Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 5/11/2009

-- Publishers Weekly, 5/11/2009

NONFICTION

Bittersweet: Lessons From My Mother’s Kitchen
Matt McAllester. Dial, $25 (216p) ISBN 9780385342186
In this eloquent tribute, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McAllester (Blinded by the Sunlight: Surviving Abu Ghraib and Saddam's Iraq) takes a break from global conflict to address a much more intimate struggle, his late mother’s descent into mental illness. After learning of her death, McAllester pores through his mother's old collection of cookbooks in an attempt to reconnect with the loving woman he remembers. Using the wise work of British celebrity chef Elizabeth David, his mother’s true north in all things culinary, McAllester masters cassoulet, lobster, elaborate omelets, and steak with bordelaise sauce, gaining not only in confidence and ability but in understanding and acceptance. The process involves McAllester's touching descriptions of his mother’s dishes and the memories they elicit: strawberry ice cream, homemade bread and a stolen taste of fresh parsley all provoke fond stories of his mother in her prime. As he tries to makes sense of his mother’s declining years, visiting past residences and even requesting her medical files, McAllester loses some of his enthusiasm for cooking, but brings his mother's complicated, troubled soul into focus. With this memoir, McAllester makes a fine, food-centric testament to the redemptive power of grief and acceptance. (May)

Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press
Eric Boehlert. Free Press, $26.00 (352p) ISBN 9781416560104
Award winning journalist Boehlert (Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush) introduces the new generation of political muckrakers who took the 2008 presidential campaign—and old guard, by-the-numbers reporting—by storm. From the banner names of newly minted powerhouse The Huffington Post to the vitriol dished out by established liberal outposts like The Daily Kos, Boehlert presents a Web's-eye-view of the American left's grand reawakening. The netroots, as they became known, “literally kept the lights on during a very dark period for liberals”; prominent blogger Digby puts it more bluntly: “The Internet became available just as American politics turned bat shit crazy.” That craziness only accelerated through the presidential campaign, including the polarizing campaign of Hillary Clinton, Obama calling small-town Pennsylvanians “bitter,” and the entire shock-and-awry VP candidacy of Sarah Palin. Boehlert also examines the use and misuse of social networking sites like MySpace, and some seismic changes in televised news (including mainstream media's biggest new star, unlikely MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow). Blogger Markos describes his site as “a place for passionate activists, not conflict-averse weenies”; Boehlert illustrates that ethos well in this opinionated, impossible to put down narrative, chronicling with cagey insider detail the failures of copycat reporting and the inspired citizen-journalists picking up the slack. (May)

Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China
Rebiya Kadeer. Kales, $28.95 (210p) ISBN 97809979845611
Growing up in the Uyghur nation, a swath of land north of Tibet and bordered by Mongolia, Kazakstan, Kyrgzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India, activist and politician Kadeer made many unpleasant discoveries at a young age; her idyllic childhood came to an end in 1955, when newly Communist China sent 20 soldiers to chase her family from their home. As a young woman, her sense of civic duty compelled her to defend Uyghurs from cultural eradication, ideological oppression, violence, Communist indoctrination and worse at the hands of the Chinese. In her late 20s, a recently-divorced Kadeer reinvented herself as a businesswoman in order to take care of her six children; soon, the security of wealth and a second marriage (to Uyghur activist Sidik Rouzi) lead her back to political activism. Even after Kadeer wins a seat in China’s National People’s Congress, she is unable to correct, among other grievances, plans to repopulate Uyghur with AIDs patients, or botched relief efforts in the region following an earthquake. Eventually, Kadeer's work lands her in prison for six harsh years. This memoir of singular bravery in a little-known corner of the Chinese Republic is a compelling testament to the human struggle for freedom, told with gravitas, warmth, and hard-won wisdom. (May)

Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind
Edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist. Sierra Club, $16.95 paper (312p) ISBN 9781578051618
Psychotherapist Buzzell and psychology professor Chalquist (Terrapsychologist) gather 29 contributors to explore traditional psychotherapy at the intersection of the human and the environment. This next-generation update of the Sierra Club's 1995 Ecopsychology finds one of the editors of that volume, Theodore Rosak, comparing society's “relentless pursuit of money” with Aztec “blood sacrifice,” and urging all psychologists to challenge the prevailing ethos. Mary E. Gomes, another editor of Ecopsychology, considers an extention of the community circle to “all that lives and all that has left this world,” treating lost species “as we would a friend, a family member, a beloved.” Buzzell explores the precepts of ecotherapy (probing “human-nature” as well as “human-human” relationships) and its questions (“Are there animals in your life? Special environments where your heart opens and life feels right?”). Chalquist provides an overview of ecotherapy research while exploring the idea that a missing “psychology of homecoming” is the result of an artificial divide between “scientific knowledge” and “indigenous wisdom.” Other sections explore ecotherapy in practice, helping couples bond to nature, treating animal trauma, and the healing methods of wilderness therapy. (May)

Famine: A Short History
Cormac Ó Gráda. Princeton Univ., $27.95 (344p) ISBN 9780691122373
Author and University College Dublin economics professor Ó Gráda (Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce, Black ’47 and Beyond) examines the causes of famine, from Biblical times to the present, in order to refute Parson Malthus’ still-influential 1798 contention that unchecked population growth leads to famine. In case after case, (the Great Irish famine of the late 1840s, the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, etc.), Ó Gráda finds price spikes, crop failures, climate change, floods, droughts, civil strife and other factors behind devastating food shortages. While the effects of famine are horrible—including not just mass sickness and death but infanticide and child abandonment—the corresponding population decrease reverses relatively quickly, as compared to the effects of chronic malnutrition (associated to higher long term death rates and reduced fertility). History shows that famines “have nearly always been a hallmark of economic backwardness” rather than overpopulation, and Ó Gráda expresses “tempered optimism” that famines will continue a pattern of decline. This persuasive argument for global development is intricate enough to satisfy policy wonks but written with a larger audience in mind. (May)

The Golden Willow: The Story of A Lifetime of Love
Harry Bernstein. Ballantine, $25 (208p) ISBN 9780345511027
In this sweet testament to love, loyalty and persistence, late-blooming nonagenarian author Bernstein (The Dream) explores his life's goal to be a published writer while chronicling his 67 year marriage. Having shared and supported his dream their whole ma rriage, Bernstein's wife Ruby died of leukemia before seeing it fulfilled, but lives on in his honest, unvarnished prose. Their life together begins in New York during the Depression, when young couples like themselves often lived in single rooms. (Says their landlord, "we don't call it a furnished room anymore. It's a studio apartment.") Both Jews from overseas he from England, she from Poland with poor childhoods and few expectations, they savored their simple lives together, and with their children, throughout the turmoil of the 20th century. In the difficult aftermath of Ruby's death, Bernstein threw himself into writing, eventually producing a well-received memoir of childhood on a segregated Lancashire street called The Invisible Wall. This sweet, inspiring story illustrates the power of dreams and the everyday virtue of an average American family. (May)

Life in Rewind: The Story of a Young Courageous Man who Persevered over OCD and the Harvard Doctor Who Broke All the Rules to Help Him
Terry Weible Murphy with Edward E. Zine and Michael A. Jenike. Morrow, $24.99 (256p) ISBN 9780061561535
In her first book, veteran television producer Murphy, mother of an OCD patient, recounts the extraordinary, triumphant tale of Ed Zine, a man so mired in obsessive-compulsive behavior that he was trapped for six years in his squalid basement, compelled to perform an endless series of rituals meant to stop time and the inevitability of death. Jenike, a dedicated psychiatrist with extensive experience, found Zine “as ill as any patient I had ever met.” Murphy traces Zine’s illness from its roots in childhood trauma (his mother's death from cancer) through its full flower, shortly after high school graduation, when it began to take over his life. Unable to get Zine out of his house, leading OCD expert Jenike made the three-hour trip from his Boston office to Zine’s Cape Cod home once a week. The bond between them developed slowly and with difficulty, but ultimately proved deeper than either suspected; after three years, Jenike mistakenly concluded that Zine’s case was hopeless and stopped visiting. Zine, of course, would end up surprising them both with a dramatic recovery. A passionate, faithful narrative from a reporter who understands the stakes and the people behind them, this is a fascinating, hopeful read. (Apr.)

The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Vision
Mark Changizi. BenBella, $24.95 (240P) 9781932100556
Scientist Changizi (The Brain from 25,000 Feet) kicks off this engaging romp through vision science with a list of the human eye's superpowers: “telepathy, X-ray vision, future-seeing and spirit-reading”; a “theoretical neuroscientist” trained in cognition and biology, he's not kidding. To expose these amazing abilities, and explain the whys of vision (the hows just “make my eyes glaze over”), he poses four challenging questions: “Why do we see in color? Why do our eyes face forward? Why do we see illusions? Why are letters shaped the way they are?” In his answers, Changizi challenges common notions regarding sight. Human color perception, for instance, is based around subtle changes in skin tone which correlate to blood flow, indicating emotions silently—allowing us, in essence, to read the minds of others. Binocular vision, it turns out, is not required for depth perception: in videos game, we “acrobatically navigate realistic virtual worlds as a cyclops.” “Future-seeing capabilities” evolved in order to account for a one-tenth-of-a-second lag in perception. A friendly tone, colorful everyday examples and many helpful figures will draw readers—science buffs or not—down the rabbit hole of cognitive theory and keep them there, dazzled. 7 color images, 75 b&w illustrations. (June)

LIFESTYLE

Bacon: A Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat
Heather Lauer. Harper, $16.99 (224p) ISBN 9780061704284
In this voluminous look at all things bacon, the creator of BaconUnwrapped.com takes her love of pig belly to print. Like its subject, this material is best consumed in small portions; along with anecdotes and opinions from hog farmers, chefs, food bloggers and average Joes, first-time author Lauer also covers topics like bacon production, non-pork variations, and songs devoted to the breakfast meat. Lauer does her best to keep things light, but her relentless cheerleading quickly becomes grating; her phrase “The Best Meat Ever” appears on almost every page. Still, bacon lovers will enjoy (and probably employ) the glut of trivia, including the restaurant chain that first put bacon on a cheeseburger (A&W), the number of states with a town named “Bacon” (six), and alternate uses such as “bacon plaster,” assembled with cheesecloth and affixed to one’s chest in order to ward off a cold. Even those well-acquainted with bacon will find new recipes like Black Pepper Bacon Chili, Bacon-Wrapped Tater Tots, Bacon Bloody Marys and Candied Bacon Ice Cream. Readers who, like Lauer, possess a borderline-obsessive love for bacon are likely to embrace this as their new Bible, but anyone else will quickly get their fill. (May)

Rinnavation: Getting Your Best Life Ever
Lisa Rinna. Simon Spotlight, $26 (224p) ISBN 9781416948636
Television personality and former soap star Rinna has the charisma and outsized ego to stay afloat in the treacherous seas of Hollywood show business, but even haters have to concede that her feel-good TV persona has both heart and staying power. Here, the Dancing with the Stars contestant makes an effective leap into print with an extra-positive, quick-witted, all-purpose self help. Rinna's small-town Oregon background helps her keep advice practical and affordable, for the most part. (Her exhaustive three-week big event preparation—facials, spray tans, masks, mani-pedis—might be a bit much for your average working woman.) Where Rinna excels, however, is sharing her insecurities and her methods of overcoming them; it's easy to forget a constant TV presence can struggle with the same anxieties as any woman regarding diet, marriage and work-life balance. In addition to dishing on life in the spotlight, her famous lips and sex with her husband Harry Hamlin, she also reveals her struggles with post-partum depression. Throughout, she remains cheery, humble and helpful. (May)

FICTION

The 8th Confession
James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. Little, Brown, $27.99 (352p) ISBN 9780316018760
Fans of Sex and the City ripoffs may best appreciate Patterson’s eighth Women’s Murder Club novel, his fifth coauthored with Patero (after 7th Heaven). Det. Lindsay Boxer, of the San Francisco police department, is searching for a killer who’s knocking off the well-to-do without leaving any signs of violence on the bodies. The investigation is going nowhere until the department’s repository of institutional memory recalls a series of unsolved killings from 1982, in which the unidentified perpetrator used a krait, a rare Indian snake, to poison the victims. Meanwhile, Boxer’s gal pal, journalist Cindy Thomas, is pressing the police to devote resources to a low priority murder—that of a homeless man known as Bagman Jesus, whose real name is a mystery. The romance that develops between Thomas and Boxer’s hunky partner, Det. Rich Conklin, includes a striking moment when Conklin, magician-like, slips “his hands into the flimsy fabric of her panties, making them disappear.” (May)

The World in Half
Cristina Henríquez. Riverhead, $25.95 (305p) ISBN 9781594488559
In her debut novel, Henríquez, author of the short story collection, Come Together, Fall Apart, explores the depths of love within an unconventional family. The protagonist, Miraflores finds herself caught between finishing college and caring for her mother, who is developing  Alzheimer’s disease. While tending to her mother in Chicago, Miraflores uncovers a startling secret regarding her Panamanian father, whom she had been told abandoned them prior to Miraflores's birth. To find him, and hopefully some perspective, Miraflores takes an extended vacation to Panama. There, Miraflores makes friends with elderly Hernán and his young relative Danilo and  pursues every possible lead to her father. While Miraflores’s quest for familial stability unfolds, the friendship between her and Danilo deepens, and soon she finds herself with feelings for the energetic, handsome, occasionally abrasive young man. A tale of relationships with some astutely observed parallels between human interaction and subterranean geology, this novel also has a strong sense of place and plotting. (Apr.)