Web Exclusive Reviews: 7/20/2009

-- Publishers Weekly, 7/20/2009

NONFICTION

Channeling the Future: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television
Edited by Lincoln Geraghty. Scarecrow, $45 (254p) ISBN 9780810866751
The twelve essays in this collection examine aspects of sci-fi and fantasy television, from the recurring desert landcape of The Twilight Zone to the gritty aesthetic of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. With the exception of Laurel Forster’s far-ranging essay on the scientist in sci-fi television (relating it to, among other things, the progression of the UK women’s rights movement), most essays will lose much impact for those who haven't seen the program under discussion. All, however, seem to build to editor Geraghty’s chapter on Futurama, where the previously discussed conventions are finally set on their head. For fanboys of one or more, however, this volume should provide illuminating context. (June)

Colin Powell: American Power and Intervention from Vietnam to Iraq
Christopher D. O’Sullivan. Rowman & Littlefield, $34.95 (224p) ISBN 9780742551862
One of the more tragic political casualties of the latter Bush Administration, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was a powerful voice for moderation who was unable to curb the neoconservative agenda of colleagues Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. Powell instead became their fall guy, notoriously presenting flawed intelligence to the U.N. portraying Iraq as an immediate threat. A Vietnam veteran who had vowed to keep the U.S. out of any more Vietnams (a doctrine is named for him), Powell jettisoned the most dubious intelligence Cheney produced, but also provided the final impetus for the war's launch O’Sullivan never uncovers the reasons why, nor does he cast blame, but he does highlight the more striking contradictions of Powell’s career: as Clinton's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell spoke up against gays in the military and intervention in Bosnia, but retained a soldier’s silence and obedience during Bush II's march to war. Throughout, O’Sullivan keeps his account remarkably balanced, probing the four-star General's remarkable sense of loyalty for the secrets to his meteoric rise and its abrupt halt. Once a powerful contender for the presidency, Powell's story is particularly poignant, and captured with authority in this respectful, illuminating biography. (June)

Exposed! Ouija, Firewalking, and Other Gibberish
Henri Broch, trans. from the French by Bart K. Holland. Johns Hopkins Univ., $24.95 (168p) ISBN 9780801892462
In this rational look at dowsing, ESP, astrology and other pseudo-scientific phenomena, physicist Broch exposes the trickery employed by paranormal practitioners and teaches readers how to recreate their own so-called supernatural effects at home. His examination of the shroud of Turin, for example, calls on research from the fourteenth century to the present to conclude the shroud is a hoax, created to profit a particular church, and details how Broch made his own shroud at home. Readers will also learn how to concoct saint's blood, hold hot coals, and complete controlled ouija experiments. Broch also covers circular reasoning, snowballing of anecdotal evidence, escalation of commitment and other techniques used to explain and defend paranormal phenomena. He counsels for an education system focused on reason and skepticism, and for consumers to pay attention to small details and motivation in practitioner justifications: "[I]t's not so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff when so many publications seek to mystify rather than demystify." (July)

Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer
Howard Dean. Chelsea Green, $12.93 (144p) ISBN 9781603582285
As a both a Democratic Party standard bearer and a former practicing physician, Gov. Dean (You Have the Power, Winning Back America) has placed himself at the forefront of grass-roots organizing for healthcare reform. In a searing indictment of private insurers who put profits ahead of care, Dean advocates a public-health insurance option, posing the question: “Is private health insurance really health insurance? Or is it simply an extension of the things that have been happening on Wall Street?” Charts illustrate the disadvantages faced by U.S. industry against competitors in other countries, and dovetail with his plan for “healthcare reform, not just insurance reform,” including more preventative medicine, home-care for seniors, standards set by medical professionals rather than insurers; ultimately, he concludes, the result would be lower costs and better medicine. Dean is most controversial when he proposes to fund reforms with a carbon tax on gasoline, and only slightly less so when asserting that a “reform bill is not worth passing” without a public option. This lively, detailed read should help shape the debate on one of the year's most pressing issues. (July)

I Drink For a Reason
David Cross. Grand Central, $23.99 (256p) ISBN 9780446579483
Cross, a comedian best known for his role on TV’s Arrested Development, is one of the few comedians working today with an easily identifiable comic voice, and his authorial debut ensures that his voice is heard on every page. Mixing bitterness and absurdity, the result is often piercing sarcasm, beginning with the preface (in which Cross imagines life as a famous author) and opener “Don’t Abandon Your Baby”; though he may send up easy targets, Cross consistently hits his mark without sounding like a hack. Though largely irreverent, he often seems genuinely angry (even hurt) when responding to negative reviews or misquotes. Much of the book is devoted to getting even with his detractors, but they aren’t all as good as the Pitchfork.com-skewering “Top Ten CDs to Listen to While Listening to Other CDs”; his response to a blogger who accused him of bigotry is strangely joke-free. Cross reserves his greatest vitriol for fellow entertainers Larry the Cable Guy and Jim Belushi, whom he accuses of, respectively, exploiting and outright disdaining their audiences. Though he admits inviting the charge of elitism with some of his material, Cross avoids condescending to his demographic while knocking out a steady stream of laugh-out-loud quips. (Aug.)

 Lies My Mother Never Told Me
Kaylie Jones. Morrow, $25.99 (384p) ISBN 9780061778704
Accomplished author Jones (A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries), daughter of famed literary figure James Jones, has spent most of her life avoiding the twin parental legacies of fame and alcoholism. In this brilliant, touching memoir, Jones faces both head-on. Jones explores her life, from her childhood in France, surrounded by the greatest literary minds of the age, to her troubled adulthood, seeking a way independent of the great minds that sired her. Looming throughout is Jones’s larger-than-life mother—charming, caustic and alcoholic. As Jones wrestles with her own alcohol issues, coming out sober and strong, her relationship with her mother (long in denial) continues to deteriorate. Absolutely addictive, this story of struggle and triumph is a joy to read, thanks to Jones’s gift for handling dark material with humor and grace. A rare child of privilege capable of looking on herself and her family objectively, Jones has produced a memoir will be a treasure for fans of literature and literary memoirs, as well as anyone who’s coped with alcoholics in the family. (Sept.)

 Making an Elephant: Writing from Within
Graham Swift. Knopf, $26.95 (416 pages) ISBN 9780307270993
Swift, Booker Prize-winning author of Last Orders, looks to expand his U.K.-based audience with this delightful collection of essays, interviews, musings and asides. Swift’s valuable insight into matters of imagination, inspiration, composition and discipline speaks both to fans and aspiring authors. Though many of these pieces have been published elsewhere, their organization forms a compelling, consistent arc, held together by thoughtful reflections and explanations. Opening with an early memory of disillusionment, Swift relates his early discovery that “in good fiction, without any trickery, truth and magic aren’t incompatible at all.” Subsequent chapters build on this seminal idea, particularly through discussions of model writers like Isaac Babel, dissident Jiøí Wolf, poet Ted Hughes (Swift’s close friend), and Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne. In interviews with Patrick McGrath, Kazuo Ishiguro and Caryl Phillips, the subjects elaborate on their work but also provide new perspectives on Swift’s craft. Rounding out the collection are frank tales of the writer life, ie what happens after the real fantasy comes true—getting one’s book published; they include sparsely attended tours and dangerous film adaptations. Swift’s warm, relatable style humanizes both the talent for and process of writing. (July)

 The Natural History of Unicorns
Chris Lavers. Morrow, $26.69 (272p) ISBN 9780060874148
In an inspired iteration of a cluttered genre—world-history-through-innocuous-topic—U.K. natural historian Lavers (Why Elephants Have Big Ears) rattles off a history of the mythical unicorn that “binds… the earth’s natural history to our own.” An object of fascination for at least the last 2,000 years, the unicorn was described in 398 B.C. by the Greek Ctesias as “wild asses as large as horses... white [bodies], their heads dark red” with a horn that, when used as a drinking glass, protected men from epilepsy and poison. Ctesias became a source for Aristotle and Pliny, who shaped European beliefs for 1500 years. Wending its way into (and possibly out of) the Old Testament (Ctesias's ass was, “like the Hebrews' totemic reem, real strong, horned, indomitable and, crucially, not a cow.”), unicorns are incorporated into Bible translations and the Physiologus bestiary (in its time, almost as big as the Bible), and one-horned creatures have even been found drawn on the walls of African caves. Laver's tongue-in-cheek delivery maintains its charm throughout while turning up a good bit of knowledge about natural history and how it's been artfully embellished by those recording it. (Aug.)

Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
Kapka Kassabova. Skyhorse, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 9781602396456
Novelist, poet and travel writer Kassabova takes a meandering, bittersweet journey through her native Bulgaria, where she grew up in the last decade and a half of the Cold War. Her chilling, panoramic view of life under Communism is perhaps best caught in her memory of the “rumored disaster at Chernobyl,” vehemently denied by the Bulgarian government; just as nuclear rain began t fall, the citizens were forced into the streets for a mandatory May Day celebration that left many to fall sick and die within the year. Kassabova's personal history, like her country's, is full of complex characters and overwhelming challenges; one of her grandfathers, she realized later, was a homosexual struggling in a country that forbade it, and Kassabova herself developed teenage anorexia: “If you can’t do anything to the world around you, you do it to yourself.” Written following her return visit as a 34-year-old “global soul,” Kassabova finds the country she left at 17 still devastated, but with a new measure of hope. Kassabova’s tendency to travel two or three decades in a single paragraph can make her a challenge to follow, and she too often gets lost in day-to-day minutia; though engaging and illuminating as is, a more rigorous edit could have made this memoir a page turner. (Aug.)

The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
Douglas Brinkley. HarperCollins, $34.99 (960p) ISBN 9780061139123
Award-winning author Brinkley (The Great Deluge, Gerald Ford) turns a bright light on a facet of Roosevelt’s nine-year presidency that was arguably his greatest contribution to the country: his “visionary” take on “our national wilderness heritage” that led him to preserve 234 million acres of land for posterity (that’s one out of ten acres). Using the power of the presidency, he declared Florida’s Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation, created 37 new national forests (including 17 million acres of pristine Alaska) and saved the Grand Canyon from mining outfits. A larger-than-life figure, almost manic in his exuberance and known for his battlefield valor in the Spanish American War, it is less well-known that Roosevelt was a serious naturalist and author, who trained in Darwinian biology at Harvard. The “heart and soul of the burgeoning conservation movement,” Roosevelt combined intelligence, enthusiasm and hunting-buddy charm to influence congress as well as the “backwoods types” he met on hunting trips out West. Brinkley’s full, rounded warts-and-all portrait of Roosevelt is sure to interest history buffs and environmentalists. (July)

LIFESTYLE

Menu Dating: Taste Test Your Way to the Main Course
Tristan Coopersmith and Todd Johnston. St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.95 paper (288p) ISBN 9780312354177
Consumer consultant Coopersmith presents a tapas-style take on dating to help women find their ideal mate: “in small bites” and “with great abundance, great purpose and great variety.” In pushing the idea that every date is worthwhile, however, Coopersmith becomes mired in generalizations and stereotypes. Describing 23 generic brands of men (“Young Guy,” “Sugar Daddy” “Mama’s Boy”) and a number of weak, familiar “commandments” (“You will always rock a laid-back, positive, confident attitude,” “meet a great guy by appealing to men's three senses: look, smell, and touch”), Coopersmith is unafraid to support her points with worn cliches (“no pain, no gain,” “it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon”) and made up words (“manalysis” and “mandidates”) that quickly become tiresome. Her lifelong friend Johnston contributes a few promising “Boy's Eye View” sidebars that dwindle as Coopersmith rattles on. By the time readers get to Coopersmith's two-page devotional to her husband (“My Mr. Right... He makes my cloudy days blindingly sunny”), they'll be ready to walk out on the check. (Aug.)

FICTION

The Blue Notebook
James A. Levine. Spiegel & Grau, $23 (206p) ISBN 9780385528719
Levine, a doctor at the Mayo clinic, was inspired to write this heartbreaking and terrifying novel when he was interviewing homeless children in Mumbai as part of his medical research. In the “Street of Cages” where child prostitutes ply their trade, literally encaged by their neglectful and abusive overseers (who pocket all the profits), Levine was struck by the sight of a young girl sitting outside her cage writing in a notebook. Batuk is a 15 year old girl who was sold to Mamaki Briila by her father when she was 9. Forced to service up to ten men a day from her “nest,” and subject to deplorable treatment by the men who pay for her services, she’s even abused by the doctor who examines her; her friend Puneet, meanwhile, nearly dies after being sexually assaulted by two policemen and is castrated at the first signs of puberty. Batuk tells her story matter-of-factly, in a voice reminiscent of The Color Purple’s. While painful to read, Batuk’s story puts a face on the mistreatment and disregard for children worldwide, as well as a testament to the hopefulness and power of literacy. All U.S. proceeds from the book will be donated to helping exploited children. (July)

The Consequences of Love
Sulaiman S.M.Y. Addonia. Random, $25 (320p) ISBN 9781400067992
Addonia’s bold debut is more compelling as an indictment of the repressiveness of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism than as a love story. In 1979, Naser’s mother arranges for him and his brother, Ibrahim, to be smuggled from a Sudanese refugee camp into Jeddah and the care of a fundamentalist uncle. Naser learns to despise and fear the hate-mongering local imam, merciless religious police and powerful men who lust after boys with impunity. He never stops feeling homesick for his mother and her friends or frustrated by the Saudi’s strict segregation of the sexes, and when a young woman drops a love letter at his feet, he’s quickly smitten. The girl he calls Fiore (flower) is bold, passing him notes and wearing pink shoes to be recognizable in her abaya. Addonia’s prose, unfortunately, loses credibility when he describes their passion. Both lovers risk public flogging or even execution, but neither doubts their relationship’s correctness. The consequences they fear are of daring to love in a society dominated by hatred of foreigners, nonbelievers, women and often of love itself. Addonia’s troubling revelations make for thought-provoking reading. (Aug.)

Spin
Robert Rave. St. Martin’s, $24.99 (336p) ISBN 9780312544362
The latest acid tale of people who sell their souls to the devil who wears Prada comes from a former New York publicist. Debut novelist Rave plunges his naïve Midwestern hero, Taylor Green, into the sweet-and-sordid world of New York publicist Jennie Weinstein, whose gift for spin has elevated her to the top rung of her profession. This, apparently, means endless nightclub openings, coke-snorting, sexual escapades, personal betrayals and celebrity gossip-mongering. Despite being used as Jennie’s flunky in situations that range from illegal to embarrassing, Taylor is hooked. In a series of incidents that entertain through sheer outrage, he alternately succumbs and stands up to his boss while losing much, though not all, of his integrity, and the ultimate battle between them takes on truly hellish proportions. Taylor’s awareness of his own susceptibility adds at least an inch of depth, in contrast to Jennie’s unrelieved depravity. With its inside views of a corrupt yet glamorous lifestyle and its witty tone, the book is sure to please fans of the sub-genre. (Aug.)

The Sum of His Syndromes
K.B. Dixon. Academy Chicago, $15.95 paper (126p) ISBN 9780897335867
This uninspired short novel presents itself as a collection of notes scrawled in an office men’s room. “Is art a business? If so, how much is it a business like any other?” Another: “One thing I can tell you for sure: I’m nobody’s first choice.” As thought-provoking as these might be, the reader is rarely allowed time for contemplation. The narrator is a man weighed down by a vague sense that he was meant for better things (“The real trouble begins when you can’t, in your own mind, turn your suffering into something heroic—when it is simply suffering and not the price you have to pay for some plucky act of witness.”) He shares concerns about his shrink, his girlfriend and the possibility of a new job, but any fruitful development is sidetracked by one-liners about office life and co-workers that zing only occasionally. It seems the narrator’s focus on such distractions is to demonstrate just how alienated he is from his own existence, but the point becomes belabored after nine chapters and hundreds of subsections. (Aug.)

That Summertime Sound
Matthew Specktor. MTV, $24 (304p) ISBN 9781576875209
Towards the end of Specktor’s debut novel, the protagonist declares that “it is almost impossible to speak, act or be without quotation.” That may be the philosophy by which Specktor himself wrote this 1980s coming-of-age novel, a liberally clichéd tale of college, complete with all the usual references to music, drugs, first love and self-discovery. Further complicating the story’s problems is the difficult-to-like protagonist, a jaded child of L.A. transplanted to the Midwest. What makes the book bearable is Specktor’s clear love for music, those passages enthusing over a band or a series of chords are the work’s most exciting. Despite the oftentimes beautiful prose, Specktor’s characters read flat, dramatic tension is almost nonexistent, and the whole overwrought enterprise leaves one feeling strung out and dissatisfied. (Aug.)