Nonfiction Reviews: Week of  10/1/2007

With its vast banana plantations and control of railroads and even national treasuries, the Boston-based United Fruit—known as El Pulpo, the Octopus—made the Central American countries whose economies it dominated into archetypical “banana republics.” This jaundiced history briskly recaps the firm's misdeeds, including its bribery and political strong-arming, its calling in of Colombian troops who machine-gunned hundreds of strikers in 1928, its prominent role in overthrowing governments in Honduras in 1911 and Guatemala in 1954, and its fostering of a disease-prone banana monoculture that ravaged tropical landscapes. Financial Times writer Chapman interprets the company—with its monopolies, its union busting, its marketing campaigns to get housewives to approve bananas as between-meals snacks, its treatment of whole nations as disposable assets—as the forerunner of today's rapacious multinationals. But in making the now-defunct United Fruit the wellspring of capitalism's sins, the author insinuates more than he shows. He vaguely ties the company, with tenuous threads of inspiration rather than specific actions, to everything from Watergate to the Iraq War, and toys with the notion that it had a hand in the J.F.K. assassination. When Chapman sticks to United Fruit's real, rather than spiritual, influence, he offers a compelling cautionary tale of the evils of overmighty corporations and untrammeled globalization. (Feb.)

Absolutely by accident, I fell through a kind of historical trap door into a vexing intrigue” surrounding the invention of the telephone, writes science journalist Shulman (Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration). The result is a dramatic probe into a shocking intellectual theft. In 2004, studying Alexander Graham Bell's laboratory notebook, he found a 12-day gap followed by a March 7, 1876, note, “Returned from Washington,” and a striking shift in Bell's ideas that resulted in his famous “telephone” call to Mr. Watson on March 10. The suspenseful details of “Bell's life-altering visit” emerge as Shulman learns that electrical researcher Elisha Gray had filed a claim on a device to send “vocal sounds telegraphically” on the same day Bell filed his patent application, February 14, nearly a month before Bell's notebook recorded his success. Bell, Shulman realized, had “drawn an almost perfect replica of his competitor's invention in his own notebook.” The reader follows Shulman as he contacts curators, explores archives and unravels the mystery, leading to a remarkable re-creation of the 1876 Centennial Exposition, where a nervous Bell attempted to avoid demonstrating his telephone because he knew Elisha Gray would be present. Although much of this book involves comparisons of correspondence, documents and journals, the skillful, polished writing makes century-old events spring to life. 20 illus. (Jan. 7)

Former journalist and bestselling author Earley (Family of Spies) tells the story of Russian spymaster and defector Sergei Tretyakov—code-named Comrade J—in an exposé with few surprises. A career intelligence officer, Tretyakov was Russia's deputy resident in New York City from 1995 to 2000, responsible for all covert operations there. But as the political and economic situation in Russia deteriorated under presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Tretyakov began to consider defecting. Disgusted by the spy agency's shoddy standards and the “corrupt political system” in Moscow and seeking “a better future” for his teenage daughter Ksenia, Tretyakov became a double agent for the FBI before finally defecting in 2000. He claims that he is now breaking his silence because he hopes to warn America that Russia is not a friend and “is trying to destroy the U.S. even today.” Among his more controversial assertions, in 126 hours of interviews with the author, is that former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott was considered a “Special Unofficial Contact” by Russian intelligence—a claim that Talbott adamantly denies. While many of Tretyakov's claims are impossible to verify, Earley mounts a spirited defense of his veracity in this workmanlike account. (Jan.)

Mix one part freshman anthropology with nine parts Washington insider politics and you'll get this caustic sendup of “Potomac Man.” Veteran Washington Post political reporter Milbank rummages through a bagful of (sometimes forced) ethnographic clichés—consultants and pollsters are shamans, lobbyists are the Beltway version of Melanesian Big Men—but takes none of them seriously. These pseudoscholarly conceits are just pegs on which to hang his colorful accounts of recent Washington scandals, humiliations and felonies. Many of these, like the three-ring circus surrounding superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, are well known, but the author also spotlights the everyday antics of congressmen and the behind-the-scenes skullduggery that propels the ship of state. His contempt is resolutely bipartisan, targeting both Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy for his drug-induced vehicular mishaps and Dick Cheney for concocting “folk tales”—duly debunked by Milbank—to sell the Iraq War. Sometimes the author's derision seems knee-jerk rather than considered; when he diagnoses Democrat Harry Reid with “Potomac-variant Tourette's syndrome” because the senator uses phrases like “intractable war in Iraq,” one wonders about the media's role in enforcing Washington's euphemistic double-talk. Still, Milbank knows where the fossils are buried and offers a canny, entertaining field guide to the manners and misdeeds of the political species. (Jan.)

Coming at the very end of WWI, the six-week Meuse-Argonne offensive was the bloodiest single battle in American history, killing 26,000 doughboys and wounding another 95,000. In Lengel's gripping study, the struggle becomes a microcosm of the tragedy on the western front. New to the war and dismissive of the bitter lessons learned by the British and French, the inept and overconfident U.S. Army under the bullheaded John J. Pershing insisted that American fighting spirit, willpower and bayonets would carry the German lines. The results were predictable: badly trained and equipped U.S. soldiers mounting clumsy frontal assaults were massacred by German machine guns, artillery and gas. Historian Lengel (George Washington: A Military Life) delivers detailed accounts of the many separate engagements during the offensive, which coalesce into a grim panorama of highest-intensity conflict. Traumatized by the carnage, soldiers lapsed into despair and madness or murdered German prisoners. The author spotlights exemplars of individual prowess and heroism (including Corporal Alvin York, the erstwhile pacifist who killed 32 Germans and captured 132 more), but even they feel turned to “wood” by the brutal fighting. An evocative narrative grounded in copious research and judicious historical assessments, Lengel's book will probably become the standard work on this neglected epic. Photos. (Jan.)

With a major shift in American foreign policy, the U.S. can step into a new leadership role in the world, argue Hachigian and Sutphen in this lucid and compelling book. Drawing on their experiences working for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, as well as a variety of studies, public opinion polls and scholarly work, their central thesis rests on the assertion that the United States must pursue “strategic collaboration” with the “pivotal powers”—China, European Union, India, Japan and Russia. In making this recommendation, the book surveys the major threats facing the United States and the pivotal powers, the ideological tensions between the U.S. and these powers, and attitudes within the powers toward America. Unsurprisingly, given their résumés, Hachigian and Sutphen explicitly criticize the Bush administration's record. But their approach to policy is pragmatic—for example, while the authors acknowledge legitimate concerns about engaging with China, they offer convincing evidence against containment as a viable alternative. Synthesizing a vast amount of material while advancing their arguments, the authors have produced a persuasive text. (Jan.)

It's a great idea: a survey history of how Homer has been read throughout history, taking in Roman Homer, Christian Homer, Alexander Pope's Homer and Homer in Islam, among others. And Manguel (A History of Reading) is perfectly cut out for the job, armed as he is with a wealth of stories about scholars and translators through the ages. But most of his anecdotes, though engaging, are disconnected from any central argument. In one Arabic telling of the Trojan War, Agamemnon is made the “secret protagonist,” we are told. But why? Specifics are scarce, while great claims are made—“The epic of Gilgamesh and the stories of the ancient Egyptians stir in our prehistory, but Homer and his poems are the beginning of all our stories”—supported only with more bald assertions. Things pick up in a chapter examining Homer's imagery, but once again, Manguel trails off without taking his ideas anywhere. It's hard to imagine that this latest entry in the Books That Changed the World series will do much to excite further interest in the student or first-time reader of Homer. (Jan.)

The 41st president's political persona was the stuff of greatness, argues this entry in the American Presidents series. Historian Naftali (Khrushchev's Cold War) credits Bush less with principles than with “tendencies” toward flexibility, realism and a moderate Republican version of decency. In his foreign policy, these qualities helped him nudge communism toward a soft collapse and build an international alliance to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait; domestically they led him to a budget compromise with Democrats, in which he acquiesced to unpopular tax hikes for the good of the nation. Bush's flexibility had a dark side, the author notes, that came out in his repeated tactical embrace of racial politics, from his opposition to civil rights legislation during his 1964 Senate run to the 1988 Willie Horton ads, and in his public support for Reaganomics despite deep private misgivings. Naftali forthrightly dissects Bush's misdeeds—especially his role in the Iran-Contra scandal—but he's less skeptical about the substance of Bush's policies, which he pointedly contrasts with Bush Jr.'s failures; he credits Bush's wars in Panama and Kuwait with helping America “overcome the burden of Vietnam,” without wondering whether this paved the way for the son's misadventure in Iraq. Naftali's is a brisk, useful, but not always penetrating overview of a pivotal presidency. (Dec.)

The founder of modern astronomy was, according to Repcheck (The Man Who Found Time), a science editor at Norton, an unlikely scientific revolutionary: an unambitious man who had lingered in university for 12 years and never sought fame or success. This far-ranging study explores why Nicholas Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres wasn't published until 1543, when he was on his deathbed, three decades after he'd first circulated a draft. Repcheck reveals that in addition to Copernicus being a late bloomer, astronomy had to be squeezed into spare moments between ecclesiastical duties and other civic duties. Copernicus also had an eye for the ladies, especially his housekeeper, which drew repeated, usually unheeded admonitions from his church superiors. It took the arrival of the brilliant young Lutheran mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus, who risked his life to travel to Frombork on the Baltic to seek out the reclusive Copernicus, to spur him on to complete his masterpiece. Repcheck paints a vivid picture of the times, in which both Protestantism and intellectual inquiry posed threats to the Catholic worldview. The author also does an admirable job of shining a light on Copernicus's little-known immediate predecessors to show that, like the works of Einstein and Darwin, the scientist's theory didn't spring Athena-like from his brow. Maps. (Dec.)

It's science itself that was put on trial in 1818 in a dispute over a $75 inspection fee, as related in this fascinating account. Burdick (Masters of All They Surveyed), director of Princeton's history of science program, illuminates the convergence of commerce, science and shifting views of the natural world and human exploitation of it. The case of Maurice v. Judd arose from merchant Samuel Judd's refusal to pay the inspector's fee on three casks of spermaceti oil, claiming inspection was required only for fish oil, not whale oil. The jury heard the case in a “gloriously feisty public forum” as the Linnaean classification system was debated, with Samuel Latham Mitchill, a local “patriarch of natural history,” testifying that the whale was indeed not a fish. The plaintiff's lawyers argued against a system that said whales, monkeys and humans were related, and raised the threat to civil order if scientists were allowed to interpret legal statutes. Burnett's look at the trial and its fallout adds a historical dimension to debates caused by science's role in the legal sphere, especially when it introduces new concepts. 16 pages of color illus., 19 b&w illus. (Dec.)

British psychologist Nettle (Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile) defines personality as a grouping of traits, partly genetically inherited, that remain stable throughout one's life. Drawing on his own research and others', he explores what he sees as the five dimensions of personality: extroversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience. This last, Nettle admits, is the most elusive; while it involves creativity, it also may include “restless unconventionality, supernatural beliefs and psychosis-like experiences”—exemplified by Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl. Nettle also delves into evolutionary biology, showing how certain traits that were adaptive in one environment might become nonadaptive in another (e.g., the fight-or-flight response that was necessary for prehistoric humans facing predators is less desirable when manifested as road rage). In emphasizing the genetic component of personality, Nettle concludes, based on twin studies, that within normal families (with no violence or abuse) parenting “cannot have any measurable effect on child personality.” But overall, this is a well-researched, accessible, informative and sometimes (in its use of personal anecdotes) entertaining book that ends on a hopeful note: Nettle says that while our basic personalities don't change significantly after childhood, our behavior can. (Dec.)

Member of Congress and civil rights, antiwar and feminist activist, Bella Abzug (1920–1998) was one of the 20th century's greatest progressive leaders. Since she left only an unfinished memoir, two friends and colleagues (Levine wrote Inventing the Rest of Our Lives and Thom Inside Ms.) have stitched together an “oral biography” of excerpts from Abzug's own writing as well as snippets of interviews with dozens of people, from her high school gym teacher to Jimmy Carter and Roe v. Wade attorney Sarah Weddington. Edward Kennedy recalls working with Abzug on the Freedom of Information Act, and Shirley MacLaine tells about Abzug accompanying her to a channeling session. Abzug emerges as a determined activist and savvy legislator, but prickly; the barrage of admiration is punctuated with occasional barbs: Ed Koch cites one of Abzug's two fellow congresswomen, Shirley Chisholm, as saying, “Oh, that woman has no class.... That woman is so vulgar.” Historians and Abzug devotees will be thankful for Levine and Thom's labors, but the lack of narrative flow—with paragraph after choppy paragraph of recollections from luminaries—leaves one wishing for a more unified, coherent biography. (Dec.)

Since 1492, Spain has experienced more than 14 great exoduses and expulsions, making it by far the most “departed” country in Europe. Kamen (Empire: How Spain Became a Great Power), a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, explains that the exile of some three million Spaniards has exerted a powerful influence on Spanish culture, identity and character in absentia. These exiles, recalling only the sights, smells and sounds of home, often conceived idealistic visions of what their country should be and persuaded others to realize them. Modern Spain, he argues, is thus the invention of its disinherited citizens: many of the finest works of Spain's authors, painters (Picasso's Guernica, for instance), musicians and philosophers were produced outside of the mother country. Over the course of his narrative, Kamen discusses in detail the background conditions of the most painful exiles (the Jews in 1492, Protestants in 1559, Muslims in 1609, liberals in 1813 and writers in 1936) and while commiserating that “the disinherited went through deprivation, alienation and loss of identity,” he concludes that they achieved for Hispanic culture something they could not have had they stayed home and enjoyed a life of tranquillity. Kamen adopts an intriguing perspective for those who have a broad interest in, and familiarity with, Hispanic history. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Dec. 2)

Veteran journalist and historian Johnson (Modern Times; A History of the Jews) offers 30 brief profiles of “heroes.” Unfortunately, he offers a vague, tautological definition: “anyone is a hero who has been widely, persistently, over long periods, and enthusiastically regarded as heroic....” Yet Johnson's choice of subjects is highly idiosyncratic; Mae West and Marilyn Monroe are included, but not Gandhi, Mandela or Sakharov, not to mention scientists, entrepreneurs and athletes. Johnson, who is prone toward his fellow Brits, even includes a chapter on “the heroism of the hostess,” including the mid-20th-century London hostess Lady Pamela Berry, whom he seems to have known well and portrays as having admirable interpersonal skills. His book contains fascinating facts and insights; for example, Johnson calls the biblical Samson “the first suicide-martyr-mass killer” and we learn that the austere philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had studied engineering, invented a helicopter part “which later became standard.” Still, Johnson profiles no one in depth. The conservative author also cites as a personal hero the late Chilean dictator Pinochet, whom Johnson credits with saving his country from communism and was then “demonized” by the Soviet Union. Though informative and entertaining, this is not one of Johnson's better efforts. (Dec.)

Bayard (Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?), a professor of French literature at the University of Paris openly (if not entirely convincingly), confesses to having neither the time nor the inclination to do much reading. Yet he is all too aware that in his profession, one is often expected to have read the literature one is teaching or talking about with colleagues. In this extended essay, a bestseller in France, Bayard argues that the act of reading is less important than knowing the social and intellectual context of a book. He is so convinced of this that he claims there is great enjoyment—and even enlightenment—in discussing a book one has not read with someone equally unfamiliar with it. Despite appearances, Bayard's volume is not a self-help book or a bluffer's guide to great literature, but instead serves to warn people not to try to impress others with how much they have read. The truth is, most of the time they're fibbing and there are many gradations between total reading and complete nonreading, he declares, including hearing about a book, skimming it and forgetting its contents. A little too much impenetrable psychoanalytic jargon sometimes threatens to overwhelm Bayard's argument, but Bayard's at least partly tongue-in-cheek argument about not reading is well worth reading. (Nov.)

When Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, the volcanic material that buried the provincial Roman town of Pompeii also preserved it for posterity and rendered it one of the most famous archeological sites in the world, where the modern discipline of archeology began more than 250 years ago. Berry (Unpeeling Pompeii), an archeology instructor at Swansea University, Wales, masterfully gathers primary sources, discusses the various excavations of Pompeii and the neighboring ancient holiday resort Herculaneum. Berry vivifies Pompeii's bustling everyday life, particularly its architecture, religion, economy, women's roles, and arts and cultural scene. Pliny the Younger's detailed eyewitness account of Vesuvius's destruction, reprinted here, retains its freshness and urgency The majority of Pompeii's denizens were at least semiliterate, and graffiti both vulgar and banal grace the forum, while election propaganda and advertisements for gladiator games plaster houses, shops and tombs. The most famous Pompeiian woman was the priestess Eumachia, who built the forum's largest public building with her own funds, while ostentatious private houses became personal status symbols among the elite of the prosperous empire. Highly readable and lavishly illustrated with more than 300 photos and maps, 275 in color, this authoritative, comprehensive resource is a boon for archeology buffs. (Nov. 27)

Hauptly, an executive in new product development for Westlaw, the online legal research company, examines the process of identifying product innovation potential. In the world of product and service innovation, he asserts, utility is the driving force, and the key to successful product innovation is to enhance usefulness. Hauptly identifies three questions aimed at finding where customers are expending resources unnecessarily, allowing a manufacturer or service provider to help reduce those inefficiencies. These questions—“what tasks is the product really used for”; “when I know what a product is really used for, are there any steps that I can remove from the task”; and “what tasks are the very next tasks that the customer will want to perform after using my product”—get to the heart of driving innovation. In addition, he details how to navigate potential detours, such as finding the task beneath the function, putting everything together and dealing with the people challenges inherent in any organization. Hauptly's simple and straightforward approach will enable organizations to quickly and inexpensively create new products and services that have real value. (Nov.)

A formidable labor organizer and longtime leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, Mazzocchi (1926–2002), had an exceptional career that belies much received wisdom about American labor after WWII. In prose that unabashedly reflects the upbeat, streetwise worldview of its subject, Mazzocchi's friend and associate Leopold shows how Mazzocchi's earliest experiences—from a Bensonhurst childhood among a politically engaged Italian-American working-class family, to underage entry into WWII as an army grunt—informed his shrewd strategies for a militant labor agenda from the 1950s onward. That agenda embraced civil rights, anti–nuclear testing, antiwar and environmental causes, often years ahead of the liberal mainstream, while deftly negotiating such obstacles as employer antagonism, Cold War red-baiting, mob racketeering, union corruption and government intrigue. Balancing a wealth of firsthand interviews with astute judgments, Leopold delivers a vivid picture of Mazzocchi as a practical visionary whose milestones include passage of 1970's Occupational Safety and Health Act. Those undeterred by a sometimes earthy and partisan tone will find a wealth of practical lessons as well as an excellent introduction to American left and labor history. (Nov.)

In May 2005, four employees of Chemonics International, a Washington, D.C.–based contractor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, were among 11 Afghans killed in two separate attacks on aid workers operating in Afghanistan's Helmand province. First-time author Hafvenstein was then a young administrator for Chemonics, having eagerly joined in 2003 a small team working on U.S.A.I.D.'s Alternative Incomes Project, aiming to create thousands of jobs building a new infrastructure to offset planned eradication of the opium poppy, the mainstay of the rural economy and the raw basis for heroin sold around the world. Beginning with the news of his colleagues' deaths, Hafvenstein retraces his rapid immersion into the deeply fractured and danger-strewn politics and society of post-Taliban Afghanistan. His personal narrative gracefully introduces this complex and troubled land, measuring the impact of warlordism and police corruption on what he comes to see as the ultimately misguided U.S. emphasis on poppy eradication. While that conclusion will hardly surprise those following the escalating violence since 2005, Hafvenstein offers a revealing if narrowly critical insider perspective on the workings of U.S.-sponsored international development schemes in Afghanistan and worldwide. (Nov.)

Popular historian Sword (Southern Invincibility) offers up much more than a series of sketches of heroic battlefield action in this free-ranging examination of moral and physical courage on both sides in the Civil War. Grounded in deep respect for the inner vision and strength required to exert “moral courage” in battles where hundreds of lives could be lost or saved with a single decision, these brief, fast-moving chapters present snapshots of many characters, primarily officers. Seen in action on the field of battle, their selflessness and physical courage under fire are evident. Sword also offers analyses of important strategic and battlefield decisions by the war's top leaders. Sword praises Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, but has harsh words for Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Braxton Bragg and especially for Jefferson Davis over their lack of “moral courage” during a time of war. Davis's self-righteousness and hubris, Sword contends, “perhaps contributed the most to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.” (Nov.)

For centuries, people have dreamed of lost continents. Today, the author of this fascinating book shows, geologists can detect evidence of a continuing cycle of formation, breakup and re-formation of one giant landmass—a supercontinent—over billions of years. Nield, editor of Geoscientist magazine, imagines what these supercontinents might have looked like and tells the stories of the scientists who have discovered and studied them: Alfred Wegener, a German geophysicist who proposed in 1912 that these giant landmasses are formed by continents drifting together; John Joly, who showed in 1924 that supercontinents break apart due to radiogenic heat; and Roy Livermore, who currently uses computer-modeling to demonstrate how the plates of the earth's crust move. The first recognizable supercontinent existed three billion years ago, and the next supercontinent will have formed in about 250 million years. Seen in this context, humans, who evolved a mere six million years ago, are of little consequence. Nield deplores the hubris of those who believe in creation myths rather than science. If scientific knowledge had been properly deployed, he shows, many lives could have been saved in the 2004 tsunami, triggered by an earthquake as continents moved together. Making highly technical material understandable, Nield explains why “the Earth's Supercontinent Cycle matters to everyone, everywhere.” (Nov.)

Documentary photographer Cooper's exquisite and eclectic portraits of New York City in 1975 create a world at once removed from and inextricably tied to the soaring crime rates and crumbling neighborhoods of the 1970s. Without captions or titles, Cooper's crisp black and white photos document everything from a mother and child in Central Park to an unself-conscious naked man being interviewed on the street by a television reporter. Despite a conspicuous lack of street signs, Cooper's photographs are unquestionably “New York”: her relaxed, candid subjects reveal more about their city in their smiles and sideways glances than any map could. Her most affecting work involves children: at play among the ruins of their neighborhoods, leaping from abandoned rooftop to rooftop and running through hydrant geysers. Cooper's eye for everyday rituals in her adopted city is as sharp as her eye for the outrageous: the men calmly walking their llama down the street have the same intensity as the elderly man reading alongside a baby carriage in a park. Readers will delight at the opportunity to pore over each image, creating their own stories as they go along. (Nov.)

The aesthetic of 91.1 WFMU, New York's legendary free-form radio station, is defiant eclecticism born of the cultural and musical ideals of the 1960s. This musical philosophy translates into a careening, relentlessly aggressive collection of cartoons, illustrations, essays, charts and various other media in LCD, a compilation of material from the meticulously arranged program guides the station released between 1986 and 1998. LCD stands for “Lowest Common Denominator,” but one glance at the book's contents confirms the sarcasm that such a title suggests. In truth, the collection is a celebration of everything but popular appeal: an appreciation of old rock and roll songs translated into French resides comfortably with a series of cartoons documenting bizarre moments in history, such as the opening of the first Santa Claus school. Connoisseurs of the bizarre have a bountiful flea market of vaguely dated junk to explore, including a distinctly creepy interview with Gumby creator Art Clokey, an in-depth feature on obscure Hawaiian exotica records and enough wholly inexplicable and vulgar cartoons that one can imagine R. Crumb being a big fan. For those who delight in failed show-business tales, the sporadic contributions of Andy Breckman, a former SNL staff writer and Don Mclean tourmate, are laugh out loud highlights each time they appear. (Nov.)

The in-your-face, hard-boiled chef Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential) delivers another entertaining look at the best and worst places around the world in which to eat. While the book shares a title with Bourdain's popular television show, it achieves its author's goal of not being “some cynical, cheap-ass 'companion' book to the series” featuring “a bunch of blurry photos taken from the show.” The book chronicles his last three years globe-trotting—“a continuing journey of 200,000 miles”—as he's accompanied by a film crew whose “disturbing eccentricities” make up his “new dysfunctional family” with whom he shares his many adventures. The bulk of the book consists of beautifully composed photos of Bourdain's travels, “an honest and direct recording of the way life is lived in the rest of the world.” But Bourdain also provides many of his always incisive and entertaining observations, ranging from short takes on Singapore (“one of the most food-centric, food-obsessed, food-crazy cultures on earth”) and Iceland (“The notoriously stinky fermented shark was, in fact, the second worst thing I've ever put in my mouth”) to longer looks at Beirut, cooks and “Bathrooms Around the World” (worst country for bathrooms: Uzbekistan). (Nov. 5)

By unspooling charming stories and encyclopedic information about ingredients, Locatelli, chef at London's Locanda Locatelli, conveys the atmosphere in a busy restaurant kitchen after hours. When Locatelli waxes sweetly sentimental about the joy derived from feeding others—first discovered at his family's restaurant in the small town of Corgeno, Italy—and what he has learned from having a daughter who is allergic to some 600 foods and once went into anaphylactic shock after eating a bit of smoked salmon, he comes off as an Anthony Bourdain without the bluster. With reams of good information about everything from cheese and eel to how to judge a dish of pasta by sight, this volume is a major addition to the English-language Italian cookbook shelf, particularly as a reference. The savory recipes are mostly carefully considered Italian classics like Linguine with Pesto and Chargrilled Chicken Breast with Spinach, though desserts are not the simple pieces of fruit Locatelli admits that Italians prefer, but presumably restaurant-derived showstoppers like Blood Orange and Fresh Loquat Salad with Violet Jelly and Yogurt Foam. At more than 600 pages, the range of recipes is almost as large as Locatelli's personality. One caveat, though: Britishisms abound, as when Locatelli refers to tomatoes as “the steak and kidney pie of Italy.” Despite that, this is an impressive achievement, marking Locatelli as a major talent, comparable to Marcella Hazan in his ability to explain Italian cooking. (Nov.)

This collection, focusing on a single ingredient and assembled by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board seeks to remind readers of the usefulness and versatility of butter in the kitchen. The book's prologue highlights the relative healthfulness (compared with margarine, anyway) of butter, despite its reputation for clogging arteries. That leads to a “Cooking with Butter” basics chapter that explains the differences between European, cultured and whipped butter styles, and suggestions for when to use salted or unsalted varieties. While one might assume that butter's culinary role is rooted in baking and sauces, recipes here run the gamut from appetizers like Camembert Almond Balls and Blue Cheese Walnut Wafer to a cream-free Mexican-Style Corn Soup and Florentine Game Hens, with plenty of pastry, cookies, cakes and pies in between. There are also several recipes for compound butters, like a wild mushroom and shallot butter meant to accompany a sautéed steak. The book's most inventive ideas belong to the Sauces, Spreads and Condiments chapter, with its wide array of spreadable, meltable and pourable butters in both savory and sweet flavors. Throughout, recipes are clearly written and easy to follow, and colorful photos bring out all the golden richness of this dairy product. Trans-fat free though it might be, butter is still fattening, making this a special occasion cookbook rather than an essential cookbook for the day-to-day. (Nov.)

Spain's bestselling cookbook for more than 30 years, this unpretentious and exhaustive collection is a welcome addition to the growing number of books on Spanish cuisine. With a prologue from Michelin-star Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, this mother-daughter team offers a wealth of recipes that reveal the diversity and breadth of Spain's long culinary tradition. Clear and precise instructions—many no more than a few sentences long and none more than a lengthy paragraph—allow for quick, low-fuss preparation. Chapters cover everything from fried dishes, stews and sauces to pulses (dried beans), fish and seafood, and game. Dishes range from the simple—Asparagus Éclairs and Chunky Gazpacho to the slightly more time-consuming Marinated Swiss Chard and Leg of Veal with Pineapple. A particularly robust chapter on vegetables makes this cookbook an excellent choice for those looking to eat more healthfully or seasonally. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Spanish cuisine, this hearty collection is sure to be a favorite of both the home and the serious cook. Mariscal's beautiful illustrations fill the book. (Oct.)

Like a caring mother, Katzen, in this logical follow-through to her last book, Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less, exhorts readers to eat vegetables. Katzen's methods, though requiring some attention and high-quality ingredients, are low-key enough for novice cooks and maybe even exhausted working moms: “It is easy to make vegetables taste wonderful through simple preparations utilizing a very few choice ingredients... extra-virgin olive oil, fresh garlic, roasted nut oil, tiny touches of salt and pepper, an herb or two.” This is vintage Moosewood Cookbook Katzen at her poetic best: “For many palates, dark leafy greens need a soft context... to frame and tame them. Polenta is perfect for this! Consider using some of the more elusive, serious greens, such as dandelion, mustard, or kale.” Katzen offers Tomato-Basil Jam as a ketchup substitute; exoticizes the lowly carrot with flavors of North Africa—cumin, cinnamon, garlic and citrus—or Jamaica, in a coconut-ginger gratin; and will surprise even veteran vegetable mavens with such imaginative dishes as Sautéed Fennel with Crispy Fried Lemon. With Katzen's signature hand-lettered text and charmingly homey illustrations, the book will be an inspiration to those who like meat with their vegetables, vegans and vegetarians alike. (Oct.)

Weed connoisseur Pilcher (Spliffs 3: The Last Word on Cannabis Culture) deals a gnarly collection of 35 starters, entrees, desserts and drinks, all using the kind of pot not generally found in the kitchen cabinet. Nor is this the type of cookbook that provides a list of suppliers for hard-to-find ingredients. But for the reader with a ready stash, these offerings are served up in a well-researched and easy to digest manner, with plenty of tempting color photos and helpful data such as the suggested amount of cannabis bud per person per meal, based on body weight. The key to being a successful ganja gourmet, it turns out, is to first prepare a smooth batch of either Cannabis Ghee or Cannabis Butter. This allows for easier measurement but more importantly ensures that the psychoactive chemical du jour, tetrahydrocannabinol, blends evenly into the dish. Thus three tablespoons of Cannabutter transform perfectly legal mushrooms into Really Wild Mushroom Sauté and the hopped-up ghee is at the heart of an in-your-face Charas Curry, where it mingles with red chilies, ginger and cilantro. There's a classic brownie recipe, of course, sweetened with honey. (Oct.)

In this gorgeous guide to every cocktail imaginable, Rathbun, a poet and the “editor for the Kitchens and Housewares store” at Amazon.com, breaks out the 12 chapters not by ingredients but by useful, or at least amusing, categories. These include “Dinner for Two,” which is a chapter of romantic drinks such as the French Connection (brandy and amaretto) and the Kiss in the Dark (cherry brandy and dry vermouth). A section entitled “An Obscure Reliquary” features creepy concoctions, like a Brain Hemorrhage and a Corpse Reviver. There's a voluminous chapter on martinis, including a questionable Bacontini, as well as others on shots, frozen drinks, hot drinks and blended drinks. There are 450 recipes in all—and, fortunately, an excellent index. Not only is there a general index to let you know on which page to find a Purple Python, there is also an index of “Drinks by Primary Liquor,” which lists, for example, all the book's 29 bourbon-based options at a glance. The scores of full-page color photos by the aptly named Melissa Punch, each with dazzling Day-Glo backgrounds, are thirst inducing and add an irresistible retro charm to the proceedings. (Oct.)

With his first cookbook, Farris leaps into the front ranks of culinary regionalist and troubadour. He's a transplant to Texas, a restaurateur and importer, but his taste buds still twinkle to the lusty, muscular primal cuisine of his ancestral Sardinia. He stirs up an appetite for simple pasta dishes in which the sauce determines the shape of the macarrones, and any number of compositions featuring spiced and herbed lamb, artichokes, olives and various seafood stews enriched with bottarga. The author first tasted this “Sardinian caviar,” the roe of gray mullet, at age three on a cherished expedition to catch and cook fish on the beach with his father and uncle. He balances sentimentality with frank delight in testing the reader's mettle. Roasted eels, pictured in full slither, are only a start. Anyone for abbamele, the honey and bee pollen reduction? Raw sea urchin under the full moon? Then there is casu murzu, rotten cheese, which owes its creamy texture to maggots. Our intrepid guide, who “cannot resist its charms,” admits that even for him it was a childhood gross-out. Beautifully illustrated, often eminently cookable, the book also has the charms of a picaresque novel. (Oct.)

Seinfeld, mother of three and wife of comedian Jerry, devised an elegant plan: puree fruits and vegetables and incorporate them into kid friendly dishes like Mac & Cheese (cauliflower or beans); Chicken Nuggets (broccoli); Chocolate Cake (beets). The recipes blend nutrition into a meal and harmony into mealtime. Seinfeld writes that mealtime should be about “happiness and conversation” not about “power struggles and strife,” and her plan diminishes nagging. Although her program is easy, Seinfeld is honest about the need for shortcuts and offers some good ones. The nutritional breakdown of each vegetable/fruit featured in the recipes is valuable. While some parts smack of self-promotion (she encourages parents to share her recipes with other parents), Seinfeld does supplement her recipes with sound tips for learning to say no to junk when kids ask, encouraging conversation, getting children to participate in prep and cleaning, and developing age-appropriate eating habits. (Oct.)

Linderman, clinical director of Spring Creek Lodge Academy, an alternative school for at-risk kids, teams up with writer Brozek to share lessons learned from 10 years of success with troubled teens. His clients—described in a number of case studies—are extreme examples of kids who turn to alcohol, drugs or other high-risk behaviors, but their stories provide insight into the volatile nature of the teen psyche as well as the importance of solid family relationships. Linderman relies on a model of five primary needs that teens require: survival, freedom, power, belonging and fun. He guides readers through each, describing how teens can act out when a particular need is not appropriately met (e.g., a lack of belonging may lead to alcohol abuse in an effort to gain status with peers). Linderman counsels parents to stay connected to their teens' lives. (At times, however, Linderman's approach itself seems a bit extreme, as when he asks his own teenage daughter to hand over her cellphone so he can converse with her friend.) Along with Linderman's philosophy on dealing with teens, the book includes useful information on warning signs that may indicate such problems as depression or substance abuse. Parents will benefit from both the clinical and personal experiences of a man who respects teens and whom teens respect. (Oct.)

This handsome coffee-table book introduces the basics of organic gardening through a formal yet intimate tour of the prince of Wales's three stately gardens: Highgrove, the estate he uses as a demonstration organic farm and fund-raiser for charities; Clarence House, his London home, and Birkhall, “the most private of the Prince's gardens” at Balmoral Estate in the Scottish Highlands. It appears to be written mainly by Donaldson (Peaceful Gardens), with an introduction and selected quotations from Prince Charles, and includes standard subjects such as how to build soil, make compost and choose seed varieties, but also intriguing descriptions of more unusual experiments, such as the extensive rainwater collection and reed and willow pond water filtration system from which all the water at Highgrove is obtained. Avid gardeners will appreciate the detailed photos of woven willow plant supports and the movable bee house “honey factory.” Anglophiles will be charmed by photos of the prince laying hedges and filling bird feeders, and descriptions of those who work his gardens, such as Dennis Brown, 70-something manager of Highgrove's “productive” garden, who “leaves the Walled Garden at the end of the day” to cultivate vegetables “he hopes will trounce all comers at the local shows.” (Oct.)