Nonfiction Reviews: 10/5/2009

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about “faith, science, journalism, and grace.” It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women—Skloot and Deborah Lacks—sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah’s mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line—known as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henrietta’s death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloot’s portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family. Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society’s most vulnerable people. (Feb.)

The Sindells (coauthors of Sink or Swim) explore why employees feel disengaged from their work and offer tips for creating greater alignment between who you are and the work you do. The authors are clear-eyed about why so much work feels meaningless (“How does creating a PowerPoint presentation on this quarter’s revenues... make a difference in the world?”); they stress that workers must see their jobs as an opportunity for professional and personal growth—not just a paycheck—and provide eight strategies to that end: sharing expertise, initiating change, demanding autonomy, creating meaning, sparking creativity, seizing recognition, maintaining balance and building legacy. Each strategy is accompanied by analysis, an illustrative case study, guidance on when to apply it and advice on what will be gained. The book’s emphasis on the work-life balance, the necessity of deriving professional fulfillment from work and clear, cogent tips on defining and achieving career goals will help employees at all levels reap personal rewards in the workplace. (Jan.)

Israeli writer Cohen (Army of Shadows) makes extensive use of the thousands of recently declassified Israeli government and police files to argue that Israel has attempted, from its earliest days, to control and co-opt the lives of its Palestinian citizens (roughly 20% of the population) and has utilized classic tools of social control—informants, censorship, offers of reward and threats of punishment—to neutralize a potentially “seditious” faction and to turn the community “from members of the imagined Palestinian community/nation... into members of Israeli civil society.” He explores how deeply Israel infiltrated Palestinian communities, political groups and refugee camps to secure informants and create a veritable “collaborator class” to “ensure a maximal control over the political and social behavior of Israel’s Arab population.” Stressing that the behavior of both sides is typical of national majority-minority relationships everywhere, he shows the extent to which Israel has treated its Arab citizens as one-dimensional characters open to manipulation, and shrewdly observes that the irony for Israel is that because the state couldn’t offer non-Jewish citizens “a real path to participation... the state actually reinforced Arab identity among its Arab citizens.” (Jan.)

Neoconservative ideologues battle pragmatists by fair means and foul in this scattershot history of American foreign policy. Colodny (Silent Coup) and Shachtman (Decade) hang their study on the figure of Fritz Kraemer, an obscure Pentagon analyst, whose championing of a militarized, moralistic foreign policy allegedly inspired two generations of neoconservatives. The book’s first half follows the departure of Richard Nixon and erstwhile Kraemer-ite Henry Kissinger from conservative orthodoxy in seeking a rapprochement with Communist powers. In a voluminous rehash of Watergate, the authors insinuate that White House chief of staff and Kraemer protégé Alexander Haig, abetted by reporter Bob Woodward (a sinister “mouthpiece”), undermined the Nixon presidency for this apostasy. The second half treats ensuing decades as a seesaw struggle in which neocon policy makers’ adventurism, from the Iran-Contra affair to the Iraq War, periodically self-destructs and generates a realist backlash. The authors’ sharp narrative of factional infighting exhausts itself in flogging the Haig-Woodward conspiracy theory. Kraemer is an ill-chosen central character, more figurehead than intellectual godfather; his sketchily elaborated ideas shed little light on this serviceable but mundane account of the conflict between hawks and doves. (Dec.)

The statistics startle: homicide death rates are more than 17 times higher for young black men than their white counterparts. Rich, chair of the department of health management and policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health, considers the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on the survivors. His account is professional, as he finds analogies between his subjects and “combat veterans and victims of sexual assault,” and personal, as he reports “how spending hours and days with these young men transformed” him. Two particularly detailed moments stand out: one follows a young man through emergency room protocols, another follows Rich through prison visit procedures. Although Rich’s research spans two decades, he focuses most sharply upon four young men he encountered at Boston City Hospital. The “high level of violence in their communities makes young men feel physically, psychologically, and socially unsafe,” Rich observes; thus, ironically, these violent young men seem to be looking for safety in a violent world. Rich joins the ranks of Rachel Carson, Michael Harrington and Ralph Nader for bringing attention to a pervasive social problem with a fresh perspective and warranted urgency. (Dec.)

According to Siegel (Futurize Your Enterprise), the semantic web, a more standardized version of today’s Web where our data will be so precisely parsed as to make logical conclusions possible, will enable our online information to be stored in a personal online locker from birth, keeping all vital information such as addresses automatically updated and vastly streamlining how we do business. He posits that the semantic web will morph our current “push” oriented strategy, in which providers push products and services, to an individually customized “pull” economy. Using bowling as an example, Siegel explains that in the past, a bowler scored every game by hand; in the mid-1980s, many bowling alleys moved to pin-setting machines tied to computers that automatically calculated and displayed scores (“pushing”); in the future, he predicts, a bowler will enter any venue, bowl (possibly against players in other venues worldwide) and all the data will be collected and housed in a personal online locker along with statistics of past games (“pulling”). This thought-provoking read is sure to spark ideas about what it will take to succeed in tomorrow’s marketplace. (Dec.)

Show business biographer Sellers (The Battle for Bond) chronicles the booze-soaked lives of four of the stage and screen’s most bombastic performers. Welsh Burton (1925–1984), Irish-born Harris (1930–2002), Irish-born and English-raised O’Toole (born 1932) and English Reed (1937–1999) gave some of the 20th century’s most memorable performances, but were equally famous for their offscreen antics. Except for Reed, their careers began on the British stage, before all four were lured to Hollywood, starring in such classics as Lawrence of Arabia (O’Toole), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Burton), Camelot (Harris) and The Three Musketeers (Reed). Consuming staggering amounts of alcohol on a daily basis, all were forces to be reckoned with on the set, often turning up too drunk to perform. Burton’s tempestuous affair with Elizabeth Taylor—which led to two marriages and two divorces—often eclipsed his talent, while O’Toole, Harris and Reed saw their careers slump in the late 1970s and ’80s, only to be revived by roles in such successful films as Troy (O’Toole), the Harry Potter franchise (Harris) and Gladiator (Reed). Though Sellers often muddles the chronology by switching too often between the four’s liquored-up antics, his glimpse into Hollywood’s culture of excess is more than enough to satisfy. (Dec.)

If you’ve ever wondered how a frat boy would fare in the Congo, then Thompson (Smile When You’re Lying) has written the book for you. It’s not just the Congo either; the former Maxim editor and “extreme tourism” expert also slogs across Mexico City, India and Disney World. Along the way, he encounters elephant penises, eight-year-old boxers and naked gurus who climb into the shower with him. Thompson’s stated reason for his extreme tourism is that Americans have grown soft, and he must prove his travel writer toughness by going places he doesn’t want to go. Thompson uses a Maxim-derived prose that features present-tense narration and unfortunate similes. Every page is disfigured by a phrase like “Flat as the Kinshasa investment market, and brown as a turd....” Thompson poses as an iconoclast, but his critiques skew toward the obvious (he notes that there are two Indias, one rich and one poor, and that Disney “runs a very tight ship”). Sanctimonious liberals provide one target, as does soccer—not manly enough for Thompson, and they don’t score enough goals. In the end, Thompson’s observations and strained prose will wear thin on readers. (Dec.)

What do dog treats and chasing squirrels have to do with quantum mechanics? Much more than you might imagine, as Orzel explains in this fun introduction to modern physics based on a “series of conversations” with his dog Emmy. Dogs make the perfect sounding board for physics talk, because they “approach the world with fewer preconceptions than humans, and always expect the unexpected.” Physicist Orzel begins with the basics, explaining how light can be both particle and wave simultaneously—a bit like a dog that can split itself into two to chase a rabbit no matter which direction it runs. A look at Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle begins with a hunt for a hypothetical bone. Schrödinger’s cat becomes, of course, Schrödinger’s dog. Quantum entanglement, quantum teleportation and virtual particles (composed, for example, of bunny-antibunny pairs) are all explained with the author’s characteristic lighthearted touch. While Orzel’s presentation may be a bit too precious for some, readers who’ve shied away from popular treatments of physics in the past may find his cheerful discussion a real treat. (Dec.)

Theodore Roosevelt steers America onto the shoals of imperialism in this stridently disapproving study of early 20th-century U.S. policy in Asia. Bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley traces a 1905 voyage to Asia by Roosevelt’s emissary William Howard Taft, who negotiated a secret agreement in which America and Japan recognized each other’s conquests of the Philippines and Korea. (Roosevelt’s flamboyant, pistol-packing daughter Alice went along to generate publicity, and Bradley highlights her antics.) Each port of call prompts a case study of American misdeeds: the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines; the takeover of Hawaii by American sugar barons; Roosevelt’s betrayal of promises to protect Korea, which “greenlighted” Japanese expansionism and thus makes him responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt’s policies and paradoxical embrace of the Japanese as “Honorary Aryans.” Bradley’s critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced. He doesn’t explain how Roosevelt could have evicted the Japanese from Korea, and insinuates that the Japanese imperial project was the brainstorm of American advisers. Ironically, his view of Asian history, like Roosevelt’s, denies agency to the Asians themselves. Photos, maps. One-day laydown. (Nov. 24)

Independent curator Levine (Around the World) encountered a mysterious, important and long-hidden collection of more than 1,200 of what are reputed to be Frida Kahlo’s personal items in the back room of an antiques store in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. (The Associated Press has reported that the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust has charged that the materials in this book are forged. Mexican prosecutors are investigating.) Levine and Jaycox meticulously document the unpacking of the archive from five trunks, suitcases and boxes, and guide readers through the contents with reproductions of letters and diaries, and photos of Kahlo’s drawings and personal effects. Levine finds it all illuminating, not only regarding Kahlo but also “the universally human tendencies that the archive represents.” Levine’s interview with the antiques-store owners recounts their fascinating acquisition of the pieces while the “visual exploration” focuses on Kahlo’s impassioned love and hatred for her husband, Diego Rivera, whom she calls an “evil fat toad,” and her anxiety over her amputated leg, which manifests itself in her obsession with flight (“What do I want feet for/ If I have wings to fly”). This beautiful book poetically offers a fresh look at one of art’s iconic women, and though Kahlo is the protagonist of the project, Levine’s journey includes us all. (Nov.)

Journalist, filmmaker and photographer Benson follows his book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes with an even more stellar array of astronomical photographs that offer glorious views of space, moving successively from close to home to the outermost regions of the universe, moving simultaneously farther from Earth and farther back in time. Benson’s emphasis on the correlation between geological time and astronomical distance sets this book far apart from others. Light rays, he says, move “like ripples in a pond... so vast that the ripples extending out from each event take thousands, millions, or even billions of years to echo off its banks.” Light reaching Earth now from the Witch Head nebula, some 740 light-years distant, was generated in the 14th century. Elsewhere, remote galactic clusters, “aggregate bonfires shining across the blackness of deep time,” cast light as old as Pangaea, the Earth’s ancient supercontinent, which broke up to create today’s continents. Benson illuminates the vast scale of the universe and its workings with large-scale “quasi-cinematic” photos that reveal scintillating stars, galaxies and Rorschach-like nebulae in their “true” colors. The 228 color photos are spectacular and enhanced with three eight-page gatefolds. (Nov.)

As American studies professor and Janis Joplin biographer (Scars of Sweet Paradise) Echols succinctly states, “Nothing seems to conjure up the seventies quite so effectively as disco.” But while the decade’s weltanschauung is often dismissed as merely polyester and platform heels, Echols aims for—and thoroughly achieves—a range of higher cultural insights. Using an encyclopedic knowledge of the eras’ biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a “central role” in broadening the contours of “blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality” in America. She brilliantly explores the many ways that early disco clubs created new spaces “where gay men could safely come together in a large crowd,” at the same time often masking an early strain of the racial and class exclusion that dominated disco’s later years. She brings to light the influence of underground legends such as club deejay Tom Moulton, who first remixed popular records to make them longer for dancing and “created the model for the 12-inch, extended play disco single.” Best of all is Echols’s revelatory look at how the “critique of racism and sexism” in the film Saturday Night Fever offers “a richer portrait of the disco seventies” than its critics have granted. (Nov.)

This memoir by Osama bin Laden’s first wife and fourth son attempts to illuminate the flesh-and-blood man behind the jihad. They trade chapters, starting in the 1980s and Afghanistan’s insurgency against the Soviet Union, through suicide bombing of the American embassy in Kenya and the USS Cole, on through the hijacking of jetliners in order to fly them into the World Trade Center. Najwa recounts a domestic life of courtship in Saudi Arabia, marriage (one among six wives for bin Laden), children (11 for Najwa in all) and living in almost total isolation according to her husband’s strict conservative demands. Omar recalls being toughened up by his father (he was deprived of water while in the desert), growing up uneducated, worrying about his mother’s numerous pregnancies in primitive settings and witnessing Qaeda training camps in the mountains of Tora Bora, where his father was nearly killed by American forces in 2003. The material for this memoir began when Omar contacted Jean Sasson, a veteran Middle East correspondent, requesting that she write about his efforts to start a peace movement. At Omar’s request, his mother offered to participate, too. The result is a memoir that adds color to an otherwise cloudy character, but one that stops short of true revelation, as mother and son left Afghanistan before September 11. Omar has since made public demands—which are rare for a son to do in Arab culture—of his father to “change his ways.” (Nov.)

Buckland’s visually hypnotic history of rock photography is as much a history of rock as subject as it is of photography. In fact, it is the inseparability of the two that lies at the heart of Buckland’s argument. Here are nearly 300 iconic photographs by those photographers who understood the power of the image in the formation and sustenance of rock-and-roll culture from 1955 onward. The care with which Buckland selects representative photographers and their most significant images is matched by her interpretive prowess. In her comparison of photographs by Mick Rock and Masayoshi Sukita of David Bowie’s 1973 tour, for example, Buckland demonstrates “no discernible difference in affection for the pop star among teenagers on three continents.” Such observations stand testament to the scope of Buckland’s inquiry, which throughout the book directs us over and over toward the definitive visual responses of rock fans as well as the musicians, be it through the gestures of physical expression or choices in fashion. Buckland carefully but deliberately argues that the art of rock photography has been sacrificed to the paparazzi and corporate art departments. In light of this inclusive, heady and visceral collection of the genre’s best, it would be hard to argue otherwise. (Nov.)

Economist Levitt and journalist Dubner capitalize on their megaselling Freakonomics with another effort to make the dismal science go gonzo. Freaky topics include the oldest profession (hookers charge less nowadays because the sexual revolution has produced so much free competition), money-hungry monkeys (yep, that involves prostitution, too) and the dunderheadedness of Al Gore. There’s not much substance to the authors’ project of applying economics to all of life. Their method is to notice some contrarian statistic (adult seat belts are as effective as child-safety seats in preventing car-crash fatalities in children older than two), turn it into “economics” by tacking on a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis (seat belts are cheaper and more convenient) and append a libertarian sermonette (governments “tend to prefer the costly-and-cumbersome route”). The point of these lessons is to bolster the economist’s view of people as rational actors, altruism as an illusion and government regulation as a folly of unintended consequences. The intellectual content is pretty thin, but it’s spiked with the crowd-pleasing provocations—“'A pimp’s services are considerably more valuable than a realtor’s’” —that spell bestseller. (Nov.)

Market disasters—and the cycle of delusions responsible—receive lively, engaging analysis by Cassidy (Dot.con), a journalist at the New Yorker. The author focuses primarily on the rise and fall of free market ideology and the mostly unrealistic ideal of a self-correcting marketplace. An excellent comprehensive history of the economic thought that led to this kind of utopian economics provides a refresher course in Adam Smith, Friedrich August von Hayek, Kenneth Arrow and Hyman Minsky. Both a narrative and a call to arms, the book provides an intellectual and historical context for the string of denial and bad decisions that led to the disastrous “illusion of harmony,” the lure of real estate and the Great Crunch of 2008. Using psychology and behavioral economics, Cassidy presents an excellent argument that the market is not in fact self-correcting, and that only a return to reality-based economics—and a reform-minded move to shove Wall Street in that direction—can pull us out of the mess in which we’ve found ourselves. (Nov.)

Keller, one of America’s most acclaimed chefs (The French Laundry; Bouchon), shifts his focus from fine dining to family-style meals for the home cook in this accessible and dazzlingly beautiful book based on the fare served at his Ad Hoc restaurant, in Napa, Calif. He does not disappoint, providing a thorough primer on the foundations of cooking, offering clear and easy-to-follow instructions on techniques such as butchering and trussing chickens and tying a pork loin. He also includes a section on becoming a better cook, which helps fine-tune the cook and instructs on using salt properly, learning to make one really good soup and getting organized. Throughout are helpful sidebars that clarify potentially murky subjects, including brining fish and meat, salad basics and using fats. Dishes such as braised beef short ribs, buttermilk fried chicken, and fig-stuffed roast pork loin highlight a vast array of offerings that range from crab cakes to shortbread cookies. This collection is what legions of Keller fans have been waiting for, a book that allows them to replicate the merest glimmer of his culinary genius in their own homes. (Nov.)

Cleveland’s most famous restaurateur, Symon is an iron chef on the Food Network, and he’s got the personality to hang with Mario Batali and Bobby Flay. His fun, brash appeal often shines through in this collection of bold and surprisingly simple to master recipes. He doesn’t hold back with the flavorings: a simple linguine with heirloom tomatoes is spiced with capers, anchovies and chili, and even veggie side dishes—peas and pancetta; Ohio creamed corn with bacon; crispy cauliflower with anchovy aioli—are decadent. Chapters on pickling and charcuterie are evidence that this is a legit chef’s cookbook, but he makes such recipes as lamb bresaola, duck confit, and pickled ramps completely approachable. Though the prose feels dashed off (one paragraph says Symon’s food is “reliant on good technique” and a few lines later claims it uses “almost no technique whatsoever”) and the design is occasionally forced (chapter contents and some headings are displayed in a font apparently meant to evoke Symon’s many tattoos, but they’re barely legible), the recipes are very strong. This volume is excellent for anyone who wants to cook like a chef without a lot of stress. (Nov.)

Long before ecofriendly vegetarian eating became trendy, the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, N.Y., wowed diners with delicious meat-free, organic-focused fare. The 12th cookbook inspired by the restaurant, dedicated to “organic farmers and small farmers the world over, including backyard and balcony gardeners,” focuses on dishes filled with superhealthy ingredients and loaded with flavor. An apricot orange twist smoothie; pineapple salsa with blueberries; sweet potato soup; apple and chipotle soup; vegetables in spicy lemongrass-tamarind sauce; and savory asparagus and mushroom bread pudding are as appealing as they are good for you (as the nutrition info included with each recipe and the sidebars about antioxidants, food allergies and other foodie health topics suggest). The recipes work beautifully and feel approachable and doable, and the results taste so terrific that meat and unhealthy ingredients are scarcely missed. Even the low-in-fat-and-refined-sugars sweets—honeydew and basil popsicles, and figs baked with chevre and pistachios—will hit the mark with dessert connoisseurs. (Nov.)

There’s an inherent difficulty in encapsulating basic kitchen knowledge in a single book, but Katzen’s latest is a fresh, contemporary entry in the 101 subgenre. This is likely because she has some experience—Katzen’s The Moosewood Cookbook and Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbooks have been unofficial required reading for cooking students for decades, and her latest speaks directly to a newer, more food-savvy generation of just-starting-out cooks. Launched in conjunction with a companion Web site and illustrated by Katzen’s own photographs, this newest is divided into basic categories like soups, salads, pastas and desserts. Naturally, given her meatless pedigree, she gives vegetarian options with bright flavors (acorn squash stuffed with fruited basmati pilaf; mango curry) their own chapter. While the recipes cover the traditional home repertoire—spaghetti and meatballs, an excellent and simple roast chicken, apple crisp—Katzen also sneaks in some more intriguing flavors by way of a North African red lentil soup, cherry clafouti and Thai green curry along with explanations of more unusual ingredients like jicama and panko. Encouraging cooks to experiment with additions and flavor combinations, she suggests alternatives in a running “Get Creative” sidebar. Rounding out the training is a short primer on kitchen tools, pantry items and photos that illustrate vegetable chopping techniques. Katzen’s enthusiasm for the subject and her ability to keep the proceedings truly simple makes for the rare beginner’s book that accomplishes its mission. Photos. (Oct.)

When their two children were young, kids’ TV writer and animator Corlett and his wife initiated a weekly family after-dinner discussion to explain and foster ethical and moral values. Admitting that he is a plain old dad and not a Ph.D. in ethics, Corlett nonetheless felt obliged to address the void in moral education left as school and even Sunday school curricula stopped routinely teaching ethics for “it seems no one wants to touch the subject of right and wrong anymore.” He developed two charming and lovably humorous characters—Elliot and his sister, Lucy—and 26 story situations that take place in families, at school, in team sports and in the community, each of which demonstrates a different ethic ranging from honesty and understanding through forgiveness, courage and perseverance to loyalty, gratitude, fairness and acceptance. Even citizenship, generosity, trust and respect are covered as Elliot and Lucy encounter life’s moral predicaments. Each of the 250-word “lessons” is followed by a “what would you do?” kind of question, the definition of a moral quality with accompanying short commentary and a pertinent famous quote or two, which together point youngsters toward doing the right thing and understanding why. Most likely to be well received by younger kids, this charming, interactive little book is appropriate for kids preschool to tween age and their parents. (Dec.)

According to Australian child-development expert Dunstan, every child falls into one of four sense-based categories for experiencing, interpreting and relating to the world: tactile; auditory; visual; and taste-and-smell. Simple-to-use checklists and evaluation tools help parents identify a child’s primary sense orientation (and their own) so that they can better understand that child’ s behavior, ranging from sleeping and feeding problems through stubbornness, temper tantrums, fear and hurt feelings. While a tactile two-year-old prefers to eat with her hands, a visual three-year old insists on lining up all his plastic dinosaurs just so, and a taste/smell five-year-old is naturally hypersensitive and emotional, each presents a different challenge to his or her parents. Dunstan’s advice is to “customize” parenting to the unique needs of the child, with some practical solutions and communication strategies just to get through the day at first, and then the week, and eventually most early childhood milestones. The process appears to take time and involve everyone in the family with a lot of trial, error and dedicated effort, but it may be just right for frustrated parents who are struggling with calming and encouraging their infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Like astrology books, this will speak to believers, and since Dunstan appeared on Oprah! and established her Los Angeles clinic, her readers will be numerous. (Nov.)