Nonfiction Reviews

In her first book, internist and New York Times columnist Sanders discusses how doctors deal with diagnostic dilemmas. Unlike Berton Roueché in his books of medical puzzles, Sanders not only collects difficult cases, she reflects on what each means for both patient and struggling physician. A man arrives at the hospital, delirious, his kidneys failing. Batteries of tests are unrevealing, but he quickly recovers after a resident extracts two quarts of urine. An abdominal exam would have detected the patient’s obstructed, grossly swollen bladder. The author then ponders the neglect of the physical exam, by today’s physicians, enamored with high-tech tests that sometimes reveal less than a simple exam. Another patient, frustrated at her doctor’s failure to diagnose her fever and rash, googles her symptoms and finds the correct answer. Sanders uses this case to explain how computers can help in diagnoses (Google is not bad, she says, but better programs exist). Readers who enjoy dramatic stories of doctors fighting disease will get their fill, and they will also encounter thoughtful essays on how doctors think and go about their work, and how they might do it better. (Apr. 14)

Everyone has one of those days when nothing seems to go right, but why? Unlike others who have broached the question, British computer science guru Bentley (Digital Biology) actually escorts readers through a really bad day, exploring the science behind all the little things that can go wrong: he looks at why you slept through the alarm (to explain the nature of sleep); why you then slipped on the spilled shampoo (a look at the nature of cleansers and lubricants); why that torrential downpour soaked you on your way to work (a look at the cycle of water in nature). This journey through the day, if sometimes strained (getting chewing gum stuck in one’s hair on the bus), is a neat device for explaining the science behind everyday things such as how clothing is woven and why fabric is so strong (until it rips when you bend over) and how capsaicin in chilis fool the body and provoke a burning sensation. Each chapter ends with a brief tip on how to avoid future mishaps. Hopefully, readers and librarians won’t be put off by the title and miss Bentley’s reader-friendly explanations of the science behind everyday life. (Apr.)

Tooley (Reclaiming Education) documents his surprising finding that private schools are providing quality education to millions of poor children in the developing world. Whereas development experts insist that the path out of poverty lies in investment in public schools, the author draws on his fieldwork in India, China and Africa to argue that small entrepreneurs are educating the poor. In one region of India, 80% of urban children and 30% of rural children attend private schools; in China’s Gansu province 586 private schools are located in small villages, even though the state prides itself on its public system. Contrary to accepted wisdom, the modest fees of private schools are within reach of most, and parents find them superior to public schools that are often riddled with corruption and incompetence. Tooley argues that development funds be invested to support these institutions, through vouchers to parents and microfinance loans to the schools. The author’s engaging style transforms what could have been a dry if startling research report into a moving account of how poor parents struggle against great odds to provide a rich educational experience to their children. (Apr.)

Describing the Third Reich from the height of its power to its collapse, Evans concludes the masterful trilogy that began with The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power. As in those works, Evans demonstrates a fluent style and a sweeping grasp of the Third Reich’s history and of the enormous historical literature. The account is peppered with insightful anecdotes drawn from diaries, letters and speeches. What comes across most clearly is the supreme arrogance of the Nazis and the utterly rapacious character of their rule. Evans gives the Holocaust the centrality it deserves, while also depicting effectively the suffering of Poles and many others under Nazi domination. Evans offers a nuanced picture of the lives of Germans, but ultimately, he suggests, the Nazis’ racial ideology thoroughly corrupted German society. Evans narrates the Reich’s end in gripping fashion as the Allies closed in on Germany. Evans’s fellow historians as well as a broader public will read this work, not quite with pleasure, for there is little joy in this story, but with admiration for the author’s narrative powers. Illus., maps. (Mar. 23)

The horrors of communal violence give way to quieter torments in this harrowing collection of oral histories. Hatzfeld revisits Tutsi survivors and confessed Hutu killers he interviewed in Life Laid Bare and Machete Season after the latter were unexpectedly released from prison and returned to their homes.. The official Rwandan policy of reconciliation holds: Hutu-Tutsi relations are civil, and one génocidaire even marries a Tutsi woman whose relatives were slaughtered. But to Hatzfeld, the survivors reveal inner scars—their unappeasable sense of grief, dispossession and mistrust of their neighbors, the fillip of fear whenever they encounter Hutu farmers carrying their machetes, the bitterness that justice has been sacrificed for national recovery. (Less anguished, the pardoned Hutu perpetrators express a diplomatic repentance and relief at having escaped retribution.) Hatzfeld includes nightmarish scenes from the genocide; survivors recall running for their lives for weeks on end, regressing to the status of game animals as Hutu hunting bands cut down their families and friends. Just as haunting is the spiritual aftermath: “ 'I believed in honorable effort, decent behavior, the straight and narrow path,’ ” one Tutsi woman recalls, “ '[but] from now on, I’m suspicious of moral maxims.’ ” (Mar.)

Burleigh (Earthly Powers), one of the leading English-language scholars of the role of ideas in the modern world, makes another major contribution in this pull-no-punches cultural study of terrorism as it has been lived and practiced for a century and a half. Burleigh sees modern terrorism’s roots in the mid–19th century, with the emergence of the Irish Fenians, the Russian nihilists, the Western anarchists who used fear induced by violence to compensate for their lack of political power. Their tactics were adopted in the mid–20th century by movements seeking decolonization, like the Palestinian Black September, Italy’s Red Brigades and Germany’s Red Army Faction. By century’s end, terrorism further mutated into a tool for marginalized “local nations” like the Basques. Most recently, terrorism has become identified with what Burleigh calls the “world rage of Islamism.” Burleigh’s case studies demonstrate mercilessly that terrorism is “a career, a culture, and a way of life” attractive for its own sake as well as its ostensible objectives. The terrorist milieu, the author demonstrates convincingly, is “morally squalid,” intellectually bankrupt and politically barren. Burleigh considers the lessons history has to teach us, though he eschews policy recommendations. (Mar.)

Kilcullen, adviser on counterinsurgency to General Petraeus, defines “accidental guerrillas” as locals fighting primarily because outsiders (often Westerners) are intruding into their physical and cultural space, but they may also be galvanized by high-tech, internationally oriented ideologues. This interaction of two kinds of nonstate opponents renders both traditional counterterrorism and counterinsurgency inadequate. Kilcullen uses Afghanistan and Iraq as primary case studies for a new kind of war that relies on an ability to provoke Western powers into protracted, exhausting, expensive interventions. Kilcullen presents two possible responses. Strategic disruption keeps existing terrorists off balance. Military assistance attacks the conditions producing “accidental guerrillas.” That may mean full-spectrum assistance, involving an entire society. Moving beyond a simplistic “war on terror” depends on rebalancing military and nonmilitary elements of power. It calls for a long view, a measured approach and a need to distinguish among various enemies. It requires limiting the role of government agencies in favor of an indirect approach emphasizing local interests and local relationships. Not least, Kilcullen says, breaking the terrorist cycle requires establishing patterns of “virtue, moral authority, and credibility” in the larger society. Kilcullen’s compelling argument merits wide attention. (Mar.)

The first major American nuclear accident wasn’t at Three Mile Island in 1979 but rather at the military’s National Reactor Testing Station at Idaho Falls, Idaho, in January 1961, killing three workers at the tiny reactor. Two of these men were later rumored incorrectly to have been rivals in a love triangle—which some conjectured might have affected their ability to work effectively and safely at the facility. Tucker (The Great Starvation Experiment) skillfully reveals the drama of the event. At the same time, he shows how the accident resulted from inadequate maintenance, poor training, negligence and ignorance. Tucker also profiles the inscrutable naval R&D power broker Hyman Rickover, who almost singlehandedly resurrected the potential of nuclear power after the 1961 disaster through a monklike and emphatic devotion to the highest skill in engineering and the best training. Today, trying to balance the realities of global warming with America’s energy needs, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received proposals for 32 new reactors—which makes Tucker’s book vitally relevant. (Mar. 3)

Black, chair of the department of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, reflects on his extraordinary life and career. As an African-American growing up in Alabama and Ohio, Black benefited from the emphasis his scholarly parents put on learning: “I was brought up to believe there was nothing that I could not do,” and he published his first scientific paper at age 17 and went on to pioneer blood-brain barrier research to enable chemotherapy drugs to reach brain tumors directly. Introducing the reader to his colleagues and patients, Black tours the interior of the brain with detailed accounts of delicate surgical procedures: “Under the microscope I could see the delicate latticework of blood vessels covering the brainstem, all of which absolutely had to be preserved.” Documenting the risks and rewards of the procedures he performs, he also examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon. Black is equally skilled as an author, alternating incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational. (Mar. 25)

Over the past decade or so, numerous studies have suggested that prayer and meditation can enhance physical health and healing from illness. In this stimulating and provocative book, two academics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind contend that contemplating God actually reduces stress, which in turn prevents the deterioration of the brain’s dendrites and increases neuroplasticity. The authors conclude that meditation and other spiritual practices permanently strengthen neural functioning in specific parts of the brain that aid in lowering anxiety and depression, enhancing social awareness and empathy, and improving cognitive functioning. The book’s middle section draws on the authors’ research on how people experience God and where in the brain that experience might be located. Finally, the authors offer exercises for enhancing physical, mental and spiritual health. Their suggestions are commonsensical and common to other kinds of health regimens: smile, stay intellectually active, consciously relax, yawn, meditate, exercise aerobically, dialogue with others and trust in your beliefs. Although the book’s title is a bit misleading, since it is not God but spiritual practice that changes the brain, this forceful study could stir controversy among scientists and philosophers. Illus. (Mar. 24)

Science journalist Cohen and Cosgrove, a WebMD contributor, offer an emotionally charged indictment of the medical-pharmaceutical complex centered on efforts to control height (making boys taller, girls shorter) in otherwise normal, healthy children. Reviewing five decades of such efforts, such as in the 1950s with the administration of estrogen to stunt tall girls’ growth, the authors take to task pediatric endocrinologists, drug companies and the parents who bring their children for treatment. This history is meant as a cautionary tale, and Cohen and Cosgrove raise all the right questions: when do we cross the line from treating disease to “satisfying desires for perfection”? can the exorbitant cost of growth hormone therapy be justified in an otherwise inadequate health system? do drug companies distort the practice of medicine? does government adequately protect the public? Because it can take decades for the ill effects of treatment to emerge, this account can only raise questions about possible threats from current practices. Fortunately, the treatments much of the book is devoted to are no longer in use. (Mar.)

Imagine a world where philosophers are celebrities, their works are greeted with stone throwing and literary correspondences are the stuff of tabloid-style publication. This was the world of 18th-century Europe, where David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s friendship, which lasted but six months, created a public stir and has a remarkable enough trajectory to be the centerpiece of this study of Enlightenment mores. Further, the dispute highlights a key divergence in the study of human understanding: “Rousseau represented an alternative way of knowing that went, in a certain sense, beyond reason to regions reached only through the imagination and the passions.” This mode of thinking sets the stage for Rousseau’s dramatic misunderstanding of Hume’s intentions and actions, and ushers in Rousseau’s revolutionary demotion of “adherence to external or objective truth,” replacing it with “loyalty to one’s own self.” Zaretsky and Scott (coauthors of Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau) weave vivid storytelling together with elegant arguments about this transitional period from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period. The book is also a revealing intellectual history of Rousseau’s compelling madness and mystifying genius. Illus. (Mar.)

“I would say that I’m a maker of distinctions,” writes MIT philosophy professor Singer in this short summation of his life’s work, which has been, in the Socratic tradition, to clarify the meanings of “large-scale terms like love, happiness, meaning of life, meaning in life, sex, beauty.” The conversational tone of the book betrays its origins as a series of interviews, but it also fits Singer’s focus on distinguishing his views against the perspectives of the past. Thus: “Nietzsche goes too far,” “Freud made a number of errors,” “Even science has its flaws.” It all makes for a fairly interesting dialogue between Singer and his predecessors and contemporaries. Although he may disagree with them, understanding what has come before is for him the only method for a reader to choose a thoughtful path. For Singer, Plato is the beginning, Shakespeare is the turning point and science is the present. Singer has written 15 works on the philosophy of love, and this latest can serve as an introduction to his oeuvre, a stand-alone survey of the topic or a model methodology for seeking greater understanding. (Mar.)

In his debut book, journalist Fuchs provides an underwhelming account of how a decades-old Kansas cold case came to be solved. In 1982, 25-year-old David Harmon was savagely bludgeoned to death while he slept in Olathe, Kans. His wife, Melinda, was unharmed and her flimsy account made her the prime suspect, along with family friend (and Melinda’s possible lover) Mark Mangelsdorf. Despite stories full of holes, the two were not charged, due in large part, Fuchs says, to the power of the town’s growing Nazarene Church, in which Melinda’s father was highly placed. In 2001, the case was reopened and two Olathe detectives tracked down Melinda, happily married to an Ohio dentist, and Mark, a Harvard Business School graduate and former v-p at Pepsi. Melinda was convicted but reached a deal for a reduced sentence, and Mark eventually reached a plea agreement. Fuchs never delves deep enough into the crime or the killer(s)’ motivation in this compelling case. Despite frequent references to In Cold Blood (murderers Smith and Hickock began their journey in Olathe), Fuchs fails to capture the intensity and lyricism of Capote’s tale. 16 b&w photos. (Mar.)

Mamdani (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim) continues to challenge political and intellectual orthodoxies in his latest book, a bold, near brilliant re-examination of the conflict in Darfur. While acknowledging the “horrendous violence” committed in the region, Mamdani contends that Darfur is not the site of genocide but rather a “site where the language of genocide has been used as an instrument.” The author believes that the ”war on terror” provided an international political context in which the perpetrators of violence in Darfur could be categorized as “Arabs” seeking to eradicate “black” Africans in the region. Challenging these racial distinctions, Mamdani traces the history of Sudan and the origins of the current conflict back past the 10th century to demonstrate how the divide between Arab and non-Arab ethnic groups is political rather than racial in nature. The author persuasively argues that the conflict in Darfur is a political problem, with a historical basis, requiring a political solution—facilitated not by the U.N. or a global community but rather by the African Union and other African states. The book’s introductory and closing chapters are essential reading for those interested in the topic. (Mar.)

Parness (Rule the Freakin’ Markets) shows readers how to take control of retirement and the years leading up to it. Full of practical suggestions, this book highlights numerous aggressive but simple and safe strategies to actively manage retirement resources. The author focuses on the fundamentals so that readers will be able to understand mutual fund reports and stock charts and know how to digest the information they contain. He divides his advice into three sections: assessing one’s current financial situation, mastering the tools and making the most of assets. Each section includes charts and quizzes to help explain concepts and test understanding. Scattered throughout are “Waxie’s” tips: short, helpful nuggets that provide advice on a variety of topics. Parness also includes several profiles of individuals at various stages of life and financial responsibility and offers practical advice for approaching their retirement savings. A handy glossary section serves as a useful reference tool for the less initiated. Free of jargon and easy-to-understand, this book will be of interest to everyone hoping to regain control over their retirement future, especially with the current market volatility. (Mar.)

Writing explicitly for an audience that is already familiar with international affairs, Codevilla (The Character of Nations) draws on examples from ancient Greece through the Iraq War to provide a road map for future foreign policy in this accessible but didactic book. In a series of chapters arranged thematically around concepts that include the language of politics and the effectiveness of diplomacy, the author takes issue with the realist, liberal nationalist and neoconservative schools of thought and their “ruinous counsel” that dominates contemporary international politics, instead advocating a commonsense approach that emphasizes mastering the basic skills of diplomacy and statecraft. Codevilla appeals to the Monroe Doctrine and 19th-century American approaches to foreign affairs while condemning contemporary policy that he believes has failed to secure a lasting peace. Codevilla writes intelligently on topics as diverse as the affect of economic sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s and contemporary relations between Russia and Georgia, but his highly critical style can sometimes be abrasive. (Feb.)

In elegant prose colored by vivid—but not precious—descriptions of her homeland, Burmese journalist Tin relates with great effect the insidious erosion of freedoms that occurred in her country, beginning in the 1950s with the installation of military rule and the imposition of socialism. Burma, or Myanmar since 1989, is a country often obscured to the rest of the world via the political paranoia of its government. Tin lifts the lid on how the country deteriorated under authoritarian socialism to become one of the world’s poorest nations, and writes of her own personal conflict as both government-regulated journalist in a male-dominated environment and despairing Burmese patriot. As the turmoil grows, Tin’s story continues to vacillate between resignation and the furtive search for any signs of hope, such as the one in 1988 when democracy advocates took to the streets for a brief moment of free expression. After enduring 10 more years of the often violent military junta’s rule, Tin moved to the United States in 1998 to pursue a journalism fellowship. Her quiet but powerful story deserves a wide audience. (Feb.)

Nakhleh, former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, draws on nearly three decades of experience, current research and extensive polling to argue that the majority of Muslims strongly oppose terrorism and want good governance and a functional relationship with the U.S. But, he writes, “The policies of the past six years have put the [U.S.] on a collision course with the Islamic world, and have undermined American credibility and stature worldwide.” He offers several recommendations for engaging Muslim communities, starting with “enhancing government expertise in political Islam” and including “promoting multilateralism, a resolution of regional conflicts... intellectual exchanges... dialogue with adversaries and an end to wars of choice.” Nakhleh defends the CIA from accusations that it failed to sound the pre-9/11 alarm (“the claim made by some neo-cons... is patently false”) and strengthens the case that more often than not, politics trumped intelligence in the Bush administration. Indeed, the greatest irony may be that today, a majority of Muslims view the U.S. “as a threat to world peace.” Incoming policymakers might want to take note. (Feb.)

Novogratz combined her twin passions for banking and philanthropy after she left a lucrative corporate banking position to work with women’s groups in microfinance, the pioneering banking strategy that won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Her work merging market systems with development and social empowerment led her to create the Acumen Fund for entrepreneurs in developing nations, which she describes as “the opposite of old-fashioned charity.” Novogratz also focuses on her own developmental path as she charts her evolving views of capitalism and how she will “change the world.” Unfortunately, she stumbles when she strays into biographical territory, relying on clichés to bolster her professional decisions through a personal lens. The book is most interesting when it touches on the difficult decisions that Novogratz and her team must make about financial empowerment—should they charge interest on loans to poor women? can working women find acceptance in a patriarchal society?—but these dilemmas are facilely glossed, keeping the book in an uncomfortable limbo between a personal narrative and a primer on globalization. (Feb.)

Instead of exploring exotic locales such as India and the Congo, as he did in his previous books (Search for the Pink-Headed Duck; Drums Along the Congo), Nugent stays close to home for a portrait of the fishing port town of New Bedford, Mass., where he lived for 17 years. With wry humor and empathy (it helps that he is a mariner himself), Nugent deftly tells the tale of a once bustling and vibrant community—the pre-eminent spot for fishing and whaling—and its decline as its fiercely independent inhabitants grapple for relevance in an increasingly globalized world. The book at first reads like a series of colorful character sketches: a junkie conman who turned to fishing after fighting in Vietnam; a jinxed fisherman whose presence on a boat indicates death to all the passengers save himself; the secretary to a secret lesbian fishing society. But the book reveals something larger as Nugent seamlessly weaves in the history of the town, its industry, drug-smuggling trade and flirtations with radical politics. (Feb.)

For 17 years, German recorded the comings and goings of the Rolling Stones in his fanzine Beggars Banquet; in this surprisingly lifeless memoir, he documents his relationship with the band. German’s fandom with the Stones began when he was 12. When he heard songs like “Bitch” and “Sweet Virginia,” he was inexplicably hooked on the band’s music, and he envied the DJs who got to play their music and the journalists who covered the band. By the time he was 16, German had decided to produce a newsletter devoted to his favorite group, printing the first 100 copies of Beggars Banquet on his Brooklyn high school’s mimeograph machine in 1978. Although his classmates were unenthusiastic (they were more interested in disco and Saturday Night Fever than Exile on Main Street), the Stones and their management eventually became aware of German’s efforts. By 1983, the Stones wanted to make Beggars Banquet the official fanzine of their fan club and stuffed the record sleeves of their new release, Undercover, with it. When the Stones’ manager reneged on his promise of payment, German learned a hard business lesson and ended the arrangement, but he never lost his affection for the band. He chronicles his close relationships with Keith Richards and Ron Woods (with whom he coauthored a book) as well as his lukewarm relationship with Mick. Richards emerges from German’s memoir as a sweet and loving guy, while Jagger appears an arrogant prima donna who has little time for his band mates or his family. (Feb.)

Arnold Gragston ferried slaves across the Ohio River, “freeing other people while remaining enslaved himself”; Nelson Gant was tried for attempting to steal his wife from slavery; Althea Lynch, cook and escaped slave, set off “a crisis that involved one military governor, two posses and a U.S. Marshal.” That’s just a sampling of the “stories of former slaves and freedmen who were agile enough to... sneak through holes in the system and take what seemed like very little and turn it into more than enough” in award-winning journalist DeRamus’s salute to the daring and the inventiveness of those who made history, while not making it into history books. DeRamus’s touch is light and journalistic, close in tone to Sunday supplement pieces, and a bit jazzy (“It was love bubbling on a stove, love shouting at the low-slung midnight moon”). Entertaining and easy reading it is, but as DeRamus reaches beyond the famously heroic figures into the lives of the little known, she enriches and alters our perspective on 19th-century African-American daily life. (Feb.)

Drawing on captured Nazi documents found in Soviet archives and other recently released materials, Cassidy (J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century) offers a new view of the German wunderkind Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), who won the 1932 Nobel Prize in physics for revolutionizing the nascent field of quantum physics, first with his matrix interpretation of quantum mechanics, then with his famous uncertainty principle. What Cassidy seeks to understand is why Heisenberg chose—indeed fought—to remain in Germany under the Nazi regime and then took a leadership role in its efforts to split the atom. Heisenberg later rationalized these activities, but Cassidy shows that the account in the scientist’s memoirs doesn’t always agree with evidence in the recovered documents. Heisenberg’s famous wartime meeting with his one-time mentor Niels Bohr in Copenhagen is parsed in detail as Cassidy considers their conflicting accounts. Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is an important book, though it moves too quickly through Heisenberg’s 30 postwar years. Photos. (Feb.)

By covering the lives and careers of hundreds of American women writers of all backgrounds, this survey is ambitious and galvanizing, contributing to feminist theory without itself reading like theory. Diverse beyond easy description, these women, especially in earlier centuries, have two things in common. One is an almost universal break with patriarchal constructs. Second is gaining independence from European literary models, female as well as male. Although there have been multivolume, encyclopedic works of greater scope, like Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s Norton Anthology of Literature by Woman, this is the first guide and history ever attempted by one scholar working solo. With a generally chronological approach (including a handful of sensible deviations), Showalter’s Baedeker showcases the rise and fall of styles and genres. Lives and careers of superstars such as Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Pearl S. Buck and Toni Morrison are put into high relief. In Showalter’s book, the voices of several hundred other authors, ranging from Phillis Wheatley and Julia Ward Howe to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, Grace Metalious and James Tiptree Jr., sing out in a monumental choral orchestrated by Showalter (A Literature of Their Own), a groundbreaking feminist scholar at Princeton. (Feb. 25)

Hirigoyen, chef/owner of San Francisco’s Piperade and Bascadillos and author of The Basque Kitchen, makes a worthy contribution to the rapidly growing number of cookbooks from the Iberian peninsula. Hirigoyen focuses on pintxos, Basque for tapas or finger foods, a specialty taken very seriously in his homeland. Many of the selections can be made ahead of time, and many are served at room temperature. Recipes are paired with wine suggestions, including such hard-to-match plates as fried chicken sandwiches, lamb’s tongue, and artichoke chips. Dishes are grouped by food type—little sandwiches, stews and braises, fried bites, skewers, etc. Highlights include duck breast with oranges and green olives, tuna belly with lemon confit, tomato and watermelon salad, and fava beans with crème fraîche and mint. A detailed pantry section includes recipes for such staples as aioli, with lemon and orange/saffron variations; ham dust; garlic chips; and veal stock. With 75 recipes and 50 full-color photographs, Hirigoyen showcases a tasty and broad array of small plates that will tantalize and satisfy. (Apr.)

Perfectly timed for the current economy, Mattocks’s book provides an assortment of approachable, repertoire-expanding recipes for affordable dinners. The author divides the recipes into practical chapters on popular foods: chicken, meat, fish, eggs, vegetarian dishes, a few desserts. Spices and international flavors keeps things interesting, and recipes like ginger chicken with avocado; Mom’s Jamaican curry with dumplings, rice, & peas; pecan-crusted tilapia with mango-salsa salad and coconut rice; and ratatouille with couscous are tempting takes on everyday fare. Each recipe is keyed with a price for two or four servings, but unless readers have well-stocked spice cabinets and pantries, some of the estimates are a little too optimistic: for example, it’s tough to believe someone could pull off four servings of sunny shrimp curry, made with a pound of shrimp, peas, two tomatoes, chicken broth, fresh ginger, lime juice, shredded coconut and more for less than $7 total. There’s also a little too much repetition—the same tip box shows up in multiple recipes a few pages apart, and most of the pull quotes don’t deserve double attention. But among the recipes readers will find more than enough variety to inspire the wallet-friendly habit of cooking at home. (Apr.)

Despite its title, almost every recipe in this book uses meat, fish or eggs. A collaboration between Manning, a former vegan, and Desmond, an unabashed meat lover, the aim is to help Americans, who they believe eat far more meat than is healthy or good for agricultural sustainability, compose meals that are both tasty and filling without having a slab of meat as the overbearing star ingredient. Instead, meat appears in smaller quantities supplemented by “layers of flavor” in the form of additional savory ingredients that should keep people who usually expect lots of meat from noticing the difference. In a burger recipe, for example, black beans and bulgur are mashed together with a minimum of ground beef to make a patty that is full-size, fully delicious and less meaty; similarly, a recipe for gyros uses a small amount of lamb amped up with tzatziki sauce and fava beans fragrant with lemon, garlic and fresh herbs. Manning and Desmond encourage preparing meat more healthfully, as well as substituting lighter forms of meat or even tofu in some cases, and many of the recipes can be made vegetarian. Overall, Desmond’s meat-loving side often seems to win out, which may disappoint readers looking to make bigger changes, but the baby-step approach is likely to be much more palatable for many others. (Apr.)

In this latest addition of the Best Recipe Classic series, Cooks Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball and his team of kitchen scientists celebrate the untold versatility of that ordinary workhorse, the 12-inch skillet. An indispensable tool for eggs, pan-seared meats and sautéed vegetables, the skillet can also be used for stovetop-to-oven dishes such as All-American Mini Meatloaves; layered dishes such as tamale pie and Tuscan bean casserole; and even desserts such as hot fudge pudding cake. In the trademark style of other America’s Test Kitchen publications, the cookbook contains plenty of variations on basic themes (you can make chicken and rice with peas and scallions, broccoli and cheddar, or coconut milk and pistachios); ingredient and equipment roundups; and helpful illustrations for preparing mango and stringing snowpeas. Yet the true strength of the series lies in the sheer thoughtfulness and detail of the recipes. Whether or not you properly appreciate your skillet, this book will at least teach you to wield it gracefully. (Mar.)

Two food bloggers tell their stories through food.

Wizenberg’s debut shares the same basic format as her “Orangette” blog—favorite recipes interspersed with personal reflection—but constructed around a much tighter family narrative. Memories of her father, for example, begin with his cherished formula for potato salad and an attempt to recreate his French toast, but also include a variation on scrambled eggs that spurred a comforting moment as he was dying of cancer. The second half of the memoir focuses on her blossoming relationship with Brandon, who started out as a fan of the blog, became a long-distance boyfriend and eventually moved to Seattle and married her—of course, she shares the recipes for the pickled carrots they served at the wedding as well as the chocolate cake she baked for dessert. Though there is an emphasis on desserts, the recipes cover a variety of meals, none beyond the range of an ordinary cook, and Wizenberg’s directions are laced with a charming voice that strikes a neat balance with the reflective passages. Her strong personality stands out among her generation’s culinary voices. (Mar.)

Not many 21-year-olds expect to have a stroke while walking down the street of their college town, but that’s what happened to Kane, food writer and blogger of nosheteria.com. What started off as a casual stroll resulted in weeks of unconsciousness, months of rehabilitation in the hospital and years of daily therapeutic exercises, all due to an arteriovenous malformation (commonly known as an AVM), which initially left her completely paralyzed on her right side. Drawing strength from her love for cooking, Kane started to make physical and emotional progress by relearning how to chop vegetables by using her immobile right hand as a weight. As she struggled to rebuild her life “post AVM... often fraught with anxieties and self-imposed rules,” she followed her passion for food by starting a successful catering business. Kane nicely integrates memories of her childhood, family portraits (including details about her own father’s stroke 13 years earlier) as well as many wonderful recipes into this story of recovery. (Feb.)

A popular nutrition specialist offers her weight-loss program.

The Today Show’s nutrition and health expert, Bauer offers an upbeat, workable and still palatable weight-loss system designed for long-term healthy living. She asserts that starting her four-step program (“Release, Relearn, Reshape, Reveal”) is not an “act of defeat” for the severely overweight but a determination to change one’s life, even in small increments over several years, as the 20 profiles of success stories scattered throughout her work attest, many of whom have lost well over 100 pounds. The first week requires the most stringent rules (no sugar, salt, alcohol or starch), somewhat relaxed over the next weeks, and there is an extensive “Allowed at Meals” food list, though you are encouraged to swap dishes among categories in her menus and indulge in snacking from her “Unlimited Foods” list whenever you want ( i.e., all the non-starchy vegetables you care to eat). Some key points include eliminating from sight “trigger foods,” using healthy (not “toxic”) fats and seasonings, consuming three meals and an afternoon snack every day, and drinking two glasses of water 30 minutes before lunch and dinner. There are numerous recipes for each section, while one chapter (“Recreation”) addresses an exercise program; however, the profiles really bring home the key link between losing weight and a liberating mobility. The recipes attempt to keep a nice balance between flavor and calories, and Bauer’s tone is even and encouraging. (Jan.)