Bookviews - May 2013

My Picks of the Month

All wars are fought again in retrospect as the tactics, victories and losses are reviewed for whatever lessons can be learned. For anyone who had any reservations about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Breaking Iraq: The Ten Mistakes That Broke Iraq ($28.95, History Publishing Company) by Col. Ted Spain, U.S. Army (ret) and Terry Turchie, Asst. Deputy Director FBI (ret) will either confirm your worst fears about it or open your eyes to what occurred in the first year of the war. The primary voice, Col. Spain, was a commander of the military police brigade that was primarily responsible for restoring security for both U.S. forces and the Iraqis in the wake of the initial success of the “shock and awe” campaign that put our forces in Baghdad shortly after the invasion began. What Col. Spain found was evident to those of us sitting safely at home in front of our TVs. Baghdad and the rest of Iraq was in a state of chaos in the absence of the brutal Saddam Hussein regime. There was extensive looting and criminality. If that wasn’t bad enough, the war was a logistical mess for our troops, some of which were wearing Vietnam-era flak jackets. The authors meticulously report the events of that first year in which Col. Spain interacted with the highest levels of command in Iraq while wondering how stupid those back in the Pentagon and even the White House could be given the internal warring factions, the lack of law enforcement, and the insurgency that followed in the wake of the invasion. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the war.

Like most people I only pay attention to the Supreme Court when there is a critical case before them. It has a long history of making both some good and some very bad decisions. For those who find the law of interest, Murder at the Supreme Court: Lethal Crimes and Landmark Cases by Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien ($26.00, Prometheus Books) will prove a rewarding read. As they note, in 1969 the Court cast votes in secret that could have signaled the end of the death penalty, but later the justice’s resolve began to unravel. The two authors, both journalists,  pull back the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the Court’s deliberations and reveal crucial links between landmark capital punishment cases that the lethal crimes at their root. These are the cases “that made the law” defining the parameters that judges must follow for a death sentence to stand up to an appeal. What we learn is that those subject to that decision have often been the subject of child abuse, often black, often poorly educated, and often poorly represented by their lawyers. The issues involved are often difficult to parse, both morally and legally. The way things are today, a condemned killer is more likely to die of old age on death row than to be executed, with the exception of the State of Texas.

One of my favorite authors is Mark Twain. Thomas J. Reigstad has written Scribblin’ for a Livin’: Mark Twain’s Pivotal Period in Buffalo ($19.00, Prometheus Books, softcover). In August 1896, a 33-year-old journalist named Samuel Clemens moved to Buffalo, New York, with high hopes of becoming a successful newspaper editor of the Buffalo Morning Express in what was a thriving, up-and-coming metropolis at the end of the Erie Canal. Reigstad, a Twain scholar, details the domestic, social, and professional experiences of Twain when he lived and worked there. Twain would go on to become one of the nation’s most famous and successful authors, but his formative years are of interest and I think any of his fans, as well as students and scholars of American literature will find this treasure trove of information about his years in Western New York worth reading. People who write for a living love good similes that paint a big picture in a few words. Everyone uses them when they say things like “strong as an ox” or “busy as a bee.” Happily, the second edition of the Similes Dictionary, edited by Elyse Sommer, ($29.95, Visible Ink Press) has been published and it is packed with imaginative phrases on all subjects. It cites more than 2,000 sources from the Bible, Socrates, Shakespeare, and, yes, Mark Twain. Keeping it handy can make anything you write sparkle and is a useful tool for students, speakers, teachers, lawyers, and politicians, among others. It is a great aid to those seeking a quotation and well-turned phrase.

How often I look back at my youth and formative years and wish--beyond the excellent upbringing of my parents--that I could have unlocked the secrets of creating and maintaining good relationships with others. As often as not, we all make mistakes and, if this is your concern as well, I recommend you pick up a copy of Cue Cards for Life: Thoughtful Tips for Better Relationships ($12.95, Hunter House, softcover) by Christina Steinorth, a licensed psychotherapist and Board Certified Diplomate in professional counseling. For more than a decade of private practice, she has helped hundreds of people heal their relationships. The “cue cards” in this excellent book offer a variety of behavior and attitude changes that can make anyone’s life go smoother. She advises that we master three basic tools for any good relationship; listening, managing feelings, and being sensitive. It’s not always ease in a society where “I come first” is often the unspoken message. Her book will help you keep from hurting another’s feelings, saying something hurtful or that we don’t mean, or failing to say or do the right thing. You will learn how to navigate perplexing family challenges, from births to deaths, and deal with aging parents, in-laws, and other loved ones. You will learn to engage in meaningful talk with your kids—especially teenagers—and communicate effectively with bosses, employees, and coworkers. You will sail through awkward parties and intimidating public events. I am inclined to think that, after reading this book, your life will become a lot easier in many ways. A useful addition to “Cue Cards” is “Why Do I Feel This Way?” What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You by Dina L. Wilcox ($16.95, Mill City, softcover). The author takes on the life of the brain on behalf of non-scientists like herself, answering questions of why we do what we do, blending humanistic psychology with brain science while sharing her own life with a deeply personal story of the feelings that haunted her after the death of her husband from AIDS during the height of that epidemic. This is a book about how we talk to ourselves through our memories, our fears, our loves, in our quest for happiness. If you find yourself asking yourself the question posed by the title, you should read this book.

Uncle Billy’s Grim, But Wholesome Bedtime Stories (with a Smidge of Poetry) by B. Oscar Overbeck ($25.00, Charing Cross Press, Ann Arbor, MI) is now in its third edition and would normally be in the “Novels” section of Bookviews, but it deserves special mention as a collection of twenty-two short stories in which the talented author blurs the line between reality and make-believe, all inspired from his personal life. He farmed for twenty-five years and ran a gift store for ten. Natives of Nebraska, he and his wife moved to Colorado Springs, where he returned to his greatest gift, writing from his unique point of view, but you will find influences ranging from Stephen King, the Brothers Grimm, Dr. Seuss, and Rod Serling in these stories. You will congratulate yourself for “discovering” him along with many others who have had that pleasure. You can check it out at www.UncleBillystories.com.

Reading History

I confess that, for me, Bunker Hill, has just been the name of the opening battle in the U.S. Revolution, following the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord. I did not know much more about it than that. Happily, Nathaniel Philbrick has filled in that gap with Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution ($32.95, Viking), providing the reader with an understanding of the events and personalities that were the real origins of the war that led to the establishment of America. It goes beyond the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the usual elements we are taught in school, focusing on the decades-long struggle that led a group of merchants, farmers, artisans, and sailors to take up arms against their own country the most powerful empire of its time, England. Boston was already a city of 15,000 and the tension that built up climaxed in June 1775 with the Battle of Bunker Hill. The book’s special appeal is the way Philbrick has brought the story alive, making it an exciting tale about the arrogance of the British who kept imposing taxes and penalties on Boston, the Tea Party, and increasing incidents that enflamed not only its citizens, but the many Massachusetts communities adjacent to it and ultimately all of the colonies. The personalities involved, both American and British are brought to life again, the events and preparations leading up to the battle, the spies, and ultimately the battle and the Revolution combine for a compelling, exciting story.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have become mythic figures in America’s history, but we tend to forget that they were flesh-and-blood men whose acts and decisions not only gave birth to the nation, but shaped its history to come. Blood of Tyrants: George Washington and the Forging of the Presidency ($27.99, Encounter Books) by Logan Beirne reveals how Washington created the template by which future presidencies would function, dealing often with many of the same problems. When should military tribunals be used instead of civilian trials? How should enemy prisoners be treated? How should citizen’s rights be protected when the nation is struggling to defend itself? One of the best aspects of this book are the vivid stories from the Revolution, many quite different from what most of us learned in school or even college. They set the stage for Washington’s pivotal role in the drafting of the Constitution and his dogged pursuit of the war against the British despite daunting problems and odd, not the least of which was the congressional committee. Only Washington’s steely character and strong moral beliefs got us through to victory and beyond. The author is an attorney with impressive academic credentials. He is the Olin Scholar at Yale Law School. Readers will profit from reading this excellent book. Framing a Legend: Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings by M. Andrew Holowchak ($25.00, Prometheus Books) adds a new chapter to the debate over the relationship between Jefferson and a slave and rebuts the claim that he fathered one of her children. Suffice to say it challenges many of the accepted “truths” developed by who have advanced this story, bringing a penetrating, critical perspective to the question of Jefferson’s paternity, his racial attitudes, and other aspects of the legend.

The last two decades of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation that replaced it as seen by Dmity Rogozin can be found in The Hawks of Peace: Notes of the Russian Ambassador ($28.20, Glagoslav Publications). Written, of course, from a Russian point of view, it provides lots of insight into the way the events and personalities leading up to the collapse of the USSR played out. Rogozn is a Deputy Premier of Russia and had a front-row seat at the events and the people involved. His book shares his evaluation of them and provides a look at post-Communist Russia. A former Permanent Representative of Russia to NATO, he reflects on the complex relationship of Russia and the West. His book addresses his view of men like Gorbachev and Yeltzin, the political stand-offs and military conflicts, and sheds light on the terrorist acts and hostage situations that occurred during the Chechen War. For the Western reader it demonstrates how a Russian nationalist and patriot saw the world and his nation, and interpreted it. Suffice to say, it is well worth reading.

To Your Health

A health problem that affects many men is addressed in Prostate Cancer Breakthroughs ($12.95, Oceansong Publishing) by Jay S. Cohen, MD. As he notes, “A quiet revolution in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer is underway, but many doctors and most men diagnosed with prostate cancer have not heard about it. Instead, today men are quickly dispatched for aggressive treatment such as prostate surgery or radiation, both of which can affect men's sexual or bladder competence permanently. The numbers are startling: 85% of men diagnosed with prostate cancer get surgery or radiation, yet only 15% actually need it.” Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and the author takes readers, step by step, along a better path to a cure, introducing a new diagnostic process than enables doctors to differentiate dangerous prostate cancers from non-threatening ones while detailing four new treatment methods designed to target different types and various stages. The author was diagnosed with this cancer in December 2011 and it led him to undertake the research that results in this very useful book.

From Central Recovery Press, a publisher that focuses on various elements of medical and psychological care, come two books that will prove useful. Some Assembly Required: A Balanced Approach to Recovery from Addiction and Chronic Pain by Dan Mager ($16.95, softcover) an instructive story of his own struggle with addiction and chronic pain. A behavioral health professional, he documents how these problems spiraled out of control and presents a model for recovery from both life-altering conditions. This is a warning against the fastest-growing drug problem, addiction to so-called pain-killers. I have no doubt this book will prove helpful to anyone encountering these problems. Why Can’t My Child Stop Eating? A Guide to Helping Your Child Overcome Emotional Overeating by Debbie Danowski, PhD, looks at food addictions, offering real-world solutions to the social, emotional, and physical problems of obese and overweight children and their families. It arrives at a time when more and more people are aware of this nationwide problem in their own lives and those of others.

What Did You Say? An Unexpected Journey into the World of Hearing Loss ($16.95, Two Harbors Press, softcover) addresses a problem affecting an estimated 48 million Americans over the age of 12 who have had hearing loss in one or both ears. Monique E. Hammond, RPh, has worked in health care in Europe, the United States, and Australia. This is, in part, her personal story in addition to being an educational guide for anyone who is or who knows someone who is experiencing hearing loss. It examines basic hearing and emotional implications as well as checklists for preparing to meet with specialists. This book will help millions like her.  Alive Again: Recovering from Alcoholism and Drug Addiction by Dr. Howard C. Samuels with Jane O’Boyle ($24.95, Wiley) The author knows about this subject because his first arrest for drug possession was at age 17 and he struggled with his addiction until conquering it in 1984. He has since gone on to become one of the nation’s experts on the subject, running the Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles. He shares the program that saved and changed his life and anyone seeking to escape these additions would do themselves a big favor if they read this book cover to cover.

Eating Expectantly: Practical Advice for Health Eating Before, During and After Pregnancy by Bridget Swinney, MS, RD, is now in its fourth edition ($19.95, Healthy Food Zone Media, softcover) so you know it has been tested and its advice works. There are more than 120,000 copies in print. The new edition has been thoroughly updated and expanded. Eating properly can contribute to the newborn’s health and not doing so can “program” them for problems that include diabetes, high blood pressure, and asthma. When first published, it was selected as one of “Child” magazine’s Top Ten Parenting Books of the Year. This nutrition expert has done a lot of mothers and their children a big favor with this excellent book. The flip side of eating too much is eating too little or anorexia, a condition in which the individual is obsessed with being thin. Emma Woolf has written a memoir, An Apple a Day, ($16.95, Soft Skull Press, softcover) about her addiction to hunter, exercise and control, a full-fledged disorder, while also managing a successful career. The title comes from what she often ate daily and nothing else. At age 32, after a decade of hiding the truth, she had met the man of her dreams and decided it was time to start living a normal life. This is a life-affirming story and one that would help anyone with a similar disorder, as well as those in the medical and mental health professions to provide some valuable insights. It is well worth reading.

Other People’s Lives

The gift of memoirs is the way they provide a look into our own lives. The Forest House: A Year’s Journey Into the Landscape of Love, Loss and Starting Over by Joelle Fraser ($16.95, Counterpoint Press, softcover) in which she shares her life after her divorce. She was determined to ease her young son’s transition to joint custody by staying near her ex-husband, moving to the closest far-away place she can find, a one bedroom home off a one lane road tucked deep in the forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is her story as she starts to rebuild her life, finding solace in the passages of her favorite books, strength from researching her fascinating family history, and peace, in rescuing and rehabilitating injured animals. Ultimately she learns to accept her choices and discovers gratitude, strength, and resolve beneath her pain. Any newly single parent will find much to learn and enjoy in this memoir. In a similar fashion, Dena A. Bedsole offers her story in A New View of an Old Horizon ($14.95, softcover), a personal account of a daughter’s quest to discover herself in the wake of her father’s battle with pancreatic cancer. This is her account of a yearlong journey to find a new balance between her life as a wife and mother, and caring for her dying father. It is a heartfelt story told with raw honesty, the kind we all need to cope with loss and go on living.

Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche ($14.99, Hyperion, softcover) is an entertaining memoir by an Australian city girl with a morbid fear of deep water who fell in love with an Argentinian man with a sailboat and a dream of setting off to explore the world. Soon enough she has to confront a decision of either watching the man she loves sail away forever or head off on the journey with him. Her memoir is of a year-long voyage across the Pacific. These days they live together in Thailand in a $5-a-night bungalow with a million-dollar view.

Letters from the Closet by Amy Hollingsworth ($19.99, Howard Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, softcover) is the story of a deeply intimate yet platonic relationship between a gay high school English teacher and his young protégée—each seeking connection and acceptance—as reflected by the decade of letters they exchanged. They were a treasured connection that was locked away for years and a poignant commentary on the values that unite us all. This is a look at an era when many homosexuals were still “in the closet.” The author wrote for eight years for the “The 700 Club” and holds a degree in counseling psychology, along with a degree in both English and psychology.

Those who love basketball will love the story of former NBA star, Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway as told in On These Courts: A Miracle Season that Changes a City, a Once-Future Star, and a Team Forever as told by Wayne Drash ($26.00, Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster). Hardaway grew up in Binghampton, a rough section of Memphis, but his talent as a basketball player and the values imparted by a no-nonsense grandmother, kept him away from the gangs and drugs in the neighborhood. Everyone was sure he was the next superstar player, but he was plagued by injuries and eventually returned to Memphis wondering what he would do next. An old friend, diagnosed with colon cancer, needed someone to replace him as head coach of the Lester Middle School team. He coached them to their first championship win, but he did much more, helping them cope and overcome the challenging environment in which they lived. This is a story of hope and inspiration, of struggle and triumph. It helps that its author, a senior producer for CNN.com, was named one of the best online writers in America who, as it turns out, also coaches a grade-school basketball team in Atlanta.

Odds and Ends

There are books that do not fit into any particular category and are unique for their topic or some other aspect.

One such is The Birth of an Opera by Michael Rose ($35.00, W.W. Norton) which will surely please fans of opera with its stories behind the creation of fifteen operas by composers that range from Mozart to Beethoven, Bizet to Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck”, a span of four centuries. Rose drew on correspondences between composers, librettists, performers and critics to take the reader behind the scenes to tell the stories of how fifteen operas came to be created and the travails, luck and genius of those who undertook these challenging projects. Even someone who has never seen an opera would find these stories interesting. In the early nineteenth century opera was considered the best road to worldly success for a composer, but just imagine what it must have been like to merge music, a libretto, stagecraft, and drama all in one. Beethoven was writing “Fidelio” as his hearing began to fail and Bizet would die shortly after “Carmen” debuted, never to know what a success it would become.

We can all use a good laugh. Humor is great medicine and blows away our daily cares. Mary I. Farr is a health care marketing executive who is also the author of four books, the most recent of which is Never Say Neigh ($12.95, Two Harbors Press, softcover) in which the narrator is a handsome American quarter horse, Noah Vail, but Noah is no ordinary horse. After a brush with fame on an Oklahoma race track, he turned to blogging and has a large Face Book fan club. Mary is his assistant and together they motor around in his Comfy Sundowner trailer as he hosts cribbage tournaments and offer his views on human behavior, the economy, and dishing out horse hilarity as he views the world through equine eyes. It is a wonderful book, but especially for anyone who loves horses. There’s lots of humor to be found in My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places by Mary Roach ($14.99, Reader’s Digest, softcover). She has a sharp eye for our various forms of neurotic behavior, whether it’s hypochondriacs, hoarders, or compulsive cheapskates. The book is a tonic as she describes marriage as “a unit of people whose sleep habits are carefully engineered to keep each other awake” referring to her husband as “the man I call Ed.” Married couples will find a treasure of shared experiences, but Ms. Roach ranges widely with a sharp, often sarcastic, eye over the landscape of human behavior as it confronts our daily challenges. It’s a real treat.

Sidney Lea is an American poet, novelist, essayist, editor and professor who is currently the Poet Laureate of Vermont. He has taught at many of the Ivy League colleges and his work appears in forty anthologies. His latest book is A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife ($24,95, Skyhorse Publishing). His book will especially appeal to sportsmen and women who love the outdoors and notes the loss of crucial mentors who shaped his life, a lost generation of those who could turn their hand to anything from cooking without electricity or gas, to dressing wild food, or to carpentry.  He has spent his life as a hunter, angler, and paddler, evoking the forests and waters of upper New England and the lives of a cast of characters who come alive with his skillful prose. This book is an elegy to those in tune with nature. People who share his love of nature will especially enjoy this book but even a city born and bred reader will find it a great reading experience.

The travel writer, Matt Gross, offers essays on his adventures in The Turk Who Loved Apples and Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World ($15.99, Da Capo Press, softcover). It is a celebration of independent travel and begins with his first trip as a young child in the back seat of his family’s station wagon through New England. His travels have afforded him a wealth of stories, taking him from Third World countries to fabled European ports. Along the way he met a rich variety of people and include discovering a “nudie beach” in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia to being taken in by a Slovakian family on a rainy night. Gross is a graceful writer whose has penned nearly 200 article for The New York Times travel section, including his columns, “Frugal Traveler” and “Getting Lost.” He is the editor of BonAppetit.com and lives in exotic Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

It took me a long time to acquaint myself with the Greek philosophers, discovering how much they knew millennia ago and how much of what they knew applies to our lives today. Aviezer Tucker has done us a favor by writing Plato for Everyone ($21.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) in which he recasts Plato’s dialogues into accessible and entertaining short stories in modern settings. “Euthyphro” becomes a story of a televangelist bent on disowning his son at a denominational boarding school in rural Virginia and “Crito” is retitled “What have you done for your country?” as a U.S. citizen considers a current war unjust and contemplates avoiding the draft by moving to Canada. Need it be said that the author has taught philosophy at universities around the world and is currently teaching at the University of Texas-Austin? The big questions, what is good and bad, what is virtue, and what constitutes a meaningful life were addressed by Plato and are recast in this entertaining and enjoyable book.

When it comes to “odd” The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth ($24.95, Quirk Books) certainly fits that description. It is a work of fiction and art by the author who asked himself, if angels were real physical beings, how would their wings be attached? An artist and sculptor, he began to create anatomical images of fabled creatures like the sphinx, sirens, satyrs, and others, creating the character of Dr. Black to pull them together in the book as a kind of biography. It is a significant work of imagination, though it may not appeal to a wide audience given the bizarre images. If you’re into skeletons and musculature, this odd book will provide ample entertainment.

Books for Younger Readers

 

One of my special friends is Tania Grossinger, a longtime fellow member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Little did I know that one of her friends when she was a young girl and for years thereafter was the baseball legend, Jackie Robinson. She met him went he and his wife visited Grossinger’s, a famed Catskills resort run by her cousins; many celebrities would spend time there. Jackie and Me: A Very Special Friendship, illustrated beautifully by Charles George Esperanza, ($16.95, Sky Horse Press) is ideal for young readers ages 5 to 8. It is the story of when they met first in 1951 when Tania was 13 years old; a girl who felt out of place and insecure much of the time. Jackie saw something special in her and invited her to play a game of ping-pong when he learned she liked the game. In time she would learn he was the first African-American to play in the major leagues as a member of the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers. He knew what it felt like to feel out of place, but he also was secure in his skills and blessed with character and a personality that won over fans. They would stay in touch over the years until his passing in 1972. This is a wonderful story, simply told, and a great tribute to a great man.

A young set, ages 3 to 6, will thoroughly enjoy It’s a Firefly Night by Dianne Ochiltree ($12.99, Blue Apple Books) demonstrates her great talent as a writer for children. With art by Betsy Snyder it uses simply rhymes to tell the story of joy of capturing fireflies and letting them go. It is a lovely story for a parent and child to share, most likely at bedtime, capturing the simple, unforgettable fun and unforgettable memories of childhood. For the child learning numbers there’s Flowers by Number written by David Shapiro and illustrated by Hayley Vair ($14.95, Craigmore Creations) for those aged 4 and up. It starts with zero and counts up to ten while showcasing a different flower with each number. Sometimes readers count the petals or flower parts, or the flowers themselves. So they learn counting and the names of various flowers at the same time. It is an intriguing way to learn these things.

Another counting book is National Geographic Little Kids Ocean Counting by Janet Lawler with photos by Brian Skerry ($16.95, National Geographic) and while the “flowers” will appeal to little girls, this one will appeal to both girls and boys, ages 4 to 6. The photos are excellent as one might expect of a National Geographic book and the text is an enjoyable learning experience. Also from National Geographic is The World is Waiting for You by Barbara Kerley ($17.95). With sparse text and eye-catching photos, this book invites the reader to explore the world around them including the sky above them. It is a spur to the tiny adventures that make up childhood no matter where the reader, ages 4 to 6, may be.

Novels, Novels, Novels

I don’t know if more novels are being written and published these days, but it sure feels that way. They pour into the Bookviews office and the best one can do is select those that one feels will prove entertaining to someone.

Like werewolves? If so, you will like Red Moon by Benjamin Percy ($25.99, Grand Central Publishing). The novelist John Irving praised this novel saying, “Red Moon is a serious, politically symbolic novel—a literary novel about lycanthropes. If George Orwell had imagined a future where the werewolf population had grown to the degree that they were colonized and drugged, this terrifying novel might be it.”  This is straight out of the classic horror genre, combining both the familiar and the frightening. This novel with its unforgettable characters, grisly action, and powerful storyline is hard to put down. Now let’s turn 180 degrees for a novel filled with magic and enchantment, drawn from the Afghani culture, a narrative interlinked stories rooted in fact and laced with magical realism. The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman, the former who fled Afghanistan in 2001 for Australia and the latter, a Melbourne-based writer, conjures up a cast of characters such as a grief-stricken boy who finds his way back to happiness as the apprentice to a master beekeeper. There’s a musician capable of conjuring stones to rise into the air with the beauty of his playing who teaches his art to a mute child. These are just two that you will meet as your knowledge of Afghanistan today will be transformed from the dry headlines of war.

Other novels fill familiar genres such as Bolero: A Nick Sayler Novel by Joanie McDonell ($14.95, Thomas & Mercer, softcover). A private investigator, an orphaned former junkie, gambler, and petty thief, Nick has turned his life around is living the good life, solving cases for a long list of wealthy and appreciative clients. His nights are spent on the “Dumb Luck”, a luxurious converted barge anchored in the Hudson River. He is plagued thought by memories of the beautiful woman whose killing he failed to stop a decade earlier. When an emergency call comes in late one rainy evening, it sets in motion a series of events that could finally bring about his redemption—or lead to his ruin. The law is at the center of A Case of Redemption by Adam Mitzner ($26.00, Gallery Books) by Adam Mitzner who is an attorney living in New York City. We meet Dan Sorenson who was once a high-powered New York defense attorney until a horrifying accident killed the two people in his life who meant the most to him. He hits bottom, but is offered the opportunity to defend an up-and-coming rapper in a murder trial on the front page of every newspaper. His client swears he’s innocent of killing his pop star girlfriend and Dan believes him, but as he delves deeper into the case, a successful defense may come at a high price. It is a real thriller that lovers of legal dramas will enjoy.

The world of mega-churches is the backdrop to Pastor’s Wives by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen ($16.00, Plume, softcover). When the then-Time magazine reporter attended a religious retreat on a story assignment, she had no idea what to expect. What she found was that life as a pastor’s wife was more complex than imagined. This novel has been praised as “a terrific first novel, fast-paced and fresh” as it follows three women whose lives converge and intertwine at Greenleaf, a Southern evangelical mega-church. Suffice the say they all come together from very different points of view and life experiences. Each will end up asking what is the price of loving a man of God? There is a lot here to enjoy and it is never boring.

Relationships are at the heart of Girls I Know by Douglas Trevor, a Hemingway finalist, (SixOneSeven Books) whose main character, Walt Steadman, in the winter of 2001 gets wake-up call when he survives a shooting in his favorite Boston café that leaves four people dead. He is a grad school dropout, a sperm donor, and holder of odd jobs. He has not made much of his life and knows it. He becomes entangled with two new relationships; one with an ambitious Harvard undergraduate, Ginger Newton, who is writing a book titled “Girls I Know” about jobs women do and with 11-year-old African-American Mercedes Bittles, who lost her parents in the shootings. He accepts Ginger’s support while tutoring Mercedes and, through the power of human relationships, begins to shape a future for himself. This is a very promising new novelists, well worth getting acquainted with. Booklist has said of Jonathan Tropper that he is “a master of the mid-life male coming of age story” while praising One Last Thing Before I Go ($16.00, Plume, softcover). His previous novels such as “This Is Where I Leave You” have garnered similar praise. In his new novel, Drew Silver is a drummer who has tasted fame just long enough to be ruined by it. His band, the Bent Daisies, became rock stars overnight on the strength of just one hit song. Then their lead singer quit, stranding the ban back home in suburbia. Eight years and an endless succession of mistakes later, Silver is a flabby 44-year-old divorcee scraping by on royalty checks, living alone in an efficiency hotel off the interstate that is filled with other lonely divorced men. Two unexpected events transform things for Silver. The first is that his 18-year-old daughter confides that she is pregnant and the second is a diagnosis that he has an aortic tear that requires immediate surgery. To everyone’s astonishment, he decides to forgo the operation and focus on making the most of his remaining days. Suffice to say this is a very different kind of story and one that will draw you in and keep you there to the last page.

Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate by Alexis Rankin Popik ($14.00, Aucoot Press, softcover) is not for the faint of heart. Is is a novel of madness and mayhem in Los Angeles in which Clare Stone’s husband disappears soon after they move there, only to resurface in the emergency room in a manic state. After piecing together the signs of Richard’s bipolar disorder, Clare comes to realize that the man to whom she has been married for 15 years has become a dangerous stranger. At the same time, Clare finds it difficult to resist the flirtations of the attractive gardener she and Richard hired to revitalize their yard. This is a look at the heights and depths of manic-depressive illness as they both struggle to sort out what is real and what is an illusion.

That’s it for May. Come back in June for a look at the best in summer reading, fiction and non-fiction. Tell your book loving family members, friends, and coworkers about Bookviews so they too can get the inside edge on the many books that may not be on the bestseller lists, but often deserve to be.

Bookviews - April 2013

By Alan Caruba

My Picks of the Month

One of the best biographies I have read in years is Roger Ailes: Off Camera—an Inside Look at the Founder and Head of Fox News by Zev Chafets ($26.95, Sentinel). Firstly, it is written with a style that engages the reader in a way that says that it, like the motto of Fox News, is fair and balanced. Secondly, it is a true Horatio Alger story of a boy born in a small Ohio town who rises to success by dint of hard work and a knack of being in the right place at the right time. It is a book about how Ailes’s attitudes, values, and personal courage made friends even of his competitors. To this day he numbers leading liberals among his personal friends. It is clear that Ailes has transformed the modern news media, providing with the backing of news tycoon, Rupert Murdock, an alternative to the liberal media, print and broadcast, that has dominated news and the way it is reported. Ailes had an instinctive understanding of television and the way it reported the news that has made it the most popular news outlet in the nation today. Does it have a conservative point of view? Yes, but its daily fare also includes liberal spokespersons every hour to debate and discuss the news of the day. To understand the times in which we live and the impact that Ailes’ Fox News has had on events, personalities, and issues, this book is must reading.

Fully forty percent of Americans self-identify as conservative, but decades of government expansion have put nearly fifty percent of Americans on some form of government program such as Social Security and Medicare, and countless others that cut a check to assist them in some fashion. One of the most venerable think tanks in Washington, DC, is the Heritage Foundation, 300 scholars addressing every public issue, producing studies that are provided to members of Congress to aid them in their decisions. Lee Edwards has written Leading the Way: The Story of Ed Feulner and the Heritage Foundation ($27.50, Crown Forum) that tells how, founded in 1973, the foundation has grown under the leadership of Ed Feulner. It produced the Mandate for Leadership in 1980 in which fifty-five percent of its recommendations were adopted by the during the Reagan years. It was responsible for the historic welfare reform act of 1996, passed during the Clinton years, and produced a study of homeland security in advance of the 9/11 attacks and implemented in large part by George W. Bush. Its emphasis has always been on timely, concise, and reliable information. This is a book for people who are intensely concerned with the policies affecting the life of the nation and of all Americans. It has hundreds of thousands of members, always advocating traditional conservative values of fiscal prudence, a strong defense, free enterprise, and maximum freedom for individual Americans. It is well worth reading.

In 1955 when I was graduating from high school, Allen Ginsburg, the now celebrated poet, was writing “Howl” and on his way to joining the handful of writers who would become known collectively as the “Beats” and icons of the “beat generation.” It was and still is hokum. The lives of Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and others in their circle included drug addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, and an adolescent self-involvement that translated itself into their writing and, when they burst on the cultural scene in the late 1950s, they helped to shape their times and set in motion change that is with us today. One half of the population is desperately trying to hold onto the values of their parents and grandparents; the other is content to live off those who still have jobs. All this is captured in Mania: The Story of the Outraged and Outrageous Lives That Launched a Cultural Revolution by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover ($26.00, Top Five Books). It is an impressive piece of literary history and for those who recall the “beats”, well worth reading. Individually and as a group, theirs was a pathetic effort to avoid the norms of their times and who influenced much of the decline of our society that has followed in their wake.

My Mother was a cookbook author and famous teacher of haute cuisine, as well as an authority on wines. I grew up dining on a rich variety of dishes. I did not give much thought to taste, however, and I doubt that most of us do other than to prefer some kinds of food and drink over others. Barb Stuckey unlocks the mysteries of taste in her book, Taste: Surprising Stories and Science about Why Food Tastes Good ($16.00, Atria Books, softcover). A professional food developer, she has written an entertaining book about taste and why some of us prefer some kinds of foods over others, why we taste foods differently than others, and the science behind how, what, and why we taste what we eat. It is entirely sensory and some of us have better abilities to taste while others have lost that due to illness or injury. This will surely enhance your own ability to enjoy what you eat even more and, for those who love science, it explains the whole world of taste and why food producers invest a lot in developing foods that are designed to meet our specific preferences.

Readers are frequently writers as well and you have aspirations to be one (or already are), then you will enjoy The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language by Natalie Goldberg ($25.00, Atria). The author has written twelve books including two others on the subject of writing and has taught seminars on the topic for thirty-five years. Her book addresses the lessons learned from her workshops over the years and discusses how meditative actions are important to the creative process. April 15 is the day tax returns must be filed with the IRS and, if you haven’t begun yours, check out Julian Block’s Easy Tax Guide for Writers, Photographers, and Other Freelancers (Amazon Kindle price is $5.99. softcover price is $22.95, including shipping, available at www.julianblocktaxexpert.com). He is a nationally recognized attorney and a former IRS agent who has been cited as “a leading tax professional” by The New York Times and “an accomplished writer on taxes” by The Wall Street Journal, so you know you find some excellent information that could save you money when you file. A lot of good advice can be found at http://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com, a blog by Brian Feinblum, the chief marketing officer of Media Connect. If you want to promote and sell your book these days, you should check it out.

April is National Poetry Month. On my blog, "Warning Signs", I ask if it has become an oxymoron in an era when poets and poetry are largely ignored. Treat yourself to a good poetry anthology. It will provide hours of pleasure.

Memoirs, Biographies and Autobiographies

Though I have never been a fan, there is no denying that Bruce Springsteen is already a rock and roll legend. His fans will enjoy Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock’n’Roll by Marc Dolan ($17.95, W.W. Norton) whose softcover edition of his book now includes a new chapter. A native of Freehold, New Jersey, came from humble beginnings. His mother encouraged him to learn to play the guitar after noticing that pop music was an interest of his. As a teenager he joined a local band, playing clubs up and down the Jersey shore. It took several years of writing songs and developing his own music that reflected his working class background. His first two records sold modestly, but 1975’s “Born to Run” was his breakthrough album. While the basic facts of his life are known to fans, this book fills in all the parts of his life. It will prove very interesting and, in many ways, inspiring. Another memoir from the world of music is Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera by Rex Brown with Mark Eglinton ($26.00, Da Capo Press) in which Brown, the bassist with the heavy metal group that still has four million fans on Facebook ten years after breaking up, takes the reader behind the scenes of the group intended “to fill the spot Metallica had vacate” after the murder of lead guitarist Darrell “Dimebag” Abbott in December of 2004. After 9/11, the band returned to America from a European tour, never to play a live show again. This is a look at the highs and lows of superstardom, and the hedonistic lifestyle of the band, fueled by drugs and alcohol.

Imagine now being able to listen to music. More than thirty million people suffer from hearing loss in the U.S., but only ten percent are considered profoundly deaf. Little has been written about the remaining ninety percent, the partially deaf for whom life is characterized by verbal misunderstandings and conversational riddles. Song without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway Through Life by Gerald Shea ($24.95, Da Capo Press). A childhood illness left the author with partial hearing loss, but he didn’t realize anything was wrong, assuming everyone had a similar problem. Despite the problem, he excelled through elementary and boarding schools, Yale and Columbia Law School, eventually working his way to a partnership in a New York law firm. His condition remained undiagnosed until he was 34! This is a candid and deeply moving story that anyone with a comparable hearing loss will find a comfort and an inspiration.

Another inspiring story is found in A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn ($14.95, Mill City Press, softcover) as Albert Mazza tells the story of his introduction to teaching in a public high school in 1963 and his realization of the failures of the educational process as it was practiced then and now. Unlike others, he wanted to change it and to spread his successful methods of motivating students. In the 1960s and 1970s, he perfected his methodology with a dream to make improve the system. He created the Young Diplomats Program that focused on the constantly changing global issues, helping to make the 1980s an age of discovery for his students. He would join the New York Board of Education in 1979, become the director of the Youth Leadership Program, and continue his role as a pedagogic pioneer. After his retirement in 1995, he became the Director of Education for the America-Israel Friendship League. This is a truly inspiring memoir and particularly for educators. Inspiration can be found in Once Upon a Gypsy Moon, a memoir by Michael Hurley ($19.99, Center Street/Hachette Book Group, softcover) in which the author chronicles his decision to live about an aging 32-foot sloop called the Gypsy Moon after he had lost his job, was short of money, and his 25-year-old marriage had ended. He began in Annapolis, Maryland and headed south for two years seeking to salvage “a life that has foundered”, but the experience was one that let him grapple with issues of faith and disbelief, love, marriage, and the challenged faced by the adult children of alcoholics. When rough seas forced him ashore, he met his future, new wife. This is a deeply moving book, especially for anyone grappling with the challenges that life throws at everyone.

Parenting & Relationships

Parenting may be the greatest challenge anyone undertakes and fortunately there are books to help. Marriage, too, is a challenge and there are books to help deal with them as well.

Your Child’s Path: Unlocking the Mysteries of Who Your Child Will Become by Susan Engel ($15.00, Atria Books, softcover) says it is time for parents to be liberated from all the worry about their child’s development, much of it coming from the media and other sources of information about the latest societal ills plaguing children and teens, and I agree. She says you cannot dictate who your children will become, but you can get a good sense of who they are and where they are heading by paying attention to what they do, say, and feel. As often as not problem reveal themselves as a thread that will reveal itself over time. “And when there are problems, there are gentle ways to help.” A mother of three sons, the author is a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Williams College who has worked with students of all ages for nearly twenty years. There’s plenty of good advice packed into this book.

Parenting Your Emerging Adult: Launching Kids from18 to 29 by Dr. Varda Konstram ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover) officially debuts in May and addresses an age group that has been called narcissistic and self-absorbed, not that different from previous generations of that age, but this one faces a higher cost of living, higher college debt loads, and a sense of material entitlement says the author. Moreover, they are clinging to the parental nest, often because they are unable to find employment or earn enough to live on their own. An estimated 56% of men and 48% of women, 18 to 24 years of age, are living with their often cash-strapped parents who are often stressed out by the situation and in need of practical advice. The author offers the advice parents need to get their emerging adults living successfully out on their own while providing an understanding of their developmental period and how it intersects with the current economic, social, and political times. If you or someone you know is in this situation, this is the book to read.

Available in June, The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity by Dr. Scott D. Haltzman ($19.95, Johns Hopkins University Press) addresses the fact that an estimated 40% of marriages are rocked by infidelity every year. This book debunks many of the myths that surround cheating and that triggers complex emotions and events. The author does not advise ending a relationship that might well have been a happy marriage, teaching both the victim and perpetrator how to acknowledge their feelings, reduce their sense of despair, and begin to rebuilt a strong relationship. Interestingly, he says that the chances of cheating go up each year a couple is together and among the 60+ crowd, some 29% of men and 15% of women have had at least one indiscretion. He also says that love matures, but doesn’t have to grow old, offering tips on how to keep the relationship fresh. This book is filled with good advice on how to avoid and how to deal with this chronic problem of marriage. Marriages, however, do end, either from divorce or the death of a partner. This is examined in Suddenly Solo: A Lifestyle Road Map for the Mature, Widowed or Divorced Man by Harold Spielman and Marc Silbert ($14.95, www.suddenlysolo.org or from Amazon.com, softcover) This is a guide for men that offers a positive sense of renewal, filled with advice on how to move forward from the loss. The book is aimed at those over 50 who are most likely to encounter this change and it is written with humor as it provides transitional guidance in a culture that has changed radically since these mature men were lost “solo.”  Spielman is a sociologist and co-founder of a market and communication research company from which he retired in 2008. I think this book will prove very helpful to any man who is seeking to emerge from divorce or the death of his partner in life. And isn’t just men, of course, who must grapple with such changes. An entertaining and informative book, Ask Avery Anything: A Woman’s Journey Through Midlife Dating ($10.99, Second City Books, a division of Windy City Publishers, available via www.AskAveryAnything.com and Amazon.com, softcover) uses her own and other’s real life stories to offer her advice for women who are re-entering the dating scene for the first time after a long time in a relationship. Many conclude that finding a good man is a frustrating process at a certain age, but Avery offers advice and, best of all, the knowledge that you are not alone. She does so with honesty and humor.

To Your Health

As Obamacare transforms the U.S. healthcare system in ways most Americans are as yet unaware, Dr. Cary Presant, MD, has written a very useful book, Surviving American Medicine: How to Get the Right Doctor, Right Hospital, and Right Treatment with Today’s Health Care ($17.95, iUniverse, softcover) that may very well save your life. Bringing four decades of experience and knowledge to the task, Dr. Presant has written a book that answers some of the most important questions you need to ask, including what changes you need to make today to prepare for Obamacare reforms. He addresses what you need to know to get the best care in a hospital and how long you should stay, as well as finding affordable medications. He offers advice on what to do when your insurance company denies authorization for a treatment. In fact, there isn’t a page in this book that doesn’t offer excellent advice. The author has credentials to spare including, in addition to his own practice, being a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, past president of the Association of Community Cancer Centers, and Chairman of the Board of the Medical Oncology Association of Southern California, to name just a few. If your health, maintaining it and, if necessary, surviving an illness is important to you, read this book.

According to the National Health Council, incurable and ongoing chronic disease affects approximately 133 million Americans, 45% of the nation’s total population. I am inclined to think that figure is high, although it is true that Baby Boomers are joining the ranks of the nation’s elderly at a rate of 10,000 a day. Many have a least one chronic illness and some have more than one. When you consider that today’s healthcare system was designed for the last century, this poses a problem, but for those encountering this challenge it is a personal one. Richard Cheu is the author of Living Well With Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide ($16.95, Dog Ear Publishing, softcover and ebook). He is a neurophysiologist and a pastoral counselor, an ordained deacon and hospital chaplain in the Archdiocese of New York at Bellevue Hospital. He is a believer in taking charge of one’s own well-being as the way to improve the quality and length of one’s life. He has been a care-giver to a chronically-ill wife for nine years. In short, he knows what he is talking about. His advice covers a range of ways one can keep motivated, keeping mind and body active and fit. He discusses the negative emotions unleashed by a chronic illness diagnosis and how to take control of the shock, stress, and grief that accompanies the condition including how to overcome the loneliness that often accompanies it. There is a spiritual component to this and other aspects of chronic illness and I think this is one of the best books on the subject I have read in many years.

Honest Medicine: Effective, Time-Tested, inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases by Julia Schopick ($14.95, Innovative Health Publishing, www.HonestMedicine.com, softcover) introduces four life-saving treatments that have been effectively treating—and is some cases curing—people for many years. They do not generate large profits for pharmaceutical companies and have not been universally accepted. They include low dose Naltrexon for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, Chrone’s disease, and rheumatoid arthritis and some other conditions. There is Ketogenic Diet for pediatric epilepsy, intravenous alpha lipoic acid for terminal liver disease and, with LDN for some cancers, and Silverion for non-healing wounds. Her writings have appeared in American Medical News, Alternative & Complementary Therapies, and the British Medical Journal. The book comes recommended by a number of physicians. Check it out at her website and you may well conclude that it offers some real relief and help.

The Family Guide to Mental Health Care by Lloyd I. Sederer, MD ($25.95, W.W. Norton) addresses a problem that left untreated can devastate a family and, as in the case of the school murders earlier this year, an entire community. The book is a comprehensive resource for families dealing with a loved one’s mental illness, providing the answers needed to understand a variety of disorders, making informed judgments as to whether doctors are really helping, and getting the right treatment.  The author is medical director of New York State’s Office of Mental Health and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

A growing number of women are putting off marriage and children until later in life, beyond their twenties. Your Pregnancy after 35 by Dr. Glade B. Curtis, MD with Judith Schuler, MS ($15.99, Da Capo Press, softcover) addresses pregnancy for older women, offering information on the risk of high blood pressure and similar issues. There’s advice on job-stress relief and how to dal with fatigue while working during pregnancy, special dietary recommendations including vitamin and mineral intake. The good news is that there are benefits as well for being an older mom. A wealth of information is provided in this book by an author of 18 books.

Getting Down to Business Books

 

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, more regulations were imposed on the financial sector of the nation’s economy and regulation is a signal of a lack of confidence. The crisis was brought about by the housing mortgage bubble and the bubble was the result of the government’s role in which two government sponsored entities, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged banks to issue loans that even they knew might not be repaid. Both GSE’s bundled toxic loans and sold them as assets. The circle was complete and, after the government had to bail out the GSE’s with billions of taxpayer dollars, it is incredibly being repeated. That’s why The Death of Corporate Reputation: How Integrity Has Been Destroyed on Wall Street by Prof. Jonathan Macey’s new book is important ($39.95, FT Press). As he points out, trust and reputation are central to the operation of capital markets. He warns that when the public loses confidence in them fails, markets and societies fail as well. Ironically, more regulation only makes the problem worse. Macey, a Yale professor and expert in financial market regulation spells out how and why poorly considered regulation has undermined traditional trust mechanisms throughout financial institutions, accounting and law firms, credit ratings agencies, and stock exchanges. For anyone in the financial sector or who wants to understand why the last financial crisis occurred and is likely to occur again, this is an important book to read.

Surviving in the workplace is increasingly a topic for authors who offer advice. Meredith Fuller has penned Working with Bitches: Identify the Eight Types of Office Mean Girls and Rise Above Workplace Nastiness ($14.99, Da Capo Press, softcover). Ms. Fuller is a psychologist who is a consultant for major organizations, specializing in career development. She brings thirty years of experience to this book and it is aimed at women in the workplace who will recognize the same “mean girl” behavior they encountered in high school and who bring their bitchy behavior into the office. There’s the “excluder” who pretends you don’t exist and doesn’t pass alone important information. Others include the “insecure” who micromanages everyone, trusts no one, and thinks no one knows better than she. There’s the “toxic”, the “narcissist”, the “screamer”, the “liar”, the “incompetent, and the “not-a-bitch” who may have a disagreeable manner, but is just trying to do her job. All are discussed and their behavior is explained along with practical advice for coping with and protecting oneself against the mean girls, whether they are one’s peer, subordinate, or your boss. Make Your SHIFT: The Five Most Powerful Moves You Can Make to Get Where YOU Want to Go ($15.95, ATA Press) by Beverly D. Flaxington may just get you jump-started if you feel you are not moving ahead in your career and your life. The author is a business woman, co-founder of a boutique sales and marketing consultancy, and is a certified Professional Behavior Analyst, among other credentials. Offering more than motivation, her book is about a goal-achievement process that anyone can apply to their own life, learning how to identify attitudes that might be blocking progress, identifying obstacles in order to focus on those that can be controlled. Research has found that employees described themselves as possessing one or more five career-limited traits that include unreliability, responding with ‘it’s not my job’, procrastination, resistance to change, or projecting a negative attitude. If the feedback you’re receiving suggests this describes you in some fashion, you should read this book.

Walt F.J. Goodridge brings a lot of passion to his book Turn Your Passion into Profit: A step-by-step guide for transforming any talent, hobby or product idea into a money-making venture ($24.95, www.PassionProfit.com, softcover). The author draws on his own experience because he walked away from a career as a civil engineer to pursue his passion for music, writing, and helping others. Since then he has written 16 books and for several business magazines. Interestingly, he says you don’t need a degree to succeed because your desire will be your degree and the steps he spells out will help avoid some of the pitfalls while concentrating on what works if you want to be a writer, singer, designer, or chef. Clearly the book is written for those with a creative urge. Turning it into a career takes passion and some practical knowledge of what to do. This book will be helpful to creative folks. The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand by Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey with Rick Kushman ($15.95, Evolve Publishing, softcover) debuts next month and tells the story of how the authors started Barefoot Wines in the laundry room of a rented farmhouse with no money, no industry experience, and no clue what they were doing. It’s an inspiration to see how they broke all the rules and still succeeded against all odds. For anyone contemplating starting a business, there are lessons to be learned here and an entertaining story as a bonus. You can check it out at http://www.barefootwinefounders.com/ 

Kid Stuff

Not too many new books for younger readers have come in of late, but two are well worth recommending. Yes, Let’s by Galen Goodwin Longstreth and illustrated by Maris Wicks ($15.95, Tanglewood) is about a family’s day in the woods, making it a fun read-aloud book for those with children aged one through five. It’s the right size for smaller hands and its text rhymes from page to page in a loving tribute to family togetherness. For a slightly older group of young readers there an interesting and educational book, Tool. Time. Twist: A Brief History of Tools Through Time ($17.99, Craigmore Creations, Portland, OR). Written by David Shapiro and illustrated by Christopher Herndon, it takes the reader from the invention of stone axes, the discovery of how to make fire, hunting tools, drills and wrenches, and all the tools we take for granted, placing their beginnings in the proper time frame, up to automobiles and rockets that let us explore outer space. Even an adult will enjoy this one!

For teens, Zest Books publishes a number of books to help them navigate through life at a time when a lot of questions need an answer. The How-To Handbook ($10.99) is a good example, providing short, but good advice on everything from how to address an audience to pop a pimple. It offers advice on how to manage money, take great photos, and even how to iron a pair of pants. Other Zest titles such as How to Make the Grade ($14.99) offers advice on how to study better, avoid stress, and succeed in school while Seven Deadly Clicks: Essential Lessons for Online Safety and Success ($6.99) can save a youngster a world of trouble. A visit to www.zestbooks.net is a good place to visit whether you are a parent or a teen.

Novels, Novels, Novels

So many novels. Here are a few well worth considering.

All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian ($24.00, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is about an Armenian family’s struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s. Meticulously researched and told with great style, it is an excellent story of loyalty, love, and the many faces of resistance. It is told through the eyes of Maral Pegorian, whose family survived the Armenian genocide and endeavors to build a new life in their homeland. As the Nazis march down the Rue de Belleville, the adults brace for the suffering and oppression they know all too well, while the children see it as a new, bewildering experience. This story is about an aspect of the war that has not been widely or sufficiently told. War has always provided many novels and Jerome Gold has written The Moral Life of Soldiers ($16.95, Black Heron Press, softcover.) It is a novel and five stories in which one is told by an elderly officer retired from the People’s Army of (North) Vietnam. It is about the reasons a man takes up arms. In a novella that is part of the book, 1950’s Georgia is evoked in a story about a white family that moves there from the north and the moral compromises they must make to live peacefully among their white neighbors and the compromises they resist making. This is, in many ways, an unsettling group of stories, but one that asks the reader to question his or her beliefs.

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag ($25.95, Viking) is a whimsical story of hope and feminine wisdom in which Alba Ashby, the youngest PhD at Cambridge University suffers a traumatic event and finds herself on the doorstep of 11 Hope Street where she is welcomed under the condition that she will have 99 nights there in which to turn her life around. It is no ordinary house in which many literary figures like Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker have stayed in the form of talking portraits on the wall! Yes, it is a bit of a fantasy, but as Alba begin her journey to heal her wounds, it is a place that will save her life. Women, in particular, will enjoy this one. In Hand Me Down ($16.00, Plume softcover) Melanie Thorne offers a heartbreaking study of a contemporary family in the darkest of circumstances. It is the story of two young people who must face incredible odds to forge lives of their own in the face of an uncertain future. Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Reid is devoted to protecting her little sister, Jaime, shielding her from the dark side of their alcoholic, abusive father. When they are separated she must rely on the begrudging kindness of distant relatives. A move to the mountains of Utah is an idyllic life with her Aunt Tammy, but Elizabeth worries about her sister. She is soon packing for another, even less secure home, but she will rejoin her sister. This is about the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity and a story that you will read start to finish.

For those who love a good crime thriller, there’s Shadows of Doubt by Mell Corcoran ($16.95, Mill City, softcover), an impressive debut. Women are being hunted, tortured, and killed by an assailant that leaves the same clue on each of them, but it has no scientific explanation. Detective Lou Donovan must figure out this killer’s signature because he’s escalating and no one knows where he will strike next. It’s a case he did not want, but when it is taken from her, she tries to work below the radar, but is foiled at every turn. It’s as if someone is watching her and knows her every move. When she keeps meeting a mysterious stranger, his presence disarms her initially, but she is having the same effect on him. Is he the killer? You’ll have to read this novel to find out!  From one of Scandinavia’s best crime authors there’ Killer’s Art by Mari Jungstedt ($14.95, Stockholm Text, softcover) in which a man is found hanged on the old city wall of Visby. He is a well-known art gallery owner and it sends fear throughout the island. Days later a famous painting is stolen in Stockholm and there are disturbing links to the murder. The world of art, gay prostitution, and drugs unfolds in this fast-paced novel about an investigation that challenges Superintendent Anders Knutas.

That’s it for April! Lots of new non-fiction and fiction books are arriving daily so make sure to come back in May to learn about them. Tell your family, friends, and coworkers about Bookviews so they too can enjoy the latest and best new books.

Bookviews - March 2013

By Alan Caruba

My Picks of the Month

To understand what is wrong—and has been wrong for a very long time—with our healthcare system, you must read Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father and How We Can Fix it by David Goldhill ($25.95, Alfred A. Knopf). It is singularly the most cogent, must comprehensible book on the subject and his analysis explains why the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will only make the system worse, more costly, and fail to address our individual healthcare decisions and options. He begins with telling the reader how his father died in a hospital from an infection he contracted there and then reveals that a hundred thousand Americans die each year from similar infections. A hundred thousand! The healthcare industry—and it is an industry—takes in $2.5 trillion annually and then identifies the factors that affect our health, “your wealth, education, and lifestyle—not your access to healthcare.” Amidst all the babble about health care insurance, Goldhill points out that “We call it health insurance, but in reality health insurance has little in common with traditional insurance and provides few of its benefits.” This is because “health insurers can achieve long-term profit only if the amount of money spent on health care increases.” On page after page Goldhill dissects the health care industry and the insurance programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, that have destroyed the traditional doctor-patient relationship; corrupting it. If you read no other book this year, you must read this one.

The most powerful factor in human history is demography, the study of the birth and death rates, the migrations of people, and the impact these have on our current society and nation. Jonathan V. Last, a senior writer at the Weekly Standard, has written What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster ($23.99, Encounter Books) that looks at America’s failing fertility rates in which not enough babies are being born to replace the current population, leaving the nation with a growing population of the elderly dependent on a decreasingly smaller group of workers to fund its entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The U.S. fertility rate hasn’t been above replacement rate since the 1970s! It is part of the problem that is exacerbated by out of control spending by the federal government. Michael Novak, the recipient of the 1994 Templeton Prize and author of “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism”, says of Last’s book that it “explodes old ways of thinking. Not moralizing, not blaming, Jonathan Last peers methodically ahead at the cold consequences of plunging global birth rates, aging, ever small national populations.” Another book sounding a warming is Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff ($29.95, Current, an imprint of the Penguin Group) argues that our society has been so conditioned to live in the present, devoid of knowledge or understanding of ours and world history, that a younger generation of Americans has lost touch with the ability to analyze what is occurring or why. Rushkoff notes that the one reason that civilizations and their values persist over centuries is their shared faith systems and national histories. This explains the global interest in the naming of a new Pope or a generalized concern about the revived Islamism that uses terror worldwide to impose itself on all peoples. The role of the media, Rushkoff warns, creates “false and misleading narratives by elites who mean us no good, but also tends to leave everyone looking for direction and responding or over-responding to every bump in the road.” An example of this is the global warming hoax that has no basis in science, but which intrudes into every aspect of the global economy and our lives, contributing to enormous waste of money and time. The rise of technologies that encourage people to post every insignificant aspect of their lives, often ignoring the greater issues affecting them, is another example cited.

With terrorism in the headlines daily, Dr. Jeffrey D. Simon has taken a look at Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growth Threat 26.00, Prometheus Books), noting that a new era of terrorism is emerging in the form of the lone wolf, individual terrorist such as Anders Breivik in Norway who killed scores of young people to the mass-shooting by Nidal Malik Hassen, the U.S. Army major who killed many soldiers at Fort Hood. An expert on this topic, Simon cites several key factors. They are more dangerous that many terrorist groups, the Internet has provided a breeding ground for isolated individuals with terrorist tendencies, and that the common perception that nothing can be done about them is wrong because innovative strategies and policies can be developed to prevent and respond to this type of terrorism. Most recently the killings in Newtown, CT, evoked a tremendous response among Americans, but also spurned those opposed to the common sense option of armed citizens to call for more restrictions, not less. Drawing on twenty-five years of experience, Dr. Simon offers an interesting book for anyone concerned about the threats posed by violence-prone individuals in our midst.

Now that Hillary Clinton has concluded her role as Secretary of State, many are already asking if she will make a second run at the presidency. For her many admirers, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power by Kim Ghattas ($27.00, Henry Holt and Company) will prove irresistible reading as the BBC’s State Department radio and television correspondent tells the story of a popular but polarizing politician (she was a Senator from New York) to her role as America’s envoy as she strove to restore American leadership in a rapidly changing world. Ms. Ghattis does not come with the baggage of American reporters, being a half-Dutch, half-Lebanese citizen, so her insights are detailed and keen as she seeks to answer whether America is still a powerful force or if it is in decline, and what that will mean for the world.

Some books are just too long for their own good. A recent example is Power, Inc: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government—and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead ($16.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, softcover) by David Rothkopf. This is a writer who will take a thousand words to say when a hundred would do. He often seems a reluctant apologist for capitalism and the free market that says consumers will decide if a product or service is worth purchasing. He has taken on a very big subject, some 800 years of struggle between the powers in charge—mostly monarchs—and the emerging merchant class. He argues for a public-private partnership and believes it has worked for the U.S. it did in the days, for example, of the first railroads, but now all it does is “invest” in ideological enterprises such as solar and wind power that can never compete with the abundance of traditional sources of energy the U.S. possesses, wasting billions in the process. Too often the government has inserted itself into the marketplace with the 2008 mortgage-based crash as the latest example. Rothkopf examines the growing power of multinational corporations and doesn’t like what he sees in terms of their power versus that of government power, but government power often leads to failure when it intervenes and interferes in the marketplace and it is dealing with taxpayer’s money; the latest example being Obamacare. So, feel free to take a pass on this book. The author has impressive credentials, but so much to say that whatever point he is trying to make is lost in a Niagara of words.

To Your Health

Americans may be among the most health-conscious people on planet Earth. There are a number of new books on health-related topics. Among the latest arrivals are The Best Things You Can Eat by David Grotto, RD, a national spokesman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ($15.95, Da Capo Press, softcover). It is an interesting and informative look at common foods and their benefits as he relates their nutrient value, which foods help reduce or ward off common problems such as high blood pressure and various diseases, and the best choices one can make from dairy, grains and vegetables to induce sleep, improve memory and aid overall health. Much of what he relates is quite surprising in a good sort of way. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about what they eat daily.

The Family Guide to Mental Health Care by Lloyd I. Sederer, MD ($25.95, W.W. Norton & Company) is officially due off the press in April. The author is the medical director of New York State’s Office of Mental Health and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. As he notes, mental disorders left untreated can devastate a family and a community, but often the families of the more than fifty million people a year diagnosed with a mental illness feel they have nowhere to turn for authoritative advice. Now they do with a book that provides the answers families need to understand a variety of disorders, to assess whether they are receiving proper help and to help choose the right treatment. The author takes one through illnesses from depression to schizophrenia and evaluates the medications prescribed.

Life After 50: The Road to Longevity by Dr. Paul M. Valliant ($16.99, Mill City Press, softcover) offers advice on how to take control of your life as you age via diet, daily exercise, and other techniques to address the changes that occur as one grows older. With more and more Americans entering this age group or already in it, this book provides easy-to-follow rules for aging gracefully, increasing one’s stamina, and being less stressed about it. Dr. Valliant has authored 32 psychology, health, and sports-related research papers. If you or a family member are entering or in “the golden years”, this book will prove of interest. One of the problems associated with aging is dementia and I will Never Forget by Elaine c. Pereira ($20.95, iUniverse, softcover) tells the story of her mother and her journey through dementia and how the author learned to cope with its affects. She tells a heartbreaking story with a dash of humor that will help others encountering this condition in a parent for its excellent advice. The book was a finalist in the Best New Non-Fiction category of the 2012 USA Book Awards.

We all know people who struggle to keep their heads above water, trying to cope with work and family situations that are overwhelming. Fast Minds: How to Thrive If You Have ADHD (Or Think You Might ($25.95, Berkley Books) by Craig Surman, MD, Tim Bilkey, MD, with Karen Weintraub says that the ADHD brain is structurally different in the areas that control behavior, manage habits, and maintain attention. These are biological differences, not character defects, and the authors address why such folks are often forgetful, achieve below their potential, are time challenged, motivationally challenged, impulsive, and easily distracted, among other attributes of the problem. If you or someone you know needs to take control of their lives, this book provides the knowledge, tools, and resources to address these behaviors.

One publishing company, Central Recovery Press, devotes many of its books to issues involving various kinds of addictions. Among its new and forthcoming titles is Game Plan: A Man’s Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness; The Light Side of the Moon: Reclaiming Your Lost Potential; It’s Not About You, Except When It Is: A Field Manual for Parents of Addicted Children; and Intimate Treason: Healing the Trauma for Partners Confronting Sex Addiction. If any of these topics interest you, I recommend that you visit their website at www.centralrecoverypress.com. I have received and perused many of their books over the years and have no doubt they will prove very helpful.

Getting Down to Business

The headlines are filled with news of government spending debates, fiscal cliffs, and sequestration, to it is natural that people and businesses are trying to make the best decisions about their finances. Financial Fresh Start: Your Five-Step Plan for Adapting and Prospering in the new Economy by Shari Olegson ($26.00, Amacom) offers a lot of information regarding the new rules that are causing changes in banking, borrowing, credit, debt, savings, investments, home ownership, and everything else that involves planning for the future as well as current options. The author is a legal, financial and real estate expert who has simplified what often seems an impenetrable maze. Reading this book will help you adapt your banking and borrowing, fix your credit and debt status, protect your savings, investments, and retirement, and determine if home ownership is right for you.

Likewise, The Facts of Business Life: What Every Successful Business Owner Knows That You Don’t by Bill McBean ($24.95, Wiley Global Finance) should be must reading for every business owner today. The author has been a successful business owner in the automotive industry for nearly forty years, purchasing and transforming underperforming dealerships into businesses that generate more than $160 million in annual sales. McBean writes about the need to understand how changes occur as a business goes through an inevitable life cycle and the need to adapt to those changes. The books chapters include “If you don’t lead, no one will follow” and “If you don’t control it, you don’t own it.” In easily understood chapters, he addresses how one must protect a company’s assets, plan for the future, and understand that the marketplace is a war zone. When you finish reading Bean’s book you will be ready for whatever changes occur. A slimmer book by Beverly D. Flaxington, Make the Shift: The Proven Five-Step Plan to Success for Corporate Teams ($19.95, ATA Press, softcover) outlines the goal-achievement process she has developed over decades of working with individuals and businesses. This is nitty-gritty advice such as avoiding the top mistakes interviewers make when questioning potential hires and how poorly planned interviewing procedures impact hiring results. She discusses how to match a candidate’s behavioral style to the position to be filled and the candidate’s values to those of the firm’s culture. There’s a lot of useful psychology discussed such as being aware of the real problem one is trying to solve, anticipating obstacles, and why brainstorming solutions should be a regular part of the process. This is one of the books that can help the reader break through problems that are delaying success.

The ocean plays a role in two business-related books. Into The Storm by Dennis N.T. Perkins with Jillian B. Murphy ($24.95, Amacom) is sub-titled “Lessons in teamwork from the treacherous Sydney to Hobart Ocean Race.” Those who love sailing will thoroughly enjoy this account of the 35-foot sailboat and its crew that needed to survive hurricane-force winds and giant waves. They knew they could die in the storm and they knew that teamwork would help them survive during the 1998 race. It’s a heart stopping tale. Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can’t Really Afford it by G. Bruce Knecht ($26.99, Simon and Schuster) describes the building of a 187-foot luxury yacht, the Lady Linda, at a cost of $40 million. It is filled with interesting, audacious characters and events from the explosion of wealth that made it possible for Doug Van Allmen to dream of having such a yacht and the 2008 economic implosion that suddenly made his lifestyle unsustainable, leading him to fall for an outrageous Ponzi scheme. It is a fascinating story.

Reading History

I love to read history and a new book, The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century BY Paul Collins ($29.99, Public Affairs) provides an extensive look at that century that preceded the first millennium. The Renaissance was still several centuries to come and the 900s was a century in which “Europe” did not exist. Instead it was an era of chaos in which the Vikings marauding the continent along with the Magyars from the East. The average life span was a scant 35 years and everyone was dependent on the weather for crops to sustain life. As such bad years produced much starvation and almost any illness resulted in death. Childbirth was fought with danger to mother and child. Healthcare was virtually non-existent and superstition was widespread. It was the spread of Christianity—Catholicism—that saved Europe despite the constant strife between the various “nobles” of the era. They did, however, stop the spread of Islam. Religion infused the lives of everyone within the context of a strong system of castes, mostly based on protecting them as much as possible. In parallels that reflect our times, this look at the earliest century of an emerging concept of a Europe and its nation-states, the book provides a look at the harsh times and ruthless history of those who shaped it.

The Second World War was brought to a dramatic end with the use of two atomic bombs against the Empire of Japan. They enabled the U.S. to avoid estimated casualties in the many thousands had we been required to invade mainland Japan. A little known aspect of the story of the development of those first nuclear weapons is told in Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II ($27.00, Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.) It arrives just in time for Women’s History Month and tells of the thousands of young women who were recruited by the U.S. government to serve the top-secret Manhattan Project. Their destination was “Site X”, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a city that did not appear on any map at that time. The author introduces us to a half dozen young women who worked in a variety of roles from secretaries, statisticians, to calutron cubicle operators and chemists. The year was 1943 and Oak Ridge would go from being a ramshackle mud-pit top a bustling city of 75,000 by 1945. Despite the shroud of secretary that included gates and security fencing, watch towers and armed guards, the workers held Saturday night dances, enjoyed movies, and, with the surplus of army men, scientists and doctors, many of the girls became married women. Based on interviews with dozens of the surviving women and others, it was not until August 6, 1945 that many realized what their efforts had led to. It’s a great read.

The period of history leading up to and including the end of WWII is captured in A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 by James Barr ($18.95, W.W. Norton, softcover). These are the last years of colonialism and few know of the machinations, the politics and espionage, the secret deals, as both nations vied to determine who would control the Middle East, all of which climaxed with the birth of Israel in 1948 and the emerging nations, many of which that had been drawn as lines on a map by British and French diplomats. It is a compelling tale of clashing efforts, moving between London, Paris, and New York; Jerusalem, Beirut, and Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad and Tel Aviv. The personalities involved included Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle. It is filled with many more characters who come alive again on its pages. The world is still engaged in the Middle East and, as a region in turmoil, this book provides invaluable insights as to how we have arrived at this point.

War, as always, provides much of literature and Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher ($15.99, Da Capo Press, softcover), provides snapshots of the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most importantly how they affected the lives of its participants. The book brings together fifteen stories by writers that include front line soldiers, staff officers, and a military spouse. It is a way for those who only read about the events or saw bits and pieces on television to grasp the truth of the battlefield, the “fog of war”, and the lurking promise of death around every corner and down every road. Scranton, an Iraq veteran, was an artilleryman in the Army. Gallagher is a form Army captain who served 15 months in Iraq. I previously reviewed and recommended his account, “Kaboom”. Anyone who served and anyone who wants to know what it was to serve will value this book.

The ocean liner, Titanic, continues to attract the attention of the generations, already the subject of many books and several movies. Titanic Tragedy: A New Look at the Lost Liner, by John Maxtone-Graham ($15.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) is regarded as the dean of ocean liners historians and has long been fascinated by the story. He turns his talent and knowledge to the ramifications of that fateful night it sank.

Let’s round out Women’s History Month with One Glorius Ambition: The Compassionate Crusade of Dorothea Dix by Jane Kirkpatrick ($14.99, Waterbrook Press, an imprint of Random House, softcover) which, though a novel, has much to tell us of the life of this remarkable woman. Born to an unavailable mother and abusive father, she longed to protect and care for her younger brothers, but at age 14 she was sent away to live with relatives. She discovered she wanted more of life than the social expectation and limitations. Discovering a gift for teaching and writing, her pupils became her new family and she went on to become a leading voice for the mentally ill at a time when they were institutionalized and forgotten.

Odds and Ends

As is often the case, some books do not fit into easily recognizable categories. For example, Practical Classics: Fifty Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven’t Touched Since High School by Kevin Smoker ($18, Prometheus Books, softcover). An older generation of Americans will recognize titles such as “Catcher in the Rye” and “Slaughterhouse-Five”, but I am unsure that these and classics such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are even being assigned in schools these days. That would be a great loss to a new generation. Reading these and other classics are a great aid as well as great reading experiences and enjoyment. If you have been thinking about revisiting the books of your youth or those you have promised yourself to read, but haven’t, this entertaining book provides practical, real-world reasons by you should read them.

In my youth, I was a magician entertaining at many children’s birthday parties and other events. I learned a lot of valuable skills in the process and made a fair amount of money as well. Fifty years ago, two magicians, brothers, founded The Magic Castle in Hollywood, now a landmark and still a magical mecca for fans and practitioners of illusion and prestidigitation. Milt Larsen, one of the founders, has written a history in My Magical Journey: The First 30,000 days ($40.00. Book ledge, softcover) that is extensively illustrated with photos and artwork collected over the years. Located in the Lane Mansion, it became the clubhouse for a private magician’s group in 1963. It now includes thirteen performance areas plus a museum for many artifacts. In addition to famed magicians, it has also hosted many amateur illusionists including Cary Grant, and Johnny Carson. The current president is Neil Patrick Harris. Anyone who loves magic will treasure this wonderful history.

Fans of college basketball will enjoy Gene Wojciechowski’s The Last Great Game: Duke Vs. Kentucky and the 2.1 Seconds that Changed Basketball ($17.00, Plume, softcover).  The date was March 28, 1992 when the Spectrum in Philadelphia was packed for the NCAA East Regional final. What occurred was a game that was so well-played, so close, and so dramatic that it is remembered twenty years later. The shot that ended it was an 80-foot inbounds pass from Grant Hill to Christian Laettner with 2.1 seconds in overtime. It gave Duke the 104-103 victory that is remembered to this day. The author has written a delightful account of the game along with the discipline, strategy, gamesmanship, philosophy and group psychology that lifted it to legendary status.

Novels, Novels, Novels

The flood of new novels continues and includes many self-published books. There used to be a time when self-publishing was frowned upon by reviewers, but no more. The new technologies and companies such as Amazon that have created their own imprints have transformed the way new novels make their way into the marketplace.

I have known “Samuel Jay” the nom de plume of the author of Shadow of Love ($17.95, available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble) since I was a young journalist and he was already a successful New Jersey public relations professional. In recent years he has turned his talents to writing novels and his latest is a sequel to “Shadow of Guilt”, two novels that will greatly entertain anyone who loves a fast-paced story, filled with realistic dialogue and plenty of action as its main character, Chip Keller, copes with life’s disappointments and challenges in ways with which the reader can identify. In his latest novel, Keller is the victim of a deliberate crash by a heavy pick-up truck, survives, and hires a detective, a boyhood friend, to find out who his would-be killer is. He is also drawn into an effort to thwart the building plans of a powerful developer with corrupt political allies who threatens an ancient north Jersey forest area. And he wrestles with a complex love life that is woven into an intricate plot. I guarantee that, once you begin to read this novel, you will not put it down until the last page. To learn more, visit www.samueljaynovels.com.

The Mapmaker’s War by Ronlyn Domingue ($23.00, Atria Books) tells of a long ago age when a young woman named Aoife is allowed the rare apprenticeship to become her kingdom’s mapmaker, tasked with charting the entire domain. When she discovers a secretive people who live in peace among great wealth and when she reports their existence, the community is targeted as a threat. When she tried to warn them, she is exiled and finds refuge among them. The story is told as an autobiography and contains all the elements of life we recognize from our own lives. It is a mesmerizing, original adventure. The Sunshine When She’s Gone by Thea Goodman ($24.00, Henry Holt and Company) tells the story of Veronica Reed who wakes in her Manhattan apartment one frigid morning, rested for the first time in months, and her husband, John, and baby, Clara, are gone. What she does not know is that John has left for a weekend in the Caribbean. It isn’t a kidnapping. Just an impulsive choice he made. The story is told from their alternating points of view as both grapple with the sacrifices of parenthood and any parent, particularly a new one, will find this a sometimes hilarious, always eloquent story.

Alan Bradley has authored a series of books featuring an eleven-year-old heroine, Flavia de Luce, a chemist and sleuth-extraordinaire, that has captured the imagination of readers of all ages as almost a million copies combined have sold in print thus far. His fans will welcome news of Speaking Among the Bones ($23.00, Delacorte Press) the latest in the series in which Flavia returns to solve another murder—one that hits close to home. When she discovers that the tomb of St. Tancred, she cannot pass up the event. When opened, a priceless heirloom is missing Flavia is on the case. This and the other novels in the series are a lot of fun. Lee Child’s debut novel, “Helpless”, a thriller, generated raves and he is back with Stolen $25.00, Kensington) in which John Bodine discovers a malignant melanoma growing on the bottom of his wife’s foot. It is just the beginning of a nightmare that proceed from one bad decision after another when he steals an identity and files a false insurance claim to cover the cost of her healthcare. When the real person discovers what he’s done, he blackmails him, and Bodine must play a very dangerous game with the blackmailer.

Softcover novels abound and here’s a quick look at several new ones. Fight Song by Joshua Mohr ($15.95, Soft Skull Press) begins when Bob Coffen, out riding his bicycle, is intentionally run off the road by a neighbor’s SUV. Something snaps in him. Modern suburban life has been getting him down and Bob is suddenly desperate to reconnect with his distant wife and children. He embarks on a weekend quest, meeting a motley crew of strange and wonderful characters who help him discover his fight song and the way back to a meaningful life. This novel is a call to arms for anyone who feels beaten down by life in which many feel they are losing control. A very contemporary novel, it is well worth reading. For those who enjoy a good thriller, there’s Scent to Kill: A Natural Remedies Mystery by Chrystle Fiedler ($15.00, Gallery Books) featuring the sleuthing adventures of Dr. Willow McQuade, N.D., a naturopathic physician. This is a story of interlocking relationships when she is invited to a party on the estate of Roger Bixby, a television producer. Willow is more interesting in the lavender farm on the estate, hoping to pick up ideas for her new aromatherapy workshops in her story. Roger, it turns out, is working with her ex-boyfriend, Simon, who is dating Rogers soon-to-be-ex-wife, Carly. After the party is long over, Willow gets a frantic text from Simon saying Roger has drowned and been found on the beach. He is now the main suspect. When an autopsy report turns up lavender in Roger’s lungs, she is instantly suspicious. You will be, too!

Seventh Street Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books, has published three novels for spring. They are Fear of Beauty by Susan Froetschel ($15.95), Hammet Unwritten by Owen Fitzstephen ($13.95), and Dante’s Wood by Lynne Raimondo ($15.95).  All three are quite distinct. In Fear of Beauty, the battered body of an Afghan boy is found at the base of a cliff outside a remote village in Helmand Province. His mother, Sofi, is desperate to know and so does US Army Special Ranger, Joey Pearson. Together they must confront extremists in their search for answers and both learn that the urge to preserve a way of life can lead to a fundamentalism that destroys a society’s basic value. Hammett Unwritten stars the famed detective, Dashield Hammett, who closes his final case as a private eye, acquiring as a souvenir the counterfeit statuette that he will later make famous in “The Maltese Falcon.” A dangerous series of events takes Hammett from 1930’s San Francisco to the glamorous Hollywood of the 1940s, to a federal penitentiary, and finally to a fateful meeting on New Year’s Eve. You will want to go along for the adventure. In Dante’s Wood, psychiatrist Mark Angelotti knows that genes don’t lie. Or do they? Back to work after a devastating illness, Mark believes he has put his past behind him when he is asked to examine Charlie Dickerson, a mentally handicapped teenager whose wealthy mother insists he is the victim of sexual abuse. He diagnoses a different reason, but his prescription turns deadly when a teacher is murdered and Charlie confesses to the police. This is a case in which nothing that first meets the eye is true as Mark seeks to prove Charlie’s innocence.

That’s it for March! Tell your book-loving friends, family and coworkers about Bookviews and come back in April for a bevy of new non-fiction and fiction.