Relationship Talk

With divorce rates so high, more women need to learn how to forge new relationships than ever before. Speaker Sheila Ellison (The Courage to Be a Single Mother) explains how to do just that in The Courage to Love Again: Creating Happy, Healthy Relationships After Divorce. Various factors may deter women from dating again (e.g., fear of intimacy or failure; past negative experiences; not trusting that one's feelings), and Ellison addresses them, offering ways to move ahead in relationships and life. She covers self-love, expectations, blending lives and even sex, making this a helpful guide for recently single women. (Harper San Francisco, $23.95 224p ISBN 0-06-251750-3; July)

Everyone has a soulmate, says Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Ph.D. And while finding that person can be extremely frustrating, it is nonetheless possible. In Heart & Soul: A Spiritual Course for Meeting Your Perfect Soulmate, Guiley (Breakthrough Intuition) lays out meditational exercises, prayers, feng shui practices and other techniques readers can use to find the love of their life. Guiley says there are many kinds of soulmate relationships: family, friends and romantic; all foster love and happiness and promote spiritual growth for both partners. Her book reflects this variety, including advice regarding many kinds of soulmate relationships. (Berkley, $13 paper 256p ISBN 0-425-18476-5; July 2)

Approaching the study of relationships from a psychotherapist's perspective is How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving. Teacher and writer David Richo gives practical and spiritual exercises for couples and singles who want to have mature and lasting relationships. Emphasizing paying attention and letting go, Richo gently and compassionately coaches readers on what he calls the five A's: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing. His book, which proposes "letting go of ego," will help those seeking personal transformation in their relationships. (Shambhala, $14.95 paper 240p ISBN 1-57062-812-2; June)

Recent Studies Show…

A rabble-rousing college student in the 1960s, a gay liberation activist from the 1970s on, and a former director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Public Policy Institute in the 1990s, University of Illinois history professor John D'Emilio witnessed first-hand the flowering of gay rights and gay acceptance in American culture, as well as the political backlash. He records these in The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture. The previously published personal essays, speeches, reviews and biographical sketches cover such subjects as the career of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, the evolution of D'Emilio's sex life, the search for the "gay gene" and Pat Buchanan's homophobic star turn during the 1992 Republican National Convention. (Duke Univ, $18.95 paper 328p ISBN 0-8223-2930-1; Oct.)

Conflicts between Korean store owners and inner-city black customers have become a familiar symbol of American racial tensions, yet these clashes are really quite rare, argues University of California—Irvine sociology professor Jennifer Lee. Her study Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America examines the relationship between African-American, Korean and Jewish store owners and their black customers in New York and Philadelphia. Interviewing merchants and customers and analyzing the economics of small-business ownership, she shows that the parties on both sides of the counter strive to make interactions pleasant and routine, yet she also examines how and why tensions can periodically escalate. (Harvard Univ., $35 256p ISBN 0-674-00897-9; Sept.)

With more landfills per square mile than any other American city, Chicago has had some particularly colorful controversies over waste disposal over the last century. University of Colorado—Boulder sociology professor David Naguib Pellow traces these conflicts in Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago, examining how poor neighborhoods come to be burdened with a disproportionate amount of pollution and refuse. He offers background on Chicago's waste management from the 1880s to the present, focusing in particular on the struggle for environmental justice of the last two decades, and shows how "environmentally friendly" technologies like recycling plants and waste-to-energy incinerators actually end up adding to the pollution in poor neighborhoods. (MIT, $24.95 240p ISBN 0-262-16212-1; Sept.)

Hip Sway

In time for the 25th anniversary of his death, the king of rock is memorialized in Elvis: A Celebration, a photo book featuring over 600 images of Presley throughout his life. Compiled by author and book editor Mike Evans (The Art of the Beatles), the volume shows Elvis as a seventh-grader in Tupelo, Miss.; being inducted into the army; crying with his father over the death of his mother; signing autographs on the Paramount Studio lot; performing in his white fringed jumpsuits and romping with Priscilla and Lisa Marie. The book includes candids, movie stills and studio shots, all identified with detailed captions that together provide a thumbnail history of Presley's career. (DK, $50 608p ISBN 0-7894-8902-3; Aug.)

From Rumba to rap, Paris-based writer Maya Roy surveys the history of Cuban music, showing how the island's colonial history led to a unique fusion of musical influences from around the world. Cuban Music examines the ritual music of slaves; popular songs and the impact of Catholic liturgies; the roots of dances like the mambo and the cha-cha-cha; and the fate of music after the Communist revolution, when many musicians emigrated and new experimental groups formed by Cubans on and off the island. Roy also discusses Buena Vista Social Club and the controversies stirred by the film's nostalgic view of Cuba's 1950s "golden age." (Markus Wiener, $49.95 222p ISBN 1-55876-281-7; $22.95 paper -282-5; June)

Correction: In our review of Carl Rollyson's Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn (Forecasts, Apr. 8), we stated that "Gellhorn's successful lawsuit... forced [Rollyson] to retract portions of his first biography of her (Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave), published in 1990." In fact, there was no such lawsuit, nor did Rollyson retract any portion of the biography. PW regrets the error and apologizes to Mr. Rollyson.