Nonfiction Reviews

Orloff (Second Sight) offers a superbly written series of psychological strategies for maximizing positive emotions and minimizing toxic ones. A practicing psychiatrist, the author straddles the worlds of mainstream medicine and alternative healing; she regards emotions as a training ground for the soul, and views “every victory over fear, anxiety, and resentment as a way to develop your spiritual muscles.” As the self is the foundation for emotional freedom, the author discusses how readers can find their emotional type—intellectual, empathic, rock or gusher—and suggests how to find balance. Her tips include avoiding “emotional vampires” or consulting dreams, which she divides into three types: psychological (where fears and neuroses express themselves), predictive and guidance. The second half of the book tackles the most difficult life challenges: depression, loneliness, anxiety, frustration, rejection, grief, envy and bitterness. Orloff addresses each fully and frankly, using anecdotes from her own life and practice—the death of her mother, her own crippling envy. This insightful and positive book will assist anyone who is suffering in mapping a path out of pain. (Mar.)

In this fine piece of journalism, Zoellnerdoes for uranium what he did for diamonds in The Heartless Stone—he delves into the complex science, politics and history of this radioactive mineral, which presents “the best and worst of mankind: the capacity for scientific progress and political genius; the capacity for nihilism, exploitation, and terror.” Because Zoellner covers so much ground, from the discovery of radioactivity, through the development of the atomic bomb, he doesn't go into great depth on any one topic. Nonetheless, he superbly paints vivid pictures of uranium's impact, including forced labor in Soviet mines and lucky prospectors who struck it rich in harsh environments, the spread of uranium smuggling, as well as an explanation of why it was absurd to claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase significant quantities of uranium from Niger. The only shortcoming is Zoellner's omission of the issue of radioactive wastes generated by nuclear power—a significant problem given the possibility of a growing reliance on nuclear power. (Mar. 9)

Twenty-two years after recovering from a devastating car crash when she was 19, Greenberg, a professor at New York City's Hunter College, began experiencing unbearable neck pain. Several hospital visits and X-rays later, it turns out her miraculous recovery after the accident wasn't quite that: one of her vertebrae was still fractured. Greenberg chronicles the two years that follow: the contradicting doctor diagnoses; the descent into drugs and depression; the unraveling of her relationship with her two young children. Harrowing stuff, and when Greenberg keeps her prose spare and direct, as when she describes with cold, gory precision watching her leg being sewn back together, the result is powerful. But Greenberg's account often reads like an extended treatise on pain, overly reliant on metaphor as opposed to anecdote to describe her experience, comparing it, say, to Adam and Eve's fall in Milton's Paradise Lost (Greenberg's field is 17th-century British literature). Otherwise engaging, Greenberg's narrative is a revealing, personal journey through physical trauma.(Mar.)

Ancient and modern savageries unite in the colorful antihero of this scintillating historical study. Baron Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921) was a czarist officer who became a leader of anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia during the Russian civil war. He was a staunch monarchist and anti-Semite, whose sadism heightened the brutality of an already vicious conflict. He was pushed by the Red Army into Mongolia, where his reactionary impulses, accentuated by an attraction to esoteric Eastern religions, grew downright medieval. Hailed as a reincarnated god by locals who perhaps mistook him for a prophesied Buddhist messiah, Ungern-Sternberg dreamed of leading an Asian empire against the decadent West and instituted a fleeting dictatorship under which resisters were flogged to death, torn apart or burned alive. Journalist Palmer pens a vivid and slightly wry profile of this larger-than-life figure who rode into battle bare-chested and necklaced with bones, and lucidly dissects Ungern-Sternberg's protofascist worldview, with its motifs of racism, feudal hierarchy, regenerative bloodshed and mystic communion with primitive virility. The result is a fascinating portrait of an appalling man—and of the zeitgeist that shaped him. Maps. (Feb.)

The position of national security adviser is by far the most powerful unelected (and unconfirmed by Congress) post in the federal government, with tremendous influence over American foreign policy (for good and for ill). Daalder (coauthor, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy) and Destler (coauthor, American Trade Politics), foreign policy experts at, respectively, the Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, do an excellent job of examining the different philosophies and styles of all who have filled the role, from McGeorge Bundy to Condoleezza Rice, as well as how different presidents have deployed the skills of their national security advisers. Unlike Cabinet secretaries, the national security adviser maintains an office in the White House and operates free of the politics and bureaucratic demands of running federal departments. There is no one-size-fits-all mold, and no standard résumé for this vital job. Some advisers have been college professors, others diplomats, still others veterans of the military. Each, as the authors astutely show, has brought unique talents and prejudices to the assignment, and each has left an indelible mark on history. (Feb.)

What is going on in the brain of a pilot deciding how to handle an emergency or a man trying to escape a wildfire? Does reason or emotion rule our decision making? Seed magazine editor-at-large Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist) brings recent research in neurobiology to life as he shows that the view, dating back to Plato, of the decision-making brain as a charioteer (reason) trying to control wild horses (emotions) comes up short. As Lehrer describes in fluid prose, the brain's reasoning centers are easily fooled, often making judgments based on nonrational factors like presentation (a sales pitch or packaging). And Lehrer cites a study of investors given varying amounts of financial data to show that our inner charioteer also can be confused by too much information. Even more surprisingly, research shows that “gut instinct” often does make better decisions than long, drawn-out reasoning, and people with impaired emotional responses have trouble coping with the decisions required in everyday life. Lehrer is a delight to read, and this is a fascinating book (some of which appeared recently, in a slightly different form, in the New Yorker) that will help everyone better understand themselves and their decision making. (Feb. 9)

Inspired by her weekly column “Conversations with My Therapist,” Scottish journalist Martin takes a captivating look at one woman's adventure in psychotherapy. Heading into her mid-30s, Martin felt as though “time were running out”; with most of her friends married with children, Martin wanted to “love life again rather than feel it is an unbearable uphill struggle.” Shortly after this revelation, she committed to one year with a therapist she calls “Dr. J” and began to peel back the “layer of armor” that she had spent her whole life building to protect herself. While most of her therapy time is spent obsessing over past, present and possible future relationships (including her relationship with Dr. J), Martin also explores the effect her therapy has on her everyday life and her relationship with her family. Skillfully dodging the possibility of becoming yet another memoir of unrelenting self-praise, Martin's narrative is shamelessly funny, and she misses no opportunity for self-deprecating humor or cringe-inducing scenes. It's impossible not to root for Martin as she creates her own happy ending. (Feb.)

In her new book, inspired by her AP story of the same name, Harpaz (The Girls in the Van) focuses on a year in the life of her 13-year-old son, nicknamed Taz. After his bar mitzvah, Taz crosses the bridge from the innocence of childhood into a world of iPods, baggy clothes, lewd song lyrics, questionable peers (he calls them “peeps”) and poor grades. Harpaz takes the change in stride, rifling through her son's room for contraband (she's not disappointed, finding a locked box of condoms and alcohol later revealed to be a “plant”), peering over his shoulder as he surfs MySpace and trying to figure out whether her rebellious child is normal or the result of her being a “Terrible Mother.” Readers follow Harpaz as she wrangles with such familiar topics as dragging a teen along on a vacation, homework and the all-consuming desire to be cool. Though the antics of an annoying teenager can be tedious—even for readers sympathetic to her situation—Harpaz has an engaging voice, and her outlook on everything from teen fashion to Facebook is fresh and funny. In spite of her insistence that she doesn't fit in with the “Perfect Mommies,” she and Taz get through a challenging year without major mishaps and plenty of laughs. (Feb.)

British journalist Blyth was once described as “the person you hope you'll find at the next cocktail party—or the person you'd like to be.” The next best thing is a close encounter with Blyth on the printed page. Adopting a chatty, conversational manner to write about conversation, Blyth mixes personal anecdotes into a salmagundi of selected quotes from anthropology, history, literature, philosophy and pop culture to analyze and give advice on the dynamics of good conversation, not to mention the perfect riposte for every situation. She examines everything from small talk to pillow talk, from riotous raconteurs to crashing bores, from flattery to false smiles. The key is listening: “Good conversation is a team sport; pace and energy keep it alive.” Blyth probes layers of language, humor as social engineering, baiting, lies, flirting, evasions and failed shoptalk, such as how “miscommunication lost Xerox the PC.” Witty, eloquent and insightful, Blyth's book is a delightful encouragement to rediscover conversation as the best communication technology. (Jan.)

Peppiatt, having already written Bacon's biography (Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma), now submits a collection of essays and interviews spanning his career of writing on the artist. Some of the pieces, updated with material originally omitted because Bacon (1909–1992) was still living, take on new life. They also echo each other, as when, in an essay for Art International, Peppiatt writes that “comparatively few artists were admitted into Bacon's pantheon, and even they tended to be pared down to one or other aspect of their oeuvre”—Degas was one, as Bacon says in one interview: “Degas is complete in himself. I like his pastels enormously.” Each piece describes a different period in Bacon's life, a theme in the work, influences or significant companions. As each topic is inscribed with the biographical essentials, the motifs stand out in relief from the background details. The book gains a certain rhythm as the portrait is made simultaneously more simple and more complex. The effect, cast in Peppiatt's intimate reportage, works well, and the book will enrich the library of any Bacon enthusiast. 16 pages of color and 35 b&w illus. (Jan.)

If this workmanlike biography, by the editor of the two-volume New Writings of William Hazlitt, does not live up to the expansive promise of its subtitle, it nonetheless extends a welcome new hand to a transitional figure of the romantic age. Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life. Always hard up for cash, and often considering himself a failure in the eyes of his Unitarian minister father, Hazlitt (1788–1830) was generally celebrated as a journalist and prose stylist by his contemporaries. He was also an exceptional philosopher and painter. Among his intimates, Hazlitt counted Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Bryon and Keats, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey. Hazlitt was a passionate lover of many women and frequent brothel visitor, all of which doomed his marriage to a wealthy woman from the start. He was also done in by an understandably suspicious brother-in-law. Hazlitt has been more fortunate in his modern critics, among them Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf. As Wu notes, Hazlitt's modernity depends on his penetrating grasp of psychology and on his place as “the father of modern literary criticism.” 30 b&w illus. (Jan.)

Most readers will enjoy this thoughtful evaluation of history's famous leaders, such as Pericles, Caesar, Napoleon, Lincoln and Reagan (Newell, a political scientist, served on Reagan's presidential transition team). This is not written as an uplifting chronicle but as a serious overview of how great leaders rule. In the first of three sections, about presidents from FDR to Bush, Newell stresses that the greatest triumphed in foreign policy and war. Yet, he notes, most historians give FDR higher marks for handling the Depression than WWII and believe LBJ's domestic achievements trump his Vietnam debacle. The second section is a long, adulatory evaluation of Lincoln. The third delivers a detailed history of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.) as an example of how democratic leaders (in this case, of Athens) can self-destruct. Newell draws a parallel to the Vietnam War, but passes over the invasion of Iraq. These are meaty chunks of stimulating, conservative-oriented great man history that concludes with lessons for success (in short: be ambitious; be moral, “but only in moderation”; make correct decisions at the beginning of a career, save mistakes for the end). (Jan.)

In his meandering memoir, New York restaurateur Luongo traces his “American success story” from a hasty, draft-dodging flight from Italy to his current position as a chef at the Upper East Side's Centolire. His rise from busboy to chef at Il Cantinori and the star-studded Sapore di Mare remains far more interesting than his descent and “death sentence” with a failed corporate Tuscan restaurant chain. Friedman (Breaking Back, and co-writer of several cookbooks) makes brief appearances as the writer assisting Luongo with his bad boy cooking memoir—and Luongo is shaped into both an uncompromising, confrontational chef and a person with an affection for his mother and good food. If it weren't for his uncompromising love of Italian food throughout, Luongo's reminiscences might seem bitter. He has a tendency to drop too many names and fight other celebrities' sense of entitlement. The trendsetting chef helped popularize Tuscan cooking and tells an engaging story even when he orbits outside the intense clatter of the kitchen. The book might disappoint hardcore foodies if it were not for a few incisive remarks on restaurant design, pasta portioning, how to skewer a critic—and recipes. (Jan.)

In an attempt to challenge the legend that has sprung up around Ronald Reagan's presidency over the past decade, Bunch, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, argues that the Reagan “myth” is dangerous because, unlike other American presidents held up as heroes, like Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson, reverence for Reagan did not emerge organically. Rather, the GOP hatched the Reagan myth, feeding it to the news media “for purposes that were essentially partisan in nature... pulling off a maneuver that was unprecedented in American history.” The result has been a simplified reconstruction of Reagan, from far from universally popular president to the man who ended the Cold War and spurred unprecedented economic growth. Bunch contends Reagan was responsible for neither, at least not singlehandedly. Instead, he claims that the 40th president's real achievement lay in his ability to compromise, an element of his leadership conservatives have ignored since he left office. Neither Bunch's arguments nor his prose are powerful enough to do more than slightly tarnish Reagan's halo, but his book capably puts into perspective an imperfect but fascinating administration. (Feb.)

Cohan, a management consultant and venture capitalist, examines Jim McNerney's unique approach to leadership. One of three finalists in the running to replace General Electric's Jack Welch, McNerney took the helm at Boeing after a stint at 3M. Pressure to boost revenues and cut costs led him to develop a leadership style designed to win the hearts and minds of employees. His mantra—“you can't order change”—implies that change must come from employees if it is to succeed. Cohan provides a road map to McNerney's success that identifies 11 specific leadership challenges and the management imperatives to overcome them. The prescriptions are universally applicable and include “Help Your People Get 15 Percent Better,” “Build Strategy on Customer Focus,” “Invest in Your Strengths” and “Cut Your Company's Environmental Footprint,” among others. Easy to navigate and concise, this book will help executives tackle persistent and difficult leadership problems while motivating employees and producing results. (Jan.)

This slender sequel to Ping: A Frog in Search of a New Pond is another Zen-inspired entrepreneurial parable, at once trite and profound. Gold, former COO of the Republic of Tea, does not belabor the business aspect of his tale, which can be read as an insightful guide to internal growth and transformation. In this book, Ping visits a pond whose inhabitants have never ventured outside their small habitat. Two young frogs, Daikon and Hodo, daring to aspire further, ask Ping to take them to the ocean, which represents enlightenment. The book becomes a quest, with plenty of opportunity for Ping to instruct the youngsters on “the Way” (e.g., “The Way is the path of strength.... Always possess the courage to continue the journey, even if you are scared to pieces”). The frogs navigate a boulder in their path, hop up 100-foot shoots of bamboo and trudge through an eerie Slither Swamp. Finally, from the heights of a mountain, they view both dawn and the ocean. While the first book, where the young Ping is instructed by an Owl, may have been more spontaneous and compelling, this sequel is charming and effectively communicates its message. (Jan.)

Rao, professor of organizational behavior and human resources at Stanford University, explores the role of collective action in promoting or hindering business innovation. Drawing heavily on theories of social movements, the author posits a cycle of “hot causes,” unexpected events or innovations, and “cool mobilization,” activities that channel emotional responses into popular mass actions that anchor new identities embracing or rejecting the hot cause. Rao presents several case studies in which activist behavior either encouraged or impeded the creation and expansion of new markets, technologies or new organizational structures. For example, early 20th-century automobile enthusiasts were able to placate fears about car safety (the hot cause) by staging hundreds of reliability contests that demonstrated the car's safety and practicality to a wide audience (the cool mobilization). Though dryly written and repetitive, the case studies themselves are fascinating and challenge traditional economic models that privilege individual consumer choice while ignoring broader social mobilizations. A final chapter offers advice and strategies for would-be market rebels looking to harness collective action, making this book a useful resource for both citizen activists and corporate leaders and marketers seeking popular support for their products. (Jan.)

This scattered collection of rambling rants lauding Google's abilities to harness the power of the “Internet Age” generally misses the mark. Blog impresario Jarvis uses the company's success to trace aspects of the new customer-driven, user-generated, niche-market-oriented, customized and collaborative world. While his insights are stimulating, Jarvis's tone is acerbic and condescending; equally off-putting is his pervasive name-dropping. The book picks up in a section on media, where the author finally launches a fascinating discussion of how businesses—especially media and entertainment industries—can continue to evolve and profit by using Google's strategies. Unfortunately, Jarvis may have lost the reader by that point as his attempt to cover too many topics reads more like a series of frenzied blog posts than a manifesto for the Internet age. (Jan.)

Dent, former strategic consultant at Bain & Company, outlines the features of what he predicts will be the next Great Depression. The author argues that “demographic trends were the greatest drivers of our economy, along with radical new technologies,” working together to follow “a four-stage life cycle of innovation, growth, shakeout, and maturity.” While Dent's doomsday predictions are depressing, his theories are persuasive and elaborated in meticulous descriptions of historic economic trends and cycles. The author's candor is refreshing, especially when he discusses how equity investments “experience a wide variety of returns, including substantial losses or extraordinary gains“—and that the financial press has failed to remind the public of this fact. The book offers welcome portfolio allocation strategies during an economic crisis, as well as the bad news that the worst of the housing downturn “will occur between 2010 and 2013.” Along with domestic forecasts, Dent addresses terrorism's economic roots and the growth of megacities in South and East Asia with characteristic thoroughness. (Jan.)

Ikenberry (Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition) frames the central debate that structures this slim collection of four scholarly essays when he asks, if “Bush is the heir of Woodrow Wilson,” if the Iraq War in particular grew out of Wilsonianism and to what extent liberals “share the blame.” His provocative thesis surveys the evolution of liberal internationalism and dovetails with the historical essay by Knock (To End All Wars) that follows, drawing a distinction between Wilsonianism and successive foreign policies, including “Cold War Globalism” and the policies of the Bush administration. The most heated argument in the text comes in the final two essays by Smith (A Pact with the Devil) and Slaughter (A New World Order). Smith argues that the Bush doctrine can, in fact, be labeled Wilsonian and that it issued from a “cross-fertilization” of ideas between neoconservatives and neoliberals, including Slaughter herself. Slaughter rebuts this version of events and articulates how Wilsonianism can create a foundation for 21st-century foreign policy. Collectively, the authors present a variety of arguments in a narrow academic debate with far-reaching implications. (Jan.)

Michaels (The Satanic Gases) and Balling (The Heated Debate) claim that, although global warming is real, it does not herald a climate crisis and that human beings cannot “significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet.” They present detailed evidence that climate data is inaccurate, the fear that permafrost will release huge amounts of the greenhouse gas methane is unfounded and that “horror stories about an imminent collapse of Greenland's ice simply aren't borne out by the fact that it was warmer there for decades in the early 20th century, and for millennia after the end of the last ice age.” The authors make persuasive arguments and climate crisis skeptics will applaud the book's message. Other readers may wonder why governments would, as Michaels and Balling suggest, have a stake in manufacturing a crisis, and think that the book's credibility is undermined by the authors' tendency to mix sarcasm with facts and figures (“Earth's temperature is doubtlessly warmer than it was 100 years ago. Get over it”) and clear frustration with their minority status in the global warming debate. (Jan.)

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an estimated 23 million Americans are hooked on drugs or alcohol, representing an annual economic loss of $524 billion. Millions more have become enslaved to other compulsive behaviors: overeating, sex, gambling and shoplifting. In his first book, Denizet-Louis follows eight average Americans—including an athlete and a grandparent— who are struggling with addiction. The author covers three years in the lives of his subjects, portraying them with candor and compassion, giving these compulsions a more human face by telling the story of his own sex and pornography dependence, for which he twice sought inpatient treatment. This book provides an intriguing glimpse into the brain of an addict and the new hit or miss treatments—dopamine blockers and antieuphoria medications. While the excerpted e-mails and taped monologues might test the reader's patience, Denizet-Lewis is a compelling storyteller, and his wide-range of stories of addiction, relapse and recovery far exceeds other books in the genre. (Jan.)

Three biographies of 20th-century American short story masters.

Rebellious Yankee son of a father who fell victim to the Depression and a doo-gooder-turned-businesswoman mother, father to three competitive children he rode mercilessly but adored, chronicler par excellence of the 1950s American suburban scene while deploring all forms of conformity: John Cheever (1912–1982) was a mass of contradictions. In this overlong but always entertaining biography, composed with a novelist's eye, Bailey, biographer of Richard Yates and editor of two volumes of Cheever's work for Library of America (also due in March), was given access to unpublished portions of Cheever's famous journals and to family members and friends. Bailey's book is fine in descriptions of Cheever's reactions to other writers, such as his adored Bellow and detested Salinger. Bailey is also sensitive in describing the prickly dynamic of Cheever's domestic life, lived through a haze of alcoholism and under the shadow of extramarital heterosexual and homosexual relationships. This “Ovid in Ossining,” who published 121 stories in the New Yorker as well as several bestselling novels, has probably yet to find a definitive position in American letters among academicians. This thoroughly researched and heartfelt biography may help redress that situation. 24 pages of photos. (Mar. 12)

This sprawling first biography of the writer Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) complements an exemplary account of the man and his milieu with a history of 20th-century architecture, film, philosophy, visual art and political activism—not to mention a stunning exegesis of Barthelme's work and a surfeit of vignettes from New York literary life in the 1960s and '70s. Daugherty, a professor of English and creative writing at Oregon State and former student of Barthelme, renders the writer of The Dead Father in all his complexity: the experimental iconoclast, the “establishment figure” without a university degree who published more than 100 stories in the New Yorker, the citizen-activist, admitted alcoholic, the devoted if distant father and the “prankster on the page.” While Daugherty firmly takes Barthelme's side in his four troubled marriages, he assesses the writer's legacy, his champions and detractors (e.g., Joyce Carol Oates, John Gardner and the “hundreds” of readers who canceled their New Yorker subscriptions in 1968 to protest the publication of his catty Snow White). Like Barthelme's best stories, this unapologetically literary and ambitious book is cultural and artistic bricolage at its finest. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Feb.)

Gooch (City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara) offers a surprisingly bloodless biography of Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964), who, despite the author's diligent scholarship, remains enigmatic. She emerges only in her excerpted letters, speeches and fiction, where she is as sharp-tongued, censorious, piteously observant and mordantly funny as her beloved short stories. There is little genuinely interesting new material, but there are small gems—the full story of O'Connor's friendship with the mysterious A. of her letters, for instance. Perhaps mindful of the writer's dislike of being exposed in print, Gooch errs on the side of delicacy; he does not sufficiently explore her attitudes toward blacks and how the early onset of lupus left her sequestered on her mother's Georgia farm, without the “male companionship” she craved. Instead, he plumbs O'Connor's fiction for buried fragments of her daily life, and the revelations are hardly astonishing. Readers looking for more startling tidbits will be disappointed by this account that brims with the quiet satisfactions the author took in her industry (“I sit all day typing and grinning like the Cheshire cat”), her faith, friends and stoic approach to a debilitating disease. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Feb. 25)

Two journalists reflect.

Hajratwala, a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News, tells of the Indian diaspora experience through a part-personal, part-reported story of her extended family. Hailing from the small northwest Indian region of Gujarat, her family's ancient origins begin with the myth of a race of warriors and kings. Their migration begins in the wake of the famine of 1899, when Hajratwala's great-grandfather Motiram left to learn the tailor's craft in Fiji, leaving his wife and children behind. In the same, tireless spirit echoed in generations to come, Motiram founded a family business in his new home, then built it with the support of relatives who followed to join him. His shop eventually became one of the largest department stores in the South Pacific isles. Other family branches developed in South Africa; the U.S., where Hajratwala's parents immigrated as part of India's earliest wave of “brain drain”; and other locales, totaling nine countries in five continents. Throughout sojourns across cultures and across time, the family endures—and succeeds—in spite of discrimination and bigotry. Told with the probing detail of a reporter, the fluid voice of a poet and the inspired vision of a young woman who walks in many worlds, Hajratwala's story offers an engaging account of what may be one of the fastest-growing diasporas in the world. (Mar.)

Devidayal is a “reluctant ten-year-old” when she shows up for her first lesson in classical Indian singing, but the occasion marks the beginning of her musical lifetime, as chronicled in her new memoir. As a student at an Anglican school in Bombay, Devidayal is more at home speaking English and playing badminton than practicing the tanpura, an Indian stringed instrument. But as she progresses from one-note lessons to real ragas, she begins to realize that her mentor, the much-revered but never-quite-famous Dhondutai Kulkarni, offers life lessons as well as music lessons. Through the many stories Dhondutai relays to Devidayal (which range from factual to mythic), the reader is treated to a detailed history of Hindustani classical music and many intimate anecdotes regarding Dhondutai's own gurus, the legendary Bhurji Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar. Devidayal, who graduated from Princeton and now works as a journalist with the Times of India, was a gifted young singer, but lacked the passion to pursue the art professionally. This graceful memoir is a provocative illustration of music's unifying force in a religiously and socially stratified country. (Feb.)

A French-American cardiologist then affiliated with New York Hospital–Cornell University Medical College descended into years of hellish alcohol addiction that essentially ended his medical practice in 1997. His move back to Paris and self-treatment with the unproven drug baclofen is the subject of this clinical, thoroughgoing memoir. Early on, Ameisen, the child of Holocaust survivors and an accomplished pianist, recognized that deep-seated anxiety was driving him to drink, yet doctors treated the drinking rather than the anxiety. He tried years of AA, rehab and medication, but in time he was binging again—blacking out and ending up in psych wards or the emergency room with broken bones. When he read about the muscle relaxant baclofen in a New York Times article, suggesting that it could repress the craving in addicts as well as control muscular spasm, he seized on the drug as his life line. He researched baclofen, prescribed it to himself (thanks to France's medical identity cards) and essentially used himself as a study over several months, increasing the dosage as necessary. The results were remarkable, and his dogged self–case study published by the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism in 2005 gathered slow but intensive interest. As a trained physician who is evidently well connected, Ameisen is not a typical patient, yet his work is brave, insightful and sure to be significant. (Jan.)

As a doctor of the “oldest old,” those patients over 85, San Antonio, Tex., geriatric physician Winakur cares for the “fastest growing demographic segment of our society.” He also had to usher his own aged father through the last painful, debilitating years of his life, when he slipped into dementia and became a stranger to himself and his family. In this affecting, thoughtfully composed memoir, Winakur remembers his father as he fully was, a gifted artist whose Depression-era mother would not allow him to go to art school. He was consigned to run the family's pawnshop in Baltimore until the race riots of 1968 destroyed the store and his livelihood. While the author describes his father as someone who seemed to get little enjoyment late in life, it was his father who instilled in his son a love of bird watching. As the author and his father achieve toward the end an intimate, fragile truce, Winakur recalls the long medical journey that brought him to devote himself to the aged, from medical school, where specialization was the rule, to his thriving practice as a local doctor. He touches on many pressing issues within the profession, such as the havoc wrought by managed care, the debate over “quality care” of the elderly, and whether prolonging life at any cost is wise. Probing and intelligent, Winakur's work challenges readers to think hard and deeply about the choices they make in the care of their elders. (Jan.)