Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 6/11/2007

With impressively clear prose, Lehrer explores the oft-overlooked places in literary history where novelists, poets and the occasional cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights. The 25-year-old Columbia graduate draws from his diverse background in lab work, science writing and fine cuisine to explain how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections. Lehrer’s writing peaks in the essay about Auguste Escoffier, the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking. The author’s obvious zeal for the subject of food preparation leads him into enjoyable discussions of the creation of MSG and the decidedly unappetizing history of 18th- and 19th-century culinary arts. Occasionally, the science prose risks becoming exceedingly dry (as in the enthusiastic section detailing the work of Lehrer’s former employer, neuroscientist Kausik Si), but the hard science is usually tempered by Lehrer’s deft way with anecdote and example. Most importantly, this collection comes close to exemplifying Lehrer’s stated goal of creating a unified “third culture” in which science and literature can co-exist as peaceful, complementary equals. 21 b&w illus. (Nov.)

The toothpick is not just “among the simplest of manufactured things,” Petroski explains, but one of the oldest: Grooves on fossilized teeth suggest that early hominids might have regularly applied small sticks or even blades of grass to the spaces between their teeth. With his usual flair for combining technical expertise and cultural acumen, Petroski (The Pencil) presents nearly every toothpick in the historical record. No incident seems too small to escape his notice, from the Qur’an’s endorsement of using toothpicks before praying to Sherwood Anderson’s death by a still-skewered martini olive. The narrative eventually closes in on Charles Forster, the entrepreneur who introduced the mass manufacture of toothpicks to Maine and created an American industry; the battle over the Forster estate led to a mildly melodramatic family squabble. Petroski occasionally offers a first-person perspective, describing the unpleasant feel of a bamboo pick or confessing that sometimes he’ll resort to a mechanical pencil. Although some readers may feel he pushes the limits of the “history of ordinary objects” genre, there’s still enough intriguing detail, even in the minute evolutions of toothpick etiquette, to keep readers engaged. Photos and illus. throughout. (Oct. 17)

A charming debut by a former waiter at the New York City restaurant Per Se slips in some high-end tricks of the trade. Vermont-bred foodie Damrosch was a few years out of Barnard College when she landed a job at chef Thomas Keller’s Per Se. Fast-talking and prone to do her homework, in this case assiduously absorbing Keller’s French Laundry Cookbook, Damrosch starts as a backserver, and her training is intensive: attending food seminars, memorizing the acreage of Central Park and learning how not to interrupt dining couples holding hands. In a few months, she’s elevated to captain (a rare job for a woman), which entails navigating guests through the elaborate menus and essentially learning the subtleties of putting the guest at ease. Anticipating desire becomes Damrosch’s role, as well as making sure New York Times food critic Frank Bruni has the best meal of his life. (Indeed, the place receives four stars.) She begins a romance with Andre the sommelier. Much of the latter half of this youthful, exuberant memoir is overtaken by their burgeoning affair, although the most delightful chapter, “I Can Hear You,” is full of vignettes of Damrosch’s real-life waiting, i.e., the delivery of the Fabergé egg as a marriage proposal, and the parade of celebrities she meets along the way. (Oct.)

At 32, Clark abandoned a career in marketing to enroll in culinary school and fulfill her dream of becoming a chef. A divorce from her alcoholic husband followed, and Clark, chopping carrots for minimum wage, was left to raise their two young daughters on her own. Repeatedly comparing being a chef to motherhood, she describes all of the young cooks she helped to train as her “children.” Reflecting Clark’s ongoing struggle to balance work and family, the book’s 40-plus recipes include her eldest daughter’s “Favorite Cornflake-Coated Pork Chops” and the “Pink Medicine Placebo” administered to her youngest after a greasy “Braised Cube Steak” caused her to slip off the monkey bars. Clark’s enthusiasm for drawing people to the table is engaging, but she prefers to make excuses for her high job turnover, including several firings. In 2000, she invested her savings in her own restaurant in Washington, D.C., in a neighborhood where cloth napkins stood out more than vagrants. After a rocky start, Colorado Kitchen now often has a line around the block, and Clark thrives on being her own boss. The emphasis on family adds a personal dimension to this memoir about both comfort food and commitment to success. (Oct.)

In this memoir showcasing the ugly side of the affluent mothers of the pseudonymous Tate Academy , among the country’s most prestigious prep schools, Rouse, the school’s director of public relations, explains that his job is that of the “Mommy Handler”—keeping the families and benefactors of the institution happy. In particular, he works closely with a woman he calls Kitsy, the head of the parent and alumni committees and the ringleader of a group he dubs the M2s or the “Mean Mommies,” a troublesome squad of beautiful women whose self-appointed job it is to maintain Tate’s legacy of exclusionary ways. The tales of superficial demands and backhanded nastiness, as well as the quest for a standardized idea of perfection portray a scene worse than a suburban PTA meeting of Stepford wives. But Rouse, whose first memoir, America’s Boy, chronicled his life growing up gay in conservative middle America, justifies silently stomaching it all with a candid explanation of his overwhelming need to be accepted by the in-crowd. Rouse’s personal journey toward self-realization is highlighted by moments of compassion for students who are similarly ostracized for not being attractive, athletic or wealthy enough. Sadly, he never actually speaks up for fear of the M2s. Rouse’s writing is fresh and funny, and the stories of Botox parties, catty mothers and manicured pet pups make this an amusing insider look into the opulent lifestyle of prep school families. (Sept.)

Fried (The New Rabbi) here collects 31 columns he wrote for Ladies’ Home Journal on the humorous conflicts that occur when an immovable object (the husband) meets an irresistible force (the wife). These include why men wouldn’t mind cleaning up their dirty socks or dishes “once a year,” why low-carb diets have helped men “turn dieting into an extreme sport,” why naked guys in a locker room is the one situation “where men truly and consistently talk a lot” and why making out with a wife is the sexiest Valentine’s Day gift a husband can offer. Fried is insightful as well as funny, but many of his other topics—such as why guys just have to look at women when they walk by, and why guys have no clue how mechanical and electronic things really work—have already been covered more insightfully in Dave Barry’s classic Complete Guide to Guys. (Sept.)

Mihm vividly and entertainingly describes the muddled and often fraudulent economy of pre-greenback America: those freewheeling, pre–Civil War days when the federal government not only did not print paper money but likewise did not bother to regulate those regional banks that did. With more than 10,000 shades and varieties of cheaply printed currency on the “market” by the 1850s, counterfeiters had a field day. Mihm, an assistant professor of history at the University of Georgia, details the flimflam men and their ruses, and paints a stark picture of a world where counterfeit currency was at times issued in such volume that it threatened to spark significant inflation. Mihm’s villains include the notorious privateer, minister and alchemist Stephen Burroughs, along with numerous bankers, engravers and charlatans. Mihm’s title was a phrase used in 1818 by Hezekiah Niles, proprietor of what was the country’s leading financial journal, the Weekly Register. Niles wrote, “Counterfeiters and false bank notes are so common, that forgery seems to have lost its criminality in the minds of many.” As Mihm ably shows, the chaos did not end until Lincoln’s presidency, and even then it receded only grudgingly. 37 b&w illus. (Sept.)

This reverential biography of Jackson is the latest in Palgrave’s Great Generals series, but it’s not as concise as its slim volume might suggest. An obscureinstructor at Virginia Military Institute, Jackson was approaching middle age when he joined Confederate forces at the outbreak of the Civil War. He acquired his nickname, Stonewall, after an admirable stand at the first Battle of Bull Run. Transferred to nearby Shenandoah Valley, he made headlines as far away as Europe with a brilliant, fast-moving campaign that befuddled far larger Union forces. He returned to the main body of Lee’s command, where his crushing assault was a crucial victory in the second Battle of Bull Run, followed by his legendary flank attack that routed Union forces at Chancellorsville. Author Davis (Lightning Strike) dutifully relates Jackson’s unlegendary generalship on the Peninsula and at Fredericksburg, but like many Confederate hero biographers, his unrestrained admiration leads to purple prose (“The blue eyes of Stonewall Jackson again blazed with excitement”). Those seeking more insight into Jackson will find Byron Farwell’s 1992 biography longer, but more rewarding. (Sept.)

Expanding on his 2006 New York Times Magazine article, “Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge,” Edmundson develops his thesis about the lure of powerful, authoritarian leaders. He begins in 1938 Vienna on the eve of Hitler’s invasion and ends less than two years later, when Freud died in London. The crux of the book comes at its very end, where Edmundson, a contributing editor at Harper’s, discusses Moses and Monotheism (published in 1939), arguing for Freud’s profound insights into the rise of a totalitarian, paternalistic leader like Hitler. In fact, Edmundson’s aim seems even grander: to revive Freud’s legacy as a sage of human nature in an intellectual climate that has moved beyond many of his ideas. But the earlier parts of the volume are thin. Edmundson adds nothing in recounting the details of Freud’s life, and those facts are repeated over and over. There are some moments of sharp insight when Edmundson veers away from the biographical and delves into his own critical ideas, but these would have been better served in an article rather than incorporated into a narrative of danger, escape, illness and death. (Sept.)

In opposing the view that there is an “Israel lobby” with disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy (a view that Foxman says plays into “the traditional anti-Semitic narrative about 'Jewish control’ ”), the national director of the Anti-Defamation League focuses on the controversial 2006 paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (their book of the same title will be published in September). Foxman demolishes a number of shibboleths about the lobby’s power. Much of the book’s second half then takes on what Foxman sees as the biases and distortions in former president Carter’s Palestine Peace or Apartheid, offering evidence, for example, that Yasser Arafat, not Ehud Barak, was the obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement at the Taba negotiations. But Foxman never really defines what the “Israel lobby” is, paying more attention to the ADL than to that lobby’s main instrument, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee. And many will find debatable his claim that Israel “has proven to be the single greatest source of stability in the region.” This book succeeds far more as a rebuttal of a pernicious theory about a mythically powerful Jewish lobby than as a look at the real institutions that lobby in support of Israel or at Israel’s complex role in the Middle East. (Sept.)

Placing genocidal campaigns at the extreme on a spectrum of bullying that begins in socialization’s earliest stages, Coloroso (The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander) seeks to strengthen the legal and moral prevention of genocide and to improve humanitarian intervention. Analyzing the plight of the Armenians; the Jews, Roma and Sinti; and Rwandan Tutsis, she marshals solid studies, victim and perpetrator testimonies, as well as her own expertise as a nationally recognized speaker on conflict resolution. Her discussion of problems of definition, political will, and social and psychological persuasion are useful, but her argument can be tedious, despite graphic and distressing detail. Drawing heavily and only semiconvincingly on her earlier child-centered work, Coloroso has a tendency to rely on Power Point–style lists, brusquely contextualized quotations and even a cartoon-illustrated flowchart of bullies and their enablers. Her generalizations can be disturbing—for example, when she suggests Rwanda’s colonial past plays no role in the current violence, despite contrary arguments from Mahmood Mamdani and others not cited here. Coloroso’s checklist of genocidal prerequisites can also blur into other acts of state-sponsored or condoned aggression and exploitation. This book provides entry into a vital dialogue, but should be considered at best a beginning. (Sept.)

After giving up his advertising job and moving to Santa Fe with his wife, Wilder (Daddy Needs a Drink) decided he needed a day job, so he signed on as an assistant first-grade teacher at a local “alternative” school. Its New Age pedagogy—“pursuing kindness and peace,” counting games with “recycled organic materials,” etc.—was fine, but he was spending most of his time tending a delusional nine-year-old girl, flushing bad boys’ turds down the toilet and coping with hippie parents in denial about their bullying son. So he shifted to teaching seventh grade in a private day school, where there was just the usual preteen wackiness. Some days, so many of his students were “hoisting the middle finger,” a passerby might think he was “teaching a lesson in profanity for the hearing-impaired.” Teaching taught Wilder much about what to avoid, as a parent—especially about not being a “helicopter parent,” obsessively hovering over his kids’ every move. He also learned there are “two sides to this carpe diem coin”—we want our kids to go ahead and try everything, but we’re uncomfortable when our toddlers actually start dancing with the cross-dressers on Halloween. Wilder may be a bit potty-mouthed for the mainstream parenting shelf, but he’s honest and funny. (Aug.)

Just a typical Jewish law student who returned to New York to study playwriting, Roberts forsook torts and all things dramaturgical for tarts and all things culinary. In order to better share his discoveries and enthusiasms, he eventually launched a Web site—amateurgourmet.com—replete with recipes, marketing and cooking tips, restaurant reviews and overall winsomeness. Here, in 10 short essays, and with the same charming voice, he offers simple (perhaps even simplistic) lessons from his own journey out of fast food and microwave captivity to the Promised Land of Foodiedom. From basic tomato sauce to a feast for 10, he guides the way through a series of culinary adventures and exhorts the kitchen novice toward the same discoveries, surprises and challenges. This is not really a cookbook or a memoir so much as a kitchen travelogue or series of essays on culinary attitude adjustment, and Roberts has such lightness of spirit that even proficient gourmands may be tempted to seek again the stance of a rank beginner in order to experience anew a perfectly cooked tomato sauce or dinner for one in Paris. There are recipes, mostly cribbed from other cookbooks, but the book’s primary feature is its delight in learning something new. (Aug. 28)

MacDonald is just a regular, sharp-witted guy on a quest for “funtential,” his coined word for the maximum potential for fun. In a casual, playful tone, his account begins as he stares past his computer screen and at the brick wall of his girlfriend’s apartment in Quebec; he lives there, and she pays the rent. Wanting to contribute financially to the relationship, he recalls a childhood game, Bigger and Better, and begins looking for something to trade. He’s drawn to the red paperclip holding together his résumé and cover letter. The rest of the book traces his exchanges from the red paperclip to a fish pen to a smiley-face door knob and culminates with a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan—all within a year. From the outset, MacDonald insists on making each deal in person, and these personal exchanges provide the book with a human interest that transcends any fascination with quirky material swaps. Trading a door knob for Shawn’s camping stove, for example, becomes an excuse for the once strangers to chat over steak sandwiches and beer. So, while the trades are the unifying element of the book, it isn’t really about getting a house; it’s about people, relationships and living life to its fullest. (Aug.)

Proving nice guys and gals can finish first, Stone offers evidence from her own career, including her win on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. As founder and publisher of Her Sports+Fitness magazine, she and Dieter, her husband, weave her professional life story to date with advice gathered as they’ve sprinted down their respective career paths. With the same attention to detail and good cheer she exhibited through her weeks on the show, she shares the business etiquette and interpersonal skills she credits with her success. That advice, which forms her seven building blocks, is easily implemented—like smiling to set the tone of a meeting even when it occurs by phone. Always upbeat, Stone incorporates her advice with inspirational quotes from sources as diverse as basketball legend Michael Jordan, Woodrow Wilson and publisher Steve Forbes. Stressing the effectiveness of niceties like thank-you notes, she offers detailed directions on how to politely and effectively ask for raises and ace job interviews. Countering the reigning notion that business success is a matter of crushing or being crushed, she advises the best way to help yourself is by helping others. It is, Stone says, not winning that should be important, but how you win. (Aug.)

After living in New York for 25 years, writer Buschel returned to his native Philadelphia to explore the city from the perspective of a place of “enchantment” from his youth: Broad Street, a 13-mile stretch starting near the northern su-burbs and running through “the squalor of North Philly to City Hall and along the theaters and hotels of Center City down to Little Italy.” Block by block, mile by mile, Buschel explores how the street—and by extension the city itself—has changed since his youth, presenting fascinating glimpses of current Broad Street residents in action, such as the owner of a fast-food joint that serves hoagies and cheesesteaks. But Buschel also argues that nothing has really changed about the city’s soul: to be a Philadelphian is to be “perpetually mildly depressed and almost happy to be so,” which affects everything from the city’s politics (“a steady diet of civic shame and invective”) to sports (fans “love to complain”). This painfully honest and blunt memoir reveals how Buschel’s love-hate relationship with the city is inextricably connected to his painful Broad Street youth: the death of his father when Buschel was three, his troubled relationship with his hard-working and hard-drinking mother and the abuse he suffered after being sent at age seven to a city boarding school for orphans. (Aug.)

Ahumble motel owner and his parents become the heroes in carrying off the momentous 1969 Woodstock rock concert in Tiber’s occasionally improbable yet thoroughly entertaining tale. Tiber, né Teichberg of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, put on hold his personal ambition in the mid-1950s as an artist to help his aging Old World Jewish parents run their ramshackle resort motel in White Lake, deep in the Catskill Mountains. Hounded by the guilt that he can’t live up to his parents’ standards and riven by his own covert homosexuality, Tiber pokes fun at what he calls the Teichberg Curse, a scourge that won’t allow the family to escape financial ruin. As head of the Chamber of Commerce in his small town, and possessed of the yearly permit to hold summer music concerts, Tiber gets wind of rock concert promoter Michael Lang’s need for a venue to hold the Woodstock festival. A month of frenzied preparations ensues as Max Yasgur’s farm is secured, the anticipated numbers swell, and tensions grow in the town. Yet the planning of the concert makes up only one part of Tiber’s very human story, which includes affecting side chapters on brushes with artists (Mark Rothko, Robert Mapplethorpe) and standing defiant when the cops raided the West Village gay bar Stonewall. (Aug.)

Aprogenitor of the gay literary movement, as well as a poet, author and publisher, Picano recounts the creatively rich, landmark period during the 1970s and ’80s when the first dedicated gay presses arose in New York City. Focusing primarily on SeaHorse Press and the Gay Presses of New York, both founded or cofounded by Picano, he covers the two decades following the 1969 Stonewall riots, outlining how he (and others) fostered a GLBT literary tradition that continues today, with writers such as Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Larry Kramer and, of course, Picano. Although evocative details thrust the reader immediately into the scene, there’s no larger narrative to anchor them. Dense with information, the book is weighed down by page after page of authors’ names, dates and titles of books, almost like a veteran’s memorial. Writing informally, Picano also has a tendency to digress and jump confusingly forward and back in time. This highly personal account of an important and often neglected area of gay history offers compelling material that makes a reader long for a more objective account. But until that book is written, this is the most complete document of the gay book publishing movement to date. (Aug.)

William Morgan, an American who made his way to the front line of Castro’s revolution in Cuba, gets thorough and entertaining treatment in this biography. Largely unknown in the U.S., his story is filled with the suspense of a blockbuster war movie, offering new and insightful perspective into the political climate of 1950s Cuba. From Morgan’s Ohio beginnings, Shetterly quickly moves to his life in rebel camps in Cuba’s mountains, which Shettterly describes exquisitely, and quite viscerally. Deftly weaving together a considerable amount of research to set the scene, he uses his findings to paint an intriguing and nuanced portrait of Morgan as well as the political tensions of the time. In fact, in addition to Morgan’s story, there’s a fascinating subplot about how Castro and the revolutionaries did not enter the revolution with a clear Communist platform, but slowly evolved that way from internal and external forces. Issues of nationalism and the role of journalism play a large role in the book, turning the intriguing story of one man into a thoughtful examination of 20th-century Cuban history. (Aug. 10)

While there’s no shortage of books on international terrorism, drug cartels and genocide, the international weapons trade has received less attention. Journalists Farah and Braun center their absorbing exposé of this source of global misery on its most successful practitioner, the Russian dealer Victor Bout. Throughout the Cold War, they show, the Kremlin supplied arms to oppressive regimes and insurgent groups, keeping close tabs on customers; after the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the floodgates opened in the 1990s. With weapons factories starved for customers, Soviet-era air transports lying idle and rusting, and dictators, warlords and insurgents throughout the world clamoring for arms, entrepreneurs and organized criminals saw fortunes to be made. The authors paint a depressing picture of an avalanche of war-making material pouring into poor, violence-wracked nations despite well-publicized U.N. embargoes. America denounces this trade, but turns a blind eye if recipients proclaim they are fighting terrorism, they say. Ruthless people who shun publicity make poor biographical subjects, and Bout is no exception. The authors’ energetic research reveals that rivals dislike him, colleagues admire him, enemies condemn him, and Bout describes himself as a much-maligned but honest businessman. Although an unsatisfactory portrait, the book surrounds it with an engrossing, detailed description of this wildly destructive traffic. (Aug.)

This angry book aims to expose the conspiracy of corrupt politicians, negligent regulators and greedy industry leaders covering up the epidemic of poisoned food, water and air that, the author claims, is filling our hospitals, killing our children and spreading cancer, birth defects, autism and leukemia. A veteran investigative journalist, Schwartz-Nobel (A Mother’s Story) keeps the human element front and center by illustrating each pollutant with at least one heartbreaking anecdote. Although many of the pollutants the author denounces are proven poisons, others are only suspicious and several may be innocent. Moreover, it’s often not clear from the evidence cited in the book whether a specific toxin was responsible, though the victim and the author have no doubt. Unfortunately, Schwartz-Nobel’s apocalyptic tone and lack of skepticism weaken her case. She quotes scientists, but more often quotes other journalists, popular magazines, newspapers, victims groups, plaintiff lawyers and advocacy organizations like Washington Toxics Coalition and SafeMinds. No one refusing the join the bandwagon escapes her scorn, including pediatricians who express doubt that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. Environmental pollution needs a champion, but this overheated polemic preaches to the choir. (Aug.)

West, a Washington Times columnist with a hard-line conservative’s interest in culture, sounds a dire alarm over an age she sees marked by the “mainstreaming of countercultural behavior.” An unprecedented reversal of priorities from parents to children has occurred since the 1950s, according to West, allowing for “structural failures that permitted the behavioral revolutions of the 1960s to go forward unimpeded.” To support her case, West draws on sources generally weighted to the right end of the political spectrum, like Robert Bork and Daniel Pipes. Her examination of the social repercussions of a new “youth market” would be better grounded within the context of the transformations in postwar American society, but she focuses instead on the negative aspects of these large and complex changes, without reflecting on her underlying assumptions. In her view, the prolonged adolescence of baby boomers has left America open to an insidious “Islamization” of culture via a misconceived political correctness that can’t recognize the dehumanizing ideology of that religion. West, a vocal purveyor of distrust toward Islamic cultures, lays nothing less than the decline of Western civilization on the American counterculture, making her argument compelling only to those already in her corner. (Aug.)

Physicist Dyson, now retired from Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, attempts too much in this brief volume. He addresses three themes: “the human and ethical consequences of biotechnology”; “the place of life in the universe”; and the “implications of biology for philosophy and religion.” The seven short chapters consist of recent speeches that are not particularly well linked. Unlike some of his earlier works (e.g., The Scientist as Rebel), which dazzle the reader with insight and make intellectual connections across a wide array of subjects, this volume is somewhat quirky and superficial. A self-professed heretic, Dyson argues that “the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated,” but his analysis is far from compelling. In proposing a simple way to prospect for life in the universe, he theorizes that herbivores and carnivores may be present on objects in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, and may be constantly migrating from object to object. Dyson is most interesting when he defines “theofiction,” a genre by writers such as Olaf Stapledon and Octavia Butler, that arises from science fiction but where the vision “is primarily religious rather than scientific.” But even here, he falls short of his previous high standard. (Aug.)

The plan conceived by Secretary of State George Marshall to aid the recovery of a ravaged post-WWII Europe was perhaps the most generous act in American history and the world’s most successful program of international cooperation and visionary statesmanship. Behrman’s comprehensive study of the Marshall Plan could not arrive at a better time, when issues of nation building, postwar reconstruction and American obligations to friend and foe are the stuff of public debate. Behrman (The Invisible People) provides clarity, color and one of the greatest casts of characters in America’s history, including Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and Marshall. Readers will also learn of unjustly overlooked men such as Will Clayton, Paul Hoffman and Arthur Vandenberg on the American side and of the statesmanship of Ernest Bevin, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet and Stafford Cripps on the European. While lasting a mere four years, the $13-billion Marshall Plan rescued Europe from economic catastrophe and possible Communist domination while setting the stage for the continent’s integration today. Even if the work lacks a strong enough authorial voice and distinctive style, it’s unlikely Behrman’s narrative force could be surpassed or that the discovery of further archives would materially alter the author’s gripping tale. 16 pages of photos. (Aug.)

Husband and wife Roy Adkins (Nelson’s Trafalgar) and Lesley Adkins (Empires of the Plain) team up for this vivid account of the naval campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars (1798–1815). Contending that the wars were won at sea, the authors trace the nautical action from the Battle of the Nile (1798), where a British fleet “destroyed the French fleet” and stranded Napoleon’s army in Egypt, to the decisive Battle of Trafalgar (1805), where the British overwhelmed a combined French and Spanish fleet supporting an invasion of Britain. The narrative concludes with an account of the protracted “war of attrition” that followed Trafalgar and ended with Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. This low-grade conflict—coastal blockades and shipping raids—caught neutral nations like the United States “in the middle” and ultimately led the Americans to declare war on England in 1812—a conflict that was “never more than a sideshow” for the British. This rollicking saga ranges from the Mediterranean to the Indies, East and West, and ends with Britain in control of “the world’s sea lanes”—the foundation for her future empire. Meticulously researched—drawing on extensive and intimate eyewitness accounts from contemporary journals, letters and memoirs—this lively narrative will delight students and fans of nautical history. (Aug. 20)

They were both born on November 29 (he in 1799 and she in 1832), but willful, passionate Louisa May Alcott couldn’t have been more different from her serene, unworldly father, Bronson, whom fellow transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau revered for his wide-ranging philosophical pursuits and occasionally ridiculed for his lack of common sense. Bronson’s failed educational and utopian ventures placed a great burden on his wife, Abba, while elder daughters Louisa and Anna worked as teachers and paid companions to support the family. Yet Louisa honored her father’s steadfast principles, avers Matteson, a professor of English at John Jay College, who views both father and daughter with a sympathy that doesn’t quite conceal the book’s slightly specious premise. Bronson was far closer to Anna and younger sister Lizzie; Louisa’s fiery nature sometimes dismayed him. She only gained his full approval when mistreatment with a mercury-based medicine during the Civil War made her a near-invalid for the rest of her life. This is really a biography of the whole Alcott family, though it narrows to a dual portrait after the wild success of Little Women in 1868 gave Louisa the independence she longed for and Bronson enjoyed more modest acclaim for his book Tablets and lecture tours out West. 26 illus. (Aug.)

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf of Mexico the same weekend as the first game of the 2005 high school football season. That Friday, as the Patriots of pigskin powerhouse John Curtis Christian School endured another grueling practice under the demanding eye of head coach J.T. Curtis, there was little reason to suspect that the next weeks would bring anything other than the usual fabulously successful season—19 state titles since 1975. Within days, Katrina changed all of that, scattering the players all over the Southeast, instantly changing the definition of victory from championship to survival. Somewhat belying their professed identity as the “Rolls-Royce of athletic factories,” the school’s modest facilities did not even include a home field. Thompson (Driving with the Devil) has crafted a no-nonsense account jammed with familiar archetypes (first and foremost the tough veteran coach, whose harsh regimen masks a more tender regard for his charges, plus scads of likable, hardworking young men). Katrina still possesses the power to shock—the scenes of the hurricane, its aftermath and the difficult season will move even the stoniest of hearts. Friday Night Lights in crisis mode, this book packs an undeniable emotional punch. (July)

This is McGrath’s third book title borrowed from his atheist bête noir Richard Dawkins. But don’t let the titular borrowings fool you: this is an original and important book. Someone had to imitate the long, popular works of history being written on secular subjects from Lewis & Clark to FDR, and McGrath has the theological and historical expertise necessary to tell a story stretching from the Reformation’s origins in the 16th century to today. The “dangerous idea” was Martin Luther’s: that individual believers could and should read the Bible for themselves. The result was occasionally violent (as in the peasants’ revolt and the English Civil War), occasionally brilliant (musicians like Bach, theologians like Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, poets like Milton) and certainly world altering (the Calvinist Reformation clearing space for the rise of secular science and capitalism). McGrath concludes not with the faith practices of present-day England or America, but with the increasingly Pentecostal global south. The book occasionally falls into the dry tone of a textbook and assumes points that historians would want to debate, but is still the most readable introduction to the history, theology and present-day practices of Protestantism. (Oct.)

Lots of Buddhist books are using meditation to inspect the mind and watch its workings. The process works exceptionally well for monks and nuns, but the rest of the human race is busy householding, spends less time on the meditation cushion and could use a little help in applying Buddhist teachings to the messy world of relationships. This book by Buddhist meditation teacher Kramer fills that need somewhat unevenly. Kramer is a longtime student and teacher in the insight meditation tradition and has also studied Buddhist psychology. He has developed, and teaches, a practice that engages partners in a structured dialogue based on Buddhist practices and principles. Such dialogue, like meditation, yields insight. The book is at its best when the author explains and teaches this unique practice, offering real-world examples. Less successful, and far less novel, is a section that relates Buddhism’s four noble truths to “interpersonal truths.” This section is larded with sweeping psychological generalizations conveyed in fuzzy language (“All of these hungers rest on self-concept; they are the core around which the self constellates”). This book has potential as a text for advanced Buddhist practitioners interested in extending their practice into everyday life to illuminate and improve their relationships. (Sept. 11)

Freitas and King believe that Philip Pullman—whom the New Yorker called “one of England’s most outspoken atheists”—is a theologian in spite of himself, and that Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is a religious classic on the order of the Chronicles of Narnia. Here, the authors attempt to show that the Pullman novels are not about killing off God, but rather, annihilating an understanding of God that is antiquated and unimaginative. Analyzing lengthy scenes from the novels, they find Pullman’s views pantheistic, rather than atheistic. Pullman “resurrects a far more sophisticated divinity” and wrestles mightily with theological questions. Freitas and King explore Pullman’s beliefs about God, good and evil, and salvation, seeing the novelist as squarely situated within liberation theology and “surprisingly Greek, indebted nearly as much to Socrates and Plato as to God the Father and God the Son.” Freitas (Becoming a Goddess of Inner Poise) and King clearly know their material and have the requisite passion for their topic. Although this is not light reading, the book release’s timing to coincide with the motion picture, His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, should give it higher visibility to a popular audience. (Sept. 7)

In his characteristically erudite yet engaging fashion, Taylor, winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize, takes up where he left off in his magnificent Sources of the Self (1989) as he brilliantly traces the emergence of secularity and the processes of secularization in the modern age. Challenging the idea that the secular takes hold in a world where religion is experienced as a loss or where religions are subtracted from the culture, Taylor discovers the secular emerging in the midst of the religious. The Protestant Reformation, with its emphasis on breaking down the invidious political structures of the Catholic Church, provides the starting point down the road to the secular age. Taylor sweeps grandly and magisterially through the 18th and 19th centuries as he recreates the history of secularism and its parallel challenges to religion. He concludes that a focus on the religious has never been lost in Western culture, but that it is one among many stories striving for acceptance. Taylor’s examination of the rise of unbelief in the 19th century is alone worth the price of the book and offers an essential reminder that the Victorian age, more than the Enlightenment, dominates our present view of the meanings of secularity. Taylor’s inspired combination of philosophy and history sparkles in this must-read virtuoso performance. (Sept.)

Following C.S. Lewis’s dictum that “to 'see through’ all things is the same as not to see,” neuroscientist Beauregard and journalist O’Leary mount a sweeping critique of a trend in “the pop science media” to explain away religious experience as a brain artifact, pathology or evolutionary quirk. While sympathizing with the attraction such “neurotheology” holds, the authors warn against the temptation to force the complex varieties of human spirituality into simplistic categories that they argue are conceptually crude, culturally biased and often empirically untested. In recently published research using Carmelite nuns as subjects, Beauregard’s group at the University of Montreal found specific areas of brain activation associated with contemplative prayer. But these patterns are quite distinct from those associated with hallucinations, autosuggestion or states of intense emotional arousal, resembling instead how the brain processes “real” experiences. Insisting that “we have never entertained the idea of proving the existence of God,” the authors concede that “the results of our work are assumed to be a strike either for or against God” and that “on the whole, we [don’t] mind.” Never shrinking from controversy, and sometimes deliberately provoking it, this book serves as a lively introduction to a field where neuroscience, philosophy, and secular/spiritual cultural wars are unavoidably intermingled. (Sept.)

In this kiss-and-tell Gen-X memoir, Conant, a Christian publishing insider, chronicles his 28th year, in which he moved from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Nashville for a job and a girl. The job—marketing slick Bibles—turned out to be too corporate and the relationship too tempestuous, but Conant gradually returned to God via the nonjudgmental support he received in the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, much of his too-little-processed recounting feels like it belongs on a blog rather than in a book. A recovering Baptist, Conant seems aware on some level that it’s a bit strange his religion doesn’t make more demands on his life. He comes across as simultaneously ashamed and proud of continued adolescent behavior like driving 100 miles per hour, tipping back too many beers, succumbing to Internet porn or overspending to impress. His writing lacks the maturity of Donald Miller’s or Lauren Winner’s in that it’s less about Conant finding God than it is about his increasingly desperate attempts to find himself. What saves the book from utter solipsism, apart from its raw and bracing candor, is Conant’s keen eye for detail and his wry take on the masks Christians wear. (Sept.)

Despite the popularity of Sufism, few books provide an overview of this mystical branch of Islam— a void Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, fills nicely, albeit briefly, with this concise primer. Sufism teaches that all aspects of life—from nature to other people—are signs of God, and yet the grandeur of God is beyond human comprehension. The goal of each Sufi is to take an inner journey to transcend the human state, “to illuminate the dark corners of our soul” and reconnect with the inner divinity implanted by God at creation. Nasr’s book is not a how-to introduction on removing the “veils” erected by imperfection, which manifest as evil and block our divine roots, but a wise and tantalizing overview. He also includes a detailed and rare history of the Sufi movement and a brief catalogue of the various Sufi orders. Although readers with no prior background in Sufism may struggle with this rather dense intellectual study of the movement, it provides valuable information about the often overlooked philosophical underpinnings of Sufism along with obscure details that will be fascinating to more advanced practitioners. (Sept.)

Pastor and bestselling author Ortberg (God Is Closer Than You Think; Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them) offers a thoughtfully written instruction manual for Christian “game players” of all ages. Using games as a metaphor, Ortberg presents carefully considered tactics for succeeding in life from God’s vantage point. Each chapter weaves the rules of gaming with the Christian journey: understanding the object of the game (being spiritually “rich” toward God); the setup (keeping score, taking turns, preventing regret); how to play (with rules, gratitude and a mission); hazards (competition, greed, losing); and winning (choosing the right trophies). Christians will especially appreciate Ortberg’s wise counsel on being the kind of player other people want to sit next to, as he exhorts readers to learn to lose with grace, win with grace and forgive with grace. Perspective is key; after all, “when the game is over, it all goes back in the box.” Ortberg demonstrates some finesse in bringing together the extended game imagery with various real-life stories that are by turns comical and poignant. With excellent tools for personal and group study alike, this book’s strategy offers a win-win solution. (Sept.)

Piper, well-known for his Christian bestseller 90 Minutes in Heaven, with over 1.4 million copies in print, takes his dramatic story one step further by describing the lessons he’s learned since he died on a bridge in Texas in 1989. Piper didn’t stay dead, but instead returned from the gates of heaven a changed man. “I left the bridge different than I had been when I started across,” he says. Piper uses the bridge metaphor throughout, describing his salvation as the first bridge he crossed, then the traversal of another bridge to a “new normal” after accepting that his life was forever altered. Other journeys discussed include the bridge to compassion and the final bridge to heaven (for good this time). Undergirded with e-mails and letters from people who have read his book or heard him speak, Piper also leans heavily on the example of the Apostle Paul and the New Testament book of Philippians. Although the messages can be repetitive and the writing uninspired, Piper’s story is astounding and his life lessons are real: focus on the eternal, find the humor, accept help, give thanks and just hold on. (Aug. 7)

The latest version of an anthology of Catholic writing is packed with writing chosen for its “sacramental, incarnational perspective” and “sensitivity to the historic Christian tradition that is properly called 'Catholic.’ ” The collection includes some works from outside specifically Catholic circles, giving it greater depth. For example, the essay, “Why Protestants Can’t Write,” by Reformed pastor Peter Leithart discusses how sacramental theology informs fiction by such Catholic writers as Flannery O’Connor, making it markedly different from anything produced by contemporary Protestants. His view is fascinating and all the more credible and compelling because it comes from a Protestant perspective. Other highlights include John Romanowsky’s excellent interview with Vatican correspondent John L. Allen Jr.; Gregory Orr’s moving poem from Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved, and Joseph Bottom’s insightful piece on American Catholic culture from the journal First Things. Most of the more than two dozen essays, articles, poems and public addresses that make up this volume were published in 2006 in magazines and newspapers, although the growing influence of the Internet is reflected in the selection of four pieces that originally appeared on Web sites or blogs. A wide-ranging mix of topics, writers and sources should give this book broad appeal among Catholics and Protestants alike. (Aug.)

Award-winning Christian novelist Lisa Samson (Songbird; Quaker Summer) and her husband, sociology doctoral student Will Samson, intertwine fiction and nonfiction in this challenging and inspiring book about justice. Lisa Samson’s novella features the Marshalls, a suburban family with all the accoutrements: Matt climbs the corporate ladder, Christine cares for their three children, and both are busy with numerous church leadership positions. One day, Matt and Christine visit an inner-city mission, and their ideas about how they should be living gradually but dramatically change. The nonfiction portion of the book examines the issues these characters (and most of the book’s readership) face. The Samsons talk about why God cares what we eat, where we live, how much electricity we use and to whom we minister. Astonishingly, the authors manage to do this without hitting a sanctimonious note. On the contrary, they repeatedly highlight the heartbreak and complexity of what they refer to as “thinking and living in keeping with God’s heartbeat of justice” and frequently acknowledge their own struggles and failures. The Samsons include short meditations at the end of each chapter written by a variety of Christian authors, as well as a series of helpful discussion questions at the end. (Aug.)

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails are not the only things of which little boys are made, according to seminary professors Dykstra, Cole and Capps. Each author draws upon his own autobiographical story in this important examination of the spirituality of boys. Boys’ spiritual lives, according to the authors, are influenced much more by their negative experiences than by positive ones. These negative experiences are gathered under three archetypes: the loser, the rebel and the loner. Each of these experiences can give rise to spiritual virtues, in this case, self-awareness, self-transcendence and self-sufficiency. While the authors are not psychologists, they have done exhaustive research in this field, and their backgrounds in pastoral care and theology help convey an authentic and holistic approach to an underresearched topic. The practical application of this work, the authors posit, is “to demonstrate that by connecting with one’s boyhood one is better able to connect with one’s own and other men’s sons.” Many men will find the book’s insights and frank honesty enlightening. The authors use the word “spirituality” ambiguously at times, but this is a minor nuisance in an otherwise important work. (Aug.)

Chittister, a Benedictine abbess, popular lecturer and prolific spirituality writer (Called to Question; Transformed by Hope; etc.), returns with a probingly helpful guide to life’s most pressing questions. Spurred by letters from fans who often pour out their hearts and seek advice from her, each chapter tackles a separate existential question such as “Where is God?” or “What does it mean to be a spiritual person?” She begins each of the 25 chapters with a description of a particular person’s struggle to find meaning amid hardship, moving the narrative toward a wisdom story or parable from one of five religious traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A concluding meditation rounds out each section. Ecumenical readers will find that the God that lies behind these stories is acutely aware of human misery and helps us in surprising and meaningful ways. Chittister writes, “If the question is, Where is God? The answer is distressingly uncomplicated: God is wherever we know God to be, wherever we bring God to be, no more and no less at any time, anywhere, or in anyone.” This refreshing book will be welcomed by Chittister’s many admirers and is sure to win new ones as well. (Aug.)