Nonfiction Reviews: 8/3/2009

Poker now has what must surely be its definitive history in this excellent, comprehensive account of the game from the author of the widely hailed poker memoir Positively Fifth Street. In tracing the game from its early 19th-century roots in New Orleans to today's global phenomenon, McManus does more than present a history of poker: “My goal is to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are.” The “national card game,” he asserts, embodies essential American qualities. It's an ambitious objective, but the book achieves it by connecting the game to American culture. Poker, it turns out, is inextricably linked with history, from the Civil War to the cold war, and with politics (Nixon financed his first run for office with poker winnings earned during his WWII service; President Obama may owe some of his political fortunes to a regular poker game he joined after election to the Illinois senate). The book also outlines the re-emergence of poker in recent years as a pastime for many millions and, for a select few, a reasonably legitimate profession. (Nov.)

Karr returns with her third account (after The Liar's Club and Cherry) of her dark and drunken years as a newlywed and new mother, written to help her son get “the whole tale” of their early years together. Before she wrote memoirs, Karr was driven with a vagabond spirit toward poetry, whose origins she traces to the rural colloquialisms of her Texas roots. That poetic sensibility infuses every sentence of her story with an alliterative and symbolic energy, conjuring echoes of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and occasionally, Sylvia Plath. She even marries a fellow poet, a moneyed and controlling man named Warren. Unlike Plath, however, Karr's impulse toward self-destruction originates more from the example set by her larger-than-life, emotionally stunted parents, who were often her drinking partners. Her slow trudge toward writing success and her marriage to yet another man who comes from wealth set off her drinking in earnest. Soon she's drinking daily at all hours, hiding it in shame. Years later she obtains sobriety but not mental health, and checks into a hospital after a halfhearted suicide attempt. What heals her most deeply, however, is when she opens herself to prayer. Fortunately, Karr's wry wit and deft prose do not render her slow conversion to Catholicism in a sentimental or proselytizing manner. (Nov.)

Clothes make the man—and other intergendered subjectivities—in this stimulating study of the social meaning of fashion in the black community. Barnard English professor Miller surveys the history of sartorial style and flamboyance among black dandies and the cultural responses, both fascinated and alarmed, they have provoked. She paints a broad and teeming panorama: the 18th-century English dandy whose stylishness subtly subverted the markers of slavery; his appearance in the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain and W.E.B. Du Bois; his reappearance in 20th-century Harlem as an icon of freedom and modernity; his role in avant-garde film and art; and modern-day avatars Sean Combs and Andre 3000. Throughout, she explores the protean manifestations of dandyism, its blurring of racial and sexual boundaries, its significations of status and respectability, its capacity to satirize white fashionableness even as it expressed black determination to emulate and surpass white high-style. Miller's writing can be densely academic—“A dandy is a kind of embodied, animated sign system that deconstructs given and normative categories of identity”—but she offers an incisive, nuanced analysis of a rich vein of cultural history. Photos. (Nov.)

Steltenkamp (Black Elk) delivers an exhaustively researched and unrelentingly dry biography of the Oglala Sioux religious elder, Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950). Throughout his life, but particularly during childhood, Black Elk was prone to visions that propelled him onto a humanitarian and spiritual life path. That path has frequently—and erroneously—been portrayed as traditionalist, according to the author, who corrects omissions in early accounts—John Neihardt (Black Elk Speaks) and Joseph Epes Brown (The Sacred Pipe)—to analyze Black Elk's later years, his conversion to Catholicism, its conflict and synthesis with his Native American beliefs and his work as a catechist and religious leader of his people. The resulting history of Lakota culture, rehashing of previous scholarship and interviews with Black Elk's children create a more complex and accurate portrait of Black Elk, but with the paucity of genuinely new information, readers familiar with the history—or with Dee Brown's iconic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—will feel as if they've read it all before. (Nov.)

Hayes (Jump Point) and Malone (The Virtual Corporation) present a compelling picture of a society irrevocably changed by the Internet age: while we retain our need to connect with one another, we're more likely to base those connections on mutual interests than on geographic proximity. The Internet has fundamentally changed group forming; we use our new tools to splinter one traditional institution after another—commercial, cultural, social, religious—then re-sort ourselves by our affinities and our passions. When challenged by an increasingly bewildering world (and array of consumer choices), we huddle into small, trusted groups. And reaching those groups is not always easy. Marketers must see their customers or constituents in a new social context—they are using social networks to form small, self-selected communities of interest, and the one-way broadcast, mass media consciousness of the past century is rapidly being replaced by a mass-connected social information space. More theory than specific proscription, this is an extraordinarily well-researched look at a market where word of mouth or a nod from Oprah have a much greater impact than an expensive marketing campaign. (Nov.)

A staff writer and editor at the New Yorker, Hertzberg (Politics) paints a triptych of the 2008 presidential campaign, opening with “The Wreckage,” mostly Bush's second term (September 10, 2004–June 29, 2007) through “The Marathon” of the primaries (August 10, 2007–June 5, 2008), and closing with “The Sprint” to the presidency (June 13, 2008–November 7, 2008). Fearlessly liberal and passionately partisan (“I've followed the Obama phenomenon with the tracks of my tears”), Hertzberg's book is a “real-time, contemporaneous record” of the last days of the Bush administration and its “crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country's moral and political standing” as well as a blow-by blow of the campaign, with juicy analysis of the diversionary role played by political pundits. Readers similarly enraptured with the president's “political magic” will bask in the book's informative and witty discussion; those who don't share the author's “Obamaphilia” might find this an effusive and imbalanced rehashing of recent history. (Nov.)

Egan, National Book Award winner for The Worst Hard Time, spins a tremendous tale of Progressive-era America out of the 1910 blaze that burned across Montana, Idaho and Washington and put the fledgling U.S. Forest Service through a veritable trial by fire. Underfunded, understaffed, unsupported by Congress and President Taft and challenged by the robber barons that Taft's predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, had worked so hard to oppose, the Forest Service was caught unprepared for the immense challenge. Egan shuttles back and forth between the national stage of politics and the conflicting visions of the nation's future, and the personal stories of the men and women who fought and died in the fire: rangers, soldiers, immigrant miners imported from all over the country to help the firefighting effort, prostitutes, railroad engineers and dozens others whose stories are painstakingly recreated from scraps of letters, newspaper articles, firsthand testimony, and Forest Service records. Egan brings a touching humanity to this story of valor and cowardice in the face of a national catastrophe, paying respectful attention to Roosevelt's great dream of conservation and of an America “for the little man.” (Oct.)

Edelman (Motherless Daughters) returns with a charming memoir full of self-deprecating honesty that defies easy categorization. Edelman is forced to seek a solution to the sudden appearance of her three-year-old daughter Maya's violent imaginary friend, “Dodo.” Edelman, who believes in “the possibility of everything,” but can't place her trust “in anything without visible proof,” clashes with her alternatively minded husband and the New Age modes of thinking in her new Los Angeles suburb when seeking an answer. She grieves that her own mother, who died when she was 16, is not there to advise her on matters of parenting. But when Maya's behavior becomes severe, Edelman surprisingly agrees to let her daughter see a shaman in Belize. The journey, which is full of remarkable events, cracks open the foundation of her skepticism just shy of a transformation. The largest stretch of the narrative—the Belize journey— is gripping and vividly detailed, and Edelman occasionally detours into Mayan culture and history. The book is equal parts a meditation on the trials of motherhood and marriage, a travelogue and an exploration of faith, which she braids together into a highly readable, insight-laden narrative. (Oct.)

Cincinnati Bengals' Johnson has been one of the most successful and popular receivers in the NFL this decade, and he's not shy about letting anyone know in this brash autobiography. In the first few pages, Johnson—who legally changed his name to Ocho Cinco—says the NFL isn't going to hear what he has to say in his book, and with his pull-no-punches style, he's probably right. Johnson does talk about his tough upbringing in South Florida and living much of his life without his parents, but most of the space is used for opinions on any and all football-related subjects. Among them, Johnson says that his team's owner doesn't know what it takes to win, and relates his admiration of other coaches in the league. But of course, the main topic throughout is Johnson, who boasts that he can't be stopped on the football field, could beat Michael Phelps in a swimming race and would be involved in illegal activities if not for the NFL. Old-school football fans are certain to be turned off by Johnson's self-promotion and braggadocio—in one of the book's chapters he refers to himself as a “marketing genius.” But much like his extensive touchdown celebrations (which he is all too happy to recap in great detail), the receiver insists “it's about having fun, entertaining people.” For those fans who enjoy a good mix of style and substance, Johnson provides it in abundance. (Oct.)

He once helped debunk the theory of repressed memory; now this Columbia clinical psychology professor takes on the conventional wisdom about grieving. There's little evidence to support the existence of “stages of mourning” or the corollary that if the stages aren't followed completely, there's cause for alarm. What Bonanno does find is “a natural resilience” that guides us through the sadness of loss, and grief, rather than distracting us, actually causes the mind to focus; it also elicits the “compassion and concern” that humans are hard-wired to offer in response to another's suffering. Bonanno acknowledges that grief is sometimes extreme and requires treatment, much like post-traumatic stress disorder. But with this work, science and common sense come together in a thoughtful, kindhearted way; stories of loss go far beyond striking a familiar chord—they give us hope. As one mother who lost her daughter tells Bonanno, even years later she felt her daughter was like a “little ember, and if I need to, if I want to have Claire next to me, I blow on it, ever so gently, and it glows bright again.” (Oct.)

Noted Swiss-based psychotherapist Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child) again addresses the psychological and physical legacy of child abuse in these several hundred responses to readers' letters. But her book is weighed down by organizational problems, primarily in that the original letters don't appear here for reasons of privacy (some letters do appear on Miller's Web site). This omission leaves many of the responses sounding bland, without context and in some cases largely incomprehensible. For example, a two-sentence response begins, “I am really happy that you understand me so well and that you are able to learn so much from your child.” leaving the reader in the dark about what Miller is referring to. In addition, the letters run chronologically, rather than topically, so that issues are addressed randomly and repetitively. Finally, the responses are too brief to provide any depth. There are some valuable insights, such as “It is very cruel to leave distressed children alone, for what they most need then is the warm presence of a loving person.” But this frustratingly limited work adds little to Miller's previous writings. (Oct.)

“My goal is to... tell the story of Chicago through events minor and major that I believe explain its importance to America and the world,” says Pacyga, a veteran historian of the Windy City who teaches at Columbia College Chicago. The first permanent settler in a city that would be a magnet for the world's immigrants was probably Jean Baptiste Point de Sable, a fur trader of mixed West African and French descent. From there Pacyga goes on to discuss the economic, political, social and cultural development of the city, from the Erie Canal and the development of the railroads, which were crucial in making the city a thriving port and destination for immigrants, to Chicago's industry boom during the Civil War. The suburbs, the stockyards, Jane Addams's settlement house and public housing projects all receive Pycaga's attention, as does Richard Daley's infamous 20-year reign. Enlivened by archival pictures, this book offers a broad and compressed overview of the Windy City that's generally well written and absorbing and captures most of the highlights, although contemporary Chicago receives short shrift. 145 b&w photos, 7 maps. (Oct.)

You'd think little new could be said about one of the most famous trials in American history. But McGinty (Lincoln and the Court) comes to his work as attorney as well as historian. The result is a fresh perspective on the trial of John Brown, a work that adds appreciably to our understanding of the coming of the Civil War. Brown's trial, after his 1859 attack on the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Va. , caused a sensation for its bold challenge to slavery. McGinty makes clear that it was Brown's conduct and words during the trial itself, for treason against Virginia, more than his armed assault that made him a hero for many Northerners, and even some Southerners admired his courage. McGinty takes us carefully, if sometimes tediously, through the short trial. The author's legal knowledge illuminates the proceedings' intricacies and shortcomings, and reveals how Brown's brief closing statement, considered among the most eloquent words in the nation's history, had a more lasting impact than his armed raid. Brown's statement, writes McGinty, “transformed his public image from that of a violent fanatic into one of a public hero.” McGinty makes a strong and plausible case. 19 b&w illus. (Oct.)

Novelist Langer (Ellington Boulevard) remembers his late father, a disabled Chicago radiologist, as brilliant and driven, but also distant and contradictory. For more than 30 years, his father talked about writing a history of the Bonus March, which Langer describes as a pivotal but now mostly forgotten event, when some 20,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington for two months during the Depression, demanding advance payment of bonuses due in 1945, until a bloody confrontation with the U.S. cavalry left two protesters dead. The Bonus March comes to represent for Langer “a key to my dad's inner life,” so he decides to research the event and his father's relationship to it, along the way pondering whether his grandfather, possibly a WWI vet, participated in the march and whether it had particular resonance for a man who had difficulty walking. Langer's interviews range from his father's old friends and relatives to notables like Norman Podhoretz and John Kerry, who modeled his Vietnam protests on the march. Unfortunately, this frustrating combination of personal memoir, biography and American history falls flat as Langer barely scratches the surface of the Bonus March, and his father remains inscrutable and lackluster to readers. (Oct. 20)

The world waited anxiously for the other shoe to drop, according to this history of the fraught period between America's atomic bombing of Japan and the Soviet Union's 1949 test of its first nuclear device. Princeton historian of science Gordin (Five Days in August) treats the era as a study in the pitfalls of incomplete information. American officials tried to keep nuclear technology secret (but not too secret: they fretted that not publishing crucial data would tell the Soviets what to look for) and conjectured endlessly about when Russia would get the bomb. Meanwhile, the Soviets, working from espionage and revealing American public sources, wondered whether their information on bomb making was trustworthy and struggled to overcome huge gaps in their knowledge. When American radiological monitors detected a Soviet nuclear blast in 1949, American officials worried about the geopolitical fallout from revealing their knowledge of the Russian success, which Stalin kept secret. Gordin's suggestion that the mania for information control furthered an arms race that might have been avoided seems dubious, but his account of the epistemological hall of mirrors that was the early cold war is fluent. 7 b&w illus. (Oct. 7)

Although not a household name, Clark Clifford (1906–1998) advised Democratic presidents from Truman to Johnson. Acacia, American history professor at William Paterson University, has absorbed a mass of material and delivers an insightful if not always flattering biography. Fiercely ambitious, Clifford was a successful St. Louis lawyer when fellow Missourian Harry Truman became president in 1945. A senior colleague invited Clifford to Washington, where within a year his organizational skills won him promotion to Truman's special counsel. Happy to take credit for Truman's spectacular 1948 election upset, Clifford kept his reputation as a political genius for the next 20 years, although his opposition to sending troops to Vietnam put him in LBJ's doghouse until 1968, when—thanks to the possibility of peace talks and his own deft maneuvering—he replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense. This astute political biography concentrates on Washington infighting, position papers, memos, debates and quarrels on subjects ranging from trivial to world-shaking. Clifford comes across as a clear-eyed political strategist with genuinely noble ideals, but who looked after his own interests, often claiming others' ideas as his own and “parlay[ing] his government service into a lucrative private legal career.” (Oct.)

Bernstein, a former New Yorker staff writer and prolific popular-science author (Plutonium), embarks on an almost quixotic attempt to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics. It's a daunting topic. The legendary nuclear physicist Niels Bohr once said, “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.” Bernstein seamlessly interweaves the story of his own growing fascination with quantum theory and the people who were influential in nurturing his career with the theoretical conundrums that abound in quantum theory. He also is very eclectic in the sources he draws on to explain some of the more remarkable aspects of quantum theory: the Dalai Lama, W.H. Auden and the plays of Tom Stoppard all provide relevant points of interest. The scientific explanations that comprise much of the book—the problems of measurement and entanglement, how particles of energy and matter can become predictably correlated over great distances—are earnest and, because of the nature of the topic, unavoidably difficult for the uninitiated. But this is a labor of love, and serious science readers will find it worthwhile. (Oct.)

With more than 70 books to his credit, Gardner remains thoroughly enjoyable to read. This latest is a collection of 24 articles, book reviews and other pieces on subjects like science, bogus science, mathematics, logic, literature, religion and politics. The range demonstrates that Gardner should be well-known for more than his remarkable “Mathematical Games” column published for 25 years in Scientific American. Gardner is a debunker who begs folks to think critically and carefully, usually doing so himself with wit and wisdom. He takes on Ann Coulter for her pronouncements on intelligent design and those who claim the sinking of the Titanic was foretold by numerous people. He is most personal in the book's longest piece, “Why I Am Not an Atheist,” in which he explores the nature of belief. His essays on The Wizard of Oz, Santa Claus and the book's eponymous poem on evolution by Langdon Smith are of a different genre than the rest, but no less interesting. Least compelling in such a general collection are the somewhat pedantic mathematical explorations. The collection represents Gardner at his best. (Oct. 21)

The second best-known modern Norwegian writer after Ibsen—who remained a lifelong bugbear—Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) is an author of immense psychological insight and massive personal contradictions: surely one of the most controversial winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This somewhat rigid biography by a Norwegian journalist and editor gets to the heart of the last word of its subtitle early and often. Growing up in poverty that left the seeds for a giant inferiority complex, strong anti-British sentiments and a more moderate dislike for the United States, Hamsun was a restless obstreperous, Nietzschean and an often alienating husband and father (though he remained married to the same woman—a much-younger actress, later a writer of children's and poetry books—for more than 40 years). Hamsun's reputation is tarnished by his embrace of Nazi ideology. Yet, in not untypical fashion, his outlandish meeting with Hitler left the Nazi leader quaking. Praised by the likes of Henry Miller, Thomas Mann and Isaac Bashevis Singer, Knut Hamsun is given his due, although at something of an academic distance, in this unsentimental portrait. 20 b&w illus. (Oct.)

In this informative but uneven examination of sex crimes against children, former L.A. County Dep. DA Sax traces the prosecution of this “social epidemic” from identifying the perpetrator to securing a conviction. The statistics Sax presents are sobering: for instance, 67% of reported sexual assault victims are children. Sax outlines her role as prosecutor and, most importantly, how this role is incorporated into the “team approach,” with information shared among police, prosecutor, medical professionals and the victim's advocate. She also challenges popular beliefs regarding sexual assault, especially parents' fears that the biggest danger comes from strangers: 93% of sexual assaults on children are committed by someone the victim knows. Though her passion for her work is undeniable, Sax is unable to maintain a steady tone, too often straying from astute legal analysis (differentiating the law's view of adult versus child sexual assault, for example) into personal views. But despite the often slipshod organization, the issues Sax raises with the criminal justice system's handling of these cases and the solutions she proposes require attention. (Oct.)

Over the past 15 years, many highly educated, middle-class women have—whether by inclination or necessity—traded their 50-plus–hour workweeks and considerable paychecks to stay home with their children and enjoy a “saner, less hectic life.” Economist Moe and anthropologist Shandy, both of Macalester College, dispassionately dissect the statistics and motivations behind “opting out” to determine whether this recent, still narrow trend denotes a “bellwether,” a “fin-de-siècle folly” or just a blip on the cultural radar. The authors also demonstrate how these women differ from the 1950s housewife stereotype. Liberally used economic statistics describe financial sacrifices, potential marital shifts in power and ways to avoid the automatic social invisibility conferred on stay-at-home mothers, while well-placed anecdotes from study subjects weigh flexibility and quality of life for family members. There's no discussion of how recession-proof this trend will be, but this objective analysis provides a calmly informative, readable tool, useful for any couple considering children. (Oct.)

“It's one thing to have a difficult job. It's another thing to have a boss who makes it difficult for you to succeed,” begin Crowley and Elster (coauthors of Working with You Is Killing Me) in their second exploration of how to deal with dysfunctional workplace relationships. For anyone who struggles with an inept, unsupportive or even hostile manager, the descriptions of bad boss behavior will likely sound familiar, as will the employee's probable pattern of reaction (e.g., self-doubt, avoidance, sulking, ardently wishing for your boss's demise). Crowley and Elster taxonomize offenders into 20 types (“The Chronic Critic,” “Liar, Liar,” “The Unconscious Discriminator”) and offer practical advice for finding productive ways of coping with each personality through “detecting, detaching, depersonalizing and dealing.” Because the tactics are fairly similar, the work when read as a whole becomes repetitive; readers are advised to seek out his or her own situation and use the chapter as a self-help exercise rather than wading through advice for every type of bad boss. (Oct.)

A brief and meandering meditation by the late French postmodernist on the notion of the disappearance of both the “real world” and the human subject in modernity's drive toward objective knowledge and technological domination, this work more broadly links that “disappearance” with language's representational and conceptualizing dimensions. Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation) argues that the outcome of such a split between subject and the “natural world” is an absolute alienation in which both sides vanish. Distinguishing this process from any suggestions of an evolutionary trajectory, the author positions himself between a variety of poles, such as psychoanalysis, Marx, Hegel and Canetti, to characterize this disappearance as psychological or metaphysical rather than natural, and hence emphasizes its threatening aspects. By turns lucid and impenetrable, the prose makes frequent recourse to art and in particular photography to exemplify the distance between the human and the natural. With Willaume's images adding little by way of insight or illumination, the text neither undermines nor extends the theoretical framework laid out in previous writings, though perhaps offers, by virtue of its brevity, a good insight into the provocative theorist. (Oct.)

Important, potentially transformative ideas are nearly lost in this noble but botched treatise by Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International. Describing poverty as “the world's worst human rights crisis,” the author refutes the view that economic growth alone can address the problem, arguing that corruption, disenfranchisement and other ills perpetuate poverty even as a country's GDP rises. Shifting her focus to the United Nations, she reveals how the organization's antiquated human rights and antipoverty approaches—still heavily influenced by cold war ideological battles—impede the causes they are intended to assist. Unfortunately, readers must wade through the book's tedious first half to reach these insights; Khan squanders space and her audience's patience reporting truisms like poor people often have “inadequate” shelter, that they “lack food and often go to bed hungry” and that war and genocide impoverish their victims. Not only do these unnecessary sections obscure Khan's very valuable messages, but they read more like a textbook than the work of a leading expert in her field. Photos. (Oct.)

When times are tough, argue entrepreneur Suttle and manager Vest, it's the companies with exceptional customer service that survive. The eponymous “Gladys” represents the company's hypothetical most challenging client—the one who requires a high level of skill to manage. Using the stories of 10 diverse companies—the Canfield Training Group (of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame), Singapore Airlines, a polyethylene piping product supplier, a spa, an eyeglass distributor and a medical center among them—the authors show companies how to win over “Gladys,” develop strong client relationships and deliver the superior service that will help them through an economic crisis. It's the substantive, down-to-earth advice that sets this book apart from its competitors, as well as the helpful chapter-end sections, which contain practical points and thought-provoking questions and answers. The whole is an extremely well-organized and easy to use guide illuminated by the authors' obvious passion for customer service. (Sept.)

Roselle—cofounder of the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First!—offers a memoir of his career in radical activism—from teenage Yippie to career environmentalist, who admits he shares his “generation's complicity in creating the mess we are in today” and is now fighting against mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia. His rollicking adventures make for entertaining reading: he is jailed after hanging an anti–acid rain sign over Mt. Rushmore, helps Woody Harrelson climb the Golden Gate Bridge to protest the redwood logging and spikes trees (a form of protest in which metal spikes are hammered into a tree trunk to make the tree harder to cut down). Did he really throw Abbie Hoffman in a pool in Miami? Did he really discuss the future of Costa Rican rainforests with future president José María Figueres over a bloody steak and a bottle of whiskey? Roselle is more interested in spinning a good yarn than supporting some of his wilder stories. He embraces every stereotype he embodies and celebrates the impact he and his collaborators have had on the past 30 years of environmental policy. (Sept.)

British historian Cesarani, who won a National Jewish Book Award for Becoming Eichmann, investigates a murder, coverup and ensuing scandal in 1947 Palestine that, he says, ultimately cost Britain its mandate over Palestine. Receiving intelligence that radical Jewish resistance forces were planning an assassination on British soil, Whitehall approved a security crackdown involving special squads intended to provoke violence and snatch suspects. In May 1947, one squad, headed by Maj. Roy Farran, came upon 16-year-old Alexander Rubowitz reportedly putting up Jewish underground posters in Jerusalem, and abducted, tortured and killed him during an interrogation. Farran fled to Syria, but returned to face court-martial; his acquittal provoked criticism in the Jewish press and skepticism around the world, but in Britain he received a hero's welcome. In 1948, Farran's brother was killed by a letter bomb apparently intended for Roy; the Jewish underground took responsibility. Utilizing a variety of sources that have only recently become available, Cesarani reveals the surprising existence of Jewish terrorist networks in Europe while offering a masterful and persuasive account of an ugly episode in British colonial history. 8 pages of b&w photos; maps. (Sept.)

The cold war was a matter of personalities as well as policies. From the 1940s through the 1980s, Paul Nitze and George Kennan were central actors at opposite poles. Nitze was the hawk. In the darkest days of the nuclear arms race, he argued that the way to avoid an atomic war was to prepare to win it. Few policymakers matched either his knowledge of weaponry or his persuasive skills. Even fewer matched Nitze's ability to alienate superiors, but his talent could not be overlooked for long. George Kennan was the dove, consistently arguing that the U.S. must end its reliance on nuclear weapons, advocating forbearance in the face of provocation. He had an unusual ability to forecast events: the Sino-Soviet split, the way the cold war would eventually end. In these days of personalized polarization, the close friendship between these two men seems anomalous—but instructive. That Thompson is Nitze's grandson does not inhibit his nuanced account of two men whose common goal of serving America's interests transcended perspectives. Their mutual respect and close friendship enabled administrations to balance their contributions. That balancing in turn significantly shaped the cold war's outcome. (Sept.)

Samuelsson, author (The Soul of a New Cuisine; Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine) and co-owner/executive chef of New York City's Riingo and Aquavit, shares more than 300 recipes that attempt to define the unique amalgam of American cuisine. Samuelsson, who emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden, pays tribute to the mix of cultures that have shaped the American culinary landscape. His journey across the country showcases regional food along with the wide range of ethnic dishes that are so common today. From condiments, such as citrus mayonnaise and green salsa, and main dishes, such as Ivory salmon with jicama and ramp salad, to desserts, including rhubarb pudding and lemon-chocolate madeleines, Samuelsson highlights the breadth of our culinary diversity. In addition, he includes recipes for breakfast and brunch, breads and sandwiches, salads and snacks, small plates, soups and stews, holiday dishes and drinks. The result is an eclectic, appealing collection that showcases the richness of the American palate. From beef stir-fry with broccolini to lentil soup with pork and lamb meatballs or empanadas with peanut-mango sambal, Samuelsson takes the reader on a culinary journey unlike any other. 300 color photos. (Oct.)

Bastianich, acclaimed restaurateur, star of a PBS cooking show and author (Lidia's Italy, etc.), and her daughter Manuali offer a stellar array of regional Italian recipes in this tantalizing and lavishly photographed collection. They serve up authentic, hearty fare including such favorites as wedding soup from Basilicata, braised veal shanks from Lombardy and spaghetti with clam sauce from Le Marche. They celebrate and honor the cuisine of lesser-known parts of the country including Emilia-Romagna's sweet and sour little onions, Molise's braised octopus with spaghetti, Calabria's spicy calamari and Liguria's stuffed vegetables. In her trademark style, Bastianich places each recipe in the context of its Italian heritage, sharing insight into the people and highlights of the region. Offerings run the gamut from fish and beef to pasta and vegetables and provide insight into the traditional Italian kitchen and lifestyle. Readers will enjoy this volume not only as a cookbook but as a vicarious travel guide, flipping the pages to take in the culture as well as the cuisine. Bastianich's fans will delight in this superb volume, which no kitchen should be without. (Sept.)

Working moms Friedman and Yorio (co-owners of a PR company, YC Media, and authors of The Girl's Guide to Kicking Your Career into Gear et al.) take on motherhood in their latest career advice book. Pointing out that the situation of working mothers hasn't changed much in the last decade (i.e., working moms still earn less than men and childless women, still feel guilt and continue to do more than their fair share of housework), the authors urge women to take matters into their own capable hands. Beginning with pregnancy, Friedman and Yorio walk women through the steps necessary to ensure smooth transitions to maternity leave and back to work by using organizational skills and planning (while simultaneously noting that once a baby enters the picture, anything can happen). The authors include tips on finding quality, reliable childcare and warn mothers that they will have to “work harder, better and smarter” upon return to work to prove that they haven't lost their “ambition, edge, and guts.” Friedman and Yorio stress that working moms can't do it all without help: delegating responsibility to dad, nanny or others is essential, along with resisting the urge to micromanage. The authors also remind moms to focus on home life while at home and work life while at the workplace. Interviews with successful working mothers provide additional encouragement and insider perspective. (Oct.)

The central premise of this book by Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) and Merryman, a Washington Post journalist, is that many of modern society's most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked. Two errant assumptions are responsible for current distorted child-rearing habits, dysfunctional school programs and wrongheaded social policies: first, things work in children the same way they work in adults and, second, positive traits necessarily oppose and ward off negative behavior. These myths, and others, are addressed in 10 provocative chapters that cover such issues as the inverse power of praise (effort counts more than results); why insufficient sleep adversely affects kids' capacity to learn; why white parents don't talk about race; why kids lie; that evaluation methods for “giftedness” and accompanying programs don't work; why siblings really fight (to get closer). Grownups who trust in “old-fashioned” common-sense child-rearing—the definitely un-PC variety, with no negotiation or parent-child equality—will have less patience for this book than those who fear they lack innate parenting instincts. The chatty reportage and plentiful anecdotes belie the thorough research backing up numerous cited case studies, experts' findings and examination of successful progressive programs at work in schools. (Sept.)