First published in Mexico as Los señores del narco in 2010, this dry translation brings Mexican investigative journalist Hernández’s exposé about drug trafficking in Mexico to an English-speaking audience. Five years in the making, it’s an in-depth, unforgiving look at the deep-rooted corruption that has allowed the cartels to flourish; they now influence and control vast swaths of the country. Numerous anecdotes and interviews flesh out a decades-long narrative, touching on everything from CIA and DEA involvement, to how the drug lords run their empires from prison, to the way these powerful men live and die. It’s a scathing, sobering report, as Hernández lays the blame not just on the drug cartels, but on “all those who exercise everyday power from behind a false halo of legality” to make their “law of ‘silver or lead’ ” a reality. While appendices containing glossaries of acronyms and short bios do much to reduce reader confusion, there’s still an immense and exhausting amount of information to absorb. Those willing to slog through the dense bits will find a thought-provoking portrait of the crime and corruption that dominates our southerly neighbor. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

Though divorce and remarriage rates are on the rise, the dynamics of blended families are not well understood. They function differently than traditional families, and troubleshooting can be extremely difficult. Scarf (Intimate Partners), a visiting fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center, draws from extensive interviews she conducted over the course of more than a decade, examining possible remarriage scenarios—both good and bad—and solutions to common problems. Right off the bat, she warns readers that remarriage will likely require even more hard work and understanding in order to be successful than a first marriage. She bases her analysis on Dr. Patricia Papernow’s “architectural model” and goes through each of five “structural” challenges to be expected in a remarriage (e.g., “the uniting of two disparate family cultures” and the friction of different parenting styles), as well as “the Great Unspoken”: money. Scarf’s writing is technical but accessible, however her advice is relatively ho-hum. Still, the eight extended case studies featured in the book offer intimate and candid glimpses of the struggles faced by remarried couples and their families. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Sept.)

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Cockburn, a radical journalist and Nation columnist who died in July 2012, casts a jaundiced, jolly eye on passing scenery in this stimulating if erratic miscellany. In these short, sharp pieces, Cockburn (Corruptions of Empire) covers 18 years of U.S. politics and history, from Monicagate through Occupy Wall Street; recounts travels through America; eulogizes family and friends (and damns nemesis Christopher Hitchens for “constant public drunkenness and brutish rudeness”); and expounds his idiosyncratic version of left-wing politics. Cockburn issues his usual scabrous denunciations—of American military adventures, Wall Street, every Democrat from the Clintons to the “slithery” Obama, and of anyone who was spineless enough to vote for them. Meanwhile he embraces gun culture and conservative populism, which he finds more temperamentally congenial than the politically correct left in the U.S. Cockburn’s stylish prose is full of erudition, ribald gossip, and pithy insight, but under hard scrutiny, it’s not always convincing, reliable, or coherent. He calls Gerald Ford “America’s greatest president” and swats down dubious conspiracy theories only to float his own. (He blames ex-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s call-girl scandal on a right-wing plot.) No matter, Cockburn’s gleefully contrarian punditry makes for an entertaining read. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

British travel writer Wheeler (Terra Incognita) narrates the journeys of six 19th-century Englishwomen whose battles “to be themselves in a man’s world as late middle age loomed” were transformed by their sojourns—and in some instances, immigration—to a burgeoning America: Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and a popular writer herself; Fanny Kemble, an actress turned unhappy slave-plantation wife turned abolitionist; radical social commentator Harriet Martineau; Illinois homesteader Rebecca Burland; invalid Isabella Bird, whose rugged adventures in Colorado put her illnesses into remission; and Jane Austen’s niece, Catherine Hubback, who reinvented herself in Gold Rush–era San Francisco. Wheeler creates vivid portraits of these female adventurers with vastly differing personalities and experiences, but she conveys a depressing lack of feminist awareness, describing postmenopausal years as “frumpy” and “the last gray chapters of female lives,” referring to these brave women as her “girls,” and selecting them as subjects “based on feelings of sympathy and empathic mockery.” She seems shocked that their stories and tenacity “revealed a land as exotic as any youthful Xanadu.” The narrative includes detours into American history and minibiographies of male icons, including Erskine Caldwell, Al Cap, Buffalo Bill Cody, and John Steinbeck. Wheeler’s parallel travelogue distracts enough to seem self-indulgent but is too fragmentary to add much insight. 47 b&w illus. and maps. Agent: Kathy Robbins, Robbins Office. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

In this collection, British conservationist and poet Padel (Tigers in Red Weather), the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, muses on the transient natures of creatures high and low, which she classifies using two types: “Go and Stay,” which encompasses both the spread of prehistoric plants from sea to land and the erratic movement of humans; and “Go and Come Back,” which includes birds going south for the winter and salmon swimming upstream to spawn. The book is structured as a mixture of poetry and prose, and, as Padel explains, “the prose interludes are not essays but introductions to each run of poems.” However, the poems in each set vary in topic to such a degree that the prose introduction, in trying to mirror that variety, ceases to feel like an introduction and instead becomes like a poem of its own. Migrations depicted in the poems include cells replicating courtesy of DNA helicase; fruit bats flying to Congo and pollinating the jungles; and refugees from Cuba floating across the ocean on a raft of chairs. Unfortunately, the prose passages are so lyrical that Padel undercuts the power of her poems, and scientific facts bog down the poetry—especially when those facts appeared previously in the introductions to various sections. The writing is beautiful, but the book often repeats itself. Agent: Robert Kirby, United Agents (London). (Sept.)

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U.C. Davis sociologist Martin (The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics) recounts a century of efforts to repeal or sharply curtail the federal income tax, which was instituted in 1913. His book pays homage and is a worthy counterpart to Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward’s classic Poor People’s Movements. The anti-tax movement, which “defined the rich as the constituency [it] sought to benefit” and which was led by community organizers from the right, borrowed methods of mobilizing local groups from such liberal causes as women’s suffrage. While the anti-tax advocates never succeeded, they had a real impact when their cause was linked with related initiatives, such as a federal balanced-budget amendment. (In 1982, the Senate passed a constitutional amendment that combined the two proposals, but it wasn’t backed by a two-thirds majority in the House, as is required for it to be enacted.) And the movement influenced tax legislation—especially laws advanced by Coolidge, Reagan, and G.W. Bush, who were all sympathetic to the cause. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, for example, reduced marginal rates for the wealthiest from 70% to 50%. Martin explores the movement’s influence on the GOP during the past 30 years, noting that the party has come to be dominated by “anti-tax campaigners” and predicting that “rich people’s movements will continue to influence public policy... and perhaps even increase... the extremes of inequality in America.” 6 b&w illus. (Sept.)

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Having lost her longtime pet dog, Massachusetts journalist Luttrell volunteers to help train service dogs on the weekends; the rest of the week, the animals are taught by inmates as part of the Prison PUP program. She hits the jackpot with the second dog assigned to her—Daisy, an affable yellow Labrador puppy. Even as Luttrell struggles to follow the program’s guidelines and not simply play with Daisy, the connection she and her family form with the dog creates a complicated tension. On the one hand, keeping Daisy would be a dream come true, but that could only happen if Daisy flunked out of the National Education for Assistance Dog Services program. That failure would not only tear at Luttrell, but would be devastating to Keith, the inmate responsible for Daisy on weekdays. This moving warts-and-all narrative explores themes of redemption, as Luttrell struggles to reconcile the Keith she knows through the dog-training program and the man responsible for the crime that landed him behind bars for decades. The author’s empathy is impressive given her own troubled past; she relates those struggles, as well as her rocky relationship with her teenage daughter, with candor that will win over readers generally left cold by animal books. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

In a wacky and bold memoir about identity in this cockeyed social media environment, Cicirelli amuses himself at the expense of his relatives, friends, and Facebook family by concocting a fake virtual self that goes completely bonkers. Cicirelli—a 26-year-old Walter Mitty–type who feels life is passing him by, with all of his Facebook pals achieving undeserved success—decides to shake up his existence, creating a raucous Web version of himself with a mischievous, gonzo sensibility but completely lacking in conscience. He blames the excesses on his hell-raising bloodlines, but says he never thought his “Fake Dave” online persona would become popular. He describes tapping into “a part of me who liked… seeing how far I could take it.” Those who follow Dave on Facebook react with shock and horror as they watch his electronic double go through various fake life-changing episodes trashing an Amish buggy, and clashing with the faithful and the law before the scam runs out of steam. Cicirelli’s comic online fever-dream is told with style and is a knockout. Agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

Despite our ostensible admiration of our men and women in arms, Americans have “offloaded” the full burden of war onto their shoulders—with dismal results, argues Boston University history professor and Army vet Bacevich (Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War) in this impassioned and painfully convincing polemic. Our Founding Fathers proclaimed that all free people must make sacrifices when the nation goes to war. As late as WWII, the draft affected nearly everyone, with most people having a family member, friend, or colleague in the service. F.D.R.’s government raised taxes and instituted price controls and rationing, yet few complained. Bacevich emphasizes that eliminating the draft in 1973 sowed the seeds of disaster. When Bush announced the war on terror in 2001, the president mobilized volunteer troops, but not the nation; he urged Americans to “enjoy life,” and he cut taxes. Since borrowing paid the bill, and there was no draft, few complained. When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan turned sour, protests were mild compared to the upheavals over Vietnam. Bacevich asserts bluntly that a disengaged and compliant citizenry has reduced military service from a universal duty to a matter of individual choice, allowing our leaders to wage war whenever (and for however long) they choose—with little to fear from an electorate who are neither paying nor perishing. (Sept. 10)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink

As he headed to college, Edmundson (Why Read?) told his father that he might pursue a prelaw track. Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a lawyer, he figured that lawyers made decent money. His father, he says, “detonated”: “He told me that I was going to college only once, and that while I was there I had better study what I wanted,” which was literature. In this collection of 16 essays, some of which have appeared in Harper’s and the New York Times, University of Virginia English professor Edmundson explores how higher education has devolved into a place where “preprofessionalism is the order of the day”; where the study of literature “has become arid and abstract”; and where universities behave like corporations, teachers like service providers, and students like customers. He offers, at turns, a meditation, a jeremiad, some musings, and some possible solutions. The questions (what to teach? what to study?) find answers in the values Edmundson discovers in becoming an English major: “Love for language, hunger for life, openness and a quest for truth or truths.” Addressing teachers, students, and parents, Edmundson defends the intellectual and spiritual value, even the usefulness, of the “scholarly enclave” and “seeking knowledge so as to make the lives of other human beings better.” (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/14/2013 | Details & Permalink