Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 2/4/2008

The perfect country song, according to the late songwriter Steve Goodman, always had references to mama, being drunk, cheating, going to prison and hell-bent driving. Taking a page from Goodman's songbook, Jennings, a New York Times editor, brilliantly captures the essence of country music in this hard-driving tale that is part memoir and part music history. With the wild-eyed, hard-edged energy of Hank Williams and Jerry Reed, Jennings tells of his upbringing in the hardscrabble hollers of New Hampshire. He recalls characters from his family to illustrate the themes of what he believes is the golden age of country music: 1950–1970. Grammy Jennings, “like Patsy Cline, knows what it is to go walkin' after midnight searching for her man, to fall to pieces, to be crazy—you don't go chasing your oldest son with a butcher knife if you ain't crazy.” With the lonesome strains of the steel guitar and tales of hunger and poverty, reckless driving, cheating and drinking, country singers Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard—no longer heard on the radio—sang not only to Jennings and his family but the millions of folks just like them struggling to face “The Cold Hard Facts of Life” (Porter Wagoner) in a postwar world. (May)

Having mined his English upbringing in The Invisible Wall, Bernstein resumes a nine-decade reckoning in this gently observed memoir of a Jewish immigrant family riven from within. Eager to escape English mill town life, his mother promises her brood a better life in America—a dream providentially fulfilled with steamship tickets. But even after reuniting with family in Chicago, his father's “bloody 'ell” bellows and monstrous rage continue to smite. The author takes in his new surroundings with a keen adolescent eye, observing “back porches all piled on top of one another like egg crates,” belying celluloid America—as do his ragamuffin elders, with his grandfather reduced to begging in secret. At school he confounds Midwestern types with his Lancashire accent, comically mistaken for an Egyptian named “Arry.” Engulfed in the Roaring '20s, the Bernsteins revel in the luxuries of telephones and parlor rooms, only to feel the wallop of the Depression as the decade wanes. Uprooted to New York, Bernstein ekes out a living and falls quietly, desperately in love, achieving a joyful 67-year marriage. Coming on the heels of his first book, this one will delight readers eager for more of Bernstein's distinctive voice and gift for character. (Apr.)

In this collection of poignant essays, Lindbergh (No More Words) struggles to extract meaning, and even solace, from an imperfect everyday reality. Heading her list of concerns is her looming 60th birthday and the change and decline that it symbolizes—the departure from home of her children, a benign brain tumor, the therapeutic drug culture that is the hallmark of old age in America. Despite her anxieties and losses, she manages to find in fragile, flawed things—a broken sea shell, a heron that's lost a leg—a kind of beauty. Lindbergh also explores her fraught relationship with her father, the aviator Charles Lindbergh, “an angry, restless, opinionated perfectionist” whose “very presence alternately crowded and startled everyone,” and grapples with the discovery that he had secretly fathered seven children—her half siblings—in Europe. Set mostly amid the tranquil surroundings of her Vermont farmstead, Reeve's essays are suffused with a sly, gentle humor that supports her quiet resolve to carry on. (Apr.)

While many baseball fans likely have a casual knowledge of the subjects Rosengren explores in his latest effort, the depths to which the author travels gives new insight into the 1973 baseball season. Rosengren follows the season chronologically from opening day to the Oakland Athletics' dramatic victory in the World Series, and while he discusses the issues that shaped the game, such as the advent of the designated hitter, more time is given to the personalities of the era. Plenty of fans can tell you that Willie Mays hit 660 career home runs, but Rosengren portrays a different side of the man whose arms and knees ached every time he set foot on the ball field. Rosengren also analyzes the Athletics, notorious for superstar Reggie Jackson but also Charlie Finley, an owner “famous for his megalomania.” And as for Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Rosengren shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The author's style is overexplanatory at times, and excessively breezy at others. However, the book is exhaustively researched, and for baseball fans not alive in 1973, an enjoyable history lesson. (Apr.)

Hart and Callahan claim to have “often felt a little like Lucy and Ethel in the I Love Lucy episode in which the women land assembly-line jobs.... The difference in our case was that we had to smile and make eye contact.” Their humorous anecdotes and behind–the-scenes information on the hotel industry are rich fodder: Madonna's “phobialike aversion to air-conditioning,” Gary Busey's antics that garnered him the nickname “Mr. 'Abuse-y,' ” and Prince's rather humorous issues with public contact. Hart and Callahan go beyond celebrity as they describe such other guests as Lobby Lizards (“a nonguest who used the hotel lobby as an ad hoc office/living room/reading lounge/coffee shop, usually lingering for hours”); a cursing, Swiss general manager whose morning meetings were dubbed “the Morning Beating”; and the comically large Saudi royal family. The authors also offer tips for travelers like how to get quality treatment (snipping off a button before you send down dry cleaning or leaving some cash in a pocket will imply to employees you may be a “spotter,” an undercover hotel inspector) and warnings that one should bring disinfectant wipes for those room objects “cleaned infrequently,” like clock radios and telephone headsets. Overall, Hart and Callahan write entertaining, light fare. (Apr.)

London-based stage/TV/film actor Stirling brings up the house lights to detail the entire life of the performer he has known since 1986. Having previously written about Andrews for the Evening Standard and other publications, he highlights recollections of her associates, in addition to his extensive archival research, plowing through some six decades of reportage and interviews in magazines, newspapers and books. Stirling grabs the reader's attention on the opening pages with a description of Andrews's 1997 Mount Sinai Hospital throat surgery, a normal operation that went tragically wrong: “Her principal trademark, the voice of mountain spring purity, was gone, as astonishingly as it had first appeared.” Beginning with her childhood in London during the Blitz and youthful voice lessons, Stirling traces her career from post-WWII performances on BBC Radio and the London stage to her 1954 arrival in America with The Boy Friend. After acclaim for My Fair Lady and Camelot came the caravan of TV and movie roles that continue until the present day with voice work in the Shrek series and last year's Enchanted. The book successfully documents and details the professional and personal peaks of her life. With Andrews's memoir, Home, to be published in April, devoted fans are sure to turn to both. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. (Apr.)

Mudd's memoir, based on his own notes and extensive interviews, looks back at his 20 years in the CBS News Washington bureau. Mudd, about to turn 80, left CBS in anger when he was passed over to succeed Walter Cronkite, going on to report for NBC and narrate at the History Channel before retiring. But by his own admission, he “never truly ceased being a CBS man.” Although he does not mask his bitterness about the Cronkite succession or hesitate to detail the shortcomings of his fellow journalists (especially Dan Rather), Mudd has written a mostly affectionate memoir. The anecdotes about his former colleagues are often humorous, occasionally nasty, but rarely gratuitous, and he is equally unsparing of himself. Mudd's aim is to educate his readers about how first-rate television journalism used to occur more frequently than it does today, and he is a fine teacher. In addition, he fills the book with stories about the politicians and bureaucrats he covered, most memorably the Kennedy brothers and U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois. Mudd's writing is smooth, his tone approachable, and readers old enough to have watched CBS News during the Mudd years are likely to feel nostalgia. (Apr.)

Hitz, a former CIA inspector general, writes an entertaining primer on espionage: why it worked against the U.S.S.R. but flopped against terrorists, and what America can do about it. He starts with a delicious account of the seven reasons people spy. Ideology and money lead the list, although experts maintain that no one ever turned traitor for purely ideological reasons. Simple revenge for being fired or denied promotion play a role, and Robert Hanssen (portrayed in the recent movie Breach) so desperately wanted to prove he could amount to something, she turned double agent. Despite plenty of fiascoes, Hitz argues that spying produced much valuable information during the Cold War but little afterwards, due to the difficulties of obtaining human intelligence from terrorist cells and secretive groups like al-Qaeda. The U.S. now depends on the intelligence services of countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, whose goals often contradict ours, and Hitz claims the Bush administration clearly prefers intelligence that supports its policies. His solutions include government support for studying languages, greater professionalism, relieving the political pressure on analysts, and streamlining the lugubrious bureaucracy. Although Hitz warns that reform will take a while, he delivers this news in a short, engaging book that gives readers plenty to think about. (Apr.)

A former litigation lawyer, the one-name coaching dynamo left the corporate world to pursue a career as an actor and singer, and now she's on a mission to “show business how to use show business to get business.” In a conversational style aimed at media-shy entrepreneurs and CEOs, Tsufit breaks down the rules of stage and film into easily understandable tips and slogans. Business is a seduction, she says, and the trick is to get the customers to come to you. While her basic idea is sound, Tsufit seems more at home with catchphrases than content. “Put on your own show,” she exhorts, and “make your name the star attraction”—but she doesn't always show the reader how. Her most practical advice is about developing a 30-second script about your business, to be delivered whenever occasion demands. Though she's more of a cheerleader than a hands-on instructor, Tsufit herself provides a convincing role model. The book is infused with amusing anecdotes and examples of her own “inner chutzpah,” which are just as instructional and fun to read as the lessons that she extracts from them. (Apr.)

Maxwell (the bestselling The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership) shares 26 nuggets of wisdom based on his nearly 40 years of leadership. A practical guide, complete with exercises and “mentoring moments,” this collection offers a blend of advice, professional wisdom and personal recollection. Each chapter provides insight into a specific aspect of effective management. Some, such as “The Best Leaders Are Listeners” and “Keep Learning to Keep Leading,” are hardly groundbreaking, but others such as “Don't Send Your Ducks to Eagle School” (a phrase borrowed from Jim Rohn) and “For Everything You Gain, You Give Up Something” provide perspective into less-explored facets of successful leadership. Maxwell also covers some of the more challenging aspects of his topic: defining personal success, guarding against unrealistic thinking and determining why people quit. Throughout, Maxwell includes call-out quotes from well-known leaders such as Jack Welch and Frances Hesselbein as well as from surprising voices like J.K. Rowling and Joyce Brothers. A solid addition to a crowded field, this book will be of value to seasoned leaders as well as those just starting out. (Apr.)

In this frequently facile survey of modern-day marketing, freelance business reporter Gardner likens successful advertisers to good flirts and examines their various strategies for wooing women. Borrowing advertisers' approach, she divides the industry into nine different classifications, assigning each a catchy label and devoting a chapter to its tactics. “The scholar” relies heavily on market research; “the show-off” depends on coolness and humor; “the sneak” employs product placement and paid word-of-mouth promotion; “the fence mender” embraces cause-related marketing. Gardner provides examples of each, from classics like “Calgon, take me away” (“the romantic” touting luxury and indulgence) to the “Share Your Secret” campaign for Procter & Gamble's deodorant (“the best friend” forging a bond with other women). Although this framework is a promising conceit, the boundaries between categories are fluid enough that some are easily confused. Moreover, Gardner is prone to broad generalizations and unsupported pronouncements that raise doubts about the depth and breadth of her reporting. Based largely on anecdotal research—interviews with marketing professionals and “everyday women”—the book lacks independent or scholarly research. Gardner also vacillates between criticism and admiration: she calls on women to exercise their buying power to demand advertising that is more “empowering, entertaining, and realistic” yet offers few concrete strategies, leaving readers to puzzle over the book's raison d'être. (Apr.)

This largely admiring but flawed analysis explores King, with his “extraordinary performances,” as chameleon, consummate showman, exalted Mosaic leader, treacly icon, postethnic man and crossover artist. Sociologist Rieder (Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism) argues that King's powers of rhetoric allowed him to straddle and dissolve boundaries between black and white and draws patronizing distinctions between King's “black talk” and “white talk” (King “even went so far as to use the word 'ontological' in one homily”). Perhaps in an avoidance of academese, Rieder slips into the gossipy (“despite his cavorting, King did not stray with white women”) and the flippant (“Surely King's love of ribs and chitterlings was out of sync with the vegetarianism of the 'little brown man,' as King sometimes referred to Gandhi”). While acknowledging that the work of sociolinguist Dell Hymes “informs this entire book,” Rieder does not show how he uses Hymes's model. Rieder ends up with a commonplace argument—that King used different voices in talking to intimate friends and public audiences, in speaking as pastor and as political figure (“His oratory in the meetings was a means to ends... quite different from those at play in church contemplation or backstage talk with friends”). No news that. (Apr.)

In his introduction to this superb anthology, McKibben (The End of Nature) proposes that “environmental writing is America's most distinctive contribution to the world's literature.” The collected pieces amply prove the point. Arranged chronologically, McKibben's selection of more than 100 writers includes some of the great early conservationists, such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and John Burroughs, and many other eloquent nature writers, including Donald Cultross Peattie, Edwin Way Teale and Henry Beston. The early exponents of national parks and wilderness areas have their say, as do writers who have borne witness to environmental degradation—John Steinbeck and Caroline Henderson on the dust bowl, for example, and Berton Roueché and others who have reported on the effects of toxic pollution. Visionaries like Buckminster Fuller and Amory Lovins are represented, as are a wealth of contemporary activist/writers, among them Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, Paul Hawken, and Calvin deWitt, cofounder of the Evangelical Environmental Network. McKibben's trenchant introductions to the pieces sum up each writer's thoughts and form a running commentary on the progress of the conservation movement. The book, being published on Earth Day, can be read as a survey of the literature of American environmentalism, but above all, it should be enjoyed for the sheer beauty of the writing. 80-page color illus, not seen by PW. (Apr. 22 [Earth Day])

Old Havana mambos on the brink of the abyss in this chronicle of Cuba in the decades before the 1959 revolution. True-crime writer English (Paddy Whacked) presents an empire-building saga in which the “Havana Mob” of American gangsters, led by visionary financier Meyer Lansky, controlled Cuba. Empowered by permissive gambling laws and payoffs to dictator Fulgencio Batista, the Mafia poured millions into posh hotels, casinos and nightclubs, skimmed huge profits and sought to make Havana its financial headquarters. The results: exuberant nightlife, a giddy Afro-Cuban jazz scene, sordid backroom sex shows and the occasional grisly gangland hit. English revels in purple prose (“the island seethed like a bitch with a low-grade fever”) and decadent details, including an orgy with Frank Sinatra and a bevy of prostitutes that was interrupted by autograph-seeking Girl Scouts and a nun. But his estimate of the importance of the Havana mob and its “showdown” with Castro's puritanical rebels seems inflated. More supplicant than suzerain to Batista, the mob focused on internecine feuds and paid little attention to the brewing insurrection. The casinos, hotels and nightclubs were all the mob owned—but they sure threw one hell of a party. Photos. (May)

In his labyrinthine and surprisingly engrossing epic of literary influence and translation, Thirlwell (Politics) provides an idiosyncratic perspective on a wide range of authors and books, from Don Quixote to Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal. A leading young British novelist, Thirlwell creates narrative enthusiasm and vividly drawn characters in a welcome departure from the academic approach to this kind of project. His technique is generally conversational rather than thesis driven, and his dips into notoriously tricky works like Ulysses and Tristram Shandy are characterized by impressively observed but plainly written close readings in the vein of the popular literary scholar Harold Bloom. One of Thirlwell's basic conceits is that style is inherently translatable, “even if its translation is not perfect,” and he argues this earnestly and convincingly across eras and borders. Some of Thirlwell's arguments will undoubtedly cause debate among critics and readers, such as his defense of Constance Garnett, the original English translator of War and Peace, whose work has been criticized and possibly superseded by recent high-profile translators. However, Thirwell writes more as a reader than as an academic, and his passionate explications of writers from Flaubert to Nabokov is an absolute pleasure. Photos. (Apr. 22)

Tennessee Democrat James K. Polk is generally ranked among the nation's most effective chief executives. In this straightforward, unnuanced biography, Borneman (1812: The War That Forged a Nation) relates why. Coming into office determined to annex Texas, gain the Oregon Territory from Britain, lower the tariff and reform the national banking system, Polk achieved all four aims in his single term in office (1845–1849). But Borneman overlooks that in more or less completing the nation's lower continental territory, Polk bequeathed a fateful legacy to the nation—not so much transforming the U.S. (as the subtitle overstates) as setting it on the road to civil war. With the annexation of Texas came war with Mexico, which stripped that nation of half its lands while gaining the U.S. the southwest and California. It also unloosed the mad genie of slavery's possible further spread westward. Polk left the nation larger but politically crippled and morally weakened. But Borneman sticks to the narrative and doesn't place his subject in a larger historical context. 'Tis a pity, for Polk's administration ought to be a lesson to all candidates and all presidents at all times. 16 maps. (Apr. 8)

On February 12, 2009, numerous observances, conferences and books will celebrate the bicentennials of two major 19th-century figures: Lincoln and Darwin. Historian Contosta (Henry Adams and His World) uses the coincidence of their shared birth date as the basis for a thin, sophomoric comparison of the two men. Both, according to Contosta, introduced paradigm shifts in how people thought about humanity, whether human dignity or our place in the natural world; both men struggled against attempts, such as slavery, to dehumanize people. And both were self-made men: Lincoln in the more usual sense of the term, Darwin because he rejected the path his father had chosen and found his own calling. At first glance, the author notes, Lincoln and Darwin are very different: the former from a frontier family who had little formal education; the latter, from a wealthy family, graduated from Cambridge. Yet they both lost their mothers at an early age; both struggled with doubts about religion, were ambitious and had quick minds. But Contosta mainly catalogues these differences and similarities without delving deeply into their significance, yielding no new insights into these two well-known lives. (Apr.)

When mankind first made the leap into space in the late 1950s, one commentator compared it to life crawling out of the primordial goop onto land. In this wide-ranging study, technology historian Gainor (Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race) takes readers from ancient Chinese experiments with gunpowder to Robert Goddard's epiphany in his cherry tree when he was 17 and the thrilling moment Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Much of Gainor's book will be familiar to die-hard space buffs, but he has dug out shiny nuggets with which to dazzle readers, such as that the assassin of Czar Alexander II was a rocket buff and that the countdown was first used by director Fritz Lang in his film Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon). Gainor overlooks some worthwhile research, such as recent revelations that 13 women almost had a chance to join the early U.S. space program. On the whole, this is a detailed, deftly written history that should appeal to all would-be rocketeers, whether launching from fields on weekend afternoons or just dreaming of space in a comfortable chair. Photos. (Apr.)

It's far easier to describe the past than to predict the future: this principle is unwittingly demonstrated by Schmidt, a physicist and longtime science fiction editor (Analog: Science Fiction and Fact). His book is best when discussing how past technologies have come together, usually in unforeseen ways, to enable social change. Joseph-Marie Jacquard's late–18th-century work on automatic looms controlled by punch cards, for example, can be traced forward to the development of early computers. Schmidt is glib but far less informative when projecting where the confluence of current technologies is likely to take us. He touches on nanotechnology and improvements in computing power, among other fields, and offers projections about how medicine, communication and interpersonal relationships are apt to change, but he largely does so superficially and perhaps overly optimistically: “In the kind of world we can aspire to, everybody will have enough and nobody will have to work very hard to get it.” Though he acknowledges that some convergences can be harmful, he dismisses this downside with equal ease, concluding simply that we need to be vigilant about the choices we make. Illus. (Apr.)

Marqusee's account of his formation as an anti-Zionist most earns readers' interest when recounting the activist life of his grandfather Edward V. Morand, a progressive, and largely pro-Zionist, Jew, active in New York City politics from the 1930s through the early 1950s. Marqusee (Anyone but England), an American-British journalist, is less successful in addressing his antipathy to Zionism. The author repeatedly invokes the shibboleths of the anti-Zionist left, such as the idea that Zionism is marked by a “settler-colonial ideology.” Marqusee addresses Zionist history and Israel's conduct as though Zionism were a monolithic movement concerned only with dispossessing Palestinians of their land. His reading seems equally one-sided: he cites works by other anti-Zionist Jews, but nothing by a major Zionist thinker or even by revisionist Israeli historians like Tom Segev. He also characterizes the PLO as “building a nation on the ground, reaching across a diaspora, reaching out to the victims of colonialism everywhere”—a “stunning achievement” that, he says, not even internal corruption could stain. In critiquing his grandfather's pro-Zionist stance, Marqusee writes that Morand's views were “rooted... in a network of unexamined assumptions.” Some would consider Marqusee's writing on Zionism and Israel guilty of the same. (Apr. 14)

“Burning a village properly takes a long time,” wrote a British commander in Iraq in 1920. In this sometimes astonishing yet perplexing account of the destructive futility of war, NBCC award–winning writer Baker (Double Fold) traces a direct line from there to WWII, when Flying Fortresses and incendiary bombs made it possible to burn a city in almost no time at all. Central to Baker's episodic narrative— a chronological juxtaposition of discrete moments from 1892 to December 31, 1941—are accounts from contemporary reports of Britain's terror campaign of repeatedly bombing German cities even before the London blitz. The large chorus of voices echoing here range from pacifists like Quaker Clarence Pickett to the seemingly cynical warmongering of Churchill and FDR; the rueful resignation of German-Jewish diarist Viktor Klemperer to Clementine Churchill's hate-filled reference to “yellow Japanese lice.” Baker offers no judgment, but he also fails to offer context: was Hitler's purported plan to send the Jews to Madagascar serious, or, as one leading historian has called it, a fiction? Baker gives no clue. Yet many incidents carry an emotional wallop—of anger and shock at actions on all sides—that could force one to reconsider means and ends even in a “good” war and to view the word “terror” in a very discomfiting context. (Mar.)

Reading a book with the word “hug” in the title that basically advises on how to be nice to other people makes one realize that there ought to be more books like this on the shelves. Mitchell, CEO of the clothing stores Mitchells/Richards/Marshs has already outlined how to keep customers happy in Hug Your Customers. With his newest, Mitchell repeats this mandate, now turning inward to focus on how to hire and maintain a happy staff. Divided into five parts that outline how to treat people, build trust, develop pride in your organization and be inclusive and recognize people, the book looks at how creating a niceness culture can help to create employees that stick around the company and take a personal interest in the organization. Mitchell ends each chapter with a helpful checklist that repeats the important points. In one chapter, he advises redefining “rules and regulations” as “expectations and standards” (rules, for example, are “unbending... cold and impersonal”; expectations are “flexible and freeing when they need to be”). While such changes may seem subtle, the spirit behind them is surely a worthwhile reminder of how to make work more enjoyable for everyone. (Mar. 4)

In this first effort, LeFavour begins by covering the basics, including a look at the various cuts, traditional methods of cooking and a list of kitchen essentials. Then she divides her entrees into four geo-flavorful chapters: American, Bistro, Latin and Far East. Porterhouse and T-bone steaks have their say, but LeFavour favors the less expensive cuts, especially skirt, hangar and flank. LeFavour's father owned several restaurants, and she learned through him that recipes are about entire meals, not individual items on a plate. Each of her 56 offerings is a complete pairing of meat plus side dishes. There is Hangar Steak with French Feta, Salsa Verde and Mint-Zucchini Pancakes, and variations on the traditional such as a Cuban-Style Seville Orange–Marinated Skirt Steak with Rum-Glazed Plantains and Black Beans. Her love of intense tastes is made clear via a Strip Steak with Roquefort Butter and a Rib Steak with Anchovy Butter. And a healthy admiration for fat permeates both her heavy cream–laden Mashed Potatoes, and Porn Corn, which consists of sweet corn kernels in a frying pan full of thick-cut bacon. While ingredient lists are easy to read, cooking instructions are crammed into dense paragraphs, which can sometimes interrupt an otherwise happy and carnivorous exploration (Apr.)

This is the fourth cookbook by Flay dedicated solely to grilling, and over the years he has hosted four different cooking shows also focused on the art of placing meat and veggies upon a backyard flame. So one might excuse the author for having run out of arresting titles (à la, Boy Meets Grill) and for resorting to alphabetical order as a means of structuring his chapters. But what is truly surprising is his sudden and marked lack of preference for cooking with gas instead of charcoal. He then backs up his newfound indifference by never stating which grill might work best for any of these 150 recipes. However, Flay is still the sultan of sauce and the ruler of rub. He creates a Fig–Cabernet Vinegar Glaze for a filet mignon. In the seafood realm, grilled salmon is paired with a Honey-Mustard-Mint Sauce. Vegetarian offerings include Grilled Cremini Mushroom, Fontina, and Arugula Pressed Tacos. And a chapter on fruit provides mouthwatering desserts like Grilled Nectarines with Maple Crème Fraîche. If Flay has less to say than before, he at least does so with a healthy amount of seasoning. (Apr.)

Zien, creator and host of the television show Sam the Cooking Guy, is very clear from the onset that he is not a chef; he also believes that certain things, like measuring ingredients (unless baking), are a “waste of time” and that 350 degrees is the “universal temperature” at which to cook everything. A self-proclaimed “regular guy,” Zien thinks that people have “been wrecked by cooking shows with their millions of complicated steps and crazy ass ingredients.” His recipes are for people who want to cook, but want to spend as little time and effort in the kitchen as possible. Two of his favorite ingredients, which show up frequently, are prebaked pizza crust (used in his pesto pizza recipe, which also calls for ready-made pesto) and “ready bacon,” which simply needs to be microwaved. Other dishes include a Tomato and Potato Chip Sandwich and Stir Fry Noodles made with Styrofoam cup instant ramen. Some dishes, though lacking originality, call for fresh ingredients and explain simple techniques, like the Adobo Chicken or Ginger Scallops. Foodies won't be impressed, and even those with mild interest in putting together their own meals might want to be challenged a bit more. (Mar.)

Thoracic surgeon Gundry has invented many devices now commonly used in heart surgeries. Here, he shows readers how to avoid such surgeries as well as obesity, high cholesterol and blood pressure levels, diabetes and even cancer by outsmarting a genetic code set for survival when food was scarce and physical activity strenuous. Our culture, technology and lifestyles may have changed, Gundry says, but our genes have not. The first part of his three-phase diet aims to break reliance on high-carb, sugar-laden foods. In phases two and three, readers can broaden their eating plans somewhat, but the emphasis is on nutrient-dense, calorie-sparse greens. Some may wince at the “Gundryisms” that pepper the text (“If it's white, keep it out of sight”; ”If it's beige, better behave“), but many will find them easy to remember. User-friendly exercise and meal plans, as well as recipes for some unusual foods (among them Chicken Under a Brick; Angelic Jungle Princess with Chicken, a Thai recipe adapted from a dish served at a restaurant on Oahu; and “pasta” dishes made with low-cal, high-fiber shirataki noodles) round out this surprising take on the epidemic of obesity-related diseases. (Mar.)

An entertainment industry publicist before becoming an antibullying crusader, Blanco (Please Stop Laughing at Me) was a victim of bullying from fifth grade through high school. For Blanco, bullying is a broad term—it's not “just the mean things you do, it's all the nice things you never do.” For her, even the Columbine shootings were a result of students marginalized by bullying. She offers many stories of tearful children who have been the subject of abuse, and offers her own advice to thwart and/or deal with bullying, but in the end, she doesn't truly persuade readers that her remedies are effective. As an “Adult Survivor of Peer Abuse,” her personal experience gives her all the insight she thinks she needs—it's only “clinical experts” who need theories and evidence (“there are clinical experts who might scoff at me for trying to give comfort and guidance”). She retells frequently the story of how she overcame—and forgave—her own bullies at her 20th high school reunion. Her former tormentors just seem to have decided to accept her after 20 years: a happy ending, but hardly a winning strategy for a troubled teen today. Blanco tells readers she has counseled countless students, victims and bullies alike, and while her stories are dramatic, neither the dialogue nor the instant results seem authentic. Readers looking for advice based on concrete fieldwork should turn to Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes. (Mar.)

Distinguished Princeton historian Wilentz—winner of a Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy—makes an eloquent and compelling case for America's Right as the defining factor shaping the country's political history over the past 35 years.

Wilentz argues that the unproductive liberalism of the Carter years was a momentary pause in a general tidal surge toward a new politics of conservatism defined largely by the philosophy and style of Ronald Reagan. Even Bill Clinton, he shows, tacitly admitted the ascendance of many Reaganesque core values in the American mind by styling himself as a centrist “New Democrat” and moving himself and his party to the right.

Wilentz postulates Reagan as the perfect man at the ideal moment, not just ruling his eight years in the White House, but also casting a long shadow on all that followed (a shadow, one might add, still being felt in the Republican presidential campaign today). While examining in detail the low points of Reagan's presidency, from Iran-Contra to his initial belligerence toward the Soviet Union, Wilentz concludes in his superb account that Reagan must be considered one of the great presidents: he reshaped the geopolitical map of the world as well as the American judiciary and bureaucracy, and uplifted an American public disheartened by Vietnam and the grim Carter years. While much has been written by Reagan admirers, Wilentz says, “his achievement looks much more substantial than anything the Reagan mythmakers have said in his honor.” 16 pages of b&w photos. (May)

Signature

Reviewed by Marilyn French

Given the hysterical responses of some British critics to Germaine Greer's new book about Ann Hathaway, one expects wild-eyed surmises about that woman's life. Instead, Greer offers a richly textured account of the lives of ordinary women in Stratford and similar towns in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. We know very little about Shakespeare's life, and even less about his wife's, but this has not deterred generations of critics from inventing a narrative for them. In general, they aver that Ann, being eight years older than Shakespeare, was an unattractive woman who seduced and trapped him in an unwanted marriage, from which he escaped as soon as possible. His abandonment of his wife and three children supposedly without support is generally regarded as their just desserts, as is his will, leaving her with nothing but his second-best bed.

Greer questions these critical judgments, but her real interest lies in tracing how the Shakespeare family could have survived. She meticulously traces the members of the Shakespeare and Hathaway families, their acquaintances, relatives of their acquaintances and notable people in Stratford. She reminds us of facts other critics have ignored: for instance, in the late 15th century, almost half the children died in their early years, often from malnutrition. Ann Shakespeare's children survived—the two girls to adulthood, and the boy, Hamnet, until 11—so she must have been able to feed them. Greer shows that no one else would have been likely to step in to help Ann feed her family: she would have had to do it herself. Given a list of Ann's possessions at one point in her life, Greer theorizes she was a maltster: many women made decent livings by making ale.

Greer's details of how ordinary people lived in this period are extremely interesting—the contents of their houses, the value of their clothes, the number of rooms they occupied. These facts are also quite moving because death was omnipresent. Her theory about Shakespeare's relation with his wife is original and persuasive: she imagines there was real love between them, at least at some point. She cites the desire depicted in “Venus and Adonis” (about an older woman and a younger man) and suggests that some of the sonnets were written to Ann. She offers theories and not, she is careful to state, a definitive narrative. The theory that seems most to have inflamed British critics is the idea that Ann may have paid to have Shakespeare's plays printed after his death. Since many wives do publish their husbands' work after their death, I'm not sure why this is considered so heretical, but Greer knew it would be. (Apr. 8)

Marilyn French is a novelist and the author of Shakespeare's Division of Experience. The first two volumes of her four-volume history of women, From Eve to Dawn, will be published in March by the Feminist Press