Nonfiction Reviews

Journalist Schmidle offers a gripping, grim account of his two years as a journalism fellow in Pakistan, where his travels took him into the most isolated and unfriendly provinces, and into the thick of interests and beliefs that impede that nation's peace and progress. The author reports on the murky relationship between the Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Taliban and how American bombings have actually helped the Taliban gain influence in the border regions. While Schmidle amplifies the danger an unstable Pakistan poses to its neighbors and the world, he also turns a constructively critical eye back to American support of mujahideen during the Afghan war against the Soviets and shows how American intervention was both a help and an exacerbation of problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a witness to Musharraf's last days in power and the rage that followed Bhutto's assassination, Schmidle has, with this effort, established himself as a fresh, eloquent and informed contributor to the ongoing dialogue regarding Pakistan, terrorism and the strategic importance of engaging Central Asia in efforts toward peace and stability. (May)

Journalist Zeskind delivers a thorough, if scattered, dossier on white nationalist politics in America from the end of WWII to the present, focusing closely on three plotters on the fringe of the American mainstream: Willis Carto, William Pierce and David Duke. Among the book's dizzying investigations of neo-Confederates, skinheads, survivalists, tax protestors, Second Amendment nuts and anti-Semites, these three men loom largest as the provocateurs and grandfathers of racist politics. Drawing on writings from Oswald Spengler and Francis Parker Yockey, these white nationalists constructed a narrative about the death of Western civilization, where white nationalists are patriotic race warriors hawking their ideas at gun shows, in print and in online forums. With the breadth of an encyclopedia, this book features a staggering number of actors, publications, flashpoints and organizations, such as the Posse Comitatus movement, which denies all of the Constitution's amendments after the 14th, prints community money and seeks independence from ZOG (the Zionist Occupation Government). Zeskind's rigorously researched and eloquent book is a definitive history of white nationalism and contains alarming warnings for a resurgence in racist politics. (May)

Macy, retired after 23 years in the British army, does for the Apache helicopter's gunships what Dan Mills did for the infantry in Sniper One: he puts readers in the cockpit of an aircraft that requires great skill and attention to keep in the air. Macy takes readers to Afghanistan's Helmand Province: remote and mountainous, a center of the world opium traffic and chosen battleground of the Taliban. His squadron's eight Apaches faced both modern missiles and 19th-century rifles while supporting ground troops too few for a mission never clearly defined by the government. The book's climax comes when a British marine is listed as missing in action. In an unauthorized mission that reads like pulp fiction but whose details have been independently verified, Macy and another pilot fly into a Taliban fort to bring him out—dead. When the four crewmen are awarded the Military Cross, Prince Philip asks, “Are you all mad?” But since the days of Alexander the Great, Afghanistan has taught invaders two cruel lessons: never leave a man behind, and never count the cost. 16 pages of photos; maps. (May)

Second Street in the railroad town of Silvis, Ill., was known as “Little Mexico.” Its people had fled Mexico during its revolution almost 100 years ago and found work with the railroads, seeking to survive, to move in from society's margins. “We all wanted to be Americans,” recalled one resident. “Nobody knows how patriotic we Mexican Americans were.” Seventy-eight men from 35 small houses, shacks and converted boxcars served in WWII and Korea. Eight died—reportedly the highest per capita rate of any neighborhood—but despite this service, Second Street remained unpaved for years. Its veterans were blackballed by the local VFW, which feared “the Mexican Americans would take the post over....” But recognition of the community's sacrifices came in 1968 when a grateful legislature renamed Second Street “Hero Street.” Journalist Wilson, founder of the International Newspaper Network, tells the stories of these families with a clarity that never lapses into sentiment or pity. Things are very different now, affirm relatives and descendants. All the more reason to remember by name the young men from Little Mexico who were “killed in action fighting for their country.” 15 b&w photos. (May)

In this charming love letter to the language and culture of Italy, journalist Hales recounts her inebriation with Italian's sounds and her lovesickness over its phrases. Enamored of this lovely and lovable language, Hales immerses herself in Italian culture on numerous trips to Italy in her attempt to “live Italian.” She comes to think of Italian as “a lovable rascal, a clever, twinkle-eyed scamp that you can't resist even when it plays you for a fool.” Hales regales us with the mysteries of the language, such as when a color becomes more than hue. She tells us that yellow, for example, refers to a mystery “because thrillers traditionally had yellow covers.” In her rapture over the language, she also swoons over Italian literature (from Dante to Manzoni), opera (Verdi and Puccini) and cinema (Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini) as she rehearses the many ways in which the language has seductively slipped into Western culture and consciousness. (May)

Evans (Ballots and Fence Rails) ranges from Spanish colonization in the New World to the economic disparities of the current century in this scholarly interpretation of “how racial ideas have functioned to justify inequality” in the U.S. Drawing heavily on Marxist theories and the political philosophy of Antonio Gramsci, the author dissects how society in early America was divided into two racial categories, where “the mark dividing the haves from the have-nots was... color.” He examines the overlapping history of class and race from the American Revolution through the Civil War, but as the book nears the recent past, history is painted in large swaths, with the last half of the 20th century, including the civil rights movement, receiving scant attention. Evans's glancing look at neo-liberalism and contemporary ecological crises are downright confusing in this context, and nowhere near as explored (or explained) as the historical section of the book. While the prose is readable, the book draws heavily on political and economic theory; still, the tenacious reader will be treated to intriguing observations on the history of American race relations. (Apr.)

Sullivan (Rats) weaves biography and American history in this playful attempt to recast Thoreau as more a complex (and convivial) creature than a dour and ascetic environmentalist and “anarchical loner.” The book may stir controversy among those who have appropriated Thoreau for a particular cause—a welcome prospect for the author, who writes, “I suppose I have an ax to grind. The Thoreau you know bothers me too, in light of the one I think I've seen.” According to Sullivan, the man has been lost to the myth, and the myth has removed him from the context of 19th-century Concord, Mass. Was he an eccentric genius? Probably. Was he an isolationist hermit with a lazy streak? No. In fact, Walden was just a stroll from town, and Thoreau thrived on visits from friends. Sullivan gleefully complicates our understanding of Thoreau and the values he championed—civil disobedience and environmentalism. Although the book may not be as revolutionary a study as Sullivan claims, he proves a fine companion on yet another pilgrimage to Walden. (Apr.)

In these predictable but frequently insightful essays, Sanders (Writing from the Center) muses on how to care for the Earth, local communities and future generations. He condemns the mainstream “American way of life” as an “infantile dream of endless consumption, endless novelty, and endless play” and, calling for a “dream worthy of grownups,” explores ways to realize this dream, such as his own decision to stay put in one place and discover that his ambition was not to “make a good career but to make a good life” and remain attentive to nature and the present moment. Sanders offers a 40-point “Conservationist Manifesto,” which, in its thoroughness, thoughtfulness and inclusion of environmental justice issues would serve the environmentalist community well. But the most original and intriguing ideas in this book are Sanders's thoughts about words and their meanings, as when he suggests that for a season we make explicit the meaning of “consumers” by replacing it with “devourers,” or that wilderness is a Sabbath of space rather than time, and we need both kinds of Sabbath “because Earth could use a respite from our demands.” (Apr.)

Backstabbing and bitchery dominate this tale of woe from fashion journalist Crowe and Rosen, head of the Luxury & Retail division of Reig Capital Group. Dreary writing hobbles what could have been an inspiring portrait of Jimmy Choo's rise from his humble origins (Choo started making shoes at age nine in Malaysia) to the company's astonishing success and sale for $333 million in 2007. The story primarily follows Tamara Mellon, a socialite who convinced Choo to mass-produce his shoes, finally becoming president of the company. Despite an intriguing picture of the luxury trade in '90s London, where the supply of sexy shoes was almost monopolistically controlled by Manolo Blahnik, the details of the corporate in-fighting becomes repetitive and dull; by the time Jimmy becomes dissatisfied with the partnership and Tamara Mellon goes through an ugly divorce, readers are unlikely to care. It turns out that high fashion loses a great deal of its glamour when you examine the business nitty-gritty rather than the glitz. (Apr.)

Opdyke, Wall Street Journal columnist, offers a sensitive and sensible manual for peaceably handling marital finances. Many newlyweds have difficulty handling the transition from being an independent agent, who can overspend like mad or pinch every penny till it screams, to a partner working to manage joint finances—the communication issues that crop up are myriad. When inevitable issues of power, independence, self-esteem, security and control come into play, the resulting arguments or silent avoidance can lead to terrible financial mistakes. Opdyke gives clear advice on managing both the real dollars and the real emotions of personal finance that course through every relationship, including scripts for questions partners should ask about each other's financial history, and gives cogent, easy-to-follow plans for the division of financial duties, budgets, prenuptial agreements and home-buying, particularly in light of the credit crunch. With its compassionate and pragmatic tone, this book is invaluable for newlyweds with stars still in their eyes—and longtime couples struggling to balance the emotional with the financial and ensure a healthy, thriving life together. (Apr.)

In this memoir, entrepreneur Kitto describes his complex relationship with modern China, including the spectacular rise and fall of his magazine publishing business and his love affair with Moganshan, a small mountain village outside of Shanghai where he made his home. While he touches on the Chinese government's seizure of his media company in a few rancorous chapters, the business story takes a back seat to his personal journey and discovery of Moganshan, where he sought refuge from the harried pace and summer heat of Shanghai. During the rapid success of his business and through the ensuing legal and business roadblocks he encounters, Moganshan and the dilapidated villa he leases and renovates become a haven for Kitto, his family and his expat friends. Kitto's descriptive prose, although frequently uneven, sometimes self-indulgently therapeutic and marked by a self-conscious struggle to avoid imperialistic tones, shows clear affection for the country and draws the reader into Chinese culture, politics, history, marriage, business interactions and folklore through the lens of his daily life and relationships with the people of Moganshan. (Apr.)

In the summer of 2007, novelist and golf fanatic Merullo (Golfing with God; Revere Beach Elegy) set off with his family in search of the slower ways of life on the shores of Lake Como, Italy. Interspersing descriptions of various rounds of golf with trips to local restaurants and taverns, Merullo attempts to capture the sights, smells and sounds of the Italian and Swiss countryside. He recalls some of the characters that he and his family met that summer, such as Harold Lubberdink, real estate agent, who swept the family under his wing, leading them through various nooks and crannies of their temporary home country. Merullo takes readers on a harrowing journey through winding mountain roads in search of a perfect meal in a restaurant called La Baita. Finally, he tries to incorporate the slower pace of living into his own life, but finds it almost impossible. Part travel guide, part memoir, Merullo attempts to offer meditations on the richness of a life lived more slowly with good food and good company, but succeeds at little more than his frantic attempts to find a few good golf courses far away from home. (Apr.)

The explosion and wreck of the Mississippi riverboat Sultana in 1865, which killed 1,700 passengers, mostly Union soldiers recently released from Confederate POW camps, is but the capstone of this engrossing survey of the many varieties of suffering in the Civil War. Journalist Huffman (Mississippi in Africa) doesn't even get aboard the Sultana until the last third of the saga. Before that, he fills in the backstories of four Yankee survivors as they fight in the battle of Chickamauga, go raiding with Sherman's cavalry and finally get captured and sent to the infamous Southern prison camps at Andersonville, Ga., and Cahaba, Ala. There they endure the torments of starvation, exposure, festering and maggoty wounds, predatory criminal gangs, lice and diarrhea—a scourge, Huffman notes, that was far deadlier to soldiers than bullets. Making skillful use of war diaries and memoirs, the author makes these quieter ordeals just as moving as the Sultana's doomed voyage, with its “hellish scene[s] of hundreds of screaming people being burned alive” or drowning each other in panic. Huffman fits the climactic disaster into a meticulously researched, harrowing look at the sorrow and the pity that was the Civil War. (Apr.)

In this exuberant biography of Astaire, Levinson—who has written biographies of Harry James, Nelson Riddle and Tommy Dorsey, and who died last year—traces Astaire's stunningly long and successful career from early vaudeville partnership with sister Adele to the heyday of MGM musicals (and, along the way, highlights Astaire's musical influence in jazz and his tasteful, understated sartorial chic inspired by the duke of Windsor). Hailing from Omaha, Neb., Astaire né Austerlitz (his family the descendants of Austrian Jews), tagged along with his older, more promising sister to dance school in New York City, where the tap-and-step team got their start on the Orpheum Circuit and in Charles Dillingham's revues, before hitting stardom in the 1923 London musical Stop Flirting. When Adele quit to marry an English lord in 1932, Astaire renounced Broadway for the bright new medium of film, and once ensconced in Hollywood, under contract with David O. Selznick at RKO then MGM, he never looked back: from being teamed up rather reluctantly with Ginger Rogers (10 films) to “finding his muse” in choreographer Hermes Pan and spectacular, short-lived partnerships with legendary leading ladies, Astaire became a national treasure. Levinson takes a chatty, nostalgic look at Astaire's artistic collaborations, his longtime, stable marriage to Phyllis Potter, his shy nature and his underappreciated singing voice. (Apr.)

After 50 years in television, recently retired game show host Barker (The Price Is Right) recalls peak moments of his long career in this engaging memoir. Born in 1923 of Native American heritage (he is one-eighth Sioux), Barker grew up in South Dakota. When WWII interrupted his college education, he became a naval fighter pilot, but the war ended before he got a seagoing squadron assignment: “When the enemy heard that I was headed for the Pacific, they surrendered.” In the postwar years, as he made a smooth transition from radio to television, audience participation shows became his specialty, and fame followed after an invitation from Ralph Edwards to host Truth or Consequences. Giving away millions, Barker stayed with The Price Is Right for 6,500 shows: “The first time I interviewed an attractive young lady and I realized that her tongue was pierced, I knew that time had passed me by.” He also writes at length about how his concern for animal rights created professional career problems, notably in hosting beauty pageants where furs were worn. The team of Barker and Diehl doesn't measure up to Diehl's memorable high-dive collaboration with Esther Williams (The Million Dollar Mermaid). However, there are plenty of backstage anecdotes, so Barker's fans are certain to grab this from bookstore shelves. Two 16-page color photo inserts. (Apr. 6)

For almost four years after the 2001 World Trade Center tragedy, freelance writer Bacon chronicles his quest in this humorous book to do his best as a New York City cop, yet the arduous task of law enforcement was much more than he imagined. Self-described as “a hip, overeducated liberal,” the author had worked at home for five years for an online company before joining the NYPD force, but the collective experience of the police academy and being a Harlem beat cop eventually wears him down emotionally. Everything gnaws at his resolve, including the grueling cycle of drug collars, the rousting of crooks and a crush on a disinterested Latina police officer. When Bacon later unravels during a security detail in a manic Jerry Lewis–style comic scene, he writes: “I was no good as a bad cop and not bad enough to be a good cop. I'm lucky I made it out alive.” Bacon, now a scuba instructor on Maui, provides readers with a madcap yarn of handcuffs, broken hearts and the thin blue line. (Apr.)

Rolling Stone writer Wright (Generation Kill), offers 12 tales of outsiders, people more or less living off the grid in mainstream America. He profiles, for example, a member of Delta Company in Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan dueling with the Taliban; a fun-loving regular at a dance hall; a committed local anarchist engaging in street theater at a global trade conference; a pastor of the Aryan Nation preaching against the evils of blacks and Jews and other nonwhite “mud people”; and two HIV-infected former porn stars. As a former editor of Hustler magazine, Wright recognizes the magic in Seth Warshavsky, a con man with a mind full of schemes in the porn world of bartered desire. There is some top-drawer writing among weaker essays, but the total effect reflects a literary rebel who wants to break convention. (Apr.)

American historians tend to portray Chiang Kai-Shek (1887–-1975) as an inept dictator who mismanaged China until Mao Zedong expelled him in 1945 and he finished his life ruling Taiwan under the protection of the U.S. military. But this thick, heavily researched but lucid biography by Taylor, a research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, describes an impressive figure who left China a greater legacy than he has been given credit for. An ambitious officer, Chiang took power when Sun Yat-sen died in 1925. Attempting to unify a chaotic nation, he fought warlords and rival Communists and then spent nine even bloodier years fighting the Japanese. Those expecting the traditional account of how Chiang hoarded American military aid in preparation for a postwar showdown with the Communists will read instead of the massive losses his troops suffered fighting the Japanese while Mao husbanded his forces. Taylor does not conceal Chiang's brutality and diplomatic failures, but he is an admirer who makes a good case that Chiang governed an almost ungovernable country with reasonable skill and understood his enemies better than American advisers did. 41 b&w illus., 4 maps. (Apr.)

Tracking the plight of refugee Jews during and after the Nazi era, the authors of Auschwitz offer a comprehensive survey of various countries' responses to the refugee crisis and their often self-serving motives America, fearing immigrants would become public charges, required financial affidavits from American family or friends, which proved insurmountable for most European Jews. Britain granted visas to Jews of international repute, such as Sigmund Freud, but to only 50 Jews with licenses to practice medicine and 14,000 Jewish women willing to work as domestic servants. Eager to increase its white population, a racist Dominican Republic allowed healthy young refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to work on large-scale agricultural colonies. Internment camps in the Soviet Union offered a chance for survival while detention camps in France were conduits to the concentration camps and death. The establishment of the state of Israel resolved postwar Jewish refugee problems but ironically triggered an immediate Jewish refugee flood from Muslim countries. Although well researched and written, this work's specialized focus deems it more appropriate for academics and others with a special interest in the Holocaust or refugee policy. 50 photos, 2 maps. (Apr.)

This Zagat-sized handbook, a Dadaist chop suey showcasing the astonishing intellectual range of English professor and NPR commentator Codrescu (New Orleans, Mon Amour), is arranged alphabetically and topically, which permits one to dip in or to read it all. The occasionally outrageous encyclopedic juxtapositions of entries give a firsthand experience similar to the effect of Dada cutups and collages. The human and so-called posthuman are concepts best understood via Codrescu's imagined 1916 game of chess in Zurich between Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada (the art of the absurd), and Vladimir Ilych Lenin, avatar of the anti-Dada ethos of communism. Exactly how this fictitious game, played on the metaphoric chessboard of history—with the author rooting for Tzara —informs the rest of this book is murky. Yet, wending and blending their way through it all are dozens of people and subjects, among them Ben Franklin (who, like Lenin, bristles at the royalist aspects of chess) and a “Belgian eccentric” named Paul Otlet (who more or less envisioned the World Wide Web in the 1930s) and much else, japing and serious. (Apr.)

“Sometime around the age of 40, most of us realize that our mothers live deep inside us,” proclaims novelist Davis (The Long Goodbye) in this series of interviews with more than 20 well-known women of a certain generation—Melissa Gilbert, Candice Bergen, Anjelica Huston, Whoopi Goldberg and Cokie Roberts, to name a few—about their relationships with their mothers. Some of the mothers led careers as entertainers (like Lorna Luft's mother, Liza Minnelli), activists and preachers, but many were wives, homemakers and divorcées. The result is a cross between reaffirming self-help book and candid women's narrative, with individual daughters' stories creating a kind of collective memoir. Readers may recognize traces of their own relationships with their mothers as these women recount histories of addiction, sickness and death, along with memories of friendship, strength and reconciliation. Davis interjects to offer uplifting, if boilerplate and unnecessary, interpretations of each woman's journey, but the voices of the daughters, now seasoned with age, contemplation and perspective, are reaffirming in their own right. (Apr.)

Welcome to a doctor's office like no other, with none of the dry diagnoses, stone-faced delivery or confident cures we've come to expect of our miracle workers in white coats. As much poet as practitioner, Watts (Bedside Manners), a San Francisco doctor, offers small, poignant stories of 26 patients and the doctor who shares their complicated past, stark present and uncertain future. “The trouble with illness is that it's only logical in the abstract, not the human,” Watts notes of one woman who talks endlessly about her intractable headaches. In this case, it's the Rx that surprises: “that there are times when more gets done in silence than in speaking.... Silence knows the right answer.” Watts's patients discover it's not just the best medicine, but the best relationships that comfort them through illness. “He hadn't needed help from me at all,” Watts writes of one patient. “All he wanted was to spend a moment with what he was up against, size it up, and then make his leap.” A tincture for the soul, delivered with an elegant bedside manner. (Apr. 15)

Over three decades, more than 4,000 patients and their loved ones have shared “their most wrenching ultimate experiences” with Culkin, a critical care nurse living near Seattle. In this compelling memoir, her moving reflections on life and death interweave clinical encounters with her own life. She looks back at the “clockwork of hormones” as she began her relationship with her future husband while working 12-hour shifts in a San Francisco intensive-care nursery, moving on to become a traveling nurse in Anchorage, then living in the Alaskan wilderness, “completely alone at the edge of the civilized universe.” Her marriage, sons, problems with her parents and family dynamics intertwine with memories of patients extricated from wreckage and an impromptu procedure in a helicopter on a patient who couldn't breathe. Culkin details the “sisterhood” of nursing, with its risks and stress and sharing “cups of 0900 coffee,” and her own bouts with multiple sclerosis. Describing her life as a flight nurse in the final chapters, Culkin sees herself and others clearly, and poetic juxtapositions make her sentences soar. (Apr.)

Before he became known globally for his work as a filmmaker (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Julian Schnabel was a painter of works sometimes as large as a movie screen. Although a book cannot replicate the experience of seeing these paintings in person, the book spreads the nearly 200 reproductions generously over its thick glossy pages, each receiving a double-page spread, captioned with just title and date. To give a sense of scale, the book occasionally interrupts a series of paintings with a photograph of the work in location. Eight short essays rush to the defense of their subject, so that his early success with collectors and in the medium of film doesn't tarnish reception of his work. Painter David Salle writes: “What set his work apart was his use of fragmented, physically demanding surface, which gave his vision of free association a kind of flickering, tentative quality that insists on the materiality of the painting.” An expanded time line at the end of the book does the work of biography while the essays provide segues into the work itself: an interview with Schnabel, a meditation on experience by William Gaddis, a survey of Schnabel's monumental surfing paintings and more. (Mar.)

Mr. Love Pants, the Gnole and England's Conservative cabinet led by Ted Heath have one thing in common: they provided fertile ground for the bizarre imagination and singular artistic sensibility of British artist Alan Aldridge. This book showcases both Aldridge's art and his larger-than-life personality. Aldridge lied his way into his first job, but eventually became the fiction cover art director for Penguin Books. But it was his concept to illustrate the lyrics of the Beatles that sent his career into the stratosphere. Vignettes from a charmed life crawl their way through 421 four-color illustrations—a mélange of psychedelic album covers, racy advertisements, boisterous children's books and memorable logos. In a series of brief autobiographical sermons, Aldridge describes extraordinary encounters with every kind of prophet, from Paul McCartney to an Indian guru. In one particularly vivid tale, Salvador Dalí challenges him to a drawing duel in an airport bar. The book's cacophonous design complements Aldridge's wildest creations and is suitably constructed to inspire newly minted designers, wannabe pop-art apprentices and fans of psychedelia. (Mar.)

In this inspirational memoir, Wilson, author of the cartoon strip Ziggy (a job he inherited from his father), relates a life filled with wondrous memories and profound struggles. While growing up, Ziggy served as a means for father and son to “draw out our thoughts and feelings about each other.” But years later, Wilson's leg was crushed in a car accident, his wife died at age 44 of breast cancer, leaving Wilson with their two sons, and his father—both mentor and hero to Wilson—also had a serious illness. Immobilized by depression, Wilson's faith failed him, and he concluded that “the mercy of God [was] an apparent fiction.” Wilson struggled for peace and truth with Ziggy by his side. His ultimate rescuer was the gift of a journal in which he recorded his feelings and thoughts. With ideas like imagining Moses as the first Superman, Wilson delights with fresh, well-considered insights, while the Ziggy cartoons reproduced here put both the character and his creator in a moving light. (Mar.)

Journalist Flanigan argues that the 22-million-strong region at the nexus of Latin America and the U.S. has moved from the periphery to the center of the American economy via specific innovations, endowments and long-term trends that have not only helped create the new global economy but point the way to U.S. prosperity in a dramatically changed global marketplace. Profiling small business owners, inventors, academic researchers, and business and finance pioneers (including broadband innovator Henry Samueli and financier Michael Milken), Flanigan gives an informed sense of key transformations in both SoCal's economy and international trade attendant on developments in communications technology. Dismissing gloomier forecasts by the likes of Mike Davis and Joan Didion, Flanigan aligns himself with the “reasoned optimism” of authors like historian Kevin Starr and journalist Peter Schrag, but it must be said his is a more narrowly focused treatment than this company suggests, which leaves the book overly sanguine at points. Nonetheless, this is a valuable explication of the meaning and challenges of “globalization” for the region and the U.S. generally. (Mar.)

Epping (A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy) offers a comprehensive guide to the global economy, arguing that economic literacy is a survival imperative in a fusion economy, where what happens in one corner of the globe can have unprecedented impact on the rest of the world. He gives a thorough and easy-to-understand explanation of the rudiments of global finance and provides readers with the tools to be able to make sense of future economic events. Sidebars scattered throughout the book go deeper into such terms and concepts as subprime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities and the difference between budget deficit and trade deficit. Epping also explores macroeconomics, the virtual economy, private equity and public good—and even how to eliminate poverty. A refreshing look at the present economic situation, minus the often confusing graphs, charts and jargon typical in works of this type, this book provides a solid understanding of economic basics, giving readers the much-needed tools they need to stay on top of future developments. (Mar.)

Karlin has passed down the knowledge of wood-fired cooking for nine years as an instructor at the Ramekins school in Sonoma, Calif., so it is not surprising that her first cookbook is a teacherlike endeavor. It begins with an extensive review of the basics, including a chart that looks at the “appliance characteristics” of a vertical clay top-vented oven, a list of woods and their proper uses (red oak for beef and fish) and a survey of various wood-burning devices including the classic La Caja China Box, a pig roaster on wheels. Next, there is a treatise on “Becoming an Efficient Wood-Fired Cook.” Finally, she challenges her readers with 100 recipes ranging from academic to scholarly. Her specialty includes entrees that include the word “smoky” or involve a plank or a brick. Smoky barbecued oysters, grilled on a campfire grate, are served with an intense vinegar-based sauce. Smoked chicken and herb dumplings uses bacon, as well as smoke, to flavor the bird. And mushroom-rubbed plank-roasted steak employs a water-soaked aromatic board to flavor and keep the meat from drying out. For extra credit, there are several complex choices that seem a tough match for the open fire, such as an apricot tart with lavender crème anglaise. (May)

Brunch is one of the weekend's best assets, but people often think they must rely on the same old recipes, or else eat out, to enjoy it. Pastry chef and restaurateur Gand (Short and Sweet Dessert Deck) shows that plenty of brunch dishes, many of them even better than what is served at restaurants, are within reach. Gand, writing with Matheson (coauthor of Wine Mondays) starts with an enticing assortment of drinks (e.g., white hot chocolate and a three-alarm Bloody Mary), then a chapter on brunch's eggy foundations—omelets, stratas, frittatas, quiches and crêpes, each with appetizing variations—that will please any brunch crowd. In subsequent chapters, Gand hits the sweet and savory high points, from pancakes and doughnuts to onion tarts and cheddar grits. She amps up classics like French toast by using sliced almonds and ciabatta bread and transforms others, so that a bacon-scallion scone, for instance, comes out light and flavorful rather than resembling the usual floury hockey puck. She also mixes things up with less common items such as pretzels, pot stickers and a lemony wheat berry salad. Accessible instructions, basic preparation tips and make-ahead hints ensure that both beginners and those who think cooking brunch is too bothersome will find this volume to be inspiring. (Apr.)

“Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw,” says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body's self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating. Through the evidence of research, personal stories (including candid accounts of his own struggles) and examinations of specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, Kessler explains how the desire to eat—as distinct from eating itself—is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar. Although not everyone succumbs, more people of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar. A gentle though urgent plea for reform, Kessler's book provides a simple “food rehab” program to fight back against the industry's relentless quest for profits while an entire country of people gain weight and get sick. According to Kessler, persistence is all that is needed to make the perceptual shifts and find new sources of rewards to regain control. (May)

In a time when How Not to Look Old is a bestseller, and the women who came of age during the 1960s are now in their 60s, outspoken women's movement veteran Levine (Inventing the Rest of Our Lives) advises women 50-plus to reject the desire to recapture youth and acknowledge their great good fortune in arriving at a point where they can creatively enhance the rest of their lives. Citing Madeleine L'Engle's observation, “the great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been,” Levine uses this book to air and explore her own feelings, and those of other women, about moving from the “Fuck-You Fifties” to a pleasanter, stress-defusing outlook characterized by a growing ability “to not take lesser things too seriously.” She offers a 10-step strategy for avoiding a descent into “The Fertile Void,” where late-midlife women find themselves in a state of confusion and lost self-confidence. The self-help lessons are nothing new: “be your age, not your stage”; take responsibility for your physical and emotional life; “accept that you are not who you were, only older”; use what you already know. Advertising-style jargon and nonsensical slogans get in the way of an otherwise promising positive message. (Apr.)

Blech (Inventing Disease and Pushing Pills) presents research from the U.S. and Europe and opinions of medical professionals pointing to exercise as the key to health and longevity and a powerful way to significantly cut health-care costs. Now an accepted part of cardiac care, exercise, says Blech, remains untapped to prevent, treat and even heal type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, psychiatric disorders, chronic pain, cognitive impairment and learning disabilities. Biologically, Blech notes, humans are hunter/gatherers and were made to be continuously active. As societies gain convenience through technology, people become more sedentary and vulnerable to serious physical and mental decline typically attributed to aging. In fact, Blech states, this decline is like the wasting that begins in patients confined to bed for just a few days. Looking to the future, he includes preliminary findings on the positive impact exercise has on chronic fatigue patients and children with AD/HD. While he offers some easy ways to be more active, Blech's most frequently voiced news is good: a half hour of moderate, daily walking can make a big difference. (Mar.)

Stewart leaves no craft behind in this extensive compilation covering every craft for the DIY set, from albums and scrapbooks to wreaths. With more than 1,000 photos and 100 line drawings, Stewart provides step-by-step instructions for something as simple as making a shell soap dish to the more complicated marbleizing paper. Fans of Stewart, from kids to adults, will not be disappointed with the range of crafts, from folded-paper projects, photo-printed pillows, quilting and candle making to oldies-but-goodies like tissue paper flowers, rubber stamping and decoupage. Each subject is arranged in alphabetical order, and begins with an overview of the craft and the supplies needed, then continues with variations on the featured craft and tips for success: for example, with the chapter “Nature Crafts,” Stewart focuses on acorns, pinecones and shells, then within the chapter shows the reader how to whipstitch, how to make an acorn pin cushion, pinecone flowers, shell-covered pots, etc. With its spring publication, this must-have book will be sure to make its way into the hands of many lucky crafters in time for Mother's Day. (Mar.)

With Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 21, 2009, four people—three survivors and one former Nazi youth leader—consider its impact on the direction of their postwar lives.

Not many children who entered Auschwitz lived to tell the tale. The American judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Czechoslovakia-born Buergenthal, is one of the few. A 10-year-old inmate in August 1944 at Birkenau, Buergenthal was one of the death camp's youngest prisoners. He miraculously survived, thanks, among others, to a friendly kapo who made him an errand boy. Buergenthal's authentic, moving tale reveals that his lifelong commitment to human rights sprang from the ashes of Auschwitz. 16 b&w photos, 1 map. (Apr. 20)

Polish-born Kramer, president of the Holocaust Resource Foundation at Kean University, was a teenager when her family and others hid from the Nazis in a secret bunker, rescued by a former housekeeper and her husband, a reputed drunken anti-Semite who turned out to be an avenging angel. Kramer's extensive recollections range from a liaison that threatened the household and daily squabbles in the tomblike underground quarters where food was scarce to their fear of discovery by the Nazis and the shock and desperation of learning about relatives and friends who had been killed. Her sister was sold out by a neighbor boy for a few liters of vodka. This vividly detailed and taut narrative is a fitting tribute to the bravery of victims and righteous gentiles alike. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Apr. 21)

Reiss and one of her sisters were hidden during WWII with a family of Dutch farmers, and at the urging of her husband, Jim, an American Jew, she returned to Holland with her daughters in the summer of 1969 to steep herself in the war she had survived. The trip resulted in her 1972 bestselling memoir, the Newbery Honor book The Upstairs Room. Jim, too, visited Holland and met the people who had sheltered his wife, only to return to New York before his wife and daughter, and commit suicide at the age of 37. As Reiss wrestles with the notion that life is ”one continuous good-bye,” where loved ones can just vanish, she weaves together memories of her uneasy postwar relationship with her saviors, uneducated, often slovenly peasants who repeatedly boasted about their heroics; of Jim's tortuous relationship with a mentally unbalanced mother who conceived him to save a failing marriage. This is a ruminative, plaintive cry by a Holocaust survivor who wonders if her own childhood anguish desensitized her to her spouse's suffering. (Mar.)

A former German and women's studies professor at UC–Santa Barbara, Mahlendorf grew up in a small town in Silesia and was a squad leader in the Hitler Youth who embraced Hitler as a father substitute after the death of her own father, a former SS member, in 1935 and also in rebellion against her mother who disapproved of the Nazis. Her escape from a group suicide pact in the wake of Hitler's suicide was a first step in her denazification and eventual acceptance of her culpability in the Holocaust, an open-ended process that gained a feminist twist as she realized how politics were personal under Nazism. An eye-opening, honest and absorbing account of how evil takes root and flourishes among ordinary people. Illus. (Mar. 28)