Nonfiction Reviews: 6/22/2009

In what should become required reading for those interested in the Middle East, Cohen, director of the Institute of Middle East Peace and Development, provides a richly detailed history of diplomacy in the region and its implications for current relations. The book begins with Woodrow Wilson's idealistic initiatives, which germinated into a “confused legacy [that] continues to be at the heart of the problem between the United States and the Middle East.” Cohen takes a tour of major players and key events, including Egypt and its nationalist movement, Iran under British imperialism, the roots of a Saudi-U.S. alliance and the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cohen provides broad suggestions for contemporary diplomacy, generally emphasizing the importance of avoiding a “one-size-fits-all” policy. He discusses policies in the region of both Bush administrations, and remains timely in presaging the new administration's diplomatic message. When Cohen concludes, “To overcome despair over these relationships, which is now so common, requires the elaboration in our imagination of a best-case scenario,” he sounds prescient, and the rigorously researched history he provides make his words ring true. (Nov.)

Pollack (A Path Out of the Desert), research director for the Saban Center, collaborates with five colleagues for this timely and cogent analysis of U.S.-Iranian relations. Dismissing past U.S. policy as “not particularly impressive,” the authors point to “an emerging consensus... that the Obama administration will have to adopt a new policy toward Iran.” To that end, they identify nine approaches ranging from diplomacy to military action and containment (“the default U.S. policy toward Iran since the Islamic Revolution”) and lay out the objectives, costs, pros and cons for each. Avoiding advocacy, the authors lament that all the alternatives are “unpalatable” and “no course is unambiguously better” than the others. They further acknowledge that Iran's nuclear ambitions represent an “existential threat” to Israel and that Israel remains a “wild card” in any consideration of Iranian policy. U.S.-Iranian relations have long been a minefield, and Pollack and his collaborators carefully identify the potential missteps facing policymakers in this valuable—if wonky—primer. (Sept.)

This slim but forceful debut by turnaround management expert Cloutier serves as a wakeup call for small business owners who have been hit hard by the recession. “Don't blame the economy,” he writes. “Recession or no recession, if your small business is failing, it's your fault!” Cloutier dishes out tough love in pithy chapters that introduce his 15 “Profit Rules” (e.g., “Love your Business More than Your Family,” “The Best Family Business Has One Member” and “Teamwork Is Vastly Overrated”). While Cloutier's provocative pronouncements seem designed for maximum shock value, each rule relies on practical business principles: maintain tight controls, pay for performance and focus on sales at all times. This blunt work will not be for the timid business owner afraid to re-evaluate operations, planning, compensation or family dynamics. For those ready to focus on profits, though, Cloutier's book is loaded with valuable advice on how to get back on track and stay in the black in any economic environment. (Sept.)

That “southern white views on the slavery question varied across space and changed over time” may not appear to be news, yet through depth, detail and focus, Ford's comprehensive study forges a fresh path. Crosscutting along geographical lines, separating the upper and lower South, Ford (Origins of Southern Radicalism) follows a chronological trail between 1787 and 1840 as he focuses on “the evolution of white attitudes and slaveholder ideology over time.” While the historical detail is engrossing, Ford's eye remains on the consequences of events upon the emerging ideology. As upper South advocates of “whitening the region” instigated “a demographic reconfiguration of slavery,” for example, selling their slaves to the lower South, the lower South's ideological restructuring replaced coercion with paternalism. Ford's monumental book delineates a “twisted and tortured” intellectual history; signs of his mastery of previous scholarship and his immersion in fresh primary sources abound. Formidable detail threatens to overwhelm, but Ford's lucid prose and summary introductions illuminate the way. Lay readers will appreciate his guidance, and academic readers will find his revelations groundbreaking. (Sept.)

According to Alba (coauthor of Remaking the American Mainstream), present-day America has arrived at a rare moment in its history, when disadvantaged minorities could “alter the ethnoracial boundaries of American society through increasing diversity at its middle and upper levels.” He argues that the U.S. reached similar moments as southern and eastern European, Irish and Jewish immigrants were gradually amalgamated into the mainstream and considered white. His arguments on why conditions could be ripe for a similar shift in the early 21st century are logical and well-supported. One unfortunate blind spot, however, is Alba's insistence on lumping together disadvantaged Hispanic and black minorities and failing to acknowledge that the African-American presence in the U.S. is wholly unique—for all the labor statistics he presents, he neglects to weigh the consequences of a 400-year legacy of slavery and segregation. Alba's conclusion is strongly stated and well reasoned, and but he hides in an ivory tower, neglecting to satisfyingly examine the hurdles to the education and affirmative-action reforms he so vigorously recommends. (Sept.)

Maass (Love Thy Neighbor) brings fresh detail to a familiar topic in this worrying but never sensationalistic look at the murky world of oil. Supplies of the resource may already have entered a period of rapid decline, with Saudi Arabia, long the world's largest oil producer, possibly passing the peak point of production just as demand from China surges. Maass exposes the staggering destruction oil has wrought in countries less well-known as energy suppliers. The author recounts how the greed of Western oil companies, governments and consumers have propped up such vicious and corrupt dictatorships as that in Equatorial Guinea, where flights run nonstop from the destitute capital to Texas. The author's “Toxic Tour” of Ecuador uncovers more cause for concern, like the fact that more oil has been spilled into that country's rain forests and stretch of Amazon than were spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Reported from countries ranging from Russia to Nigeria, Maass's heartfelt and beautifully crafted book reveals how one of “oil's darkly magical properties is that it erases inconvenient memories.” (Sept. 23)

WWII was the most destructive war in history and caused the greatest dislocation of cultural artifacts. Hundreds of thousands of items remain missing. The main burden fell to a few hundred men and women, curators and archivists, artists and art historians from 13 nations. Their task was to save and preserve what they could of Europe's great art, and they were called the Monuments Men. (Coincidentally or not, this book appears only briefly after Ilaria Dagnini Brey's The Venus Fixers: The Untold Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II, Reviews, June 1.) Edsel has presented their achievements in documentaries and photographs. He and Witter (coauthor of the bestselling Dewey) are no less successful here. Focusing on the organization's role in northwest Europe, they describe the Monuments Men from their initial mission to limit combat damage to structures and artifacts to their changed focus of locating missing items. Most had been stolen by the Nazis. In southern Germany alone, over a thousand caches emerged, containing everything from church bells to insect collections. The story is both engaging and inspiring. In the midst of a total war, armies systematically sought to mitigate cultural loss. (Sept. 3)

The author of biographies of Augustus and Cicero, British scholar Everitt now combines academic expertise with lively prose in a satisfying account of the emperor who ruled Rome from 117 to 138 C.E., the man Everitt says “has a good claim to have been the most successful of Rome's leaders.” As a youth, Hadrian became the protégé and adopted ward of future emperor Trajan. (Homosexual emperors, including Hadrian, often adopted a successor, a procedure that worked better than letting pugnacious generals fight it out.) After suppressing the Jewish revolt that had begun under Trajan, Hadrian abandoned several of his predecessor's conquests as indefensible. Traveling the empire, he shored up its defenses, which included building Hadrian's Wall in England and another across Germany. Nearing the end of a prosperous, mostly peaceful reign, he adopted two men who also ruled successfully: Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Everitt presents the Roman Empire, in what he calls “tempestuous and thrilling times,” as an almost ungovernable collection of polyglot nations dominated by ambitious, frequently bloodthirsty and unscrupulous men. Readers will wonder how Rome lasted so long, but they will enjoy this skillful portrait of a good leader during its last golden age. 2 maps. (Sept. 8)

The 10 northern tribes of ancient Israel exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E., might have been lost in “another land” as Deuteronomy poetically puts it, but they never vanished from the popular imagination, as NYU Middle East and Islamic studies scholar Benite lays out in his account of the enduring legends surrounding the lost tribes. As he recounts, people in all times and regions have been thought to be descendants of the lost tribes, whether Mongol invaders who terrified Europe or Native Americans, whose descent from the tribes was used to either justify or condemn their conquest and oppression. The tribes have been put to other religious and political uses, such as a proposal in 1524 for an alliance of the Church and the 10 tribes against the Muslims. Joseph Wolff, a 19th-century rabbi's son turned Anglican missionary, believed the Benee Israel of Bombay were the tribes' descendants; and 19th-century biblical scholar William Carpenter pointed to British Anglo-Saxons. Although solidly researched and tantalizing in subject matter, this latest by Benite (The Dao of Muhammad) is academic in tone and less engaging than Hillel Halkin's 2002 history/travelogue Across the Sabbath River. B&w illus. (Sept.)

In her second affecting memoir about motherhood and nurturing (after Mitten Strings for God), Kenison, here at middle age with two sons in their teens, pursues with graceful serenity a time of enormous upheaval and transformation in her family's life. As her sons grew out of babyhood and into the “new, unknown territory” of adolescence, she no longer felt clear about what her life's purpose was supposed to be; their comfortable suburban Boston house of 13 years grew restraining, and Kenison longed for a simpler, more nature-connected lifestyle. Since neither she nor her husband, a publishing executive, was tied to a workplace (indeed, she was suddenly let go as the series editor of The Best American Short Stories after 16 years), they were content to be rootless for over three years, living mostly with Kenison's parents until the building of their new home on bucolic hilltop land purchased in New Hampshire was completed. Meanwhile, Kenison's youngest, Jack, began a new high school, while the older boy, Henry, a musician, applied to colleges, and the family had to adjust both to the move and to the startling, delightful pleasures of country life. (Sept.)

“It was on the bus to Christian school that I first heard Echo and the Bunnymen,” Bauer says, looking back at her New Jersey childhood, and the tension between the sacred and the secular permeates every page of this heartfelt memoir. Whether she's recalling the lurid details of the apocalyptic warnings she received in Sunday school or discussing a college friendship that was a constant test of her faith, Bauer writes about her spiritual idealism without a trace of pride. The humble, honest tone continues when she moves to New York City and begins to test “just how far you could go until freewheeling expansion of mind disintegrated into soul-destroying sin,” quickly realizing that her constant efforts to push up against the boundaries of her virginity have left her only “a pile of false starts.” These experiences do lead to religious disillusionment, which she attempts to resolve by converting to Catholicism, without success. “I am someone who loved God before I hardened my heart,” Bauer writes, but no matter how hard she is on herself, she maintains an ambiguous optimism that enables her to poignantly describe the grace and beauty of ordinary moments. (Aug.)

In a probing literary collaboration that moves from Greece to their home in Charleston, S.C., novelist Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees) and her daughter, Taylor, explore and record the changing stages of a woman's life. At 50, Kidd, a wife and mother who had found fulfillment as a writer in recent years, was approaching menopause and anxious about tapping the “green fuse,” or regenerative energy, for the next step in her life. Traveling to Greece with her daughter, Taylor, 22, when the latter graduated from college in 1998, Kidd recognized that her daughter, who had just received a stinging rejection from a graduate school, was also undergoing another kind of wrenching transformation—from child to adult faced with decisions about what to do with her own life. In passages narrated in turn by Kidd and Taylor, the two create a gently affectionate filial dance around the other, in the manner of the fertility myth of Persephone and her mother, Demeter. In travels through Greece, Turkey and later France, Kidd and Taylor found strength and inspiration on their respective journeys in the lives of Athena, the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, but mostly through a new understanding and appreciation of each other. Although the “maiden-mother-crone” symbolism grows repetitive and forced, their's is a moving journey. (Sept.)

James, the highest-paid athlete (including endorsement deals) in the NBA, turns to Bissinger (Friday Night Lights) to tell the story of his meteoric rise as a high school basketball player, when he and his teammates took a private school in Ohio to state and national championships. Looking back at the media circus that put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 17, James accuses the media of overexposing him for their own benefit. It feels like the young superstar is working out some grudges against the athletic officials who challenged his amateur status after he accepted two jerseys from a sporting goods store as a gift, along with his school for failing to take his side in the controversy, but Bissinger smoothes out the rough edges, letting very little anger show. That polish is the as-told-to memoir's biggest problem—despite stylistic flourishes like shifting to present tense to write about James's big games, his passion seems muted. James hits all the right moments, from the childhood promise he made to himself to put Akron on the map to the graduation day photo with his teammates, but it's a story readers hear rather than feel. (Sept.)

A group of Afghan girls are introduced to soccer American-style in this subtly composed, eye-opening tale of cultural clash and transformation. The author, the director of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange (AYSE), whose own family emigrated from Kabul to Connecticut when the Soviet-backed coup took over the country in 1978, first sponsored eight Afghan girls to come to America to play soccer for six weeks in 2004. Having been grouped informally as a team only recently back in Afghanistan, where girls were rarely encouraged to play sports, the girls spent six weeks at soccer camps in America—in Washington, D.C.; Connecticut; Cleveland—playing soccer publicly for the first time. Ayub's account explores the diverse stories of the eight girls, who had lived through the recent nightmare era of the Taliban and in some cases were prohibited from attending school; excited and a little frightened by the attention they garnered in America, the eight girls, ranging in age from 10 to 16, then had to return to their humble, war-town families and use their newfound leadership skills to teach others. (Aug.)

With strong scholarship in Marxist history and theory, a fluent style and some healthy doses of irony, Hunt (Building Jerusalem) traces the coauthor of The Communist Manifesto from his pious Prussian roots through his apprenticeship in the family textile firm in Manchester, England, early years at the forefront of revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe and his subsequent return to the family industry to support Marx's family and writing. Engels is characterized as a gregarious yet committed theorist and activist, providing considerable financial and intellectual resources to Marx while accepting his own role as “second fiddle” in their joint battle for socialist ideological dominance. Though the book makes a strong case for the value of Engels's own writings on working conditions and defends against reductive readings that would align him with the rigid orthodoxies of Leninism and Stalinism, the author is clear-eyed with regard to Engels's less savory, sometimes “deeply chilling” ideas and his divisive manipulations of organizations and party politics. This is an impressive biography of a fascinating figure whose attempts to synthesize his own contradictory roles as arch-capitalist and seminal communist, embody the very notion of dialectics so central to Marxist theory. (Aug.)

Looking beyond the Athens-Runnymede-Philadelphia axis, political scholar Keane (Tom Paine) traces democracy's roots back to Sumeria and follows its tendrils as far afield as Pitcairn Island and Papua New Guinea. (A revelatory chapter on India's “banyan democracy” suggests that democracy's center of gravity has shifted decisively eastward.) Less interested in theory than actuality, he gives Locke, Madison and their ilk short shrift to make room for engrossing profiles of obscure politicians and reformers—medieval Spain's cortes (parliaments); José Batlle y Ordóñez, president of Uruguay in the early 20th century; the Australian progressives who pioneered proportional representation and women's suffrage—whose efforts built democracy from the ground up. Democracy thus emerges as less a set of fixed principles than a culture and mindset—pragmatic, antiauthoritarian, accepting of change and contingency and the ability of ordinary people to shape them. Keane's lack of theoretical rigor sometimes tells; his vision of a developing “monitory democracy,” characterized by a hypervigilant civil society, all-seeing media and “viral politics” seems more faddish than focused. But his study's broad sweep, wealth of detailed knowledge, shrewd insights and fluent, lively prose make it a must-read for scholars and citizens alike. Photos. (Aug.)

Cooper had every intention of saying “no” to the veterinarian who asked her if she was interested in adopting a four-week-old stray kitten with a “particular handicap.” She was fresh off a bad breakup, working a low-paying job and living rent-free in a friend's bedroom—plus she was worried about the social implications of adding one cat to the two she had already adopted: “The neighborhood kids will... say things like 'That's where Old Widow Cooper, the cat lady, lives.' ” But as soon as she picked up the tiny kitten and he started to purr, she caved. She settled on a name and brought Homer home. His intrepid explorations of his new environs quickly challenged Cooper's expectations of a blind cat. And through 12 years, six moves, several boyfriends and a showdown with a burglar, this tender and affecting book reveals Homer's lessons about love and acceptance—and how he transformed Cooper into the woman she had always wanted to be. Photos. (Aug. 25)

The Bronx's Grand Concourse, with its Art Deco structures, is one of New York City's architectural delights, and its political and social history is the worthy subject of this new book by New York Times staffer Rosenblum, who edited the paper's now-defunct City section and now writes a column for its Sunday real estate section. Stretching over four-and-a-half miles, the thoroughfare designed by Louis Aloys Risse, an Alsatian immigrant, and modeled after Paris's Champs Elysées—was completed in 1909 and saw the arrival of upwardly mobile Jews in the first five decades of the 20th century, followed by waves of Irish and Italian immigrants seeking to pursue their culture and careers in a safe environment. While Rosenblum explores various aspects of Jewish communal life near the boulevard, she also dissects the rivalry between West Bronx affluence and the working-class East Bronx, and the racial tensions that led to white suburban flight and the decline and neglect of the area. The author also draws attention to the many noteworthy characters who lived on or near the Concourse such as Edgar Allan Poe and fallen NBA star Jacob Louis Molinas. A seminal recounting of the rise, fall and current revival of a major landmark, this book, with many archival photos and drawings, is a must for those interested in the cultural history of the Bronx and New York City. 43 illus., 1 map. (Aug.)

Gabriel García Márquez was Castro's propagandist and Che Guevara his conscience, say two new books.

There's no romance in the relationship between the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the Nobel-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, argues this stinging j'accuse. On the surface their friendship is chummy and literary: Castro drops by García Márquez's Havana mansion—a gift from Castro himself—for endless conversation and critiques his manuscripts. But the authors view the men's bond as corrupt and neurotic: García Márquez, obsessed with power in both his fiction and real life, gets political influence; Castro, in turn, gets cultural prestige and a matchless propagandist. The authors condemn García-Márquez's public silence over Cuban censorship and human rights violations. Almost compulsive in their point scoring, the authors jeer at the novelist for going to American rather than Cuban hospitals. More polemic than biography, their study tellingly rebukes the Left's propensity for blinding itself to the failings of the Cuban revolution by glamorizing its leaders. (Sept.)

In this elegiac study of the revolution's iconic leader, Reid-Henry makes the relationship between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara the central dynamic of each man's life and of the revolution itself. On the one hand, the driven, domineering, strategically minded Castro galvanized the dreamy Guevara to discover his talent as a guerrilla commander and political executioner. On the other hand, Reid-Henry works hard to demonstrate that Guevara's poetic soul and quixotic Marxist purism made its mark on Castro's calculating mind. In his most revisionist claim, the author insists, not very convincingly, that Guevara's ill-starred insurrectionary expeditions to the Congo and Bolivia were not merely convenient ways for Castro to rid himself of his difficult comrade but wholehearted collaborations intended to spread their joint revolutionary vision to the world. Reid-Henry's portrait of the Che-Fidel dynamic makes the Cuban revolution as much a romantic adventure as an authoritarian bureaucracy, but Castro's obvious dominance of the partnership renders that picture unpersuasive. 30 b&w photos. (Aug.)