Tweet		| Reader Comments

The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done Peter Miller. Avery, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-58333-390-7

Insects are social creatures, perhaps even more social—in the strict scientific sense—than humans since they lack such socially obstructing attributes as ego, personality, and opinion. Miller, senior editor at National Geographic, examines hives, mounds, colonies, and swarms, whose complex systems of engagement and collective decision making have catalyzed innovations in engineering and can suggest solutions to such problems as climate change. The sophisticated system of decentralized interdependence exhibited by termites invites a lesson on how to respond to emergencies, while the chemical-based communications among African ants helped officials at Southwest Airlines define their seating policy. Insects, birds, and fish variously demonstrate the plausibility and success of disorganization leading to self-organization and leaderless processes. Adding understanding to the dark side of group dynamics and, inevitably, mob behavior is the study of locusts, innocuous until they become part of a crowd. Miller informs, engages, entertains, and even surprises in this thought-provoking study of problem making and problem solving, and through the comparison of human and insect scenarios, shows how social cues and signals can either bring about social cooperation or destruction. (Aug.)

The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth Charles Wohlforth. St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-37737-3

Are we, by nature, like hermit crabs, wearing “discarded snail shells as armor against other hermit crabs, whom they attack in hopes of getting a better shell?” This wide-ranging book confronts the “competitive paradigm” to contend that “stronger than our greed and materialism, most of us feel a connection to other people, to animals and wild places, and when we're faced with a choice between meaning and material gain, we prefer fairness and the bonds of the heart over getting ahead.” Wohlforth, L.A. Times Book Prize winner (The Whale and the Supercomputer) and lifelong Alaskan, takes readers on a heart-wrenching journey through the tumultuous history of the state and its fragile land and seascape, from the complex, mysterious culture of killer whales through the clash of Native worldview and Hobbesian self-interest with the arrival of Europeans, the origins of the conservation movement and its ongoing battle with development, and the devastating Valdez oil spill. Wohlforth concludes, optimistically, provocatively, but convincingly, that “stepping off the material treadmill isn't denial, it's freedom.” (June)

Design and Truth Robert Grudin. Yale Univ., $26 (224p) ISBN 978-0-300-16140-3

The faddish exaltation of design as an all-encompassing force reaches an apogee in this scattershot manifesto. English prof Grudin (Book) discusses a hodgepodge of phenomena as exemplars of good or bad design, including St. Peter's Basilica, Edsel automobiles, Microsoft Word, Heidegger's philosophy, human liberty, and a Velcro doohickey he rigged up to fix his TV remote. Grudin has a cosmic conception of his subject (“the entire universe is a knowledge design”) and draws correspondingly vast conclusions that go beyond engineering and aesthetics into morality and politics: good design, he contends, expresses honesty and integrity, while bad design embodies falsehood, corruption, and abusive power. Unfortunately, these notions get lost in a rambling text that jumbles together perceptive criticism (the artist Christo's installations were “a massive multiplication of banalities”) with self-help exhortations and leadership bromides (“corporate activity on all levels should be value-driven”). There's little payoff to Grudin's inflation of design into a theory of everything beyond abstractions (“The energy field created by a given design is situated within the larger energy that is the marketplace”) and clunky analogies (“The U. S. Constitution is the design equivalent of the Jaguar XKE”). The result is a promising but ill-designed treatise. Photos. (May)

Delia's Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America Molly Rogers. Yale Univ., $37.50 (384p) ISBN 978-0-300-11548-2

Photographs of slaves reveal much about the men who took them in this perceptive study of antebellum racial ideology. Historian Rogers examines a cache of daguerreotype portraits and nudes of South Carolina slaves made in 1850 for naturalist Louis Agassiz, which he displayed to buttress his theory that Africans were a distinct species unrelated to whites. She uses the pictures as a window into 19th-century racial science and its intersection with Southern economic interests, and tries to illuminate the perspective of the slaves by pairing their photos with short fictional vignettes written from their imagined viewpoints. Rogers is preoccupied with critical theory (“the idea that a photographic image conveys Truth is thus a highly unstable concept”), and her fictional epiphanies—“He did not wish to be on the ocean, but he wished to have it nearby so he could feel its movement on the air”—sometimes evoke a writers' workshop more than a plantation. Still, her well-researched history paints a rich panorama of the mental world of slavery—the slaves' anxiety and humiliation, the planters' callousness and hypocrisy, the corrupt pseudoscience that explained it all as natural law rather than human oppression. Photos. (May)

Authentic Patriotism: Restoring America's Founding Ideals Through Progressive Action Stephen P. Kiernan. St. Martin's, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-37911-7

Kiernan (Last Rights) urges Americans to take on the challenges facing our society in this heartfelt look at everyday heroes who are reshaping society. Patriotism, Kiernan argues, transcends empty flag waving and political posturing, and lies instead in our service to each other and our willingness to sacrifice for the sake of our country and its people. For the author, authentic patriotism is found in the actions of people who take on our most profound social problems—problems the free market ignores in the absence of a clear profit to be had, and that our government has grown too slow moving and detached to effectively address. For example, retired pharmaceutical researcher Jack McConnell saw thousands of people in his community struggling without adequate health care and launched a free clinic that has grown into the Volunteers in Medicine program with 78 clinics in 24 states. Attorney Barry Scheck could not bear the injustice of innocent people languishing in prisons and founded the Innocence Project; today, hundreds of innocent prisoners have been exonerated. With these and other examples, the author constructs a stirring argument against apathy and for engagement. (May)

Hot (Broke) Messes: How to Have Your Latte and Drink It Too Nancy Trejos. Grand Central/Business Plus, $13.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-446-55542-5

A new twist on the pink-covered “girl's guide to finance” trend is constructed by Trejos, a personal finance writer for the Washington Post, who herself hit financial bottom. Broke and deep in debt, she found herself having to call her hard-working, blue-collar, immigrant parents for money—all the while publicly advising others on their monetary well-being. She sheepishly admits having made every personal finance mistake under the sun, and through a myriad of stories from her own epic money screwups, she offers advice and resources for the similarly beleaguered. Trejos covers all the usual suspects of get-control-of-your-finances guides aimed at young women: credit scores, car payments, student loan payments, debt, health insurance, and accountability. What makes this one stand out is how relatable the author is and how poignant her situation: that someone ostensibly well schooled in the ins and outs of money wrangling can make the same mistakes as the rest of us. Peppy packaging and an encouraging tone should help this one get some traction. (May)

Everything Is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma Emma Larkin. Penguin Press, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59420-257-5

Larkin (Finding George Orwell in Burma), an American journalist writing under a pseudonym, reports on the unreported (and suppressed) story of the May 2008 cyclone Nargis, which devastated southwestern Burma, causing over 100,000 deaths. Larkin, who has been covering the country for the past 15 years, visited Burma immediately after the storm to collect testimonies of the cyclone survivors and the horrific destruction they witnessed. Many of their harrowing stories surpass the images of the 2004 tsunami and the Haiti earthquake in terms of utter hopelessness, partly because the government did little to nothing to help cyclone victims, initially refused international disaster aid, and willfully withheld information about survivors and their needs. Once the regime began to allow aid into the country, weeks after the disaster, it siphoned off funds to fill its own coffers. With indefatigable shoe-leather journalism—she visits decimated villages one by one, even while hampered by her tenuous visa status and the government's suppression of free speech and the free press—Larkin reconstructs what happened in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis and indicts the insulated regime for creating a desperately untenable situation for its people. (May)

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality Manjit Kumar. Norton, $27.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-393-07829-9

With vigor and elegance, Kumar describes the “clash of titans” that took place in the world of physics in the early 20th century, between physicists who did and those who did not believe in the quantum—the strange concept that we now know to be the underpinning of reality. The titans in Kumar's account of the conflict are Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. In 1900, Max Planck discovered that electromagnetic radiation and the energy of light are transmitted not in a continuous flow but in small packets called “quanta” (singular, quantum). Bohr applied the idea of quantum to electrons, leading to the development of quantum mechanics. Bohr's theory explained experimental results that were inexplicable in classical theory. Einstein rejected Bohr's theory overturning reality in dangerous but also thrilling ways. The clash culminated at the 1927 Solway conference. Kumar, founding editor of Prometheus and a consulting science editor for Wired UK, recounts this meaty, dense, exciting story, filled with vivid characters and sharp insights. With physics undergoing another revolution today, Kumar reminds us of a time when science turned the universe upside down. 16 pages of photos. (May)

Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature Emma Donoghue. Knopf, $27.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-307-27094-8

“The past is a wild party; check your preconceptions at the door,” warns British literary historian and novelist Donoghue (Slammerkin) in her comprehensive catalogue of a thousand years of Western literature. “[I]n Western culture passion between women is always a big deal, whether presented as glorious or shameful, angelic or monstrous,” she claims. These passions are not always, strictly speaking, lesbian, Donoghue says, as she sorts them into categories (e.g., cross-dressing and the resulting “ 'accident' of same-sex desire' ”; women friends who remain inseparable despite all obstacles). She links them to historical developments and deciphers their sometimes obscure language. “Morbid,” for example, was often a code word for “lesbian” in the 19th century. Delivering on her promise of a wild party, Donoghue reads Clarissa as a rivalry between Lovelace and Anna for Clarissa's heart; she considers Jane Eyre as an early schoolgirl novel (note Jane's crush on her schoolmate Helen), whose form would be adapted by early lesbian coming-out novels. With her excellent reading list, readers can test for themselves the “unexpected continuity” Donoghue finds in the presence of passion between women in Western literature. 19 photos. (May 26)

The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America Robert Love. Viking, $27.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-670-02175-8

Eastern spirituality and Western commercialism fuse in this flamboyant tale of an iconic American guru. Journalist Love tells the story of Pierre Bernard, a yoga adept from Iowa who made a splash at the turn of the 20th century by enduring bloody piercings and lacerations under trance. His Tantrik Order of disciples in San Francisco and New York soon gained notoriety; after police raided his schools, Bernard was accused of seducing girls and conducting sacred orgies. Delighted tabloids dubbed him “The Great Oom.” Bernard rehabilitated himself in the 1920s with the Clarkstown Country Club, a yoga-themed resort and rehab center for the rich on the Hudson, financed by a parade of heiresses who fell under his sway. Love makes his hero a quintessentially American character who yoked his mystic bent to a brash entrepreneurialism; with the riches he made from his yoga initiatives, he started a chemical company, an airport, a semipro baseball team with a midget second baseman, and a trained elephant act. Love credits Bernard with changing public perception of yoga from dissolute exoticism to healthful normalcy, but this colorful, frenetic tale reminds us that money is America's true religion. Photos. (May)

The Finger: A Handbook Angus Trumble. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-374-15498-1

Trumble (A Brief History of the Smile), curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, blends art history, anatomy, and etymology in this analysis of finger lore that originated as a lecture to Australian orthopedic surgeons. Contrary to the OED, Trumble contends that the thumb is a finger. In the fraught world of human relationships, he says, the handshake is indispensable, and a proper one must include “the enclosing clasp of the thumb.” Queen Elizabeth I owned hundreds of pairs of gloves and gave gloves as gifts in a sophisticated diplomatic game; in portraying his right hand expensively gloved in a self-portrait, Rubens was affirming his rank; and Eleanor Roosevelt was the first first lady to wear colored nail polish. Trumble enumerates the necessities of fingers: they are indispensable in playing the violin and in sex; ancient Romans could count to one million using their 10 digits; babies' discovery of pointing with the index finger as a means of getting attention seems partly innate. This prodigiously researched work offers many gold nuggets of wisdom to a rarefied audience, though it's verbose and esoteric in the extreme. 22 b&w illus. (May)

Henry Clay: The Essential American David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. Random, $30 (624p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6726-8

Yet another hulking biography of an early American political giant, this one, unnecessarily clogged with detail, is still a fitting, up-to-date, and highly readable account of Henry Clay's life (1777—1852) and achievements. In vigorous prose, the Heidlers (coauthors, The War of 1812), experienced scholars of pre—Civil War America, relate the emergence of the Kentuckian who served in the House (as Speaker) and Senate, as secretary of state, and as repeatedly failed presidential candidate. A man of enormous gifts—the beloved “mirror of his country and its aspirations”—Clay bestrode Washington and the Senate as member of the “Great Triumvirate” with John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster and did his best as the Great Compromiser to hold the nation together as it splintered over slavery. That he failed, as the authors show, was not his fault: even great congressional leadership couldn't save the Union. The authors bring verve and clarity to Clay's struggles, even if they add little to what's known. They also make one yearn for more statesmen and stateswomen, who, like Clay, could say, “I had rather be right than be president.” 32 pages of b&w photos. (May)

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern Victor Davis Hanson. Bloomsbury Press, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-1-60819-165-9

Since 9/11, Davis, director of the Hoover Institution's group on military history and contemporary conflict, has emerged as a major commentator on war making and politics. This anthology brings together 13 of Hanson's essays and reviews, revised and re-edited. They have appeared over the past decade in periodicals from the American Spectator to the New York Times. Hanson's introductory generalization that war is a human enterprise that seems inseparable from the human condition structures such subjects as an eloquent answer to the question “Why Study War?” a defense of the historicity of the film 300, about the Persian Wars, in a masterpiece of envelope pushing, and a comprehensive and dazzling analysis of why America fights as she does. He explains why, though a lesser historian than Thucydides, Xenophon retains a “timeless attraction” and analyzes war and democracy in light of America's decreasing willingness to intervene in places like Rwanda or Darfur. The pieces are well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives. Hanson's arguments may not convince everyone, but cannot be dismissed. His critics and admirers will be pleased to have these pieces available under one cover. (May)

Voices of the Foreign Legion: The History of the World's Most Famous Fighting Corps Adrian D. Gilbert. Skyhorse (Norton, dist.), $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-61608-032-7

Military historian Gilbert (Sniper: The Skills, the Weapons, and the Experiences) focuses on the French Foreign Legion, beginning with its 1831 formation by royal decree as an infantry force for overseas service. Gilbert gained access to the Imperial War Museum sound archive along with permission to use material from that key source. The book consists of excerpts from these and other firsthand accounts skillfully linked to vivify his informative and insightful interpolations. He sets the scenes with a vivid backdrop, letting the first-person passages take center stage. The reader peruses the nightmarish horrors of the battlefields but also the daily life of barracks, barrooms, and brothels, such as the congaïs (“young girls”) in 1950s Indochina. One soldier wrote: “Cheerful and hardworking, they knew, biblically, very nearly everyone in the battalion and gave not one damn for rank.” The history traces the legion through colonial and postcolonial eras, through both world wars, Vietnam, Algeria, Bosnia, and the Congo. These vibrant legionnaire voices are agonized, bitter, brutal, fearful, and haunting, but some speak with pride and praise (“It's a soldier's dream”), recalling the legion as a “life-changing” experience. Maps. (May)

The Living Constitution David A. Strauss. Oxford Univ., $21.95 (176p) ISBN 978-0-19-537727-9

The concept of a “living Constitution” that evolves over time is not a formula for untethered judicial activism but a necessary—and venerable—mode of interpretation, argues this scintillating treatise. University of Chicago law prof Strauss mounts a devastating attack on “originalism” (the doctrine most vociferously advocated by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) that constitutional law should hew to the written Constitution and the intent of its framers; such an approach, Strauss argues, is rife with contradictions, fraudulent history (it's often impossible to know what the framers meant or how they might think about modern-day issues), and ideological bias. The more fruitful—and historically dominant—interpretive school of living constitutionalism, he contends, follows a tacit common-law approach focused less on the text than on judicial precedent and changing notions of fairness and sound policy. Strauss offers meticulous accounts of how common-law processes revolutionized the consensus on core constitutional issues like freedom of speech and civil rights; indeed, he insists, they can transform our understanding of the Constitution more profoundly than formal amendments do. Writing in prose that laymen will find lucid and inviting, Strauss makes the usually fuzzy idea of a living Constitution rigorous and substantive. (May)

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris Graham Robb. Norton, $26.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-383-06724-8

With the same exhilarating sense of historical adventure and narrative elegance he brought to The Discovery of France, Robb's new book might be called The Discovery of Paris. Through a series of chronological episodes, Robb relates little-known events in the city's history, each featuring a fascinating figure, some well-known (Napoleon or the great criminal-turned-sleuth Vidocq), some less so (Henry Murger, the struggling writer whose Latin Quarter vignettes became La Vie de Bohème). Each figure discovers or reveals an unknown Paris. In the 1770s Charles-Axel Guillaumot explored the ancient quarries beneath the city and built the catacombs there; a little-noticed carved panel at Notre-Dame is at the heart of a 1937 episode involving espionage, alchemy, and a future nuclear inferno. The most thrilling chapter tells the supposedly true tale (the original records are lost) behind The Count of Monte Cristo; only the tale of actress and singer Juliette Greco framed as a shooting script fails to entice. With his profound knowledge of Paris, its treasures and squalor, its heroes and victims, Robb reveals a city of not only lights but darkness, which, though discovered, remains unknowable and alluring. (Apr.)

Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Became Mark Twain Roy Morris Jr. Simon & Schuster, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4165-9866-4

His 1872 Roughing It was Mark Twain's sanitized version of his trip west between 1861 and 1866, and Morris (Fraud of the Century) utilizes contemporaneous letters and diaries to separate fact from fiction about a watershed odyssey that transformed an itinerant printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, and Confederate guerrilla into journalist, author, and stage performer. Unsuited to soldiering, fun-loving 25-year-old Samuel Clemens accompanied his older brother Orion cross-country by stagecoach from Missouri to Orion's patronage appointment in the newly created Nevada Territory. Clemens's encounters included notorious gunfighter Jack Slade, with whom he shared an innocuous cup of coffee, and the indomitable polygamist Mormon leader Brigham Young, whom he found kindly and dignified. At a lively Nevada newspaper, Clemens launched his professional writing career and took the name Mark Twain; at a San Francisco paper, he honed his satirical skills and began a complicated friendship with writer Bret Harte; in 1866, he wrote the first modern description of Hawaiian surfing in a Sacramento paper. This latest Twain bicentennial volume is a tale of a high-spirited, gifted humorist finding his voice in the rough-and-tumble of the Wild West—an authoritative and engrossing slice of American history. (Apr.)

The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents Alex Butterworth. Pantheon, $30 (496p) ISBN 978-0-375-42511-0

Historian Butterworth (Pompeii: The Living City) makes a first-rate addition to the growing list of books dealing with terrorism's origins and history. His focus is the alienated young men and women who, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, turned to anarchist and nihilist terrorism. This gripping and unsettling account depicts the movement's rise from the failed Paris Commune of 1871 through the abortive 1905 Russian revolution and its decline into the 1930s. Alternating among Russia, Europe, and America, the author produces a narrative packed with colorful figures, plots, assassinations, and bombings, betrayals, persecution, heroism, and martyrdom. Despite inflicting great damage (including assassinating a czar, an American president, and many European leaders), it failed. Successful attacks produced only more oppression. However, the first “war on terror” also failed. Police wreaked havoc among plotters (and many innocents), but the terror declined only after WWI, when rising communism and fascism attracted a new generation of disaffected idealists. Delivering a virtuoso performance, Butterworth adds the hope that history will not repeat itself and that a successful new bloody ideology will not create the next scourge. 8 pages of b&w illus. (Apr. 20)

Lifestyle

Food

Pig: King of the Southern Table James Villas. Wiley, $34.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-470-19401-0

If pig is indeed king, then there is trouble at the castle, for Villas (Dancing in the Lowcountry) has stormed the gates and had at him, leaving no sweetbread, shoulder, or chop untasted. So let the commoners rejoice: here are 300 recipes from Southern hog heaven that are juicy, flirtatious, and, at times, scary. Brave hearts will want to immediately dive into the Variety and Special Meats chapter for some deviled pork liver; hog's head stew; and brains and eggs. The upper crust might prefer a pork pie. Choices include spicy Tennessee sausage; Pork, Apple and Raisin; or Bacon and Corn. A section on barbecue and ribs includes both North and South Carolina styles of BBQ and half a dozen sparerib options. And where lesser authors might stray off-topic when moving to side dishes, Villas, with 13 cookbooks and two James Beard awards under his belt, knows better. All 39 vegetable and rice dishes are chock full of oink, from the mushy turnips with bacon and pork to the slab bacon hoppin' John. Similarly, there are 20 breads that are decidedly not fat-free. That other Southern king, Elvis, would surely have appreciated the bacon-peanut butter muffins, perhaps chased down with a lard hoecake or some bacon-grease hush puppies. (May)

Sausage Victoria Wise. Ten Speed, $23 (176p) ISBN 978-1-58008-012-5

Clearly authored for those who prefer knowing how the sausage is made, Wise (American Charcuterie) writes with the gentility of a woman who owned and operated her own French-style charcuterie in Berkeley in the 1970s, and with the precision of an author of 12 previous books. Here she guides us through the making of a vast array of sausages that can either be shaped by hand or stuffed into casings. She also provides a variety of international recipes that incorporate the freshly made creations. Chapters are broken out by main ingredient, be it pork, beef, lamb, poultry, or seafood. There are even three vegetarian entries for the tofu, bulgur, and brown rice crowd. The classics are all accounted for, including a chorizo made with plenty of garlic for use in a black bean chili, and a basic lamb and rice sausage for stuffing grape leaves or bell peppers. Sweet Italian sausage, with fennel and thyme, is at the heart of a Pittsburgh-style sausage sandwich, while more exotic options include a Vietnamese-style beef meatball made with mint, cilantro, and Thai fish sauce. A gefilte fish recipe in a book with this title may strike some as culinarily sacrilegious, but Wise justifies the entry, simmers her ground white-fish dumplings in a broth of fish bones and heads, and explains that gefilte is actually the Yiddish word for “stuffed.” (May)

Chocolate Cakes: 50 Great Cakes for Every Occasion Elinor Klivans. Chronicle, $22.95 (144p) ISBN 978-0-8118-6872-3

There's no such thing as too much of a good thing, as this drool-inducing, photo-heavy cookbook proves. Former pastry chef Klivans (Potpies; Big Fat Cookies) turns her attention to the most decadent of desserts, the chocolate cake, finding 50 different approaches. Klivans orients her readers with a narrative about chocolate production, tips for choosing and using chocolate, and basic tips about ingredient and technique in baking, such as beating egg whites. The remainder of the book is organized by cake type (quick and easy; layer cakes; party cakes), and the recipes run the gamut from a basic chocolate-chip loaf to her chocolate yule log and chocolate-apricot pudding cake with chocolate toffee sauce. Some, like her pavlova with chocolate-covered strawberries, and her trifle-like deep-dish white chocolate peaches and cream cake are not technically cakes, but who's counting? Klivans is nothing if not inventive—a basic devil's food recipe serves as a staple for seven other variants. With deft instructions and highly detailed, clearly written recipes, she guides even the least confident baker to a cocoa-dusted kitchen and full-on chocolate ecstasy. Photos. (Apr.)

A Cook's Journey to Japan: Fish Tales and Rice Paddies, 100 Homestyle Recipes from Japanese Kitchens Sarah Marx Feldner. Tuttle, $27.95 (160p) ISBN 978-4-805-31011-3

Feldner, a food enthusiast and Japanophile, offers an intimate and colorful guide to traditional Japanese home cooking in this unique and attractive collection. Focusing on recipes collected from a wide swath of life, from grandmothers to waitresses to fishermen, she highlights often overlooked techniques and ingredients. Most recipes are prefaced by a short story about the individual who shared it, offering glimpses into Japanese culture as well as cuisine. Feldner also offers a short tutorial on cooking tools, a section on techniques, including grating wasabi and pressing tofu, and a particularly helpful guide to essential Japanese ingredients such as burdock and dashi. Recipes are homey and mostly uncomplicated, ranging from pork and leek miso soup and sesame fried chicken to salmon teriyaki and spicy pan-seared eggplant. Desserts and drinks are also well represented, with oolong tea chiffon cake, sugar bread sticks, and gingerade. Feldner also includes a section on the basics, such as stocks and various types of rice. Entertaining, with striking full color photographs throughout, this book shows that Japanese home cooking is more than sushi and noodles, providing new perspective on everyday Japanese home fare. (Apr.)

Parenting

Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs Ellen Galinsky. HarperStudio, $16.99 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-173232-4

Galinsky (Six Stages of Parenthood; Ask the Children) has spent her career observing and analyzing how children learn. Collaborating with top researchers in the science of childhood brain development for the past decade, she identifies seven life skills that help children reach their full potential and unleash their passion to learn. The skills are presented in a readable and accessible volume enlivened by parents' narratives about what works and what doesn't, hints and tips, and over a hundred “suggestions” (games and family activities) for involving kids in the pursuit of learning. Each of seven chapters focuses on one skill, most of them involved with the “executive” (or management) function of the brain, such as focus and self-control, communicating, and critical thinking. Galinsky urges parents to instill in their children a grasp of different kinds of knowledge to best tap inborn “sense” and foster self-motivation. The big message is simple: teaching children to think may be the most important thing a parent can do. It doesn't take a village and it doesn't require fancy courses or equipment—Galinsky's everyday, playful, parent-child learning interactions offer a place to start. Some of the advice may seem self-evident, but it is a valuable, worthwhile resource. (Apr.)

Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, and Helping Your Children's Learning Problems Jane M. Healey. Simon & Schuster, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-416-55641-1

From educational psychologist Healey (Your Child's Growing Mind) comes a parents' guide to learning disorders and the positive steps to avoid or reverse problems accompanying a child's diagnosis. Defining a learning problem as “any innate or acquired characteristic that consistently interferes with one or more aspects of learning,” Healey explains that the way a brain is “wired” accounts for disorders in language arts and math, social and personal organizational skills, and motor and sensory abilities. Whether a development problem becomes a disability (and if medication is appropriate) depends on its severity and expectations made of a child at a given age. Healey provides a very hands-on guide with anecdotal case studies, the latest brain science research data made comprehensible, and plenty of bulleted checklists covering symptoms, action steps, and advice. The first part focuses on the problems and possibilities for “dys-sed” kids; the second part presents the scientific how-and-why of juvenile brain function, the role of genetics, and intelligence and learning styles; the third offers proven techniques and remedies for destressing kids and their environments by limiting distracting or disruptive lifestyle factors. Every chapter features plenty of subheads and pullout questions or quotes, which make the pages visually accessible and help sustain interest in what could be an overwhelming topic. This is a ready reference parents will welcome. (Apr.)

Making Sense of Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Create the Brightest Future for Your Child with the Best Treatment Options James Coplan. Bantam, $23 (448p) ISBN 978-0-553-80681-6

A developmental pediatrician who has worked with children on the autism spectrum for more than 30 years, Coplan pre-sents a detailed analysis of the disorder. In Part I, the author discusses the causes and symptoms. Part II focuses on treatment, including a thorough examination of behavior management techniques and medications, and in Part III the focus is on the family as the child ages. The sibling of an individual with special needs, Coplan has a compassionate voice and a keen understanding of the devastation parents feel upon learning of their child's diagnosis, but he is also determined to confront “sense and nonsense” in autism treatment. He questions the popular theory of a connection to gluten, refutes the assertion that autism results from the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, and argues that while the prevalence of autism is certainly on the rise because of broadening definitions and changes in federal education law, there is not an “epidemic,” as many claim. Though pragmatic, Coplan maintains a hopeful tone; he points out that autism often has a “natural history of improvement over time” and predicts scientific progress as well. This is a comprehensive text dealing with a complex disorder, but it's Coplan's worthy contention that the more parents understand, the better advocates they will be for their child. (Apr.)

Health and Beauty

How to Never Look Fat Again: Over 1,000 Ways to Dress Thinner—Without Dieting! Charla Krupp. Springboard, $26.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-446-54747-5

In How Not to Look Old, Krupp aided readers in their quest to fend off the ravages of age. In this second outing, she puts her style and beauty savvy—gleaned from her work at Glamour, InStyle, More, and People: Style Watch—to work helping women discover and celebrate their slimmer side. Those who know the basics of dressing thin (avoid horizontal stripes; Spanx do wonders for bulgy bits; etc.) and are ready for advanced techniques will be thrilled with this book. And novices who think any derriere looks good in any jean should study up: the woman knows her stuff, as evidenced by loads of revelatory before-and-after photos, plus clever tips and useful lists (e.g., the winter-themed “Swap-outs” chart recommends sleek leather gloves vs. bulky woolly ones). The book is organized by issue, such as big bust, “muffin top + back fat,” and “Buddha belly.” While some of the topics may seem wacky at first (“Are your brows making you look fat?” and “Hiding fat with your bag”), a careful read will reveal that Krupp's advice—delivered in just the right knowledgeable-yet-commiserating tone—makes excellent sense. When it comes to clothes and the female figure, the author understands how proportion, balance, and color make the difference between lumpy and lovely, frumpy and fabulous. (Apr.)

Also on PW

PW's Libraries Page

PW's Best Books of 2011

Tale of the Tablets: Comparing New Devices more...