Nonfiction Reviews: 8/31/2009

A convincing economic, political and cultural analysis of waning Western dominance and the rise of China and a new paradigm of modernity. Jacques (The Politics of Thatcherism) takes the pulse of the nation poised to become, by virtue of its scale and staggering rate of growth, the biggest market in the world. Jacques points to the decline of American hegemony and outlines specific elements of China's rising global power and how these are likely to influence international relations in the future. He imagines a world where China's distinct brand of modernity, rooted firmly in its ancient culture and traditions, will have a profound influence on attitudes toward work, family and even politics that will become a counterbalance to and eventually reverse the one-way flow of Westernization. He suggests that while China's economic prosperity may not necessarily translate into democracy, China's increased self-confidence is allowing it to project its political and cultural identity ever more widely as time goes on. As comprehensive as it is compelling, this brilliant book is crucial reading for anyone interested in understanding where the we are and where we are going. (Nov.)

The combative personality of conservative judicial firebrand Antonin Scalia comes through more clearly than his philosophy in this dense biography. USA Today legal affairs reporter Biskupic (Sandra Day O'Connor) notes Scalia's contemptuous chin-flicking at the media and relaxed attitude toward torture and other controversies, but focuses on his Supreme Court tenure through a thematic survey of prominent cases. What fitfully emerges, apart from a man “confident in his views, hot in his rhetoric,” is his hostility to affirmative action, abortion rights and the “ 'homosexual agenda' ” and a fondness for states' rights, executive branch authority and gun-owners' rights, all justified by an “originalist” interpretation that hews to the bare text of the Constitution as its authors allegedly understood it. Biskupic's critical approach highlights inconsistencies in Scalia's reasoning, particularly when he went against his usual states' rights position in the Bush v. Gore decision, which settled the 2000 presidential election. But the complex, murky vagaries of Supreme Court case law are not the best format for elucidating a judicial philosophy; Biskupic gives a full account of this influential figure's doctrinaire conservatism, but the originalist doctrine itself is harder to discern. 8 pages of b&w illus. (Nov.)

This collection of stirring narrative, government data and testimony, edited by two of the lawyers for those detained by the Bush administration as unlawful combatants at Guantánamo, puts America on notice about the issues of civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. Denbeaux and Hafetz have edited together accounts from 100 other detainee advocates into a chronological narrative of legal battles: to gain access to their clients, to establish the detainees' right to habeas corpus, to describe the occupants of “Gitmo” (at its peak, 750 from 40 countries) and the torture and mistreatment of detainees. They describe their clients as underlings, working stiffs and not the high officials of any terrorist group. Plowing through legal red tape, bureaucratic mumbo jumbo and political maneuvering, Denbeaux and Hafetz fight for the men who are isolated without diversions or outside contact. The desperate words, quoted here, of Gitmo detainees on torture grab the heart and do not let go. This compelling book on the American penal colony and its residents is a cautionary tale of overzealous executive wartime power and the awful mess it sometimes leaves behind. (Nov.)

On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, was shot dead in his bed during a police raid. Hass and his law partner, Flint Taylor of the perpetually underfunded People's Law Office, spent the next decade fighting a well-financed opposition team and a hostile judge to prove that Hampton had been shot not in self-defense, as the police advocates claimed, but as the result of an FBI assassination The dramatic David and Goliath struggle embodies many of the era's fiercest debates, but Haas lacks the skill to transmute his experience into compelling reading. The prose is studded with clichés, and nearly every physical description reads like a checklist: age, size, build, skin color and length of Afro. Hass strays from the narrative to relate irrelevant information about his personal life, as when he recollects that his third wife first captured his attention when she “propped her red, calf-length boots” on his desk. The book is most engaging when Hass offers a straightforward account of the legal process, a testament to the power of the story—not the author's proficiency. (Nov.)

He has been called “a chronicler of blue-collar despair.” He led a relatively private life, much of it spent trying to raise cash via odd jobs and the writing-conference circuit, and died from the cancerous effects of excessive drinking and smoking. Raymond Carver (1938–1988) is a fascinating figure more for what went on in his imagination, as it registered the dynamics of couples' relationships amid the counterculture, than for his messy life. He came from the lower-middle class of Yakima, Wash., and was a father before he turned 21. Maryann Burk, his first wife, had her own measure of success as a memoirist, but as the Carvers' lives came to resemble his stories, they divorced. Carver soon found his second great love, Tess Gallagher. It's ironic that the master of the minimalist short story has his own life recounted in such whopping detail by short story writer and essayist Sklenicka. Earnest and carefully researched, this biography interestingly recounts Carver's working relationship with editor Gordon Lish and other publishing figures. But the writing is most compelling in an epilogue that highlights posthumous legal disputes showing Gallagher maintaining an iron grip on Carver's growing legacy and reputation. (Nov.)

A staple among readers of the New York Times, urban affairs correspondent Roberts collects 40 of his podcasts for the Times Web site—savvy snapshots of the city that prides itself on its restless energy. Roberts (Who We Are Now) pens snappy glimpses of its personalities, trends, events and general mayhem, including topics such as the gender gap and “eligible men,” fat New Yorkers, the New York City pooper-scooper law, gangster Nicky “Mr. Untouchable” Barnes, and the terror and fear of the 9/11 tragedy. His writing really crackles when he sinks his teeth into the antics of some of those who put their stamp on the city, such as writers Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin in their 1969 madcap political race, Mayor Bloomberg's deep pockets for wooing voters or President Obama's early student days of roughing it in Manhattan. Street-smart, informative and occasionally hilarious, Roberts's new book is New York City as it is and always has been. 20 b&w line drawings. (Nov.)

Resilient Queen Joanna of Naples (1326–1382) weathered overwhelming political challenges, financial ruin and a papal-run murder trial for the death of her Hungarian husband—all by age 22. Veteran author Goldstone (Four Queens) expertly describes bloodthirsty 14th-century politics and the complex family entanglements that encouraged siblings and cousins to clash over kingdoms like toddlers brawling over toys. Adding to the fray was Joanna's military support for “anti-pope” Clement VII against Pope Urban VI, ultimately helping create the Great Schism. Although primarily set in pre-Renaissance Naples, familiar contemporaries such as England's Black Prince and St. Catherine of Siena appear. Joanna repeatedly suffered violently jealous consorts, intrusive popes and envious relatives. Goldstone effectively proves Joanna's innate leadership through the queen's mastery of complex legal arguments and her formidable resilience through four husbands and relentless challenges to her royal status. Packed with action and effortless to read, Goldstone's account will satisfy scholars and entertain book clubs with a heroine who had persistence and unbounded dedication to her realm. 16 pages of color illus; 3 maps. (Nov.)

Standing before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987, President Reagan delivered his famous challenge to Soviet Premier Gorbachev: to tear down the wall dividing East and West Berlin. Within two years, the wall crumbled, and the U.S.S.R. soon followed. Time magazine deputy managing editor Ratnesar has mined American and East German archives to produce a lively, impressively detailed history of the iconic speech. Despite impeccable conservative credentials, Reagan considered avoiding nuclear war more important than defeating communism. This only became obvious in 1985, when Gorbachev assumed the Soviet leadership. Over the course of several meetings, the two leaders developed a rapport and announced disarmament agreements that distressed Reagan's hard-line supporters. In early 1987, speechwriter Peter Robinson produced a draft containing the “tear down this wall” statement, followed by a tortuous four months of innumerable drafts and quarrels with high officials who considered it unnecessarily offensive. In the end, Reagan liked the phrase, so it stayed. Being the world's sole superpower has brought America little satisfaction, so readers should enjoy this slim, lucid account of a time when events turned out brilliantly. (Nov.)

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was a collection of complex domestic conflicts and economic discontents, argues this shrewd historical study. Historian Pleshakov (Stalin's Folly) surveys upheavals in postwar Eastern Europe, with a special focus on Poland, “the mother of the Eastern European revolution.” He finds a variegated tapestry of states with different degrees of economic and political liberalization and often considerable popular support for the welfare protections and social mobility they guaranteed citizens. They also enjoyed substantial latitude from Russia: the Berlin Wall, the author reports, was an East German initiative, only reluctantly approved by Moscow. The turbulence leading to 1989 was equally complicated and factional; the disturbances that brought down Communist regimes were often touched off by their own violations of Marxist orthodoxy—especially with that reliable riot starter, food price hikes. (Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, with his proletarian opposition to industrial speedups, comes off here as something of a primitive communist himself.) Pleshakov's characterization of 1989 as a civil war is perhaps overstated, but his sardonic narrative offers a savvier, richer take than the usual hymns to national liberation. (Nov.)

The fall of the Berlin Wall might have brought forth a radically changed geopolitical landscape, but instead yielded a redux of the cold war status quo, according to this incisive history of German reunification. USC international relations professor Sarotte (Dealing with the Devil) spotlights West German chancellor Helmut Kohl as the key figure, the man who seized the moment to annex East Germany while others dithered. Through adroit, sometimes misleading diplomacy and offers of aid to the collapsing Soviet economy, Kohl outmaneuvered Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, both unifying his country and advancing NATO's borders a long step eastward. East Germany's post-Communist leadership, who imagined an independent, quasi-socialist East Germany, come off as hapless idealists easily bulldozed by Kohl. The author embeds her interpretation in a sharp-eyed, fluent narrative of 1989–1990 that sees the realpolitik behind the stirring upheavals. Sarotte's claim that the outcome—a bigger NATO, still squared off against a truculent post-Communist Russia—might have been different feels more wistful than convincing, but she offers a smart and canny analysis of the birth of our not-so-new world order. Photos. (Nov.)

Crime novelist and true-crime writer Flacco (A Checklist for Murder) gives the reader a front-row seat in the harrowing Wineville, Calif., murders where, between 1926 and 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott, with the aid of his nephew Sanford Clark, killed at least 20 people at a remote chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. The unwilling accomplice Sanford was 13 when he was sent by his parents to stay with his uncle, who continually brutalized and sodomized him while killing a series of helpless boys. Flacco reconstructs the details of the grisly murders, with Northcott's dotty mother, Louise, sometimes joining the bloody mayhem. Eventually, the cops caught up with Northcott and his ritual killings, and he was hung after a sensational trial in which Sanford was the star witness. With a heartfelt epilogue by Jerry Clark, Sanford's son, this well-told tale of senseless killing, guilt and redemption of a young innocent is a page-turner. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Nov.)

Here's a man in a white coat who gets right to the point, makes it clearly—and has a good story to tell along the way. Chairman emeritus of the neurology department at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, Bradley is the patient-friendly doc for the rest of us, providing an easy-to-read roadmap through the research, anatomy and science of the convoluted highway and byways of the brain. “You have to go to see Dr. Bradley. He will figure out what is wrong with you!” one family doctor urged his own hard-to-figure patients. It's not just bragging. Bradley coolly tackles diagnoses from migraines to movement disorders, brain injury to neuropathies, epilepsy to cancer. None of it is easy terrain. But Bradley navigates with such ease and wisdom—gleaned primarily from his own practice—that the information, even if occasionally frightening (chapters are devoted to head and spinal cord injuries, brain cancer and other diseases of the brain and nervous system), is never overwhelming. “In good health, we need to respect and protect the brain if we expect it do everything that we ask of it.” Luckily, there's this handy guide for the times when we need help. (Nov.)

Canadian environmental activists Hoggan and Littlemore pull no punches in this spirited indictment of global warming deniers. Their well-sourced research spotlights premeditated prevarications about the threat of greenhouse gas emissions by the oil and coal industry, in league with “junk” scientists, compliant conservative politicians and unsavory public relations practitioners. Persistent obfuscation of science by these anti-environment players is further abetted, say the authors, by a manipulated media that, in a misguided effort toward journalistic balance, pairs scientific certainty about an encroaching climate crisis with quotations from people “who make a living denying” it. Readers predisposed to believe the worst about the oil, coal and electric industries will find their fears buttressed by the book's detailed overview of an orchestrated climate coverup by Astroturf (fake grassroots) organizations, right-wing think tank echo chambers, the tens of millions of industry dollars poured into primarily Republican campaign coffers and the PR profession's Orwellian use of language. But global warming skeptics might also be swayed by the detailed dissection of an ongoing campaign to convince the public that “climate change is still unproven.” (Nov.)

Harvard government professor Sandel (Public Philosophy) dazzles in this sweeping survey of hot topics—the recent government bailouts, the draft, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and reparations for slavery—that situates various sides in the debates in the context of timeless philosophical questions and movements. Sandel takes utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice out of the classroom, dusts them off and reveals how crucial these theories have been in the construction of Western societies—and how they inform almost every issue at the center of our modern-day polis. The content is dense but elegantly presented, and Sandel has a rare gift for making complex issues comprehensible, even entertaining (see his sections entitled “Shakespeare versus the Simpsons and “What Ethics Can Learn from Jack Benny and Miss Manners”), without compromising their gravity. With exegeses of Winnie the Pooh, transcripts of Bill Clinton's impeachment hearing and the works of almost every major political philosopher, Sandel reveals how even our most knee-jerk responses bespeak our personal conceptions of the rights and obligations of the individual and society at large. Erudite, conversational and deeply humane, this is truly transformative reading. (Oct.)

This timely and well-chosen collection of texts on the notion of utopia examines the concept as a recurrent literary and theoretical trope and as it relates to contemporary artistic practice. Succinctly contextualized by Noble as an “impulse or tendency” rather than a place, “utopia” is examined from its earliest explicit articulation in Thomas Moore's 1516 eponymous text through its 19th-century entanglement with revolutionary aspirations in the work of Marx and Engels and its 20th-century negation in George Orwell's 1984. These provide the grounds for considerations on the significance of the avant-garde and the relationship between art and politics in its myriad activist and critical guises. While including such suspects as Adorno and Foucault, the book offers a perceptive selection of writings on and by such artists as Joseph Beuys, Liam Gillick and Thomas Hirschhorn, while critics are amply represented with superb pieces by the likes of Jan Verwoert on the avant-garde gesture and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh's infamous reading of Beuys as a historic self-mythologizer. Marred only by the brevity of the individual selections, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the art-world's current impasse between willful naïveté and postmodern cynicism. (Oct.)

Humanity's problems can be designed away with ingenious products and catchy marketing, according to this giddy manifesto. Journalist Berger (Advertising Today) channels the insights of celebrity designer Bruce Mau, whose grandiose projects—he's helping the University of Arizona to “reinvent higher education”—yield such pensées as “everything communicates.” He distills Mau's wisdom into high-concept “glimmer principles,” including “work the metaphor” and “design for emergence,” and applies them to everything from disaster relief to personal life. Berger tries to both abstract and systematize the process of innovative design and to give it a populist spin: you don't need expertise or money to solve problems, just optimism, an attentive eye and a childlike readiness to “Ask Stupid Questions.” Nifty gadgets are showcased, including a nut-sheller for Third World farmers and a wheelchair that climbs stairs. But much of the book is just a retread of self-help bromides (“you have to be willing to grow”) and familiar business buzz concepts, one that treats a pet food company's promotion of an international holiday for dogs as a humanitarian crusade. The result is an overhyped brief for a shallow approach to the world's ills. (Oct.)

White (The Cost Conscious Homebuyers Guide) paints a grim picture of America's financial future in this scathing indictment of our big banks, retirement system, mortgage brokers and legislators. White argues that middle-class families are headed for an even more disastrous financial catastrophe down the road, a result of our undersaving, overspending and overcharging ways, not to mention an excessively expensive educational system that leaves our citizens mired in debt before they've even begun earning. She explores the roots of our present woes, including underfunded 401(k)s, “bad” mortgages and unaffordable college tuition, offering such helpful advice as avoiding adjustable rate mortgages and steering clear of home improvements that don't add to your home's resale value. Despite the validity of White's tips, the consumer finance directives seem incongruous along with her pleas for legislative reform and diatribes on larger political issues. While she tries to solve too many problems—large and small, personal and political—in one volume, the tone is winning, and this book will appeal to cash-strapped, mortgage-challenged Americans who are looking for answers. (Oct.)

Allen, a senior international executive with a 20-year track record of international branding, offers a fascinating look at the chocolate wars in China. Allen, himself a participant in bringing chocolate to this new frontier as an executive for Hershey and Nestlé, recounts the struggles of doing business in a rapidly changing market of almost limitless possibility. For five global chocolate titans (Ferrero Rocher, Cadbury, Hershey, Nestlé and Mars) entering this market, the stakes were extremely high and included a billion potential customers for generations to come. Allen details the challenges these organizations endured, including copyright infringement, dedicating lengthy chapters to each corporation, documenting their failures and successes and ultimately demonstrating that there's no single path to business success in this emerging world power. In addition to the many trials these firms encountered, Allen notes a new one that will soon emerge—competition from local Chinese companies. While local competitors are a low-level threat today, in the future, they will gain greater market share. Informative, cautionary and essential, this book is a must-read for executives currently doing business, or planning to, in this most volatile and critical market. (Oct.)

You've come a long way, baby: that's Collins's conclusion about American women, who once lacked the right to publicly wear pants and now take their place on the presidential campaign trail and the battlefield. New York Times columnist Collins attempts a comprehensive account of the last 50 years of women's history in this sequel to America's Women, primarily focusing on the 1960s. Giving relatively short shrift to the current generation of young women, Collins centers the bulk of her attention on the baby boom generation (to which she belongs) and leaders like NOW founder Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, as well as dozens of ordinary struggling women. The book's stronger parts include highlighting pioneers like Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, who began her political career in the 1940s and stories of laughably shortsighted sexism against Sandra Day O'Connor. Collins captures the conundrums of feminism's success (does a see-through blouse make a woman liberated or a sex object?), but the book will probably resonate most for her generational peers. 16 pages of b&w photographs. (Oct. 14)

In 1989, all East European Soviet “satellites” abruptly broke free, triggering a similar breakup inside the U.S.S.R. In this addition to the Modern Library Chronicles series, Princeton history professors Kotkin (Armageddon Averted) and Gross (Neighbors) deliver a perceptive account of how this happened. They deny that freedom-loving citizens (“civil society”) led the transformation, pointing out that, except in Poland, no organized opposition existed. The only true establishment was the “incompetent, blinkered, and ultimately bankrupt” Communist system—an uncivil society. Even in private, all awaited the collapse of capitalism and increasingly focused on the moral superiority of socialism in the face of the unnerving economic superiority of the West. In 1989 the bottom fell out. Polish leaders agreed to a quasi-free election, which unexpectedly voted them out; faced with peaceful demonstrations and a mass exodus of citizens, East German leaders resigned. Except for a bloody attempt to stave off the inevitable in Romania, all satellite governments peacefully dissolved, often with comic-opera ineptness. Combining scholarship with sparkling prose, the authors recount a thoroughly satisfying historical struggle in which the good guys won. 16 pages of b&w photos; maps. (Oct. 13)

As the saxophonist for the E Street Band, the famed backup band for Bruce Springsteen, Clemons has lived a kind of pop music celebrity that's rare these days, a life spent rising and staying at the top of the album charts and performing before stadiums packed with tens of thousands of people. Along the way, he's mastered the art of telling yarns that are entertaining, whether plausible or dubious. It's a skill acquired during long hours waiting for gigs, traveling to gigs and recovering from gigs (Clemons now suffers from knee, hip and other joint ailments). His storytelling prowess is on display in this memoir, written with friend and producer Reo (My Wife and Kids; 'Til Death). The book is part episodic memoir (printed on white pages) and part bull session (“legends” printed on gray pages). The authors trade chapters about how the E Street Band got its name, how Spring-steen and Clemons met and why Big Man decided not to cut his hair, among other things. The intent is to give readers, especially fans, an idea of life behind the music by sharing the stories bandmates told each other. It's a novel approach to memoir that unfortunately skimps on serious insight and Springsteen's music and too often settles on nostalgia and celebrity name-dropping. Fans of Springsteen (who contributes a foreword to the book) will no doubt be more tolerant and eager to savor every page. (Oct. 21)

Whether it was in the ring during his decades-long wrestling career, or in his home during his popular reality show, Hogan has spent most of his adult life in front of the cameras. But for this memoir, Hogan hoped to “open up about everything in his life,” and it's hard to argue that he didn't succeed. From his days as a high school outcast in Florida to his ascension as perhaps the most popular wrestler of all time—“it was like the Beatles or something,” he writes—Hogan pulls no punches along the way. The first half of the work is fascinating, as he chronicles his first exposure to wrestling, which ended in a broken leg, along with his openness about steroid use and other drugs. Once his wrestling career ends, however, the book devolves into rather uncomfortable reading. Hogan writes exhaustively of his destructive marriage and his wife's alcoholism, and details his subsequent affair. But the most cringe-worthy passages come in his unabashed defenses of his son, who served nine months in jail for his role in a car accident that permanently injured his friend. The spiritual enlightenment that Hogan experiences in the final chapters does little to brighten the mood by the time the final page is turned. Wrestling fans will enjoy Hogan's honest look at his career and the history of the business. But the exploration into the rest of his personal life proves to be more depressing than uplifting. (Oct.)

In this polished tale that belies the author's raw origins, Masters (Finding Freedom), who has been imprisoned on San Quentin's death row since 1990 and become a devout Buddhist, recalls the neglect, abuse and cycle of crime and hopelessness that relegated him to prison by age 19. As a child in the late '60s, Masters and his siblings were shut up in their house in Long Beach, Calif., because their mother and stepfather had turned the place into a heroin den. Filthy, starved and whipped, the children eventually attracted the attention of neighbors, then were scattered among foster homes. Despite a happy period spent with a caring, elderly Christian couple, Jarvis was once again uprooted, this time to a hardened, joyless home where the other foster boys quickly taught him the ropes to survive. Dispirited, he ran away repeatedly from age 10 on, and the book largely follows his trajectory from one institution to the next, from McLaren Hall, where he enjoyed a sense of belonging, to the abusive Valley Boys Academy, where he was trained like a pitbull to fight the other boys. Being united with his extended family in Harbor City was both a blessing and a curse, because they gradually dragged him into a downward spiral of robbery, violence and jail. Masters's claim of innocence in the murder that landed him on death row is beside the point in this work that's a frank, heartfelt rendering of a young life that should have mattered. (Oct.)

One of the few women, and the youngest, to win a seat in Afghanistan's Parliament, Joya recounts in strong, uncompromising language her march to activism, from her humble origins to recognizing a burning need to bring the corrupted leaders to justice in her war-torn country. Native to the western Afghan province of Ziken, and later Farah City, Joya—a name she had to adopt in order to protect her family—grew up mostly in desperate, unsafe refugee camps in Pakistan after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1978. With only a high school education (and one wonders how she wrote this book in English), she nonetheless became a teacher in the camps, then worked to organize underground classes for girls in Herat in defiance of Taliban edicts. Her activism grew, supporting orphanages and war victims after the Taliban fled and the U.S. began air strikes and became an armed presence; Joya is adamant in underscoring the responsibility America holds in reinstalling to power the same warlords (commanders she names in the Northern Alliance) who once tore the country apart during the civil war of the 1990s. Having won election to Parliament in 2005 at age 27—Eva Mulvad's film Enemies of Happiness documented her election—Joya was outspoken in condemning these warlords she called “criminals” and “antiwomen,” enduring the shutting off of her microphone, assassination threats and, finally, suspension from Parliament. Joya is on a dangerous, eye-opening mission to uncover truth and expose the abuse of power in Afghanistan, and her book will work powerfully in her favor. (Oct.)

Eteraz, known for his blog Islamophere, opens his memoir with a vivid description of his father promising Allah that if God bestowed him with a son, that boy “will become a great leader and servant of Islam.” The rest of the book finds Eteraz, whose given name is Abir ul Islam (which translates as “Perfume of Islam”) trying to come to terms with his father's mannat, or covenant, and understand the role that Islam will play in his life as well as the role he will play for Islam. Born in Pakistan but raised in the U.S. from age 10, Eteraz moves easily between describing the holy history and tenets of his faith while exploring and explaining the differences between the Islamic world and Western society. As Eteraz's feelings for Islam change to fit his evolving personal, political and religious views, readers get a glimpse of all aspects of this hot-topic religion, from fundamentalism to reformism, salafism and secularism. A gifted writer and scholar, Eteraz is able to create a true-life Islamic bildungsroman as he effortlessly conveys his coming-of-age tale while educating the reader. When his religious awakening finally occurs, his catharsis transcends the page. (Oct.)

In his proficient and titillating biography of one of the last greats to emerge from the Hollywood studio system, Mann (Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn) spotlights Taylor's feverish, sensuous years during the high '50s and '60s, when she set her own standards of fame, both moral and professional. Tinged by scandal as well as touched by greatness as an actress, Taylor was the first female movie star to earn a million dollars for a movie plus a share of the profits (Cleopatra in 1963). Mann relishes depicting Taylor's larger-than-life appetites, whether for men, jewels or food, and marvels at her ability to arouse and sidestep scandal, as well as to demonstrate continually a singular devotion to her acting craft, as captured in A Place in the Sun and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Taylor managed not only to play along with the old Hollywood system perfectly—for example, allowing MGM to orchestrate her first marriage to Nicky Hilton in 1950 in order to pump publicity for her film Father of the Bride—but to flout it outrageously, e.g., by becoming the ultimate home wrecker in Eddie Fisher's marriage, and all to her advantage. Mann employs an authoritative voice, promising intimacies but still remaining respectful of his subject, and concentrates on Taylor's skillful use of marriages and illness to get what she wanted. By refusing to apologize for her flagrant adulterous affair with Richard Burton, Taylor possibly “spurred the sexual revolution of the 1960s,” Mann suggests. Reading this life is like gorging on a chocolate sundae. (Oct.)

Dickerson was a struggling 20-something with a creative writing M.F.A. when he submitted a writing portfolio to Hallmark in part because he had an idea for a novel set at a greeting card company. He takes the job of writing those cards, but what seemed like a natural outlet for his highly verbal sense of humor quickly degenerates in a profoundly alienating environment, where his self-acknowledged “ridiculously intense and enthusiastic” personality rubs almost everybody the wrong way. The tone is set early—“Oh Jesus, I just sent out a cry for help,” Dickerson thinks at his first holiday party, “and everybody heard it, and no one is coming to save me.” His personal life isn't any better, as he struggles to maintain a long-distance relationship with the only woman he's ever dated while coping with the frustration of being a 28-year-old virgin. The behind-the-scenes material is diverting (you'll never be able to read the word “special” on a card again without smirking), but it's the broader drama of the profoundly un-corporate Dickerson's doomed efforts to fit into the corporate world that gives the memoir its staying power. (Oct.)

Best known for his hilarious stage and screen plays, Paul Rudnick courageously takes on a David Sedaris style of memoir with this collection of essays. Rudnick offers a hilarious romp through the many components of his life: from the sweet tooth that landed him in child therapy to his debut Broadway play, I Hate Hamlet—and everything in between. Rudnick's humor comes from his ability to buoyantly portray the “large-scale personalities” that fill his life, including his Jewish aunts, a neurotic agent and a flamboyant costume-designer friend. With such a cast of characters in his own life, it's no wonder Rudnick developed the comical genius within his hit screenplays: The Addams Family, Sister Act and In & Out. Yet in these essays, Rudnick never sacrifices honesty for humor. Rather—as the title suggests—he tastefully incorporates humor into real-life issues, such as his father's death and his friend's struggles with AIDS. In addition to Rudnick's personal essay, he offers the narrative of Elyot Vionnet—Rudnick's alter ego of sorts—whose crude insights are woven throughout the book in the form of journal entries paired with absurd events. Elyot Vionnet is a compilation of Rudnick's friends and family—plus a truly New York sense of entitlement. (Sept.)

Four art, architecture and photography gift books for fall.

The author and photographer of these vaulted European church ceilings from the 12th through the 16th centuries directs readers' attention to the emotional resonance and liberating sensation one feels in these buildings, and to the spiritual meaning of the symmetries and mathematical proportions employed in their construction. At the book's core are 104 pages of color photographs that capture these symmetries and let readers discover their pleasures. Stephenson (Visions of Heaven) provides a straightforward architectural history of the structures and their evolution into delicate traceries suggesting floral patterns and ending with the rampant vegetal images of the late Gothic style. (Nov.)

Gustavson's book is a history not of iconic images, but rather of the machines that made them possible. Examples, from the Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., where he is curator of technology, show how innovative ideas became products and how those products made possible the progressive transformation of photography from amateur pastime into a business and a central component in the world of modern art. Major developments are discussed from the earliest wet plate cameras to the camera NASA used on the moon. Detailed captions provide both the technical information to satisfy enthusiasts and glimpses into the personalities of those who created the cameras. Over 350 color illus. (Oct.)

Glancey invites readers to “dream about” buildings lost to antiquity, war, acts of God and modernization. Architecture and design editor at the Guardian, Glancey doesn't dismiss everything new. What he bemoans is the loss of fine old buildings to generic, cheap new construction or even a parking lot, but in waxing poetic about buildings only imagined in literature, he gets off the point. But overall he offers an entertaining if saddening survey of the long-lost and recently disappeared built landscape. 300 color and b&w illus. (Oct.)

Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) was perhaps second only to Manet as an object of both intense admiration and vituperative attack, argues the final essay in this visually dazzling and critically astute Prado exhibition catalogue. The book opens with an extensive biographical essay convincingly arguing that the commercial success of Sorolla's beach scenes has overshadowed his masterful portraits and historical, religious and social paintings. This exemplary catalogue, edited by two Prado curators, and including works from major European and American collections, is a comprehensive critical introduction to Sorolla's magnificently varied oeuvre. 300 color illus. (Sept.)