a spot next to Alton Brown’s Good Eats and Harold McGee's classic On Food and Cooking. (Oct.)

ILLUSTRATED

Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art
Russell Howze. Manic D, $24.99 (192p) ISBN 9781933149226
In his introduction, Chris Carlsson praises grafitti's power to invoke “millennia-old art forms..., pre-literate and pre-industrial signage... [and] the chasms of the digital divide”; stencil documentarian D.S Black describes it more simply as “comments and critiques sketched into the margins of everyday life.” Those views neatly ground this vibrant exploration of a sub-sub-genre that is, arguably, art at its most inherently political. As a means of expression for the disenfranchised, a legitimate form deserving equal gallery space, or an illegal act of vandalism that encourages criminal behavior, stencil graffiti is considered thoughtfully in several essays. The text also includes testimony from some of the form's best artists, a compact but detailed chronology, discussion of commonly used materials and tips for the novice. Still, the images are the book’s biggest appeal, reproduced in crisp color images. From London-based stencil-art icon Banksy’s detailed image of a police officer frisking a little girl to Dwell's paper urinals in Montreal to gallery shows in Barcelona and San Francisco, this volume crosses the globe for a swift tour of the world's best artists, making it a handsome and insightful introduction to the form. (Oct.)

FICTION

An Ice Cold Paradise: A Harry Pines Novel
Terry Holland. Point Blank, $17.95 paper (228p) ISBN 9780809572427
Holland’s uneven debut, the first in a series, introduces ex-con turned PI Harry Pines. A larger-than-life figure, Pines has benefited from a series of lucky breaks after his release from prison, including winning enough money at the horse track to buy a house in the town of Kailua on Oahu. Valerie Sabatino, a gorgeous and fabulously wealthy attorney, asks Pines for help tracking down her missing nephew, Danny MacGillicuddy, whose father was Pines’s former cellmate. MacGillicuddy, a soldier stationed on the island, has gone AWOL under circumstances that make his aunt fear the worst. After this intriguing set-up, Pines gets on the trail of some violent Mormon fundamentalists but soon finds himself in stock situations involving fire fights and hostage-taking. An abrupt ending reminiscent of Diamonds Are Forever may leave some readers scratching their heads. Still, Holland’s prose is good enough to suggest he can deliver more nuanced characters and a less predictable plot in the sequel. (Oct.)

Extreme Measures
Vince Flynn. Atria, $27.95 (448p) ISBN 9780743270427
Any hope this contrived thriller had of suspending disbelief for most readers who weren’t already fans of bestseller Flynn’s Mitch Rapp series (Protect and Defend, etc.) is lost early on. Rapp’s CIA chief, Irene Kennedy, is on a date at a fancy Washington, D.C., restaurant when one of her aides informs her that Rapp, an Oliver North for the war on terror, has fallen into yet another jam with his unorthodox, maverick ways. Under false pretenses, Rapp has gotten access to two high-value terrorists being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Believing that an Islamic fundamentalist cell is about to launch an attack on the homeland, Rapp resorts to violence to get information. His actions lead to his arrest by the base commander, but with precious hours ticking down, Kennedy decides to finish her meal before intervening. Even then, incredibly enough, it takes two days to secure Rapp’s release. The rest of the less than convincing plot includes a grandstanding senator’s efforts to hang Rapp out to dry and the inevitable race to prevent disaster. (Oct.)

The Funeral Home Murders
Rob Hahn. North Star, $24.95 (280p) ISBN 9780878392872
Hahn’s tepid debut introduces Sean Kelly, a brash, cocky and smart-mouthed TV reporter who drives a classic 1984 Jaguar XJ6, wears Saville Row suits and favors good wine and better cigars. While working for Minneapolis’s Channel 6, the obnoxious Kelly takes a call about a double killing in the small town of Hudson, Wis., right across the river. A chance sighting near the scene, the O’Grady Funeral Home, piques Kelly’s interest and helps direct police to a priest who becomes the prime suspect. The sporadic investigation, often fueled by Kelly’s speculations and deductions, takes more than 10 months before its unsurprising conclusion. The failure of Kelly and the police to interview an obvious interested party fatally weakens Hahn’s effort. (Sept.)

Precious Cargo
Clyde Ford. Perseus/Vanguard, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 9781593154851
In Ford’s undistinguished second Charlie Noble thriller (after 2005’s Red Herring), Noble has found a second career as a PI in Eagle Harbor, Wash., after his promising career with the Coast Guard was cut short by his refusal to doctor a report. Noble sets aside plans for a romantic getaway with his significant other, Kate Sullivan, his first major relationship since the death of his wife, after deciding to accept a new assignment. Marvin and Angela Baynes, who have been haunted by the decades-old disappearance of their only daughter, are horrified when a dead girl is pulled from the bottom of the sound by their boat’s anchor. The couple hire Noble to identify both the victim and her killer. Aided by Raven, a skilled diver, Noble soon finds two other corpses and begins to probe the victims’ link to a brothel. Readers should be prepared for routine prose (“Damn relationships… I hate ’em and I love ’em”) and a by-the-numbers plot. (Sept.)