Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 7/30/2007

Former Vanity Fair contributing editor Rasenberger (High Steel) provides an entertaining survey of 366 distant American days (1908 was a leap year). As the author admits, history does not fit neatly into 12-month segments, and Rasenberger frequently has to reach for benchmarks. Yes, during 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model-T: the first affordable automobile. However, he'd actually invented the horseless buggy years before. These quibbles aside, what a difference a century makes, and how easy the confidence of 1908 looks by contrast with today. The imperially ambitious Theodore Roosevelt was president, and the world seemed ripe for redemption through American innovation, exploration and colonization. All righteous patriots applauded as TR dispatched his “Great White Fleet” on a “Friendship Cruise” round the world, to show off American might. Yet, as Rasenberger shows, a different reality lurked behind the red, white and blue banners. That same year, anarchist Selig Silverstein exploded a bomb in New York City, and throughout the South blacks died at the ends of nooses hoisted by lynch mobs. Rasenberger renders 1908 as a series of snapshots, and his camera never blinks. 44 b&w illus. (Nov.)

In 1951, Theodore Mann and Jose Quintero founded New York City's Circle in the Square, which valued risk taking and innovation. It was instrumental in staging the classics, while showcasing such American playwrights as Jules Feiffer and Terrence McNally. At the same time, it was a training ground for American actors, many of whom, like Dustin Hoffman and Jason Robards, got their starts there. Mann's memoir chronicles his life and that of the theater, which began in Greenwich Village and is credited with giving birth to the off-Broadway movement The amazing array of actors and directors who graced Circle's stage reads like a theatrical Who's Who. The downside is that many chapters are unnecessarily long. And by mixing in his reminiscences, the book becomes a bit disjointed, lacking a smooth narrative flow. Still, his memory is encyclopedic, and the joy he takes in his profession is palpable. (Nov.)

This new release from Sports Illustrated writer Wertheim (Venus Envy), who expertly reports a true life story reminiscent of The Hustler and The Color of Money, details the exploits of Danny “Kid Delicious” Basavich, who, after dropping out of high school in the 1990s, went from being a suicidal, overweight teen to a legendary pool player. Wertheim has created a new version of the American dream, one where the predictable life of white picket fences and green lawns is replaced by the adventures brought by the spin of a cue ball and wads of greenbacks continually changing hands. At the heart of the book is the engrossing tale of two distinct relationships. The first is about Kid's two selves—the personable, pool-playing wiz and the bedridden, depressed bundle of nerves. The other story line follows the ruckus raised by the pool-playing exploits of the fat and friendly Kid and his fit and feisty partner, Bristol Bob. Adding to the book's appeal is Wertheim's eloquent and vivid prose that so perfectly captures the squalid, sepia-toned environs of America's billiard halls that it's easy to forget that the events in this book reflect recent history and not pool's roaring 1920s heyday . (Oct.)

NPR host Sagal (Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me) offers a hilarious, harmlessly prurient look at the banality of regular people's strange and wicked pleasures. In the wake of the late-1990s obsession with other people's fun, notes Sagal, the hoi polloi have pursued their own indulgences, such as sex joints, swinging couples' clubs, gambling and pornography. He describes the three necessary elements of vice that distinguish it from sin and give it that irresistible frisson: social disapprobation, actual pleasure and shame. A buttoned-up journalist and family man, Sagal visits the respective dens of inequity, interviewing the principals in the name of research while preserving his academic irony, e.g., during the shooting of a hardcore porn sequence for Spice TV, he remarks of the actors: “I began to appreciate how very well Evan and Kelly did their work.“ Indeed, the dedicated hedonists, such as the regular joe habitués of San Francisco's Power Exchange or the normal-seeming couples who frequent the Swinger's Shack, face “the same problems of meeting supplies, logistics, expense versus income, and time management as does any warehouse foreman.” Sagal is a terrific, lively writer, and while some of his segments are repetitive and stretched, he is admirable in humanizing the participants. (Oct.)

Francophile Chelminski (The Perfectionist) offers up a feisty defense of Georges Duboeuf, who singlehandedly put Beaujolais, the grape and the region, on the culinary map. Unlike the better established regions of Burgundy and Bordeaux, the small grape growers of Beaujolais—a ribbon of land between Lyon and Mâcon, its capital Beaujeu—held to the growing of the inferior gamay, which flourished in the region despite the attempts by the Romans to eradicate it. Surviving phylloxera and grafting from plants of American roots, the humble Beaujolais became a favorite wine of Lyon largely because of the excellence of its primeur, or new wine, which was available by St. Martin's Day, November 11. In Chelminski's circuitous path, enter young Duboeuf, on his family winery at Chaintre, who decided by 1951 to circumvent the big dealers and set up his own wine-tasting cellar. Armed with two of his own bottles, he pedaled over to Paul Blanc's famous restaurant Le Chapon Fin down the road, and history was made: Duboeuf Wines is the #1 exporter of French wines to the U.S. Chelminski offers a stylish history of French wine-making, and an unblushing tribute to Duboeuf's achievements. (Oct.)

When the Actors Studio faced possible extinction in 1994, Lipton (An Exaltation of Larks) engineered a partnership between the Studio and the New School for Social Research to create a degree-granting program. Thus was born the Actors Studio Drama School, with Lipton as both founder and dean. The school's craft seminars, in which Lipton interviewed leading actors and directors, became the basis for Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, and since 1994, he has been that series' executive producer, writer and host. Looking back over the show's parade of personalities, he intercuts autobiographical flashbacks with quotes from the TV interview transcripts. These brief selections, excerpted from his sessions with Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Lemmon, Mike Nichols, Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and many more, may leave some readers wishing Lipton had published the transcripts in full. Raising the curtain on his own memories, he traces the path of his multifaceted career as radio actor (The Lone Ranger), TV actor (The Guiding Light), Broadway lyricist (Sherry!) and novelist (Mirrors). Along the way, theatrical truths emerge and amusing anecdotes abound since Lipton is a witty and engaging writer. The free-associative transitions from interviews to autobiography occasionally read like two different books shuffled together, but that only makes this exaltation of Lipton doubly enjoyable. The 48 illustrations include Al Hirschfeld's caricature of Lipton. (Oct. 18)

Given the almost perverse ratio of fans and media attention on the one hand (massive) to the minuscule number of NFL games (a mere 16 per team in regular season, compared to 162 in baseball), the level of attention paid to each play, press conference or trade is astounding. So when Bill Belichick took over as coach of the famously inconsistent New England Patriots in 2000 and quickly turned them into what Boston Globe sportswriter Price terms the “unlikeliest dynasty in the history of the NFL,” the coach's low-key recipe for success was bound to be anatomized within an inch of its life. Fortunately, Price's account of the team's elegantly simple transformation from league laughingstock (his stories of their 1970s foibles are legion and hilarious, to nonfans at least) to Tom Brady powerhouse is a breeze to read; neither pumped full of steroidal sports hyperbole or weighed down by bloated play-by-play. From the soap opera that was the Bill Parcells era to the high drama of Drew Bledsoe's injury, when he unwittingly handed the quarterback crown to an untested Brady, this is a highly diverting read perfectly timed for the start of a new season for a team that, in Price's mind, “has become the gold standard for the rest of the National Football League.” (Oct.)

Earlier this year, William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaar alerted readers to the blind eye the United States and other nations have turned toward Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb and to sell that technology to other nations, including the entire “Axis of Evil.” Levy and Scott-Clark (The Amber Room) work on a larger canvas, shaping their in-depth reporting into a compelling and more detailed narrative. They have not truly improved upon Langewiesche's portrait of A.Q. Khan, the metallurgist who became “Pakistan's biggest and most valuable personality” after smuggling atomic secrets out of the Netherlands. But they do substantially support the idea that the nuclear program influenced Pakistan's internal power struggles, and that American government officials led disinformation campaigns for 30 years in order to hang onto the nation as a dubious ally against first the Soviets and then al-Qaeda. The authors also hint at the possible involvement of Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby in an attempt to discredit an intelligence analyst who spoke frankly of the Pakistani threat during the first Bush administration. Building on a decade's worth of interviews, the husband-and-wife investigative term serve a stunning indictment of “the nuclear crime of all our lifetimes,” in which, the authors claim, the U.S. has been an active accessory. (Oct.)

In contrast to the American classic The Education of Henry Adams, in which the author lamented that his traditional education had not prepared him for the modern world's rapid progress in science and technology, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Perkins's early studies in science (MIT) and business (Harvard) were perfectly adapted to building high technology companies in California. But historians and aspiring venture capitalists will be disappointed that his memoir says little about the companies he helped found and manage, focusing instead on gossipy accounts of boardroom squabbles. Instead of discussing making money, he concentrates on anecdotes about spending it on playboy activities like buying, building and racing expensive cars and yachts. The writing is clear but wooden. While the stories would be unremarkable if told about ordinary people, they will interest some readers due to the millions of dollars and celebrities involved. There are clunker jokes about women and homosexuals and the references to women are generally uncharitable (except for wives and mistresses of male friends, who are “slim and attractive”). Perkins's book is a pale imitation of Henry Adams's original. (Oct.)

In this groundbreaking work, historian and scholar Rediker considers the relationships between the slave ship captain and his crew, between the sailors and the slaves, and among the captives themselves as they endured the violent, terror-filled and often deadly journey between the coasts of Africa and America. While he makes fresh use of those who left their mark in written records (Olaudah Equiano, James Field Stanfield, John Newton), Rediker is remarkably attentive to the experiences of the enslaved women, from whom we have no written accounts, and of the common seaman, who he says was “a victim of the slave trade... and a victimizer.” Regarding these vessels as a “strange and potent combination of war machine, mobile prison, and factory,” Rediker expands the scholarship on how the ships “not only delivered millions of people to slavery, [but] prepared them for it.” He engages readers in maritime detail (how ships were made, how crews were fed) and renders the archival (letters, logs and legal hearings) accessible. Painful as this powerful book often is, Rediker does not lose sight of the humanity of even the most egregious participants, from African traders to English merchants. (Oct. 8)

Even in his own day, the famed 13th-century travel writer Marco Polo was mocked as a purveyor of tall tales—gem-encrusted clothes, nude temple dancing girls, screaming tarantulas—in his narrative of his journey to the Chinese court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. In this engrossing biography, Bergreen (James Agee: A Life), while allowing that “mere facts... were never enough for Marco,” finds him a roughly accurate and perceptive witness (aside from the romantic embellishments and outright fabrications concocted with his collaborator Rustichello of Pisa) who painted an influential and unusually sympathetic portrait of the much-feared Mongols. Bergreen follows Polo's disjointed commentary on everything from Chinese tax policy to asbestos manufacturing, crocodile hunting and Asian sexual mores—Polo was especially taken with the practice of sharing one's wife with passing travelers—while deftly glossing it with scholarship. Less convincing is Bergreen's attempt to add depth to Polo's “lurid taste and over-heated imagination” by portraying him as both a prophet of globalization and a “pilgrim and explorer of the spirit.” Polo's spiritual trek didn't take him very far, since he ended his days back in Venice as a greedy, litigious merchant. Still, the result is a long, strange, illuminating trip. 16 pages of photos, 3 maps. (Oct. 25)

It is little surprise that there has been no major biography of Fanny Wollstonecraft—first daughter, by an American lover, of brilliant feminist theorist Mary Wollstonecraft and elder half-sister of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Fanny produced no books, lived in the shadow of others and found her feelings for Percy Bysshe Shelley ignored, as the poet favored, then married, Mary. Fanny spent a great deal of time as a go-between, helping smooth over the endless sexual and social intrigues of the Shelley and Byron circle. Realizing none of her own dreams, she committed suicide in 1816 at the age of 22. There are moments of terrific insight, such as Mary's odd, confused reaction to Fanny's death and her transforming Fanny into the ill-fated servant girl Justine in Frankenstein, who is unjustly accused of killing a child. Todd has rescued Fanny from ill-deserved obscurity, yet the biography is more of a meditation on the role of all of the women in Byron and Shelley's circle, and its power lies in Todd's soundly and generously feminist reimagining of these women's lives. Not only a splendid work of feminist history, this is an important addition to late 18th- and early 19-century literary criticism. (Oct.)

In a fading November light in 1847, the most desperate year in Irish history, an Anglo-Irish landlord named Denis Mahon—whose ancestral family demesne in County Roscommon tenanted 12,000 poor and mostly starving people—was shot and killed in a roadside ambush. Mahon was returning from a meeting to discuss funding for a workhouse, meant to provide sustenance to the victims of the potato blight—in return for work. Mahon's death has been a source of controversy ever since. Was it justified? Was Mahon himself committing slow mass murder of his tenants? Duffy (The Bielski Brothers) mounts an investigation, but more importantly, marshals his storytelling skills to render vividly the harsh realities and the alternately heartbreaking and appalling politics of the Great Famine. To Duffy's credit, his treatment is evenhanded. Yet he does not lose sight of the larger discussion that the blight engendered in Parliament, where powerful factions seized upon the crisis as an opportunity to persuade the Irish to change their ways—particularly, their loyalty to the Catholic Church. Duffy's effort falters some as he renders numbly the lengthy trial of the men accused of Mahon's murder. Now that peace is at hand between England and Ireland, the timing could not be better for this look back at a deadly blight and the failure of a powerful empire to manage the consequences. There is much here for all sides of the debate to learn. (Oct.)

Baker, who teaches history at Salem State College, examines a witchcraft accusation made a decade before the more famous Salem outbreak. In June 1682, someone showered stones at a Great Island, N.H., tavern owned by a Quaker named George Walton. When the stone-throwing continued through the summer, Walton accused his neighbor, widow Hannah Jones, of witchcraft. The neighbor, in turn, charged that Walton was a wizard. Baker helpfully connects the Great Island event to other stone-throwing episodes in early New England, and he uncovers some of the social factors—including town politics, a property dispute, and struggles between Walton and his servants—that lurked underneath the Great Island drama. His examination of anti-Quaker sentiment is especially nuanced. Baker is widely read in the academic literature on witchcraft; in fact, his analysis is mostly derivative, leaning heavily on works by John Demos, Carol Karlsen, Mary Beth Norton and others. Baker's use of anachronistic analogies like “the witchcraft accusation... might be seen as the seventeenth-century equivalent of 'playing the race card' ” do more to obscure than illuminate. Still, colonial history buffs will appreciate this account of the strange happenings in Great Island. Maps. (Oct.)

This handsome new version of McCullough's blockbuster (2.6 million copies of the original edition in print) is a visual feast. The text is abridged, but McCullough illustrates his riveting account of “the most important year in the war that made America” with maps, portraits and reproductions of broadsides and newspaper ads. Many famous paintings are included—Washington Crossing the Delaware (which, McCullough notes, captures the drama of the moment, even though many of the details are inaccurate); Charles Wilson Peale's portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Gen. Nathanael Greene; John Singleton Copley's portrait of Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote an early history of the revolution. McCullough also introduces less well-known images, such as a satiric print poking fun at the British prime minister, Lord North. Scattered throughout are vellum envelopes that hold facsimile reproductions of 37 primary sources—letters from George Washington to Martha, an ambrotype of Continental soldier Ralph Farnham as a centenarian, the text of a vow of allegiance to the king taken by Loyalists in New Jersey. By including these documents, McCullough has recreated not just the excitement of 1776, but the thrill of an archival research trip as well. From start to finish, this volume is a delight. (Oct.)

A great deal has been written about Venter as the head of Celera, the private research company that won a race with the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project to sequence the human genome. His role in this historic accomplishment has been both vilified and praised. Now, in a clumsily written autobiography, Venter offers his side of the story, portraying himself as the eternal underdog, fighting for truth and attempting to make scientific discoveries solely to help others. He is opposed in this struggle by a cadre of scientists out to advance their own careers, by a federal bureaucracy incapable of rationally using public funds to promote scientific advances and by the heads of corporations willing to do almost anything to make money. Venter accuses all of the big players—the Human Genome Project's Frances Collins and Nobel laureate James Watson, among many others—of outright dishonesty. Ignore the hyperbole and be skeptical of the accusations, but there's still a terribly depressing story about the politics of big science. Venter also attempts to contextualize the controversy swirling around the patenting of DNA sequences. Despite the lack of unbiased insight, this is well worth reading for the fascinating perspective it offers on one of the major scientific discoveries of all time. (Oct. 22)

To get a nuts-and-bolts understanding of heart surgeons—from the decisions they make in the operating room to the impact of colleagues, patients and pharmaceutical companies on their jobs—Morris (The Tycoons) “embedded” himself for six months in the elite cardiac surgery center at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital in New York City. Unlike some noncardiac surgeries where music blares in the operating room, an aortic valve replacement for a retired pharmacy executive, says Morris, is a solemn affair, the calm briefly interrupted only when the patient fibrillates, his heart muscle fibers fluttering irregularly. The author finds it “exhilarating” to watch as a surgeon “basically built... a new heart” for a five-day-old baby with a major heart malformation. But even technical marvels can't save a desperately ill four-year-old girl after a heart transplant. The reserved Craig Smith, the unit's head, who gained national fame when he performed a quadruple bypass on former President Clinton, impresses readers with his skill and deep concern for his patients. From detailing the workings of the heart's chambers and valves to the bald economics of cardiac surgery—including Smith's income ($1.5 million in 2004), the hospital's billing and collection procedures and forecasts on universal health insurance—Morris masterfully breaks down complex jargon, procedures and policies for a lay audience. (Oct.)

For more than 40 years, a small band of self-anointed investigators have made a cottage industry out of critiquing the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of JFK and postulating elaborate theories associated with that tragedy. Kelin—one of the second generation of critics and the founder of the JFK assassination Web magazine Fair Play—pays homage to the first generation who, unlike “craven” mainstream historians, he says, “refused to buckle under the most subversive lies ever told the American people.” Kelin explores in detail the work of a parade of investigators, including prosecutor Jim Garrison (immortalized in Oliver Stone's controversial film JFK); Rush to Judgment author Mark Lane; smalltown newspaper editor Penn Jones Jr. (who made a specialty of investigating the “strange” deaths of assassination witnesses over the course of several decades), and poultry farmer and Whitewash author Harold Weisberg. The book retreads the familiar territory of the Zapruder film and the grassy knoll and concludes with this year's revelation of the existence of another film of the assassination, taken by a spectator. If Vincent Bugliosi thought his mammoth Reclaiming History would put an end to this debate, Kelin is determined to prove him wrong. (Oct.)

London Times associate editor Macintyre (The Man Who Would Be King) adroitly dissects the enigmatic World War II British double agent Eddie Chapman in this intriguing and balanced biography. Giving “little thought” to the morality of his decision, Chapman offered to work as a spy for the Germans in 1940 after his release from an English prison in the Channel Islands, then occupied by the Germans. After undergoing German military intelligence training, Chapman parachuted into England in December 1942 with instructions to sabotage a De Havilland aircraft factory, but he surrendered after landing safely. Doubled by MI5 (the security service responsible for counterespionage), Chapman was used “to feed vital disinformation to the enemy” and was one of the few double agents “to delude their German handlers until the end of the war.” Meticulously researched—relying extensively on recently released wartime files of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service—Macintyre's biography often reads like a spy thriller. In the end, the author concludes that Chapman “repeatedly risked his life... [and] provided invaluable intelligence,” but “it was never clear whether he was on the side of the angels or the devils.” Of the two Zigzag biographies this fall (the other, by Nicholas Booth, is reviewed below), this is clearly superior. (Oct. 9)

Broadcaster and author Booth (The Encyclopedia of Space) mines the newly released World War II records of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI5) for this lively and sympathetic account of celebrated double agent Eddie Chapman. A petty criminal, Chapman was incarcerated in a Jersey jail when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands in 1940. After his release, he offered to work for German military intelligence and received training as a saboteur and spy in occupied France. He parachuted into England in 1942 with orders to blow up an aircraft factory, but contacted British intelligence once on the ground. Despite their misgivings—his handlers variously described Chapman as “a very strange character” and “a man without any scruples”—MI5 employed him as a double agent for the remainder of the war. There are legitimate questions as to the enigmatic Chapman's motivation, but Booth, who collaborated with Chapman's widow, Betty, invariably sides with the double agent against his critics. In Booth's judgment, Chapman was the “most remarkable spy of the Second World War,” and his treatment by British intelligence was “shameful.” Whether rogue or patriot, his story makes for intriguing reading, but Booth's transparent cheerleading for Chapman detracts from an otherwise enjoyable biography. (Sept.)

This casual and lively book deals with some of the most basic philosophical questions we have: why are we here? How did life arise from nonliving particles? What is the fate of the earth? Sagan (What Is Life?), son of astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan, draws on, among others, science, philosophy and “the speculations of science fiction” in attempting to answer these questions. He begins with a quick introduction to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, that the Earth is a living, self-regulating organism, and that life is not just a “passenger” on Earth but an integral part of the planet's systems. In chapters titled “Earth,” “Water,” “Air” and “Fire,” Sagan touches on the oceans and atmosphere, the evolution of life on Earth, the laws of thermodynamics and human consciousness, always circling back to Lovelock's theories. Sagan is equally comfortable discussing scientists like Richard Dawkins and Lewis Thomas, and science fiction authors like Philip K. Dick and A.E. van Vogt. The chatty style and ranging mind communicate a broad understanding and should appeal to inquisitive readers who want to know more about Earth and our relationship with it. (Sept.)

A perpetual tourist in his New York City hometown, Barry wrote a weekly New York Times column from 2003 to 2006 humanizing the faceless hordes of a bustling metropolis. He gives a voice here to umbrella peddlers grumbling about bad business in a downpour, a Buddhist monk robbed of his bag of humble possessions at Trump Tower and a Bronx poker champ whose winnings bought 10 heart surgeries in his native Guyana. In a city of transition, Fulton Fish Market hawkers bid adieu to their old stinky open-air digs; Plaza Hotel doormen lament the famed hotel's conversion into luxury condos and the probable loss of their jobs. Remarkable yet ordinary New Yorkers include a Methodist office worker who donated a kidney to a Muslim woman, a Harlem window washer who plummeted to his death in a Silk Stocking neighborhood and a potato chip salesman who was unmasked as a brutal Nazi. September 11 casts a long shadow as a Staten Island retired firefighter learns for the fifth time in two years that parts of his son, a commodities trader, have been recovered at ground zero. Pulitzer Prize–winner Barry delivers highly evocative pieces, but they'll be yesterday's news to Times readers. (Sept.)

What does an analysis of PW's and USA Today's bestsellers lists tell us about the values, desires and fears of the American reading public? “[R]eaders are increasingly attracted to simple, univocal reinforcements of hunches rather than complex... answers,” say the authors. Heath (coauthor, Who Killed Homer?) and first-time author Adams go on to analyze book after book to show its superficiality and failure to challenge readers' assumptions; they pick in particular on Dan Brown. The low-carb craze was about simplistic answers to psychological and physiological issues. J.K. Rowling and John Grisham reduce the world to good vs. evil, eliminating the need to understand conflicting points of view; Laura Schlessinger's and John Gray's success reveal an American public longing for traditional male-female roles. Disaster books, even literary titles like Into Thin Air, demonstrate an American appetite for redemptive stories of survival in the face of tragedy, and the red-hot Da Vinci Code scored by manipulating our lust for controversy and conspiracy and our need to feel (without actually being) educated. This effort is larded with data that will be obvious to publishing professionals and of little interest to general readers. (Sept.)

Dreams, coincidence and imagination are “the three 'only' things,” says Moss, because people's common response to these phenomena is that it's “only” a dream, etc. A thriller writer and the pioneer of a dream-interpreting technique called Active Dreaming, Australian-born Moss believes that “the Three Only Things can connect with “extraordinary sources of direction, healing, and energy.” Writing about dreams, Moss is eloquent and authoritative, a wise teacher. He says that for many indigenous cultures the dream world is more real than waking life; he argues for dreams' prophetic capacity; and he shares some dreams of his workshop participants and reveals the meaning behind certain common dream motifs. The power of the section on dreaming carries the rest of the book, which is a slightly rambling and quirky meditation packed with great stories on how to read the coincidences that pop up in our lives. Moss is a raconteur, but a serious one, and finishes by describing how we can access and use our imagination's healing imagery to help us map our lives. As he says, “[W]hat we can imagine has a tendency to become real in our bodies and our world.” (Sept. 15)

Is there a secret to healing others and ourselves? Larsen, originator of the process known as Stage II recovery from addictive behaviors, replies that although there is no shortcut to recovery, at the root of all human well-being is the question of “love or love denied.” Love denied leaves a wound that continues to cause pain in different forms throughout a person's life. Writing with his sister Hegarty, Larsen breaks down the healing process, or “hoop” of recovery, into seven steps. We must make sure our basic physical needs are met; then we get lost, get hurt and get stuck. Only then can we get called, get up and finally get going. By telling the stories of people in different stages of recovery, Larsen seeks to demonstrate that “the hoop” is universal. The book's loose organization, colloquial style, frequent changes of metaphor (on one page we go from bent trees to a bend in the road then the “shark bite... taken out of our soul”) and digressions make it hard to follow. Nevertheless, Larsen has a solid understanding of human emotions gained through years of counseling experience, and his conception of recovery is a valuable tool for both healers and those in need of healing. (Sept.)

Two titans, Disraeli and Gladstone, dominated English politics in the Victorian age. Each did multiple stints as prime minister and as leader of the Conservative (Disraeli) or Liberal (Gladstone) party. Political opposition shifted over the years to mutual personal disapproval and finally to rage-driven attack. Aldous (of University College, Dublin) traces the development of this seemingly pathological antagonism amid the policy disputes of the era. Both combatants displayed rhetorical skills unimaginable in a politician today. Both were writers, Gladstone of dull works on religion and on Homer, Disraeli of novels lampooning notable figures of his day, especially Gladstone. Aldous portrays both as possessing repellent character traits, such as Disraeli's vindictive mockery and Gladstone's moral hypocrisy. All these tangy ingredients make this joint biography highly appetizing, even if some readers may find issues like the Corn Laws, that so energized Gladstone and Disraeli, a bit faded. However, vexing issues of international trade, religion in public life and voting rights divide our nation as they did Victorian England. Aldous's smooth pacing and adroit writing bring a forgotten world back to life and demonstrate how two forceful if warring personalities can create a history that neither could have achieved acting alone. (Sept.)

Atkinson surpasses his Pulitzer-winning An Army at Dawn in this empathetic, perceptive analysis of the second stage in the U.S. Army's grassroots development from well-intentioned amateurs to the most formidable fighting force of World War II. The battles in Sicily and Italy developed the combat effectiveness and the emotional hardness of a U.S. Army increasingly constrained to bear the brunt of the Western allies' war effort, he argues. Demanding terrain, harsh climate and a formidable opponent confirmed the lesson of North Africa: the only way home was through the Germans: kill or be killed. Atkinson is pitilessly accurate demonstrating the errors and misjudgments of senior officers, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, Gen. Mark Clark and their subordinates commanding corps and divisions. The price was paid in blood by the men at the sharp end: British and French, Indians and North Africans—above all, Americans. All that remained of the crew of one burned-out tank were the fillings of their teeth, for one example. The Mediterranean campaign is frequently dismissed by soldiers and scholars as a distraction from the essential objective of invading northern Europe. Atkinson makes a convincing case that it played a decisive role in breaking German power, forcing the Wehrmacht onto a defensive it could never abandon. (Oct. 2)

Novelist Goldman (The Divine Husband, etc.) pursues in his first nonfiction book the infamous murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the Guatemalan human rights leader murdered after the release of his multivolume report on the genocidal terror campaign led by the army in the 1980s and '90s, in which 200,000 people disappeared or were killed. The book, which began as a New Yorker piece, casts light into the darkest corners of this tortuous case, the U.S.-supported war in Central America and the continuing legacy of violence and corruption. The large cast and myriad details can be overwhelming, but overall Goldman manages a clear narrative (aided by a “dramatis personae” and chronology). Drawing on a wealth of sources, including interviews, declassified documents and court records, his meticulously researched book is an impressive organizational achievement, as well as a vital moral accounting. Goldman—who was baptized in Gerardi's church of San Sebastian, attended by his Guatemalan-born mother—invests this eye-opening account with a layer of personal reflection. Like Latin American writers García Márquez, Vargas Llosa or Carlos Fuentes, his journalism isn't so much a departure from his fiction as an extension of his concerns with the fraught landscapes where “truth” is as contested as the soil underfoot, yet central to battles waged over it. (Sept.)

While opinions of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez vary tremendously on a global scale, there are few defenses of him available in the United States. This biography by Bart Jones, a former AP correspondent from Venezuela, attempts to level the ground. Without taking a political stance, Jones provides a nuanced account of the Venezuelan leader's life, creating a portrait that is, if not sympathetic, certainly more balanced than previous ones. For example, when Chávez characterized President Bush as the devil at the U.N. in 2006, most American news sources presented it as a crude and clownlike gesture. According to Jones, Chávez is hardly just a jester, but uses vulgarity to remind his friends and his enemies of his humble beginnings, as well as to win a tremendous amount of publicity. Jones's precise and entertaining account moves smoothly through Chávez's beginnings up to his current position, making Venezuelan history accessible. (Sept. 4)

Ledeen, a well-known conservative pundit on Iran, argues passionately for a bolder, better-reasoned American policy toward the Islamic republic. He presents compelling evidence that the Shiite regime has collaborated with al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist organizations, and that Iran's Supreme Leader has considered the goal of killing Westerners and Jews throughout the Middle East. In presenting his litany of Iranian perfidies, however, Ledeen can seem to overreach: he divines Persian influence in the siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979 and implies there's consensus that Tehran is harboring Ayman al-Zawahiri. Of 9/11 Ledeen writes, “[W]e have still not unraveled all the threads of the September 11 conspiracy. If we ever do, I suspect we will be amazed at the number of terrorist groups—and their national sponsors—that were involved in the conspiracy.” The last third of this short book is dedicated to improving American policy toward Iran. One of the cooler heads at AEI and the National Review, Ledeen presents discussions not on bombs and tactical strikes, but on the moral, logistical and material support for Iranian dissidents, who he claims make up a clear majority of the population. While he may overestimate the potential for regime change in the near future, Ledeen's suggestions merit further discussion. (Sept.)

In his latest anti-Republican polemic, ex–Nixon White House counsel and Watergate whistle-blower Dean (Conservatives Without Conscience) moves from policy to “process”—how necessary government functions are corrupted and hobbled by Republican politicians and their ethos of authoritarianism, secrecy, partisanship and dogmatic contempt for the public sphere. It's a long indictment. The last Republican Congress, Dean contends, rubber-stamped Bush's policies, shut Democrats out of the legislative process, neglected pressing issues and made a shambles of government finances. Meanwhile, the Bush administration—“the worst presidency ever”—has sought to replace constitutional checks and balances with a “unitary executive” that brooks no congressional interference and undermines civil rights. All of this is enabled by the swelling ranks of “fundamentalists” on the federal bench and Supreme Court (some of whom, he insists, committed perjury to get confirmed). The author, a former Republican, bolsters his procedural analysis with insights from political scientists, but doesn't offer procedural reforms; the cure he prescribes is to stop voting Republican. (He hails the new Democratic Congress for repairing much of the damage done by the GOP.) Dean's take on “process”—mainly a conventional reverence for the Constitution and bipartisanship—isn't acute, but he presents a vigorous critique of the Republican machinery. (Sept. 11)

In this passionate but meandering political memoir, the author reconstructs his failed 2006 bid to unseat then incumbent Lincoln Chaffee for the Republican nomination in the Rhode Island Senate race. Positioning himself as a political underdog fighting against the power-hungry Republican leadership, Laffey accuses the National Republican Senatorial Committee of an unprecedented negative campaign against him in favor of his more moderate opponent. The author holds a number of key Republicans responsible for his defeat, including John McCain, President Bush and especially NRSC chairwoman Elizabeth Dole, who he believes chose power over principle by supporting Chaffee in the primary. The text alternates between colorful anecdotes about the campaign and vitriolic attacks on his adversaries. Laffey's candid, sometimes playful tone is both charming and abrasive: when he talks about campaigning with his family, he strikes an appealingly human note, but when he imagines conversations between Washington insiders, he seems desperate to dramatize a conspiracy about which he can only speculate. The text ends with a “prescription for the future” in which Laffey calls on the Republican party to return to the conservative ideals articulated by Ronald Reagan. This overly brief postscript is the closest the book comes to offering the “primer for the Republican party of the future” that Laffey promises. (Sept. 13)

In this macho, profanity-laced memoir by a 2003 Iraqi invasion veteran, Martinez describes himself as a Hispanic juvenile delinquent from Albuquerque, N.Mex., who turned his life around by joining the marines in 2001. His exploits (including winning the Navy Cross) will entertain military buffs with precise details of combat and of a sadistic boot camp that recalls the antiwar movie (but Marine and Martinez favorite) Full Metal Jacket. Bonded and eager for battle, his unit yearned in vain to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 and joyfully participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though experts now agree our forces overwhelmed Saddam Hussein's disorganized army, Martinez and his men assumed they faced a vicious enemy, referred to by Martinez as “terrorists,” and killed scores while destroying buildings with their overwhelming firepower. His company suffered two wounded. Martinez never doubts that he fought to defend America's freedom and freely admits his contempt for those who don't appreciate this. The book is peppered with denunciation of “biased news coverage,” “liberals,” “hippies,” John Kerry and Anthony Swofford (ex-marine author of Jarhead), but readers who enjoy learning about the mechanics of an urban gang and of a marine platoon in combat are unlikely to object. (Sept. 18)

Perhaps mindful that the procession of Freakonomics-inspired pop-economics books is becoming a blur, blogger Cowen aims to not “hit the reader over the head with economic principles.” Indeed, in his chatty disquisitions, economics often recedes into near invisibility. Few readers will hold it against this charming guide on how “to get more of the good stuff in life.” An engaging narrator, Cowen offers idiosyncratic strategies for appreciating museum art, for building “family trust and cooperation,” for writing a personal ad, for reading “classic novels that seem boring on first inspection,” for surviving torture, for properly practicing self-deception and for most effectively giving to beggars in Calcutta. In the book's most passionate and practical chapter, on food, Cowen explains how, with planning and tactics, we can “eat much better meals” at home and in restaurants, here and abroad. Throughout the book, the author's advice is less counterintuitive than simply surprising (he argues that “the committed foodie should look to regions where some people are very rich and others are very poor”). Even if you don't agree with all of Cowen's cheerfully offered opinions, it's a pleasure to accompany him through his various interests and obsessions. At the least, you'll pick up some useful tips for what to order at upscale restaurants. (Sept.)

Ten days after helping the New England Patriots win the 2005 Super Bowl, 31-year-old middle linebacker Bruschi suffered a debilitating stroke that left his future uncertain. Initially he planned to retire, but as he began to recover, a process that included surgery to repair the hole in his heart that precipitated the stroke, the lure of football beckoned. Bruschi learned much about stroke from doctors who treated him and cleared him to play again. After serious disagreement with his wife, he won her support for his return to the game only eight and a half months after suffering the stroke. His comeback initially met with much skepticism from the media and fans alike, but Bruschi writes that he was determined to overcome the obstacles thrown up by those ignorant of strokes. He also found a new audience of fans: stroke survivors across the country, many who wrote him letters in support. Bruschi, who went on to play the 2005 and 2006 seasons, is planning to be in the lineup this season as well and is now a spokesman for the American Stroke Association. His story is a compelling and convincing one that will appeal to both football fans and those affected by strokes. (Sept.)

The 2006 New York Giants were a team whose victories, though not plentiful, offered much hope, and whose ugly losses, far too plentiful, seemed oddly uncharacteristic for a team with such evident talents. Few teams were so frustrating, few talented teams had such poor chemistry, and few playoff teams made so many pivotal mistakes. If they weren't the championship team rabid fan Director clearly hoped for when he commenced this seasonlong memoir, the combination of the author's past Giant-related tribulations and the interest of a team imploding result in a diverting read. A fan of Jeremy Shockey and Tiki Barber, lukewarm but hopeful on Eli Manning and positively brutal on coach Tom Coughlin, Director suffers his way from the Albany training sessions through the promising 6-2 start and the bewildering 2-6 second half to the playoff loss to the Eagles. A more apt title might have been Director's frequent plea of desperation, “Someone make a play.” In his narrative, Director, a onetime editor of Sport magazine and coproducer of the sitcom Mad About You, combines the hangdog obsessive who is an axiom in such books with an otherwise cool veneer of a Santa Monica entertainment veteran. (Sept.)

Kreamer has been creative director of Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite and columnist for Martha Stewart Living. She has a loving husband (author and radio personality Kurt Andersen) and two daughters. She was 49 and still “pretending” to be young. So not only did she decide to stop coloring her hair, she set out to discover the practical implications of going gray. If she wanted, could she still find men willing to date her? Was gray a handicap in the job market? Not surprisingly, she found that it isn't so much what other people think, “it's how we feel.” Her consultants reminded her that hair color is only one part of a woman's appearance; a new haircut, well-selected cosmetics, new clothes and even plastic surgery will affect the success of a woman's look. Kreamer's chatty, confessional style is appealing, as are the gray-positive cultural icons she invokes (George Clooney, Helen Mirren, Emmylou Harris). But when she declares, “I remain at least as vain as the next person. I intend to continue spending large sums to have my hair cut and styled,” she undercuts her own argument that “repackaging” ourselves can be a dangerously “slippery slope.” In the end, she's learned to accept her own aging; readers over 55, however, may find that premature. (Sept.)

The relative of the victims of a drunk-driving accident extends forgiveness to the criminal driver in this stark, improbable memoir of tragedy. In alternating chapters reflecting the points-of-view of the two authors (streamlined by the writer Laura Morton), the woeful tale unfolds. Alcoholic and married with children, Kishline rejected AA, but enrolled in a program called Moderation Management, which allowed drinkers to moderate their drinking and still function without having to abstain completely. However, Kishline still drank in secret, and in 2000 in Takoma, Wash., she plowed into an oncoming car on the highway, killing Danny Davis and his 12-year-old daughter, LaShell. Ex-wife and mother Maloy, who was reconciling with Danny at the time, staggered under the grief of their loss; Kishline was incarcerated with a four-and-a-half–year sentence. At one point, empowered by her Christian faith, Maloy visited Purdy Prison, where she announced her forgiveness. The aftermath was bittersweet: although Maloy was supportive, Kishline continually faltered before she could put her life back together. The stories of these women are wrenching and real, and now they plan to travel and speak publicly together. (Sept.)

As a poet and Wisconsin Public Radio's “Distinguished Senior Broadcaster,” Feraca knows the power of the well-chosen word. Feraca (South from Rome) grew up attuned to language, with her flamboyant, “Old World Italian patriarch” father defiantly reciting poetry to her mother's cold criticism. Feraca's traditionally Catholic upbringing was full of stories of “saints and virgin martyrs,” which gave her “an enduring template of courage and heroism,” even if they imparted a taste for suffering that left her “vulnerable to abuse.” Feraca tells stories of her dearly eccentric brother, her demented mother, her wretched first and second marriages, her attempt to live the monastic life, her passion for her third husband and his taste in wine. Most remarkable, however, is her account of that pivotal moment when she took Donald Hall's creative writing seminar. Ignoring her disastrous marriage as she immersed herself in writing, she was “Rapunzel, spinning straw into gold.” Blending the spiritual and the profane, Feraca is beguiling. (Sept.)

Master cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Pulitzer Prize–winning music critic Page (The Glenn Gould Reader) provide the text for this large-format collection of photographs assembled by publisher Lester, former manager of the Glenn Gould Foundation and current literary adviser to the Glenn Gould Estate. Arranged more or less chronologically, these pictures span the entirety of Gould's brief life (1932–1982) and provide a unique perspective into his creativity as a pianist, composer and recording artist. The book is divided into four sections: in “Overture,” childhood snapshots reveal the growth of a keyboard prodigy; “Bursting Forth” soars with early accolades and triumphant tours; “New Horizons” depicts the mid-1960s, when Gould abandoned concerts to explore the possibilities of the recording studio; and “Envoi” uses scenes of his silent studio to depict his death, an age 50 finale. As the pictorial parade marches on, the result is like watching an old 16mm documentary film unspool, and Gould's fervor, evident in the photos, is amplified in attractive, appealing layouts. (Sept.)

This lavishly illustrated companion to the September PBS documentary series reduces the American side of WWII to the local and personal. Documentarian Burns (The Civil War) and historian Ward (The Civil War: An Illustrated History) foreground the iconic experiences of ordinary people, including a young girl interned in a Japanese camp in the Philippines, marines in the thick of combat in the Pacific and a fighter pilot who exchanges letters with his sweetheart. Their stories are full of anxiety and exhilaration, terror and pathos. (Sample vignette: a GI casually tosses pebbles into the skull of a Japanese machine-gunner, still upright and wide-eyed after the top of his head has been shot off). The authors' portrait of the home front glows with nostalgia—war bonds, scrap-metal drives, USO dances—but they also note racial tensions at a Mobile, Ala., shipyard and the bitterness of Japanese-American soldiers whose families were interned. In the background, Roosevelt and Churchill confer, Patton struts and growls, and arrows march across maps as the authors deftly sketch major campaigns and battles and offer tart criticism of inept generals. This visually appealing coffee-table book gives little idea of how and why America won, but a strong sense of what it felt like on the way to victory. Photos. (Sept. 12)

Signature

Reviewed by
Carl Zimmer

It's coming on 40 years now since James Watson published one of the classic works of popular science, The Double Helix. In that slender volume, Watson told how he and Francis Crick collaborated for two furious years to discover the structure of DNA. It is a great story splendidly told, but what truly set The Double Helix apart from most other books about scientific discoveries was Watson himself, less a narrator than a character: a wildly ambitious young man splitting his time between searching for the secret of life and trying to find a date, ready to spill the beans on friends and enemies alike.

The Double Helix focused on only two years of a life that has now spanned nearly eight decades. After his Nobel Prize–winning work on DNA, Watson went on to become a towering figure in the new science of molecular biology, first at Harvard University and then as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Watson offers a new look back in Avoid Boring People, which he presents as, of all things, a self-help book. At the end of each chapter, he reviews the lessons he learned during that phase of his life. “This is a book for those on their way up, as well as for those on the top who do not want their leadership years to be an assemblage of opportunities gone astray,” he writes.

There's much that is entertaining and historically revealing, and Watson still knows how to deliver a delicious skewering. He refers to his opponents at Harvard who resisted his push into molecular biology as “so many prima donnas whose meager accomplishments scarcely justified even the status of has-been.”

There's also much cause for head-scratching. In the 21st century, Watson's descriptions of “my hopes of finding a suitable blonde” are not even funny. He pads the book with too many details, like the $8.86 his lawyer billed him for toll calls. And while some of Watson's advice is wise (“never be the brightest person in the room”), some is obsolete. “A scientific team of more than two is a crowded affair” made sense in the 1950s, but today it's impractical for Watson's intellectual grandchildren, who must work together in squadrons on massive projects to analyze entire genomes. And when he offers lessons on how to spend your Nobel Prize money, you realize that Watson is actually offering lessons on being James Watson. And that unique job, we all know, is very much taken. 65 photos. (Sept. 27)

Carl Zimmer's books include Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea and Soul Made Flesh. His next book, on E. coli and the meaning of life, will be published by Pantheon next spring.