Web Exclusive Reviews: 8/31/2009
-- Publishers Weekly, 8/31/2009
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Web Pick of the Week |
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At Microsoft, computer science pioneer Bell has worked with senior researcher Gemmell for years on a project called True Recall, which will allow people to create a “digital diary or e-memory continuously,” something they predict will “change what it means to be human” as fundamentally as language development and the invention of writing. Based upon further development and integration of three already-extant technology streams (digital recording devices, memory storage and search engines), the authors have worked toward this “third step” in the development of human memory for a decade and a half. A number of issues will need to be addressed, including privacy; the authors distinguish between being a “life logger,” with privately stored digital records, and a “life blogger,” whose web posts are accessible to others (like friends or coworkers). Bell and Gemmell outline the tests they’ve run since 2001, scanning and then cataloguing for retrieval a mass of personal data (documents, photographs, books and articles, web pages visited, instant messages, telephone calls) and wearing miniature cameras that sense light shifts and take automatic photographs. Readers will be wondering about the consequences of “recall[ing] everything you once knew” long after they put down this fascinating text, of particular interest to techies, but clearly written for general readers. (Sept.) NONFICTION
Barack Obama’s America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family and Religion Ended the Reagan Era
John Kenneth White. Univ. of Mich., $75 (320p) ISBN 9780472114504; $27.95 paper -033911
White, an author and D.C.-based professor of politics, documents the shifting demographic sands that led to President Obama’s election, and the “politics of discomfort” that have arisen (on the right and the left) in America’s transformation from a predominately white country, content to reminisce about conservative 1950s values, into a multicultural body politic with elastic cultural and social mores. With a sensibility that recalls Robert Putnam’s seminal Bowling Alone, White uses polls, census data, popular media and political anecdotes to describe a “new” society, in which interracial marriage, divorce, single motherhood and cohabitation are no longer taboo, in which gay rights gain ground (as long as marriage isn’t put to a vote) and people attend church more for entertainment and community than for religion. Changes in attitudes in any one of these areas—race, family, gay rights, religion—would be “good enough to transform politics as previously understood”; together, they constitute “four revolutions” that show “no signs of abating.” Though he’s generally a careful, dispassionate observer, White (The New Politics of Old Values) occasionally betrays a hint of wistfulness for the social and political frameworks of a bygone time. (Aug.)
Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities
Ken Corbett. Yale Univ., $26 (288p) ISBN 9780300149845
Based in his extensive work with nontraditional families (including same-gender couples raising children) and years of research into non-normative gender behaviors, practicing psychoanalyst Corbett outlines an elastic psychoanalytical model for examining male desire, while confronting society’s reliance on traditional masculinity narratives. Corbett isn’t afraid of questioning any existing school of thought: Does a strict, heterosexual reading of the oedipal triangle still functions in modern analysis? Should boyhood femininity be suppressed in favor of the gender binary? Can aggression be a productive, even healthy, quality among men? Corbett’s frank discussion of the emotional and sexual fluidity of boyhood play, as well as his honest assessment of himself as both a gay man and a professional, go a long way toward expanding the boundaries and methodology for understanding boyhood. Practitioners facing what Corbett calls a “category crisis” with their patients will find this most useful, but a wider audience should get caught up in Corbett’s social, cultural, psychological, and biological critique. More case studies would produced a richer experience, especially for concerned men, but Borbett’s praise-worthy challenge to still-persistent myths of masculinity is an absorbing read that pushes psychoanalysis into the 21st century. (Sept.)
Connected: The Surprising Power of our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Little Brown, $25.99 (320p) ISBN 9780316036146
Harvard professor and health care policy specialist Christakis (Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care) became interested in social connectivity when observing that the mortality rate of spouses spike after a partner passes away. Christakis sought out a collaboration with Fowler, a health systems and political scientist, and together they compare topology (the hows of a given structure) across different social networks to better explain how participation and positioning enhances the effectiveness of an individual, and why the “whole” of a network is “greater than the sum of its parts.” Five basic rules describe the relationship between individuals and their networks—including mutual adaptation, the influence of friends and friends’ friends, the network’s “life of its own”—but the results do more than promote the good of the group: they also spread contagions; create “epidemics” of obesity, smoking and substance abuse; disseminate fads and markets; alter voting patterns; and more. A thorough but popular take on a complex phenomenon, this volume offers an entertaining guide to the mechanics and importance of human networking. 13 b/w illustrations, 8-page color insert. (Sept.)
A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis
Louis Breger. Basic, $22.95 (176p) ISBN 9780465017355
In this follow-up to his biography Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision, Cal. Tech psychoanalysis professor Breger focuses on the work of Freud’s collaborator, Josef Breuer, a well-recognized Viennese neurologist who was Freud’s mentor and the co-author of Freud’s first “groundbreaking” book, Studies in Hysteria, laying out the “essential features of psychoanalysis.” It was after that that Freud, “[i]n his quest for fame,” disparaged Breuer and abandoned him completely. Where their views subsequently diverged—in the centrality of sexuality and the Oedipus complex—Breuer would ultimately be proven correct. Breuer believed that there were many contributory factors to hysteria, and called Freud’s model an “overvaluation of sexuality”; for his part, Breger calls the rise of Freudian theory “one of the tragedies of psychoanalysis,” turning psychology into “a cult-like ‘cause,’” and leaving it to therapists “outside the psychoanalytical mainstream” to make the new discoveries (setting back, for instance, recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder by 50 years). This volume should interest people with a toe in the history of psychology, or those seeking to better understand the history of their own diagnosis. (Sept.)
Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor
Mike Sielski. Berkley, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 9780425229743
With the biggest high school football rivalry in Pennsylvania as his backdrop, Sielski tells the tale of two opposing Doylestown, Penn. players who each abandoned gridiron dreams to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Central Bucks West senior captain Bryan Buckley and Central Bucks East senior Colby Umbrell, two standout players, graduated in 1999 to pursue collegiate (and possibly professional) ball careers. After Sept. 11, 2001, they were both inspired to abandon sports and serve their country, Buckley with the Marines and Umbrell with the Army Rangers. Both deployed to the Middle East in 2006, but only one survived, a tragedy that shook the idyllic Philadelphia suburb to its core. Local sportswriter Sielski (How to Be Like Jackie Robinson) recreates prep football games, military training and war-time battles in rich detail, based on dozens of interviews, letters and e-mail correspondence. Leagues deeper than most sports stories, this Friday-night-lights tale unfolds into a moving study of war's transforming effect on individuals, families and communities. (Sept.)
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Tabloid Fodder Fights Back |
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Mary Jo Buttafuoco and Rod Blagojevich are two prime examples of America at its most bizarre. Their strange debut memoirs shouldn't change that perception: her survival seems to have come from 15 years ago, and his "who me?" cluelessness seems to come from another planet. |
Since 1992, when Buttafuoco found herself at the center of a senseless tragedy, her last name has become an easy (and surprisingly long-lived) punchline. While most everyone knows the story of her ex-husband, Joey, his relationship with teenaged Amy Fisher, and Fisher’s violent attack on Mary Jo, no one knows the former Mrs. Buttafuoco’s side. In this revealing memoir, Buttafuoco examines the sociopathic manipulation perpetrated by her husband, how he kept her tied to him, and how she finally found the strength to leave. Readers looking for a scandalous rehashing of the Joey-Fisher affair will find surprisingly little (it is, after all, a well-covered 17-year-old story), but Buttafuoco bares her soul in a detailed account of her life, from the high school roots of her relationship with Joey to the healthy, rewarding relationship she currently enjoys. Buttafuoco’s goal is to alert readers to the dangers of sociopathic personalities, as well as to inspire in them the strength to leave and the patience to heal (a mission only slightly undermined by her admission that she does keep in contact with Joey). (July)
Accused of trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat, impeached as governor of Illinois, and abused as a national joke, Blagojevich recounts his political life in this desperate, unsuccessful bid for redemption. While steadfastly maintaining his belief that he’s the victim of a vicious conspiracy (headed by members of his own Democratic party), Blagojevich focuses on his humble roots and the good works he has done for the citizens of Illinois. Surprisingly candid about the shady inner workings of local Chicago politics, Blagojevich holds himself aloof from the fray of corruption and glad-handing, faking an almost willful naivety; his absolute refusal to admit wrongdoing rings particularly hollow in combination with his canny insider observations. Blagojevich tries to paper over his disingenuity with incessant repetition and grandiose comparisons to figures like Roosevelt and Shakespeare (a memorable leftover from his earlier cable-news charm offense). Rather than provide any answers, Blogojevich stokes the fires of suspicion, inspiring another, more specific round of questions. (Sept.)The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief
David Plante. Beacon, $23 (116p) ISBN 9780807072981
In this simple, heartfelt memoir, author Plante (The Family, American Ghosts) shares a series of disjointed memories about his lover for 40 years, the recently deceased Nikos. Reflecting the way longtime partners become one, even Nikos’s earliest first-person recollections enter into Plante’s memoir, including dreamy passages about Nikos’s childhood in Greece: watching his mother leave, witnessing his father dying in bed, attending college in the U.S. Having met in London in their mid-20s, Plante and Nikos immediately began a relationship that would last a lifetime. Readers unfamiliar with either man’s literary legacy won’t get much of an education; references to their careers are sparing, and the absence not only keeps readers at arm’s-length, but gives the material an unanchored feel. The book ultimately seems written for an audience of two, rather than a general readership; Plante’s intimate, guarded tone keeps readers feeling like intruders. (Aug.)
Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History
Judith S.Weis and Carol A. Butler. Rutgers Univ., $49.95 (272p) ISBN 9780813545486; $23.95 paper ISBN 9780813545707
Rutgers Univ. biologist Weis and science writer Butler compile an outstanding study of North American salt marshes, their natural histories, contributions to human well-being, and what their destruction means from human life and property. After describing the formation and maintenance of coastal marshlands (through tidal and river flows), Weis and Butler discuss in detail the plants and animals that populate marshes, arranged by general complexity, beginning with small invertebrates and insects. Next is a historical overview, introducing the calamitous, long-held belief that marshes are little more than wastelands (the first attempts to “reclaim” marshlands came from European settlers) and a painful exploration of invasive species and their effects. Research data on the widespread benefits of marshlands precede a specific case study, looking at how the Hackensack Meadowlands were destroyed by more than 250 years of “development, drainage, diking, filling, garbage dumping, and sewage pumping.” Ongoing restoration projects are also profiled, and the volume concludes with thorough notes. This account should make an informative treat for any armchair conservationist. (Aug.)
Shorebirds of North America, Europe And Asia: A Photographic Guide
Richard Chandler. Princeton Univ., $35 paper (448p) ISBN 9780691142814
Birders, long in need of a global shorebird field guide, can safely replace three or four other volumes with Chandler’s comprehensive new volume. A member of the editorial board for British Birds magazine, Chandler (North American Shorebirds) is a bona-fide expert who puts all his research and experience to use. The photos are ideal, with excellent contrast between birds and their backgrounds, bringing even the most camouflaged color schemes to vivid realization. Among the most wide-ranging group of birds, seashore vagrants are frequently reported from an ocean or continent away, and shifts in global climate put tropical and neo-tropical birds at higher latitudes; as such, Chandler covers many birds traditionally found in the Southern Hemisphere, and notes how far they’re known to wander. Opening with a comprehensive primer on shorebird geography, speciation, appearance and behavior, Chandler goes on to describe feed techniques in fascinating detail, with illustrations showing how birds disturb small prey on mud flats and marsh grasses. Each species is accompanied by a seasonal distribution map, and a thorough bibliography and index backs up clearly written text. Tiny type size aside, the book’s layout and typeface make for easy reading, even under poor light conditions, making this a highly practical, benchmark guide. (Aug.)
LIFESTYLE
Don’t Be Such A Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style
Randy Olson. Island, $19.95 paper (206p) ISBN 9781597265638
In 1997, marine biologist Olson recognized that scientists needed better communications skills to address a growing backlash against “rational data-based science.” Inspired by the “power of video,” Olson gave up a tenured professorship and went to Hollywood to reach a broader audience through filmmaking. The crucial lesson he learned was how to tell a good story, a largely absent concern for scientists, who focus on accuracy rather than audience engagement. It was a lesson Olson learned the hard way, after his intelligent design documentary, Flock of Dodos, flopped for lack of a lively story line. By “starting with [a] quirky little tidbit” about his mother and the intelligent design lawyer she lives next to, Olson found the hook he was missing. Olson values motivation over education, looking to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (“the most important and best-made piece of environmental media in history”) for a hugely successful example of his principles in action. As if to prove all he’s learned, Olson packs this highly entertaining book with more good stories than good advice, spurring readers to rethink their personal communication styles rather than ape Olson’s example. (Sept.)
How We Do It: How the Science of Sex Can Make You a Better Lover
Judy Dutton. Broadway, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 9780767930284
Veteran magazine writer and editor Dutton (Redbook’s 500 Sex Tips) gives the home practitioner plenty to think about in this up-to-the-minute survey of the science of sex. Relying heavily on academic studies, Dutton fills readers in on why red revs a man's engine, how the scent of cucumbers and Good N Plenty candy will draw in women, and what it is the bad boys do so well. She also tackles the age-old questions of closing-time attractiveness and the (in-) efficacy of pickup lines. Readers who've already attracted a mate will also find plenty of germane explanations, as well as more than a few techniques to heat up the bedroom, including specific instructions for improving orgasms and sharing fantasies. Whether readers have questions about Spanish fly, how to find out if your spouse is cheating, or the proper term for a getting-kicked-in-the-groin fetish (“tamakeri”), Dutton covers it all with a nonjudgmental tone and snappy, magazine-style prose.Though dense, the book is also a funny and addictive read, worthwhile for bedroom tips as well as sophisticated parlor trivia. (July)
FICTION
Hellbound Hearts
Edited by Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan. Pocket, $16 paper (352p) ISBN 9781439140901
This undistinguished anthology set in Clive Barker’s imagined universe in which a puzzle box serves as the gateway to the realm of the sado-masochistic Cenobites ties in with the release of a remake of the 1987 horror film Hellraiser, adapted from Barker’s novella “The Hellbound Heart.” Unsurprisingly, these 21 stories are no more for the faint-of-heart than the materials that inspired them. While non-Barker fans may recoil at what often comes across as violence for violence’s sake, even those who found some literary merit in the gory Barker novella may grow weary of a regular dose of torture, genital mutilation and bleak savagery. Not even a gifted and well-known author like Neil Gaiman (“Wordsworth,” a tale in graphic form with artist Dave McKean) can do much with the theme of an innocent or a non-innocent stumbling on or seeking the fabled box and unleashing, accidentally or not, the horrific Cenobites. Other contributors include Conrad Williams, Tim Lebbon, Kelley Armstrong, Nancy Holder, Sarah Langan and Chaz Brenchley. Stephen Jones, who worked on the film Hellraiser, provides an introduction. (Sept.)
In the Falling Snow
Caryl Phillips. Knopf, $25.95 (320p), ISBN 9780307272560
Phillips (Dancing in the Dark) is a master when it comes to issues of race, immigration and identity in modern England. In his latest, protagonist Keith Gordon, the child of West Indian immigrants, is going through a mid-life crisis. Separated from his white wife, whose family cut her off for marrying him, and fielding resentment from his 17-year-old son Laurie (wrestling with the stigma of his mixed background), Keith tries to make sense of his disintegrating life—also including a career on the skids and a troubled relationship with his own father. Phillips’s latest is thoughtful, personal and engrossing, detailing the struggles of second-generation immigrants, thoroughly assimilated Britons who don’t “look” British. While Keith can be frustratingly passive, his personal saga is challenging and emblematic, chronicling the changing racial makeup of modern England without ever crossing into stereotypical or maudlin territory. (Sept.)
Ladies of the Lake
Haywood Smith. St. Martin’s, $24.99 (384p) ISBN 9780312316952
Smith (The Red Hat Club) conjures up four mature sisters: Dahlia, Rose, Violet and Iris—each with her own distinct (and sometimes clashing) personality—in this entertaining yet realistic account of sisterhood. When their former dancer grandmother Cissy dies, she allocates her lakefront Georgian estate to the foursome with a contractual clause that forces the women to move from their tidy homes in Atlanta to her house in the mountains for 90 days, in a posthumous attempt to reconnect her granddaughters. With a plan—hazmat gear and all—in place to clean up the musty house before putting it on the market, the sisters get to work, their endeavor laced with humor, emotion, sisterly jibing and the occasional heated argument. The requisite romantic subplot featuring a strapping and wealthy mystery man flops in the romantic sense, but his role in unlocking the secrets to their grandmother’s life at least gives him a reason to be present. Smith’s convoluted descriptions border on fluff, but aside from a few small tumbles, Smith gives readers a lovely comedy with poise. (Sept.)
The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker
Leanna Renee Hieber. Leisure, $6.99 (324p) ISBN 9780843962963
Six young men and women are called to protect the living world from the dead in Hieber’s Gothic romance debut. Mysterious powers give Alexi and his peers the mission of keeping the restless dead in line and seeking a prophesied seventh guardian. Miss Percy Parker, an albino orphan with a talent for languages, fills none of their expectations, but Alexi is drawn to her all the same. Hieber draws Victorian London as beautiful and grim, with depictions of Jack the Ripper as a nightmarish many-headed hound alongside charming descriptions of the Athens Academy, Percy’s boarding school, and Greek mythology that smartly draws together various elements of the story. The supporting characters are nuanced and appealing but given short shrift by the narrow focus on Percy and Alexi, though future sequels may give them more room to play. Hieber’s debut shows great potential, and readers will want to revisit her intriguing world. (Sept.)
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