Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 2/18/2008

When most readers hear the words E. coli, they think tainted hamburger or toxic spinach. Noted science writer Zimmer says there are in fact many different strains of E. coli, some coexisting quite happily with us in our digestive tracts. These rod-shaped bacteria were among the first organisms to have their genome mapped, and today they are the toolbox of the genetic engineering industry and even of high school scientists. Zimmer (Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea) explains that by scrutinizing the bacteria's genome, scientists have discovered that genes can jump from one species to another and how virus DNA has become tightly intertwined with the genes of living creatures all the way up the tree of life to humans. Studying starving E. coli has taught us about how our own cells age. Advocates of intelligent design often produce the E. coli flagellum as Exhibit A, but the author shows how new research has shed light on the possible evolutionary arc of the flagellum. Zimmer devotes a chapter to the ethical debates surrounding genetic engineering. Written in elegant, even poetic prose, Zimmer's well-crafted exploration should be required reading for all well-educated readers. (May 6)

Journalist Gollner's debut is a rollicking account of the world of fruit and fruit fanatics. He's traveled to many countries in search of exotic fruits, and he describes in sensuous detail some of the hundreds of varieties he's sampled, among them peanut butter fruit, blackberry-jam fruit and coco-de-mer—a suggestively shaped coconut known as the “lady fruit” that grows only in the Seychelles. Equally intriguing are some of the characters he has encountered—a botanist in Borneo who spends his life studying malodorous durians; fruitarians who believe that a fruit diet promotes transcendental experiences; fruitleggers who bypass import laws; and fruit inventors such as the fabricator of the Grapple—which looks like an apple and tastes like a grape. The FDA and the often dubious activities of the international fruit trade, multinational corporations like Chiquita, come in for scrutiny, as does New York City's largest wholesale produce market, in a chapter with more information than one may want on biochemical growth inhibitors, hormone-based retardants, dyes, waxes and corrupt USDA inspectors. Gollner's passion for fruit is infectious, and his fascinating book is a testament to the fact that there is much more to the world of fruit than the bland varieties on our supermarket shelves. (May)

A former principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre and now a guest artist and choreographer, 34-year-old Acosta renders a deeply moving account of his leap from deep poverty in a suburban Havana hovel to international dance stardom. He was the son of a white mother and a black father 30 years her senior with eight children from several previous marriages. Obsessed with soccer and break dancing, young Acosta wanted no part of ballet when his father enrolled him in an arts school at the age of nine to keep him away from street gangs. Although extremely gifted, Acosta was frequently truant because of a grueling commute, feelings of inferiority about his poverty and the chaos of his home life. But, as he relates, winning the prestigious Prix de Lausanne catapulted him onto the international ballet scene, with triumphal stints with the English National Ballet, the Houston Ballet and the Royal Ballet; the memoir ends in 2003 with the London debut of his own ballet based on his childhood. An eloquent portrait of an artist as well as a tribute to the flawed but committed parents who wanted a better life for him. 8 pages of b&w photos. (May)

The prolific and opinionated Dershowitz (Rights from Wrongs), public personality and Harvard law professor, is provocative and erudite in this treatise on the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, which in his view may become a victim of the war on terror as America slides toward preventing violent acts rather than deterring them with threat of punishment. Replete with trademark Dershowitz flourishes, quotes from a wide range of sources including Jewish law, Emily Dickinson and his own college term paper, this is a serious examination of the constitutional ramifications of an unheralded 2003 Supreme Court decision, Chavez v. Martinez, that could allow the coercion of testimony from interrogation subjects as long as the information isn't used against them in criminal prosecutions. Dershowitz is best at exploring the implications of this decision. His analysis is sometimes technical on the origin of the right to remain silent as well as its application to suspects, defendants and witnesses. Dershowitz believes current law is dangerously unsettled and, as such, an “anathema to democracy”; his conclusion is a measured but urgent call to fill the legal “black hole” that the narrow Chavez decision creates regarding a right we all take for granted. (May)

Today's battle for same-sex marriage rights is only the latest step in the long struggle by lesbians and gay men to overturn a complex web of state laws banning nonreproductive sexual activity, often by heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. Laws against sodomy—or “crimes against nature,” as they were called by colonial lawmakers—were based on English common law emanating from Christian interpretations of a few biblical passages. The Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional in 2003. n this fascinating and engaging survey, Yale law professor Eskridge (Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse?) charts not just the destructive history of those laws, but also the long, complex and often deeply contradictory history of how Americans thought about sex and the right to privacy. While clearly explaining the laws' origins and impact from colonial America through the 19th century, most of the book examines how, from the 1930s onward, sodomy laws increasingly became the legal tool by which homosexuals were denied jobs and even the right to public assembly. Interweaving legal discussion with personal stories and social history, Eskridge gives an incisive, panoramic view of America's (slowly) changing attitudes toward homosexuality, sexual tolerance and personal freedom. B&w photos. (May 5)

Britain's collapse as a great power is chronicled in this lively diplomatic history covering the end of WWII through the British withdrawal from India and Palestine in the late 1940s. Historian Clarke (Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900–2000) tells a fundamentally prosaic story. Britain, its finances, military power and morale exhausted by the war, found itself marginalized by the superpowers and dependent on American aid; when imperial commitments in India and Greece grew unaffordable, according to Clarke, Britain ditched them rather abruptly, along with its central role in world affairs. Drawing on participants' diaries, Clarke offers a fine-grained, well-paced narrative of British statesmen playing their weak hand in one negotiation after another, begging for economic concessions from the hard-nosed Americans, strategic concessions from an indifferent Stalin and political concessions from impatient subjects. At the story's center is Winston Churchill, embodiment of Britain's faltering imperial pretensions. In Clarke's caustic portrait, Churchill is vain, pompous and infantile (showily urinating on Germany's Siegfried line, for example), forever disguising a humiliating decline with grand rhetoric. The opposite of great man historiography, Clarke's sympathetic but sardonic account shows anxious leaders struggling to catch up with a world that has passed them by. 16 pages of b&w photos; maps. (May)

Kynaston (author of the four-volume The City of London) has produced an extraordinary panorama of Britain as it emerged from the tumult of war with a broken empire, a bankrupt economy and an ostensibly socialist government. Britain between 1945 and 1951 is an alien place. No washing machines, no highways, no supermarkets. Everything was heavy, from coins and suitcases to coats and shoes. Everything edible was rationed: tea, meat, butter, cheese, jam, eggs, candy. The awfulness of 1939–1945 still lingered, and “any conversation tended to drift toward the war, like an animal licking a sore place.” Yet, people assumed “Britain was still best: that was so deeply part of how citizens thought, it was taken for granted.” By combining astute political analysis with illustrative anecdotes brilliantly chosen from contemporary newspapers, popular culture and memoirs, Kynaston succeeds in recreating the lost world of austerity. The volume represents social history at its finest, and readers may look forward to its promised sequels taking the story of Britain up to 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher. 20 b&w photos. (May)

Clinical psychologist and historian Swift (The Roosevelts and the Royals) capably documents Joseph P. Kennedy's troubled tenure as American minister to the Court of St. James's, and the experiences of his family during these years, aiming to present a “fair and comprehensive” portrait of a man he says has been caricatured by other historians. But Kennedy's flaws still appear to outweigh his virtues. He proved a problem to FDR almost immediately, casting his lot with such British appeasers as Neville Chamberlain, Nancy Astor and others of the so-called Cliveden set. This earned him the enmity of Winston Churchill and criticism from such administration figures as Henry Morgenthau Jr., Cordell Hull and FDR himself, who had to regularly remind Kennedy that his role was to implement, not define, United States policy. Kennedy lasted just over two years, during which his second eldest son, Jack, became a bestselling author with Why England Slept. Eldest son Joe Jr. toured war-torn Spain and wrote articles in support of Franco's Fascist forces. And daughter Kathleen (“Kick”) became immersed in aristocratic British nightlife, meeting Billy Cavendish—the marquess of Hartington and a Protestant—to whom she would eventually be married, to her Catholic mother's horror. All this Swift narrates with grace and style. Illus. and photos. (May)

When John Montague died alone on May 25, 1972, age 69, in a fleabag hotel in Studio City, Calif., his body went unclaimed for a week. Hardly a fitting end for a man who once rubbed shoulders with Bing Crosby, Richard Arlen, Oliver Hardy and the other Hollywood swells who golfed, drank and caroused at the Lakeside Country Club in L.A. In the capable hands of bestselling sportswriter Montville (Ted Williams), Montague's is a quintessentially American story of a man from a hardscrabble background who found himself in the glamorous, easy-money world of Hollywood. But Montague had a past that caught up to him. Having fled a charge of armed robbery in upstate New York, Montague was brought back in 1937 to stand trial, and though he got off, his life quickly unraveled. Hyped by the great sportswriter Grantland Rice (who called him “a golfer who would be a wrecking whirlwind in any amateur championship and on a par with any pro”) and other newshounds, Montague struggled through a series of increasingly embarrassing attempts to go legit on the golf circuit. An entertaining read for the golf lit completist, this doesn't rise to the level of compulsion for the average reader. (May)

With this breezy business how-to, Australian cosmetics entrepreneur King seeks to empower other women to start their own companies. King launched her business at the age of 18 after a fruitless quest for the “perfect matte lipstick” incited her to create her own brand. Within a year, she was the sole owner of a million-dollar company, Poppy Industries. King intersperses vague exhortations to daydream and fantasize with snippets from her success story to illustrate her business basics: “Keep it real,” she says and “Watch out for bad omens.” She also includes exercises so rudimentary they're almost patronizing. For example, she exhorts the reader to “go online and punch in google.com, then start entering different key words that describe your idea.” More nuanced content does arrive later, when she breaks down the elements of successful marketing and cold calling, but even this advice is undercut when King reveals that her company eventually failed. One of her last lessons to her readers is how to bounce back from depression, in keeping with the general direction of this book, which offers less pointed business advice than simplistic self-help. (May)

This passionate book from a Miami Herald journalist demonstrates that humble grassroots activism can eventually unsettle a corporate Goliath. In 1958, Margie Richard was a pregnant 16-year-old, whose home had been displaced by a Shell oil refinery expansion and had recently resettled in Diamond, a tiny neighborhood in Norco, La. The neighborhood was poor, predominantly African-American and a stone's throw from another Shell chemical refinery. Two explosions at the refineries (one killed two residents) and the 1983 death of Richard's beloved sister from sarcoidosis, a lung ailment rooted in industrial pollution, propelled Richard into 15 years of activism, demanding that Shell recompense the neighborhood for decades of steady poisoning. Along with other residents, Richard formed the Norco Relocation Committee, determined to wrest realistic relocation funds from Shell, the international behemoth whose profits would eventually exceed $1.5 million per hour. After two court cases and almost 14 years, Shell capitulated in 2002. Greene's mix of vivid oral history and hard evidence is a rousing reminder that with stubborn determination, ordinary citizens can prevail against the most powerful of opponents. (May)

Who Do You Think You Are? A Memoir
Alyse Myers. Touchstone, $24 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4165-4305-3

Myers (v-p, brand programs for the New York Times) considered herself a "daddy's girl," until the death of her father when she was only 11 left her particularly lonely. In this dark though moving book, she explains that she never told her two younger sisters of her loneliness and found her mother's unpredictable cruelty truly bewildering. Although this was a working-class Jewish family in Queens in the 1960s and '70s, it wasn't the sort featured in storybooks. Her parents chain-smoked and fought endlessly, slinging curses at each other without a thought of their children listening. Alyse got herself into a gifted high school in Manhattan, found herself part-time jobs and enrolled in an affordable city college. It was only after she married and had a child herself that she started to understand her father had been a philanderer and used morphine. The greatest gift she gave her daughter was the determination to create a different sort of life for herself. (May)

The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
Isabel Allende. HarperCollins, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-155183-3

In this deeply revealing second memoir, after Paula, novelist Allende (The House of Spirits) utilizes her family and the complex network of their relationships as the linchpin of the narrative. While weaving in her candid opinions on love and marriage, friendship, drug addiction, the writing life and religious fanaticism, Allende continues to work through the grief over her daughter's death. “In these years without you I have learned to manage sadness, making it my ally. Little by little your absence and other losses in my life are turning into a sweet nostalgia.” And though Allende's insight is keen, her prose polished and her language hypnotic, it's the stories of her close-knit family that move the memoir forward. “We lived as a tribe, Chilean style; we were almost always together.” While much of the story is infused with melancholy, her world is by no means without humor, mirth and wisdom. She celebrates friends' triumphs and exploits their foibles, including the “odyssey of the boobs,” without taking herself too seriously. This is a book to savor. (Apr.)

In a straightforward narration, Prado (with journalist Eisenberg) relates the brief, poignant story of Barbaro's rise and fall. One of the most successful jockeys in history, Prado sensed Barbaro's special qualities during a race in Maryland. After going undefeated in their first three races together, Prado and Barbaro shared an easy 2006 Kentucky Derby victory that positioned Barbaro to win the Triple Crown. Disaster struck at the Preakness, however, when Barbaro shattered a leg into more than two dozen pieces just out of the gate. His struggle for survival was avidly covered by the media and made the horse a national hero. Sadly, after a prolonged struggle and multiple surgeries, Barbaro had to be put down. Prado's matter-of-fact presentation is most successful when he's describing the routines and rituals and his own intense work habits. His journey from a one-room house in Lima, Peru—which he shared with his parents and 10 brothers and sisters—to a place at the top of his profession is fascinating in its own right. Out of necessity, jockeys try not to get attached to particular horses, but the loss of his mother just before the Kentucky Derby made Prado particularly sensitive to Barbaro's plight. (Apr.)

In 2003, while attempting to block the demolition of a Palestinian family's home in the Gaza Strip, 23-year-old American Rachel Corrie was killed by an armored Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer operated by a member of the Israel Defense Forces. This collection of her journal entries opens a window on the maturation of a young woman seeking to make the world a better place through social activism. The essays, poetry and drawings reveal Corrie going through the routine pangs of growing up, the development of her social consciousness and her love of language. Two events broadened Corrie's perspective beyond her childhood home of Olympia, Wash. A 1995 student exchange trip to Russia and the repercussions of 9/11 were formative events accelerating her desire to help those she felt were harmed by U. S foreign policy. Following Corrie's death, the British newspaper the Guardian published her e-mail accounts of what she'd witnessed in Gaza. This collection of essays, while uneven, contains thought-provoking ideas. (Apr.)

Former president Carter (author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as well as many inspirational books) now offers readers the story of his extraordinary mother, Lillian Carter (1898–1983). After laying out some family history, he comes to Lillian's teen years, when she trained as a nurse at the onset of World War I. Health conditions in rural Georgia, especially later, during the Depression, were so dire that nurses were often diagnosticians as well as caregivers. Nursing also brought Lillian close to the black community, building personal bonds that paved the way for later political alliances. After her husband died, Lillian moved from wife and mother to full-fledged “matriarch,” and later volunteered for the Peace Corps and worked in India. Being able to help such needy people was intensely satisfying, although she never got preachy about it. She'd write home, for example, that the Indian doctor she worked with was so “damned good you can't imagine him going to the bathroom.” Modern readers who assume that church-going Southern Baptists don't swear, drink or work to promote birth control will find Lillian an eye-opener. She played an unofficial though vital role as the Carter administration's goodwill ambassador around the world—she almost persuaded our government to let Muhammad Ali bargain with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for our hostages taken in 1979. Carter offers wonderful stories about a great woman. B&w photos throughout. (Apr.)

A full-time mom and a part-time professor at the nearby University of Washington, Nestor had been married 12 years, raising two children with the man she loved. Then one afternoon, she discovered her husband had been using her bank card. He had a gambling problem, and she'd already warned him, if it started again, it would end their marriage. They agreed to have a “good divorce,” but Nestor had no idea how to reimagine her life as a single mother. As Nestor moves through what she's told are the three stages of divorce—shock/denial, adjustment and acceptance—she discovers she's a lot more resilient than she'd ever thought. She has good parenting instincts and some solid friends. With cheerfully self-deprecating humor, Nestor shares her divorce process, always giving generous credit to the family and friends who helped her, and in her telling she offers hope that if that's what readers are facing, they, too, can manage. (Apr.)

Scurrying back to his office one day, Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, is stopped short by the ethereal strains of a violin. Searching for the sound, he spots a homeless man coaxing those beautiful sounds from a battered two-string violin. When the man finishes, Lopez compliments him briefly and rushes off to write about his newfound subject, Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless violinist. Over the next few days, Lopez discovers that Nathaniel was once a promising classical bass student at Juilliard, but that various pressures—including being one of a few African-American students and mounting schizophrenia—caused him to drop out. Enlisting the help of doctors, mental health professionals and professional musicians, Lopez attempts to help Nathaniel move off Skid Row, regain his dignity, develop his musical talent and free himself of the demons induced by the schizophrenia (at one point, Lopez arranges to have Ayers take cello lessons with a cellist from the L.A. Symphony). Throughout, Lopez endures disappointments and setbacks with Nathaniel's case, questions his own motives for helping his friend and acknowledges that Nathaniel has taught him about courage and humanity. With self-effacing humor, fast-paced yet elegant prose and unsparing honesty, Lopez tells an inspiring story of heartbreak and hope. (Apr.)

In this rich, often harrowing oral history, Chinese writer (and notorious target of censors) Liao travels to the margins of Chinese society, interviewing 27 outsiders from China's forgotten classes. The book contains an incredible cast of characters: a grave robber, a composer, a leper, a professional mourner paid to wail at funerals, a human trafficker and a delusional peasant who has anointed himself emperor. These conversations, largely recorded from memory, showcase Liao's empathy for his subjects and a particular talent for getting into tight situations; on one occasion, the author is forced to leap out of a three-story building when he fears the Communist government is targeting him for talking to a Falun Gong supporter. Liao's research took 11 years, and his final product is a stunning series of portraits of a generation and class of individuals ignored in history books and unacknowledged in the accounts of the “new” China. (Apr.)

Former FCC chairman Minow and Northwestern journalism professor LaMay (Abandoned in the Wasteland) continue their collaboration with a book that is part history, part memoir, part advocacy and part apologia. Minow, an early organizer of the televised debates and the current vice chairman of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, is the debates' greatest champion and most clear-eyed critic. Minow and LaMay readily admit to the debates' imperfections: the frequent omissions of third-party candidates and inquiries from the public. The authors suggest that in order for the debates to be more useful for voters, candidates must be more spontaneous, present fewer canned speeches and be open to answering questions from the audience (as in the YouTube debates) and from each other. Furthermore, the authors urge radio and television broadcasters to provide affordable public-service time to presidential candidates and that information be made available on the Internet to supplement comments during the debates. Although the book suffers from its lack of chronology and needless reiteration, Minow's perspectives are peerless, and the timeliness and importance of the topic make for worthwhile reading. (Apr.)

Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi seems both the least likely and the most natural person to become “the world's best-known prisoner of conscience,” and Wintle's thoroughly engrossing book magnificently illustrates both sides of this elusive yet very public figure. Her education at Oxford and self-effacing demeanor did not prime her for the life of a dissident. Behind her reserve and English veneer, however, was a resolutely stubborn streak and a family life steeped in politics. Wintle's research has been prodigious; he brings encyclopedic knowledge of just about anything that can be linked to Suu Kyi. In rendering his subject, he weaves in Burmese history and folklore, Buddhism, Indian politics and portraits of Suu Kyi's intimates and enemies; that he delivers all this in an absorbing fashion is a marvel. Entertaining and instructive, charming and persuasive, Wintle mingles sober history and gossipy chat. Obscure political in-fighting is made comprehensible; unfamiliar colonial history is made accessible. Still, Wintle (Romancing Vietnam; Furious Interiors) can skewer in a sentence (“About Sanjay [Gandhi] there was something palpably uncouth, while the vainglorious Rajiv [Gandhi] was lacking in intelligence”). Suu Kyi's developing political activism, her house arrests, her honors are delineated in draftsman's detail that Wintle manages to keep vibrant. He is a biographer smitten with his subject, who cares enough to note the smallest detail, such as that Suu Kyi prefers Simenon's Maigret to Christie's Poirot. In making the reader care about the smallest things, Wintle makes the reader really care about the big thing—that “the world's best-known prisoner of conscience” is not free. (Apr.)

In 1948, West Berliners were suffering and hungry, existing on food rations transported by trucks, trains and barges primarily by the occupying American forces. The Russians, trying to control the divided city, blockaded the transports on June 24, 1948, and American and British pilots risked their lives to airlift in 4.6 billion pounds of food and supplies until the blockade was lifted in May 1949. Pilot Hal Halvorsen won Berliners' hearts by secretly dropping his and his buddies' candy rations by parachute into the waiting hands of the city's children. In the process, says Cherny (The Next Deal), Berliners became devoted to democracy, and Washington foreign policy and military brass learned that the Cold War needed to be won not primarily with bullets but by appealing to hearts and minds. This book could have been cut by a third for better effect; Cherny's prose and his references to 9/11 are manipulative, and his subject, particularly the nuts and bolts of the airlift, will appeal primarily to WWII buffs, who should still find much to savor in this exhaustive, often absorbing and lucid account of America's successful standoff against the Soviets. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Apr. 17)

When President Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) left office in 1999, he was unpopular in Russia and viewed as a buffoon by some internationally, but it would be a mistake to underestimate his influence on contemporary Russia, Colton, director of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, argues in this balanced yet sympathetic portrayal. Unpretentious, patriotic and with a strong work ethic, says Colton, the provincial young man, whose father had spent time in the gulag, rose up the Soviet bureaucratic ladder. But apparently, in 1989, on a trip to the U.S., Yeltsin saw the benefits of capitalism and foresaw the pending Soviet collapse; Yeltsin's popularity among ordinary Russians served him well when he made his famous 1991 tank speech during the anti-Gorbachev coup. Colton agrees with most pundits that overwork and poor lifestyle habits eventually caught up with Yeltsin, forcing him to leave office in 1999; he named Vladimir Putin his successor. While praising Yeltsin's ability to keep Russia together and sow the seeds for later economic success, Colton criticizes his failure to establish constitutional safeguards that might have prevented Russia's recent turn toward authoritarianism. Colton's book offers a finely detailed portrait of a key international leader. (Apr.)

Addressing the state of Israel's democracy as well as security, Avishai (The Tragedy of Zionism), a contributor to the New York Review of Books, presents a three-fold approach to obtaining long-term peace and security. Most original and no doubt controversial is the idea of establishing a “Hebrew republic” that “would be patently the state of the Jewish people,” but would not privilege Jews and Judaism. (Avishai details current discrimination against Arab Israelis.) The other parts are negotiating a peace accord with the Palestinians along the lines of the Geneva Initiative and forming an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian economic union. Avishai distills his approach through conversations with 50 Israeli-Jewish, Israeli-Arab and Palestinian figures, including former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, novelist A.B. Yehoshua and Samir Abdullah, director of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. He also has a fascinating discussion with some young Israeli Jews who wrestle with how Jewish, and how integrated into the Middle East, Israel should be. His plan for economic union will be achievable only with a peace accord, and Avishai has little to say on how to get there. But he covers a great many key topics relating to Israel's internal dynamics as well as its regional and global position, now and in the future. (Apr.)

The task Ferguson (Tycho & Kepler) takes on is formidable: to describe not only the ancient Greek mathematician and mystic Pythagoras, but also the entire sweep of the Pythagorean legacy, from his time to ours. Even if the book's subtitle is never quite justified, she has largely succeeded. This chatty and readable account bites off great chunks of history and science, from Platonists to string theory. No matter how engaging, however, the book still reads more like a series of facts than a coherent narrative. Best when she comes on like a good friend bursting with some amazing thing she can't wait to share (the passages on Bertrand Russell are particularly sharp and funny), Ferguson has a tendency to punt when a concept becomes difficult to explain; rather than delve into a piece of ancient geometry called the Delian problem, she says, “[a] lengthy text is needed to understand it.” Ferguson concludes with banal generalizations about faith versus science. Still, the book is winning, accessible and intermittently fascinating. B&w illus. (Apr.)

Partisan political writing generally enjoys the life expectancy of a weather report, but this collection of Kinsley's trenchant commentary is worth preserving. Kingsley has assembled 127 essays on the American political scene from the Clinton administration to the present. He eschews deep analysis in favor of poking fun at the foibles, evasions, contradictions and hypocrisies of American public figures and the media that feed off them, with occasional detours into his personal life. Inevitably, some pieces show their age, but readers will relish his skewering of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Kinsley is irresistible when he steps back from reporting to pose his trademark provocative—often humorous—questions: Why is it admirable for scientists to love science and businessmen to love business, but political candidates must proclaim how much they hate politics? Is Pat Robertson anti-Semitic or simply nuts? Does President Bush really believe his claim that all Muslims and Jews are going to hell because they don't accept Jesus? While essays from recent years naturally feel more relevant, every essay in this collection sparkles with Kinsley's trademark brand of wit. (Apr.)

These chronologically ordered essays and stories on the September 11 attacks proceed from initial bewilderment to coruscating contempt for radical Islam. Novelist Amis (House of Meetings) rejects all religious belief as “without reason and without dignity” and condemns “Islamism” as an especially baleful variant. Amis attacks Islamism's tenets as “[a]nti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic” and characterizes its adherents, from founding ideologue Sayyid Qutb to the ordinary suicide bomber, as sexually frustrated misogynists entranced by a “cult of death.” He also takes swipes at Bush and the Iraq war, which he describes as botched and tragically counterproductive, if well intentioned, but scorns those who draw a moral equivalence between Western misdeeds and the jihadist agenda. Amis's concerns are cultural and aesthetic as well as existential: terrorism threatens a reign of “boredom” in the guise of tedious airport security protocols, pedantic conspiracy theories and the dogma-shackled “dependent mind” fostered by Islamist theocracy. As much as Amis's opinions are scathing, blunt and occasionally strident, his prose is subtle, elegant and witty—and certainly never boring. (Apr.)

The daily drone can sap the spark of the most creative personality; this sparse, saccharine manual offers a few easy steps to revive creativity and incorporate inspiration into a daily routine. Pek and McGlade (noves: recipes for growth and innovation) posit that the need to create is a basic human urge that is “not only an evolutionary imperative, but a spiritual one,” capable of mitigating everyday stresses that can lead to burnout. Citing examples of people who have pursued creative satisfaction and attained material success, such as Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman, the authors demonstrate the importance and the rewards of maintaining creative thought processes. Pek and McGlade, a married couple, are very earnest about their program, a series of five habits that can access creative potential: scouting, cultivating, playing, venturing, and harvesting. But for a book about stimulating creativity, the solutions and suggestions—the power of play, the importance of confidence and “spark moments”—are strikingly uninspired. Padded with trite aphorisms and unnecessary illustrations, the slim content is sufficient for a peppy magazine article—not a full-length book. (Apr.)

“I was privy to his innermost thoughts,” Jones, draft speech writer and adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., assures us in this bold yet presumptuous endeavor to reveal “what [King] would have to say, and what he would advise, on issues of the day.” Generally speaking, King, as channeled by Jones, would be dismayed and—astonishingly—fiercely conservative. According to Jones, King would now oppose affirmative action (“its time and usefulness have come and gone”) and illegal immigration (“the moral brazenness of those without the legal right to be here who demand that Americans treat them as though they were decorated soldiers or fighters for constitutional rights”). A complicated King emerges from Jones's portrait—not the familiar pacifist but a likely supporter of the Iraq War who in Jones's words might believe that “military action is an unavoidable option that even those who are otherwise committed to non-violence must be prepared to consider now in order to save many more lives later.” With characteristic pugnacity, Jones excoriates black leaders who “pursue policies that pimp the best interests of black people” and accuses the FBI of masterminding King's assassination. The notion of acting as a medium for the departed King is provocative, but Jones is a smooth manager of feisty prose. What's here is a sort of political parlor game and, like a good parlor game, it will make for lively conversation. (Apr.)

Environmental Defense Fund president Krupp and journalist Horn proffer a business-centric prescription for alleviating climate change, coupling the market force of capitalism with technological innovation and entrepreneurial inventiveness. The authors argue in favor of strict federal carbon caps, which would induce innovators to explore new ways to control carbon dioxide emissions. The book notes the global and historical successes of cap and trade mechanisms, such as the Clean Air Act of 1990. Designed specifically to control sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain), the Clean Air Act cut emissions 30% more than the law required by providing coal plant operators with a financial incentive to modernize. New technologies that would benefit from such a “logical, elegant, market-based approach” include one as basic as an Arizona natural gas power plant that vents its smokestack waste into a vast greenhouse, where it nourishes algae used for manufacturing biodiesel, and one as a radical as harnessing the kinetic energy of molecules as a power source. This optimistic book brims with similar ideas, balancing jargon-heavy science with engaging profiles of individuals who are blending business and science in an attempt to save the planet. (Mar.)

Altman, a San Francisco chef and host of Bay Café, a popular local TV cooking show, enthusiastically encourages people to cook California cuisine in their own homes. He introduces an array of global flavors that aim to highlight the best ingredients, particularly citrus and spices, putting a spark into recipes like Island Gazpacho, which features mango, papaya, chiles and horseradish, and Oven-Roasted Beet and Orange Salad. Intriguing combinations like tamarind, pecan and cherries with chicken, or maple, apple and mango with pork augment the dishes' central elements without overwhelming them. Like any good California chef, he gives suggestions for what to drink with main-dish recipes, and he also provides helpful tips throughout about preparation, presentation and ingredients. Altman includes a few simple classics like pasta carbonara, but despite his goal of making chef-style innovation accessible at home, most of the recipes involve numerous steps and techniques that are more suited to cooks with some experience than to absolute beginners. Altman's gusto is infectious for any reasonably confident cook with a love of putting great ingredients to use in unexpected ways. This is an excellent springboard for experimentation. Color photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)

Husband-and-wife team Cathy and Tony Mantuano (chef-partners of the Spiaggia in Chicago, and authors of The Spiaggia Cookbook) share their delightful versions of wine bar recipes from across the Mediterranean. Each chapter focuses on a specific city (Rome, Seville, Nice and Lisbon, to name a few) and includes fun, fresh cocktails as well as simple yet delectable small plates and regional wine suggestions. The authors encourage mixing and matching recipes from different cities, explaining “the point is to bring a little bit of the wine bar lifestyle—good food, good wine and simple technique—into your home.” The couple includes background information on each dish, giving the reader a distinct sense of each recipe, all written with clear and thorough instructions. From Venice there is Whipped Baccalà with Polenta Crostini, and Black Pasta with Scungilli. Cocktail recipes include Limoncello Martinis from Naples and Mediterranean Lemonade made with ouzo, anise-flavored liqueur from Athens. Unique dessert recipes round out the assortment of options such as Mascarpone-Filled Dates with Chocolate and Lavender Ice Cream Sandwiches. With excellent sections on cured meats, imported cheeses and specialty pantry items, this is a wonderful book for food and wine lovers alike. (Apr.)

Bauer, a dietician, directs her flexible plan at people who would never go for prepackaged meals or calorie counting. Her clientele are workaholics who grab meals on the go, do business over expense-account lunches and are frequently confronted by unhealthy treats in the conference room or at office parties. Bauer claims her approach “makes losing weight a seamless part of the corporate lifestyle rather than an add-on project to an already full schedule.” First, readers are asked to decide if they are a “Clean Plate Clubber” or a “Controlled Eater,” as this will help determine the course of their diet in regards to snacking, purchasing food and meal portions. Next, they are allowed to choose a few “non-negotiables,” i.e., the things they feel they cannot live without. Once these guidelines are intact, Bauer offers strategies for dealing with the food choices most working people confront daily (for ordering in with co-workers, take note of the healthy menu options beforehand, and don't succumb to dishes like “General Tso's Chicken). Though Bauer's “diet” consists of nothing earth-shattering (avoid flour and refined sugar, control portion sizes, etc.), the specificity of the situations and solutions presented should appeal to its target audience. (Apr.)

Greene is a fertility specialist, reproductive endocrinologist, obstetrician, gynecologist and hormone researcher, so his patients struggling with infertility, he says, are often surprised when, instead of suggesting state-of-the-art, expensive fertility treatments, he advocates changes in diet and lifestyle. Greene offers plenty of case studies to prove that his plan can work where assisted reproductive technologies fail. He believes that, in many cases, unexplained infertility is caused by imbalanced hormones. Improper diet, lack of exercise and stress can cause the body's hormones to go out of whack. With a dietary overhaul (drastically reduce animal products and go organic for starters), prenatal supplements and the addition of yoga or other stress reducers, Greene has been able to make many couples' dreams of having a baby come true. Greene points out that many other factors can affect fertility (exposure to extreme heat, toxic chemicals or bike riding on a hard seat, for example) and offers tips to improve your chances of conceiving. This book is a must-read for couples having difficulty getting pregnant. (Apr.)

Labor and delivery nurse Kropp was troubled when she recognized several years back that women coming into the hospital to give birth were both ill-prepared and more anxious than ever. These women had read all the latest books and had taken classes, but “with so much information available they were trusting writers and 'experts' more than they trusted themselves.” Kropp found that the humor and joy of pregnancy had been lost, and set out to help remedy the situation. Her book is a refreshing mix of medical information and helpful, nonjudgmental advice, which urges readers to inform themselves but also to relax and enjoy the special time and anticipation of pregnancy. Each chapter explains what's happening to your body (increased hormone levels) and your baby (its size and development) each month. Kropp covers topics like weight gain, which medications are safe to take, bed rest and genetic testing. Also included is a practical monthly rundown of what you can do to prepare for your baby's arrival (register at your hospital, choose a pediatrician, etc.) and a list of necessary products, furniture, clothing and gear. Years of experience working with pregnant women gives Kropp a reassuring voice, and her book is sure to leave readers feeling more prepared—and less frightened—about the journey of pregnancy. (Apr.)

Kutner and Olson, the husband-wife team who founded the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, wanted to know if video games are, as commonly argued, responsible for a rise in social violence. New entertainments, from dime novels to motion pictures, have always made great social scapegoats; they've all been attacked as injurious to public morals on the basis of little or no evidence. With video games, it's hard to evaluate the kinds of violence in the games, even harder to measure the relationship between playing a violent game and engaging in real-life violent activities. Kutner and Olson's own study of some 1,300 middle-school gamers in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, while limited, produced interesting insights. Most boys do play video games, especially mature-rated games not to train to become psychopathic killers but often to test boundaries and to experiment safely with risky behavior. Many use games to develop social skills, release stress and relax. Kutner and Olson advise parents to be involved with their kids' game playing, just as they should be with their other activities. While not profound, the authors, in a calm, evenhanded approach to a problem many parents find frustratingly difficult, address many social fears and make them less scary. (Apr.)

For gardeners too busy to plan, this eminently practical book takes care of the distracting work of planning, organizing and prioritizing. With an emphasis on efficiency, Hutchinson (Easy Container Gardening) lays out gardening tasks by season, labels them by priority, sorts them into logical categories—beds, borders and pools; propagation; containers; lawns; kitchen gardens; and pests and disease—and even gives an approximation of the time each task will take. The book itself is a lesson in efficiency, jam-packed with essentials from pruning bush roses (early spring) and the year's first lawn mowing (mid-spring) to frost and snow protection (late autumn) and cleaning containers and tools (winter). It also gives instruction on less common but intriguing topics such as planting alpines in walls, installing a computerized patio water system for ease and water conservation and protecting pond fish from predators. Cartloads of attractive, clear illustrations walk readers step-by-step through every project, whether it's dividing water lilies, planting a clematis into a tree, or eradicating vine weevils, and photos display the inviting outcomes. This book gives stressed-out gardeners practical advice on how to keep their backyard jungles tamed and maybe even time to enjoy the fruits of their labors. (Apr.)

Signature

Reviewed by Debby Applegate

In his last two books, Christopher Benfey, a prolific critic, poet and professor of literature at Mount Holyoke, cultivated an unorthodox style of historical storytelling that spurns the traditional mechanics of cause and effect. To steal a phrase from poetry, we might say that he writes history in the lyric rather than the epic mode. The goal is to evoke the thoughts and feelings created by a particular time and place. He has previously applied this technique to Victorian America's discovery of Japan and Edgar Degas's year in New Orleans.

Now Benfey turns to the more familiar territory of the 19th-century literary renaissance in New England. He focuses on some of the era's most famous writers, as well as lesser-known figures—as the subtitle indicates: “Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Martin Johnson Heade”—all of whom found inspiration and self-expression in flowers and birds, the hummingbird above all. This is the book's MacGuffin: “why did hummingbirds in particular elicit such a powerful attraction, rising at times to an obsession?”

Benfey's answer is that after the Civil War Americans “gradually left behind a static view of existence, a trust in fixed arrangements and hierarchies,” and came to embrace a new dynamism that “found perfect expression in the hummingbird.” By tracing their allusions to hummingbirds in poems, pictures, sermons and anecdotes, he shows how these sensitive souls registered the shock of war by seeking symbols of the evanescence of life.

The elegiac mood gives way near the end, when sex wrestles the spotlight from death. Stowe's brother, a celebrated preacher, ensnares himself in a sex scandal, Heade begins a flirtation with the magnetic Mabel Loomis Todd, who throws him over for Dickinson's married brother, and the reclusive poetess embarks on her own late-life love affair.

Whether Benfey's book succeeds depends on the expectations of the reader. This is not a conventional cultural history, nor is it a linear history of literary influences. Instead, to borrow from a description of Dickinson's hummingbird poems, it presents “a fusion of realistic detail and vaporous suggestion.” Those who aren't already familiar with the period—and even many who are —might drift as the author flits, birdlike, from one poignant tableau to another, beckoned by the wafting scent of yet another reference to birds or flowers. (He suffers some minor errors of fact and interpretation, due to an excessive dependence on secondary sources, but they don't alter the overall effect.)

This book fares best when seen not as an argument but as a meditation on a moment in history, in which the reading experience itself recreates those feelings of evanescence.

Debby Applegate won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for the biography The Most Famous Man in America (Doubleday).