Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 11/19/2007

Summerscale (The Queen of Whale Cay) delivers a mesmerizing portrait of one of England's first detectives and the gruesome murder investigation that nearly destroyed him. In 1860, three-year-old Saville Kent was found murdered in the outdoor privy of his family's country estate. Local police scrambled for clues, but to no avail. Scotland Yard Det.-Insp. Jonathan “Jack” Whicher was called in and immediately suspected the unthinkable: someone in the Kent family killed Saville. Theories abounded as everyone from the nursemaid to Saville's father became a suspect. Whicher tirelessly pursued every lead and became convinced that Constance Kent, Saville's teenage half-sister, was the murderer, but with little evidence and no confession, the case went cold and Whicher returned to London, a broken man. Five years later, the killer came forward with a shocking account of the crime, leading to a sensational trial. Whicher is a fascinating hero, and readers will delight in following every lurid twist and turn in his investigation. (Apr.)

In charming prose that more or less makes up for the relative lack of rigor in many of his explorations, about which Hayes is refreshingly honest (“I see no reason to doubt this assumption, at least as an approximation, but I also have no evidence to support it”), science and technology journalist Hayes (Infrastructure) explains the engineering and arithmetic of clocks and gears, wracks his brain over questions of how best to flip a mattress and visits “the prettiest wrong idea in all of twentieth-century science... the vision of piglets suckling on messenger RNA.” As he examines huge calculating tables rendered obsolete by computers, Hayes “cannot help wondering which of my labors will appear equally quaint and pathetic to some future reader.” This observation is echoed by the afterwords where Hayes addresses pointed questions and observations from readers, displaying a brave willingness to admit error and acknowledge advances made since these pieces were first published in the Sciences and American Scientist. Present-day readers would do best to approach this collection more for its literary merits than its revelation of obscure history or cutting-edge mathematical theory. 41 b&w illus. (Apr.)

Experimental brain surgery goes horribly awry; a dam fails catastrophically; a geologist leads an ill-equipped party to its doom in the mouth of an active volcano: these are the amazing and sometimes horrific stories of technical errors and scientific mistakes that LeVay (The Sexual Brain) relates. Some, like the case of the British meteorologist who failed to predict a hurricane that killed 18 people, seem due to arrogance. Others—the loss of a costly spacecraft, a criminal conviction based on inaccurate DNA analysis, multiple deaths after an accidental release of anthrax—are the result of ordinary human error. Some incidents may well have been deliberate, such as a nuclear reactor error that was possibly the result of a love triangle gone bad, or the data falsified by a physicist seeking fame as the discoverer of a new element. LeVay surveys a range of fields, offering several reasons why things go wrong and noting that “for every brilliant scientific success, there are a dozen failures.” Readers curious about particularly notorious cases will find LeVay's book both entertaining and thought provoking. (Mar. 25)

In this latest effort to popularize the sciences, City University of New York professor and media star Kaku (Hyperspace) ponders topics that many people regard as impossible, ranging from psychokinesis and telepathy to time travel and teleportation. His Class I impossibilities include force fields, telepathy and antiuniverses, which don't violate the known laws of science and may become realities in the next century. Those in Class II await realization farther in the future and include faster-than-light travel and discovery of parallel universes. Kaku discusses only perpetual motion machines and precognition in Class III, things that aren't possible according to our current understanding of science. He explains how what many consider to be flights of fancy are being made tangible by recent scientific discoveries ranging from rudimentary advances in teleportation to the creation of small quantities of antimatter and transmissions faster than the speed of light. Science and science fiction buffs can easily follow Kaku's explanations as he shows that in the wonderful worlds of science, impossible things are happening every day. (Mar. 11)

Former environmental lawyer and one-time farmer Cummings offers a persuasive account of a lesser-known but potentially apocalyptic threat to the world's ecology and food supply—the privatization of the Earth's seed stock. For almost a century, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided seeds at no cost to farmers who then saved seeds from one harvest to another, eventually developing strains best suited to local or regional climates. But Cummings also tells how seeds became lucrative, patentable private properties for some of the nation's most powerful agribusinesses. Cummings bemoans the “plague of sameness” intensified by the advent of such fitfully regulated companies as Monsanto, which now not only own genetically modified seed varieties, but also sue farmers when wind inevitably blows seeds onto their neighboring fields. According to Cummings, this “tyranny of the technological[ly]elite” threatens agricultural diversity and taints food sources. Among the author's many startling statistics is that 97% of 75 vegetables whose seeds were once available from the USDA are now extinct. Cummings heralds plans for a “Doomsday Vault” to shelter existing natural seed stock, and finds comfort in organic farming's growth, but her authoritative portrait of another way in which our planet is at peril provides stark food for thought. (Mar.)

Attorney Ezra' s first book takes up the case of defending newly crowned home-run leader Barry Bonds in the court of public opinion against accusations of steroid usage. Like a high-priced defense attorney explaining the evidence before a jury, Ezra exhausts every angle in excessive detail.     Throughout the book he makes the dubious claim that Bonds is the hardest working baseball player in the history of the game. Ezra's tedious arguments reach agonizing levels of inanity. For exhibit one, this is his banana split-to-steroids analogy: "Eating banana splits is a great way to gain weight. But if you see a heavy person, you do not have proof that the heavy person eats a lot of banana splits. In fact, the heavy person may not even eat bananas...." Ultimately, readers who make it to the end of Ezra's defense of Bonds will feel like a juror who has been sequestered for six months in a cheap motel-desperately anxious to be excused from the trial. (Mar.)

Physics for Entertainment
Yakov Perelman, trans. from the Russian. Hyperion, $16.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4013-0921-3

The impetus to republish this once-popular miscellany by an early–20th-century Russian scientist stems from the notoriety of reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman (no relation), who was awarded, and declined, the Fields Medal for proving the Poincaré conjecture. Grigori claimed he was inspired by Yakov's book as a child, and certainly children often ask about things like whether an invisible man is able to see, or what you would experience if you fell all the way through the center of the earth. Each chapter is devoted to a scientific principle, such as mechanics, heat, and properties of liquids and gases. Perelman nods to science fiction writers from Cyrano de Bergerac to Mark Twain and H.G. Wells as he explains why their whimsical fancies might or might not be feasible. The writing in this anonymous translation is lively and entertaining, but more up-to-date books in a similar vein are more likely to stoke modern young imaginations. This reprint of the original treatise's second volume (the first being unavailable for translation and republication) is a charming historical curiosity and an entertaining diversion. (Feb. 12)

John Brinkley, who grew up poor in rural North Carolina but attended Rush Medical College in Chicago, got his start touring as a medicine man hawking “miracle” tonics and became famous for transplanting goat testicles into impotent men. Brinkley built his own radio station in 1923, hustling his pseudoscience over the airwaves and giving an outlet to astrologers and country music. His nemesis was Dr. Morris Fishbein, the buoyant, compulsively curious editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association whose luminary friends included Sinclair Lewis, Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken. Fishbein took aim at Brinkley in JAMA, lay publications and pamphlets distributed by the thousands. Even after the Kansas State Medical Board yanked his medical license in 1930, Brinkley ran twice for governor of Kansas and almost won. Finally, Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel and lost in a spectacular showdown. Brock (Indiana Gothic) did tremendous research on this rollicking story, but the result is at times unfocused, overwritten and digressive, borrowing just a little too much from the overblown rhetoric of its subject. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Feb. 5)

If you haven't yet learned that war is hell, this memoir by a young Russian recruit in his country's battle with the breakaway republic of Chechnya, should easily convince you. And yet Babchenko, who was drafted in 1995 as a second-year law student for the first Chechnya campaign, actually volunteered for the second one in 1999 for reasons even he is hard put to explain. Written shortly after his discharge from the army, the book burns with the need to tell of his personal ordeal and that of his fellows as young, innocent and woefully inexperienced grunts condemned to a miserable life ruled by shell-shocked superiors and perpetual threats. Here there are no good guys or moral high purpose—”No one, from the regimental commander to the rank and file soldier,” Babchenko assures us, “understands why he is here”; one fights only for the fellow soldier next to him. Babchenko, now a journalist, demonstrates genuine literary ability, especially in the earlier vignette-like chapters, but readers will glean little about the conflict's political and historical context. Redundancy weakens a narrative that otherwise would have benefited from brevity. (Feb.)

Observers in the 1990s marveled to see the Taliban bring order to a chaotic Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Admiration vanished as the Taliban proceeded to oppress men as well as women and massacre opponents. When they refused to surrender Osama bin Laden after 9/11, the U.S. invasion helped sweep them from power. Then dismissed as reactionary zealots, the Taliban have since been revived and are now steadily expanding their influence. Historian Crews and reporter Tarzi have assembled eight revealing essays on this widely reviled movement. The Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns who make up perhaps half the country's population and whose elite have traditionally ruled the country. This ragtag army of Islamic clerics and religious students presented itself as a superior alternative to ruling Pashtun elites and successfully manipulated tribal politics. Despite accusations of being a medieval throwback, the Taliban are Islamic “counter modernists.” Their use of mass spectacle, surveillance, the media and even their strict regulation of gender roles is consistent with other modern totalitarian movements. The authors' 58-page introduction adds additional clarity and context to Afghanistan's tortured history, making for an engrossing read that is more accessible than most academic collections. (Feb.)

Schoolchildren, learning that George Washington freed his slaves when his wife died, may believe that slavery then ended at Mount Vernon, but this emancipation was not wholesale. Martha's slaves were not freed, and Mount Vernon remained a slave plantation. Historian Casper relates the complex tale of Mount Vernon's triple identities, “home, workplace, and enduring, malleable national symbol,” via the lives of its black workers and residents, slave and free, and its owners while he restores African-Americans' essential roles as actors—both as historical persons doing the work of maintaining Mount Vernon and as theater, today playing the roles that maintain an illusion of 18th-century accuracy. Casper uncovers the full breadth of these African-Americans' lives. Sarah Johnson, for example, was not only a slave, a servant and an “attendant to the public” decades after Washington's death; she was also a wife, mother, seamstress, landowner and default curator of the Mount Vernon residence. Casper succinctly relates how Washington's 18th-century estate became a 19th-century “national shrine [and] site of reverent pilgrimage” and deftly integrates national political, social and technological transformations into his tale. Unanticipated links and unsolved mysteries engage, while Casper's cautious speculation and meticulous documentation make his book as trustworthy as it is fascinating. illus. (Feb.)

Journalist Kodas has written a disturbing account of stupidity and greed on the slopes of Mount Everest. On assignment for the Hartford Courant in 2004, Kodas joined an expedition led by a couple who had summited the mountain more than a dozen times between them. As he moved up Everest, Kodas watched his expedition disintegrate in a mess of recriminations, thefts, lies and violence. At the same time, a sociopathic guide was leading a 69-year-old doctor to his death on the unforgiving slopes. The twin disasters led Kodas to delve into the commercialization of Mount Everest, and to discover that such experiences were becoming a depressing norm. A thorough reporter, Kodas does an excellent job exposing the ways in which money and ego have corrupted the traditional cultures of both mountaineers and their Sherpa guides. He also brings a painful focus to the delusions, misunderstandings and indifference that allow climbers to literally step over the bodies of dying people on their way to the top. Oddly enough, Kodas writes less ably about himself, and the reasons for his own expedition's collapse remain unclear; the sequencing of story lines is confusing as well. Nevertheless, his narrative is as hard to turn away from as a slow-motion train wreck. (Feb.)

Cheney, a former L.A. entertainment lawyer, pointedly dispels expectations of a “safe ride” through this turbulent account of bipolar disorder. With evocative imagery—time-shuffled recollections meant to mirror her disorienting extremes of mood—Cheney conjures life at the mercy of a brain chemistry that yanks her from “soul-starving” despair to raucous exuberance, impetuous pursuits to paralyzing lethargy. Caught in a riptide of febrile impulse, she caroms from seductions to suicide attempts while flirting recklessly with men, danger and death, only to find more hazards in the drastic side effects of treatment. More than a train-wreck tearjerker, the memoir draws strength from salient observations that expose the frustrations of bipolar disorder, from its brutal sabotage of romance and friendship to the challenge it poses to the simplest emotions, such as “the terrors of being happy” that augur mania's onset. Though she sustains an ominous mood and relays horrifying incidents with icy candor, Cheney lightens up at times, as when she marvels at the ease of masking her condition at an office that brings out everyone's manic side. But the narrative hopscotch frustrates readers' need for grounding and context that might clear up Cheney's muddled history and satisfy readers' urge to learn the fallout of her impulse-driven episodes. Her startlingly lucid descriptions of illness merit a more concise chronology. (Feb.)

Realizing she is the only single woman during the bouquet toss at her friend's wedding, Guidry, a former Hollywood film executive, deems herself “The Last Single Woman in America.” Along with being 40-something and unwed, she had just lost her job and her boyfriend; however, she remains in good humor and believes that with “a handful of Dave Matthews CDs” she'll be okay. Guidry offers her view on men (feminism has encouraged women to be easy, therefore men no longer appreciate the value of women), the perks of knowledge (why take advanced yoga when you know all the moves in the beginning course) and her take on the Internet (the overconnected Web population is limiting face-to-face contact with such tools as Internet dating), all the while hurdling the obstacles facing single women. If 40 is the new 20, Guidry does a good job portraying this by exhibiting the maturity level of someone half her age, making it hard to believe her anecdotes. At one point, she attacks her mother at a dinner party by questioning whether she slept with a leprechaun to produce her son, Guidry's always lucky brother. While amusing, Guidry barely offers deeper insight than thoughts on bikini waxes and acupuncture sessions for her pet. (Feb.)

Embarking on piano lessons in middle age, environmental journalist Knize sets out on an ancillary quest to find the perfect piano on a limited budget. She scours North America's piano outlets, immerses herself in the colorful online subculture of piano aficionados and grows fluent in the language of keyboard connoisseurship (“a thin, shrill, brittle treble,” she sniffs at a Steinway). Then she falls in love with “Marlene,” a Grotrian-Steinweg grand with the “sultry and seductive” tone of Dietrich herself; she's so smitten that she mortgages her house to buy it. Then disaster strikes: when shipped from the New York showroom to her Montana home, the piano sounds “weird and echoey,” and its glorious treble is dead. Desperate to restore Marlene's voice, Knize mobilizes an army of eccentric piano technicians (these lowly craftsmen emerge as wild-eyed artists in their own right), delves into the subtle intricacies that influence a piano's sound and ponders the haunting evanescence of music. Sometimes the mysticism—music “ 'is a way of exiting the petty self and entering the Over-soul... [i]t's about existing at a certain vibration' ”—gets thick enough to cut with a knife. But Knize writes in a wonderfully evocative, lushly romantic style, and music lovers will resonate to her mad pursuit of a gorgeous sound. (Jan.)

In just two years, MSNBC host Olbermann (The Worst Person in the World) has become one of the most recognized critics of the George W. Bush administration. This book explains how and why Olbermann's televised “special comments” began, then reprints them from September 2005 through July 2007, with postcomment explanations. Before becoming a Bush administration critic, Olbermann had achieved fame as a sports commentator on the ESPN cable network. The genesis of commentator Olbermann as political celebrity makes it difficult to determine if he ought to be considered a fact-based journalist, but however Olbermann should be labeled journalistically, the commentary collected here demonstrates that he is a first-rate writer unafraid of expressing criticisms of most Republican decision makers and, on occasion, Democrats. Understanding from the start that Bush defenders would label the special comments unpatriotic, Olbermann decided to wear this label as a badge of honor and makes a persuasive argument that he is the upholder of traditional American values, while Bush and his colleagues are the transgressors. Olbermann's editorials are bound to stimulate and incite arguments as election season ratchets up. (Jan. 2)

This uneven memoir frustrates and fascinates, as Kanafani appears to find the lives of others more interesting than her own. The surprising result: passages in which Kanafani's description of events as dramatic as falling for a prince on a cross-Atlantic voyage and watching her father go to prison for business irregularities (that are never disclosed) come across as mildly tedious. Fortunately, the tales she relates of Palestinian politics, Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and Arab women bucking tradition to struggle for social justice are captivating. The author sees that both her father and her ex-husband, former Yasser Arafat adviser Marwan Kanafani, were controlling and abusive, but fails to consider why her relationship with the former may have led to her bond with the latter, and only rarely intimates what these love-hate relationships meant for her. Writing of a new friend, she says, “I wanted to tell her that I was strong and independent too; I wanted to whisper this great secret to her, but I couldn't let Marwan hear me.” Ultimately, Kanafani's curiosity about others and the surprising details she reveals about lesser-known topics such as Islamic marriage law or details of Yasser Arafat's marriage are worth the effort, but the payoff is a long time coming. (Jan. 8)

While few American figures inspire like George Washington, this book's attempt to distill management wisdom from his career feels as wooden as Washington's mythic set of teeth. McNeilly, a former IBM executive with military experience, never fully applies Washington's life and lessons to current business leadership. While we learn that Washington was a successful businessman and brilliant military tactician and leader, he never fully comes to life. McNeilly spends too much of the text spinning the greatest hits of Washington's military career before dipping briefly into his career as a diplomat and, almost as an afterthought, first president of the United States. Washington's ability to organize and train the first Continental Army, comprising citizens and governed by merit, segues into a lengthy and irrelevant discussion of how Alfred Sloan created the modern General Motors and a puzzling digression about iconic automobile designer Harley Earl. McNeilly's generally-agreed-upon-best-business-practices lack novelty. We learn that Washington was not alone in scoring by collecting good intelligence on his enemies: McDonald's and Staples employed similar strategies against their competitors. This is a missed opportunity to present provocative and insightful ideas about the key to a legend's success. (Jan.)

Flynn (Land of Radioactive Midnight) draws on his experience as a company commander with the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard—the “Fighting 69th” of Civil War, WWI and WWII fame—for this riveting account of the unit's service following 9/11. Considered “the worst unit in the National Guard,” at the turn of the 21st century, according to Flynn, the 69th was “under-trained, under-resourced, and under-led.” Activated on 9/11, its soldiers were the first to arrive at ground zero, and then guarded New York City's bridges and tunnels and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In 2004, after retraining, the unit was flagged “Task Force Wolfhound” and certified for overseas deployment, but was “barely functional in the field.” In Iraq, the 69th provided route security along a six-mile stretch known as “'The Most Dangerous Road in the World,'” the main highway between the airport and downtown Baghdad. Learning on the job, the 69th “effectively neutralized” the roadside bomb threat that has caused a high percentage of the war's casualties, but paid a heavy price in its own killed and injured. Drawing on combat journals, operations orders and interviews with survivors, Flynn fashions a tale equal to the making of the new, contemporary heroes of the Fighting 69th who, against all odds, restored a previously distinguished unit to its former glory. (Jan.)

Well before the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union achieved a series of propaganda successes by using “front” organizations that ostensibly served independent purposes but were orchestrated by Moscow. In the late 1940s, Frank Wisner, chief of political warfare for the newly created CIA, proposed a U.S. version: a “mighty Wurlitzer” that like its namesake would play the music America desired. California State–Long Beach professor Wilford describes the “Wurlitzer” as most successful in supporting Western Europe's noncommunist leftist unions, students and intellectuals during the 1950s. As the Cold War spread, the CIA organized programs in the Third World combining development with anticommunism. The CIA was more a source of funding and fine-tuning than the master player its organizers intended; few of its front groups were unaware of the connection. What made the system work was a shared, principled and intense anticommunism combined with trust in America's intentions and capabilities. As these eroded during the Vietnam era, the Wurlitzer's music grew discordant, then ceased altogether. Wilford's conclusion that winning hearts and minds is best left to overt processes and organizations is predictable and defensible. Still, Wisner's Wurlitzer helped level the playing field at a crucial period of the Cold War. (Jan.)

When a CEO—or in this case a “CE-Yo”—writes a book about the philosophical and environmental underpinnings of the company he founded, it is natural to expect an ego-driven text. But Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm, the organic yogurt maker, dilutes the ego with “eco.” After all, this is a book that presents management lessons gleaned from life on a farm: in one such lesson, a herd of hungry pigs attacks a mound of damaged plastic yogurt cups, devours the contents and teaches Hirschberg nature's idea of recycling. While there is some cultured finger-pointing at big-name competitors and other corporations for organic abstinence and environmental insensitivity, Hirshberg focuses on how Stonyfield succeeds in pursuing sustainability and profitability—not to mention valuable shelf space alongside giants like Kraft and Yoplait. But in addition to describing how his company addresses such tasks as negating its own carbon footprint or establishing a “handshake with the consumer” in lieu of advertising, Hirshberg shares stories of similar successes at other companies, including Whole Foods, Timberland and, more recently, at Zipcar. Hirshberg has produced a manual of use for managers at any size company with an earnest interest in learning how to save the world while enriching employees and shareholders. (Jan.)

In the always-available age of Blackberries, more and more of even the most accomplished individuals struggle to achieve a balance between the demands of work and personal/family life. Kossek and Lautsch, professors who have long been studying the success and failure of various flextime work arrangements, have made some interesting discoveries: satisfaction with work/life balance depends less on gender, family situation and occupation than on how people self-manage their careers. Thus the authors have mapped out the most common “flexstyles” and offer practical solutions for drawing the line between work and family to create a better life in both arenas. The book offers self-assessment questionnaires to help readers work out if they are “Integrators, Separators, or Volleyers,” depending on what life role is most important to them, and provides strategies, tips and tools from there. The authors' motivational, encouraging tone is infectious, the advice solid and easy to implement. Frazzled readers may benefit from this helpful and wise approach. (Jan.)

A successful company has to focus on more than the bottom line—it has to adhere to the Golden Rule, says Parker, former CEO of low-cost airline Southwest. Southwest was the only major airline to not only remain profitable after 9/11 but to do it without layoffs or pay cuts. Parker presents a chatty, informative history of the airline and its culture of mutual respect and hard work, in which his genuine love for the company shines through. Scattered throughout are observations on how to build and run a successful business, applying the general principle of “When in doubt, just do the right thing.” Parker describes the characteristics of a great leader, methods for building trust and respect, and a sober discussion of the necessity of allowing employees to enjoy work and to feel part of something meaningful. Although Parker's enthusiasm for his company is appealing and the lessons are on-target, the long stories describing everything that's superior about Southwest makes the book feel like a long ad for the airline; the story itself is too languid to take off on its own volition. (Jan.)

Respected critic Birkerts has written an insightful appreciation of the memoir form, works that occupy a “growing... place in our literary culture.” Analyzing five ways different writers have chosen to transform their memories into coherent narrative, Birkerts discerns the underlying principle of the memoir form: balancing two perspectives by revisiting significant events in the past to discover a pattern in one's present life. Nabokov, Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are what he calls the “Lyrical Seekers,” who use “sensuous apprehension” to explore the nature of being. Frank Conroy's Stop-Time is one of the examples of the coming-of-age memoir, as is Birkerts's own My Sky Blue Trades. Fathers and sons, e.g., Paul Auster, Geoffrey Wolff and Blake Morrison, are distinguished from mothers and daughters, e.g., Jamaica Kincaid and Vivian Gornick. Finally, works by Mary Karr and Lucy Grealy are among those illustrating the category of trauma and memory. The appeal of this slim volume lies in Birkert's graceful prose and lucid analysis. Written for the general reader, it artfully conveys the basics of the craft and will be a particular boon to reading groups. (Jan.)

Although James Baldwin (1924–1987) left his native Harlem as a young man and returned only for occasional visits, the New York neighborhood was a recurring theme in his essays and novels, and critics often claimed that the noted African-American writer exploited its squalor. His junior high French teacher was luminary Countee Cullen, who may have inspired Baldwin's later Paris sojourn and his first literary efforts, and Baldwin shared a stormy relationship with another Harlem Renaissance progenitor, poet Langston Hughes, who called Another Country juvenile. Baldwin shared a distrust of white liberals with Malcolm X and lent his powerful voice to Harlem's '60s causes, including a rent-strike rally and defense of the Harlem Six put on trial for the brutal murder of a Jewish shopkeeper. Longtime Harlem resident Boyd, managing editor of Black World Today, is authoritative, but in his self-proclaimed role as Baldwin's defender, he gives short shrift to the writer's homosexuality and comes across as rationalizing the anti-Semitism Baldwin was repeatedly accused of in his lifetime. The literary critiques of Baldwin's writings and other details render this volume primarily of interest to scholars of African-American studies (Jan.)

By eloquence, literary critic Donoghue (Speaking of Beauty) emphatically does not mean the Ciceronian model of well-turned phrases supporting weighty arguments and capable of swaying hearts along with minds; such is mere “rhetoric.” In his estimation, eloquence is unencumbered by political aim or intent to persuade and requires no context or, perhaps, even meaning. It is language whose beauty has no agenda, and the author defends its gorgeous uselessness against both polemicists and moralists who frown on highfalutin departures from plain speaking. Donoghue's survey finds eloquence everywhere, from Dante and Shakespeare to Taxi Driver hero Travis Bickle's immortal “You talkin' to me?”, and he elucidates its workings in dense readings of literary excerpts from many eras and several languages. The results are often incisive, as in his comparison of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener with the Book of Job, but sometimes his readings are so subtle that they don't register. Worse, by exiling both moral and social import from his lit-for-lit's-sake framework, Donaghue can seem precious and do what eloquence never does: leave the reader unmoved. (Jan.)

In short chapters, some including evocative prose poems, Mukhopadhyay, a severely autistic adolescent whose mother painstakingly taught him how to read and write, introduces the reader to his daily inner life. Sometimes his thoughts are compulsive—he misses an entire film while mentally drawing diagonals across every one of the design squares on the cinema's ceiling—and sometimes fragmented, as when looking at a bucket: “I might easily get distracted by its redness, since it would remind me of how my hands bled when I had fallen from a swing, how I was so absorbed in that red that I had forgotten about my pain, and how that red resembled a hibiscus....” Mukhopadhyay reflects on autism without romanticizing it, acknowledging “my physical and neurological limitations” and declaring, “I am not worried about hell because I have experienced it here on earth.” Occasionally, his writing is somewhat sketchy, but for the most part this is an eye-opening book on a serious disorder and the hope that other autistic children can learn to transcend it through education and imaginative self-reflection. (Jan.)

East Carolina University history professor Prokopowicz has created a Lincoln trivia book, answering dozens of questions about the 16th president of the United States. Did he write his own speeches? (Yes, though sometimes he “borrowed” from other writers—the conclusion of the Gettysburg Address echoes abolitionist Theodore Parker.) Do we celebrate Thanksgiving because of Lincoln? (Lincoln declared a national day of thanksgiving on the urging of writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale.) Did Mary Lincoln hold séances in the White House? (Yes; she was trying to contact her dead son.) How tall was Abe? (Six feet and “nearly” four inches.) Prokopowicz addresses some trendy topics, such as the two depressive episodes Lincoln experienced in the 1830s and 1840s and the debate about Lincoln's sexual orientation. As for the titular question, Prokopowicz insists that people keep asking whether Lincoln owned slaves: he did not, but he “may have rented one.” Although the irksome q&a format necessarily lends itself to a certain superficiality, Prokopowicz is learned, his tone is engaging and his suggestions for further reading at the end of each thematic chapter are also a helpful resource. (Jan. 22)

University of Rhode Island journalism department chair Levin (Rhode Island: The Independent State) delivers a smart and definitive Early biography. Although the subtitle perhaps overstates Early's influence, he was undoubtedly a key player in FDR's presidency, and he reshaped and redefined the position of White House press secretary. Exploring a wealth of previously untapped archives and enjoying full cooperation from the Early family, Levin documents the former star reporter's long association with FDR, commencing in 1912, 20 years before the latter's election to the White House. In splendid detail, Levin demonstrates how Early, the son of a Virginia railway clerk, altered the way the Harvard-polished, New York Knickerbocker president communicated with the people, moving above and beyond print journalists to explore the full potential of newsreels and radio. Early was also in charge of making sure that the citizens of a nation crippled by the Depression only saw images of their president that depicted him as a robust and confident gladiator for the common man. This is a must-read for anyone interested in FDR and his era or in the power of presidential image makers. Illus. not seen by PW. (Jan.)

Aly (Hitler's Beneficiaries) ingeniously reconstructs the life and death of a German-Jewish girl in this impressive piece of detective work. After being awarded the Marion Samuel Prize (established by the German Remembrance Foundation to commemorate the million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust), Aly decided to learn as much as he could about Samuel and her family. With the help of ads and a speech, both published in German newspapers, he got in touch with individuals who knew the family, was able to find a few surviving relatives and pieced together a narrative from these scant sources. Soon after the family's business was ransacked in 1935, Samuel and her parents left their small town and moved to Berlin, where they lived until they were sent to Auschwitz. Illustrating civilian complicity in their fate, Aly notes a letter from the Samuels' former landlord, asking the authorities for rent that went unpaid after the Samuels were deported. Aly's account puts a face on the tragedy of the Holocaust. (Jan.)

On New Year's Eve 2000, Isaac Grimes, a Colorado Springs high school sophomore, went on a sleepover at the rural Colorado home of the grandparents of his former best friend Tony Dutcher. There, Isaac confessed three months later, he slit Tony's throat while his accomplice and fellow student Jon Matheny shot to death Carl Dutcher, a military veteran and licensed arms dealer, and his wife, JoAnna. Grimes and Matheny blamed high school senior Simon Sue for planning the triple homicide; Sue had bullied them into believing they were guerrillas following orders in a Marxist Guyanese paramilitary organization. At 15, Grimes became the youngest inmate in the adult prison system after he was convicted and sentenced to 60 years; Matheny and Sue were sentenced to 66 and 53 years, respectively. Eastburn, who covered the case for the Colorado Springs Independent, offers a well-researched, fast-paced account of events. The crime is ultimately more interesting than the criminals, who shed meager insight into their own motives and psyches. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)

Few dishes say “comfort food” more than the cheese- and egg-laden casseroles that are favored in small towns in heartland America, but Wright (Real Stew) shows that casseroles are part of a long international tradition that continues as strongly today in the Middle East as in the Midwest. He features casseroles from the intriguing higher end, like the French Escargots en Casserole or a Spanish tapa with bacon, cabbage, potato and apple, as well as simple, familiar crowd-pleasers exemplified by Tuna Noodle Casserole and the “Nebraska frittata,” aka Cheesy Ham Poof. The chapter range is another testament to casseroles' versatility, beginning with hearty breakfast recipes such as the simple Sailor's Omelet, then running the gamut of main ingredients (meat and fish, pasta and grains, vegetables) and concluding with desserts, where he makes a convincing case for fruit cobblers and crisps and even brownies as casseroles. Ingredient lists are often long, but few of the recipes have more than four or five simple steps, which cooks of most any skill level can easily handle. Wright's headnotes give extensive information about the recipes' provenance and preparation, and his frequent text boxes provide tips on what people really care about with casseroles aside from ease: how to incorporate leftovers from other meals. Not just casserole fans but also those who may previously have looked down on the thought of such dishes will find this a great resource for most any occasion. (Mar.)

Capitalizing on the runaway success of their first book, Skinny Bitch—a feisty exposé of the “shady business” of the food industry—Freedman, a former agent for Ford models, and Barnouin, a former model and holistic nutritionist, present a slim follow-up vegan cookbook with a wide range of recipes. Reminding readers that meat and dairy are no-nos (the former described as “dead, rotting, decomposing flesh of carcasses” and the latter as the cause of multiple ailments and diseases ranging from acne to cancer), they espouse the liberal use of such complex carbs as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. Simple carbs, they warn, “suck and should be avoided.” The authors offer “Bitchin Breakfasts,” “Skinny-ass Salads,” and “PMS-Pleasing Snacks and Appetizers,” using such alternatives to meat and dairy products as vegan bacon (made of soy protein and wheat gluten) and vegan cheese (a dairy-free cheese substitute that contains no milk). The recipes are neither too complicated nor basic: a zesty chapter called “International Bitch” includes Falafel and Pad Thai, and the “Italian Bitch” section ranges from Lasagna to Eggplant Parmesan vegan-style. Desserts include Bitchtastic Brownies and a mouth-watering Chocolate Suicide Cake. Perhaps not a great gift book for grandma (unless she happens to be a foul-mouthed vegan), this will be embraced by readers seeking healthful recipes with an entertaining twist. (Jan.)

This companion to Dr. Gott's No Flour, No Sugar Diet has more than 200 recipes. A recap of Gott's program explains why readers should eliminate flour and sugar from their diets, identifying the high-calorie, nutrient-deficient foods that are made from them as major factors in the escalating weights of adults and children in the U.S. To avoid obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses, Gott shows readers how to replace “empty calories” with tempting alternatives for meals, snacks and desserts. Gott acknowledges that stress and limited time lead many to choose unhealthy fast foods, but the difficulty of finding no-flour, no-sugar prepared foods in many locations means followers must cook at home. Fortunately, these recipes (some contributed by readers of his book and nationally syndicated newspaper column) are quickly prepared. For example, a simple syrup made of dates and figs turns hot cereal into a special treat; crepes made with arrowroot powder are a delicious alternative to wraps; and meat, cheese and nuts, often reduced or eliminated on diets, are permitted. (A casserole based on an English meat pie contains ground pork; an adaptation of the Philly Cheese Steak calls for provolone; and Gott's “sweet-and-sour nuts” blends pecans, cashews and almonds.) Frequently, Gott's recipes include artificial sweeteners, which he says are safe and effective. (Jan.)

This excellent addition to the literature on women's health and weight loss will help veterans of the dieting roller-coaster overcome hunger, build lean muscle mass, burn fat and maintain energy and mood levels. Developed by the editors of Women's Health magazine, the eight-week program consists of two eating plans, with each of the five-to-six daily meals containing a balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate. After determining body shape, calculating ideal weight and doing a simple test for carbohydrate tolerance, readers will know which plan to follow. Both plans pivot around hunger-banishing fiber, particularly glucomannan, a soluble fiber that stimulates satiety, helps burn fat and is featured in many of the plan recipes. Although daily meals for the entire program are charted, readers will learn enough about “perfect” and “not-so-perfect” proteins, fats and carbohydrates for their type to create meals that are low in sugar, high in nutrients and efficiently metabolized by the body. The exercise portion of the plan is rigorous: at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day of the week (three days each, strength training and cardio workouts; one day of general physical activity), but even those with no gym experience will be able to follow the detailed daily routines. In fact, this convincing presentation of the benefits of calorie-burning exercise may cause many to dive in with enthusiasm, knowing that they can eat well and maintain their weight. (Jan.)

Miller, an oncologist and director of the Yale Cancer Center Survivorship Program, presents a unique and indispensable book for women facing breast cancer, which features individual chapters written by medical experts and breast cancer survivors. Asserting that “knowledgeable people make different choices, for different reasons,” Miller's overarching message is that each woman is unique, as is her experience with this life-threatening disease. Because there are so many potential scenarios—based upon the tumor's size, the stage of cancer, etc.—treatment options vary, and women must decide which route to take in a timely fashion while simultaneously confronting their fears. Miller's approach provides the reader with the sense that she's had a private and unhurried consultation with each specialist: medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and surgeons. In addition the book includes personal accounts of survivors who have faced an array of experiences, from the woman whose mammogram reveals a lump just weeks before her wedding to the breast cancer statistician who is diagnosed with the very disease she is studying. This collection will help to fortify women making tough choices, offering invaluable information along with hope. (Jan.)

Krupp, style expert for the Today Show and former beauty director for Glamour, offers easy-to-follow, tried-and-true fashion advice for women well beyond their 20s. Presented in eye-catching, highly skimmable, fashion-magazine style, here's how to trade in the things that scream old lady (simply “OL” in the book) for a look that's younger and hipper (“Y&H”). Krupp is straightforward about the physical shortcomings of older age. Aptly (and sometimes rather brutally) she steers readers away from these OL pitfalls. She is quick to point out that fashion that works on 20-somethings looks ridiculous on older women (i.e., bare midriffs, go-go boots and tattoos). As much about what to do as what not to do, some of the tips are as easy as wearing pink lipstick, a bra that fits properly and hair with bangs. Others take more thought, time and money—like Botox shots, chemical peels and hair extensions. Whether high or low maintenance about their beauty routine, women of a certain age who want to compete in our youth-obsessed culture will treat this easy read with interest. (Jan.)

Barkley, research professor of psychiatry at SUNY–Syracuse Medical University and author (with Benton) of Your Defiant Child, and Robin (director of psychology training at Children's Hospital of Michigan) share between them 60 years of clinical and research experience studying the defiant behavior of children and adolescents. The first part of their comprehensive defiance-busting system helps parents define and assess the problem. The authors provide a chart to help readers gauge their child's behavior, then outline four factors that contribute to defiance: the teen's and parents' characteristics (which are unchanging), stress (which can be alleviated somewhat) and parenting style (which can be substantially modified). Part Two delves into the principles for reversing or preventing defiance, with sections on “one-on-one” time (including how to accomplish this with an uninterested teen), managing behavior and choosing appropriate punishments and rewards, to name a few. Without placing blame, the authors reveal that parents often unwittingly make a bad situation worse; the text gives solid tips on how to work toward a positive outcome and offers a variety of scenarios, demonstrating precisely how a parent's words and actions can be the source of a teen's compliant or defiant response. In the end, the authors offer a useful and detailed approach that respects the rights and expectations of parents and teens. (Feb.)

While underdeveloped, this well-intentioned attempt at listening to the heartbreaking voices of children of divorce struggle between two households merits some serious attention. A pastor and counselor in Nashville, Tenn., Flesberg offers eight brief chapters delineating the conflicts children express, in letters and quotes, as they are literally torn between lives with mothers and fathers, lost in the “liminal” place somewhere in between. They bemoan not seeing both parents every day and having constantly to move between two places they are supposed to call home. They express frustration at always being in a state of expectation, guilt and sometimes terrible disappointment, such as when a parent doesn't show up. The children do not look forward to stressful holidays, deflecting attacks by one parent at another or having to accept new step-family. As well, children relay their questions and confusions regarding their relations with God, Christian or otherwise. In review chapters and checklists, Flesberg gears this guidebook toward divorced parents who need and want to ease their children's bewilderment and distress. There is a great deal of important information, although it deserves much more development than this slim book provides. (Jan.)