By Alan Caruba
My Picks of the Month
There’s a new book that should be essential reading for parents, educators, employers and others dealing with the new Generation Y and its subset, the title of Tim Elmore’s Generation iY: Our Last Change to Save the Future ($16.99, Poet Gardener Publishing in association with www.GrowingLeaders.com, softcover). They are the children of the late Baby Boomers and the early Gen-X’ers between 1984 and 2002. They have been called Millennials and the Digital or Internet Generation. They are stuck in a kind of extended adolescence, experiencing a lot of depression and disillusionment as they face adult expectations in college and in the workplace. They are also the generation we will look to lead the nation soon enough and they can barely cope with their own lives, having been told how great they were by their parents, having failed to develop interpersonal skills due to iphones, ipads, texting and hours before TV and computer screens in their own imaginary world. They have been raised to be consumers, but lack the skills to be contributors. Real life and real commitments overwhelm them easily. The result is that growing numbers drop out of high school, are unprepared for the rigors of college, are prone to quit jobs rapidly, whom an older generation must wait until they get past age 25 to show signs, if any, of anything deemed maturity. Elmore says today’s adults have to begin changing how they raise, teach, and train this generation for adult responsibilities because they will be the next generation of adults, for better or worse.
A growing number of Americans are deeply disappointed by the failure of the Obama administration’s solutions to the financial crisis and failure to turn the economy around with “stimulus” spending and other “quick fix” programs. The present mood reflects the ten years in the 1930s during the Great Depression when many current liberal programs were introduced and similarly failed. However, the legacy of the FDR administration is the “entitlement” programs such as Social Security and, later, Medicare. Both are essentially insolvent. Why don’t liberal ideas translate into any measure of success? And why are so many coercive with the intent of limiting people’s choices in a nation based on freedom? Terence P. Jeffrey, the Editor-in-Chief of CNSnews.com, has written Control Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life ($$27.95, Regnery Publishing Inc) and, in the interest of full disclosure, I have been a contributor, a commentator for this news and opinion website for many years. Putting aside the book’s title is cleverly provocative title, Jeffrey does an excellent job of providing the historic context of how the role of the federal government has grown despite the specific and limited role for it that is spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. Since the 1930s, both Democrats and Republicans alike have deliberately ignored the Constitution and even the Supreme Court has reinterpreted it or perhaps one should say misinterpreted it. Jeffrey demonstrates how increasingly intrusive into everyone’s life the federal government has become and he documents it with 57 pages of citations of the facts presented. You will be appalled by the actual debt in which the nation is mired, not just for this generation, but the next and the one after that. This is a book I would recommend everyone read before the November 2nd midterm elections. The decline in President Obama’s approval ratings suggest that people of all political persuasions are increasingly concerned about his policies and programs.
While President Obama has been successful, thanks to a party-line vote, in forcing legislation through Congress, the opposition to much of it remains. That is why, if politics interests you, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer ($27.00, Threshhold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster) will prove helpful in understanding the “transformation” Obama promised is resulting in high unemployment, a free-market system under attack, and the nationalization of large elements of the economy. This book is so thoroughly researched it takes 30 pages of small print to list all the footnotes cited throughout its text. This is a very close examination of the actual acts and statements of a president who is alienating Americans on a virtual daily basis.
Israel continues in the news, threatened by its neighbors, under attack in the United Nations, and the on-again, off-again trials of its relationship with changing U.S. administrations. How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or less Without Leaving Your Apartment by Gregory Levey ($25.00, Free Press) is the often hilarious and sometimes horrifying look at the inner workings of international government agencies. Also available in softcover is his previous book, Shut Up I’m Talking to You ($15.00, Free Press).The author relates his return to the United States after a stint in his mid-twenties writing speeches for the Israeli government. He discovered that everyone seems to believe they have the solution to the intractable Middle East’s conflicts and they all want to tell him about it. He concludes that he must find the answer for himself, sorting out the many different “answers” offered by White House officials, D.C. lobbyists, congressmen, advisers to presidential candidates, high profile journalists, and others. Unraveling the ancient claims and modern rivalries has yet to hit upon a formula for peace in a region filled with conflict. The author provides a window to the process. I recommend both books.
We are all so occupied with the daily headlines of events around the world, it is easy to forget that for millennia Europeans believed the world consisted of three parts; Europe, Africa, and Asia. The trade routes between these regions was well established in early times, but The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester ($16.99, Free Press, softcover) is the story of what was widely regarded as an inaccessible place, North and South America, that until 1507 wasn’t even on the maps of that era. The book is a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration that sweeps across continents and centuries. Early traders like Marco Polo and early Christian missionaries had trekked to Asia. The Portuguese were explorers of Africa and the Far East, but it took Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci to put a then unknown but rumored continent on the map. This is a piece of history worth visiting.
Writers frequently and understandably enjoy the companionship of other writers. It is a difficult and demanding craft. Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps ($25.00, Counterpoint Press) chronicles the correspondence between these two that began with a letter of admiration for James Salter’s novel, “A Sport and a Pastime” that developed into a long friendship spanning two decades. Phelps authored “Heroes and Orators” and “The Literary Life”, but is perhaps better known as the editior of “Earthly Paradise: Colette’s Autobiography.” Some two hundred letters examine the trials of writing and their mutually supportive relationship. Salter has written novels, essays, screenplays, and short stories, and divides his time between Aspen and Long Island. Phelps passed away in 1989.
If there is one thing that people who love to read have in common is the ambition to also write. Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob ($15.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) is subtitled, “The complete guide to writing cookbooks, blogs, reviews, memoir and more” and has proven so popular it is now in its second edition. Its focus is on writing about food and for anyone wanting to break into this arena it is filled with good advice about the various genres of food writing. I have been a professional writer for decades so I can confirm that this is the real deal that is based not only on her own successful career, but on interviews with other food writers, literary agents, cookbook editors, and others. It is an essential tool for every foodie hoping to put pen to page One of the most practical cookbooks I have seen in a while is the Gooseberry Patch Keepsake Cookbook ($27.95, Oxmoor House, an imprint of Time Inc). It’s 420 pages, filled with great recipes and great color photos, of which 50 are blank pages on which you can add your own recipes, but mostly it is its unique format, a three-ring binder, so the book can lay flat on the kitchen table while you sample Gooseberry co-founders, Jo Ann Martin and Vickie Hutchins’ collection of delicious, but sensible dishes perfect for any evening meal. Gooseberry began as a mail-order business and the recipes included in their catalogs quickly became such favorites customers were saving them. Today, the company is serving its third generation of customers. You will never be without great ideas for great dinners and other meals with this timeless and timely cookbook. Check it out at www.oxmoorhouse.com.
I spent my college days driving from New Jersey to Florida on Interstate 95, so I have some memories of it. They have been awakened by Dianne Perrier’s delightful history, Interstate 95: The Road to Sun and Sand ($24.95, University Press of Florida) and, for those with similar memories of Interstate 81: The Great Warriors Trace, she has explored its history as well. Interstate 95 stretches along the East Coast from Maine’s Canadian border almost all the way to the Florida Keys, passing through fifteen states, plus the District of Columbia where Interstate 81 starts on Wellesley Island, New York and makes its way through the Appalachians to its southernmost point, Dandridge, Tennessee. Both were part of the great highway system envisioned by President Dwight Eisenhower and both created a whole new mobility for Americans, creating greater economic growth as well. If you love history as I do, you will enjoy either or both of these adventures on the highways and discover how they reflected trails blazed by Indians and early Americans.
Ever wonder why we say “God bless you” when someone sneezes? Or why hanging a horseshoe over the door is a good luck symbol? These and many other “old wives’ tales and superstitions” that are a daily part of our lives as we knock on wood to ward off bad luck or we avoid walking under ladders, are explained in Black Cats & Four-Leaf Clovers by Harry Oliver ($13.95, Perigee, softcover). I recommended his previous book, “Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops” and I recommend this one as yet another entertaining collection of information.
Relationships and Aging
Every so often one comes across a compelling title like Everyone Marries the Wrong Person: Turning Flawed in Fulfilling Relationships ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover) by Christine Meinecke, PhD. The author dismisses conventional viewpoints on relationships and shows how to transcend the initial infatuation called love in order to create a mature, lasting love because the two partners in the marriage change. Marriages fall apart for many reasons, but it often comes back to the expectations brought into the relationship and the simple fact that life imposes changes on both. The author offers a proven plan to salvage a marriage that is on the fast track to divorce. If this describes your own or a friend’s, than this book will likely prove helpful.
Raising Confident Readers is surely a subject close to my heart. J. Richard Gentry, PhD ($14.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) tackles a big problem insofar as studies have shown that four out of ten eight-year-olds cannot read independently, largely because of a lack of word exposure in their formative years. If you have a youngster returning to school with poor reading skills you need to step in and help. This book will show you how. The good news is that it doesn’t take long to improve a child’s reading skills and the author provides reading and writing exercises that any parent can use. There is little doubt that we live in stressful times and that our new age of technology and information access often contributes to that stress. A corollary to this is Homework Made Simple: Tips, Tools, and Solutions for Stress-Free Homework by Ann K. Dolin, M.Ed ($14.95, Advantage Books, softcover. Kids are coming home with more and more homework these days and this poses a problem for them and their parents. The author, a former public school teacher with more than 20 years experience, offers lots of good advice for parents of children from age six to 18 and identifies six key types of children who struggle with school and homework. She spells out six study skills that need to be developed and the organization of time that help students master content and build self-confidence. In a very real way, this is homework for adults and well worth reading. For parents that have children exhibiting learning problems, I recommend The Learning Tree: Overcoming Learning Disabilities from the Ground Up by Stanley I. Greenspan, MD, and Nancy Thorndike Greenspan ($26.00, Da Capo Press). Whether one is a parent of a child who is behind in several academic areas or of a gifted child with subject-specific weakness such as math, they know the issue needs to be confronted and the authors provide an overview of problems children face in early development and beyond. They not only identify the symptoms of learning disabilities, but the missing developmental steps that cause the symptoms. This book will provide peace of mind along with a game plan to address problems.
Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness by Susan Smalley, PhD, and Diana Winston ($16.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) discusses the beneficial effects of mindfulness techniques that can improve attention and concentration, decrease addictive behaviors, boost performance, and help with challenging thoughts and emotions like depression and anxiety. A good companion volume is Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear by Dr. Srinivasan S. Pillay, MD ($25.99, Rodale). The World Health Organization calls stress “the health epidemic of the 21st century” and given the global financial crisis, rogue nations seeking or having nuclear capabilities, and the rise of Islamo-fascism, there is plenty about which to be anxious. Dr. Pillay’s book could be called “tough love” because he advises against making excuses for not turning positive ideas into action such as how to visualize success and make it happen, explains why powerful leaders engage in infidelity, dealing with a fear of commitment or fear of rejection, and how to cope with loneliness, among other common human experiences.
Not only are Americans in particular living longer lives, they are seeking ways to live longer and healthier lives. The Longevity Diet ($14.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) by Brian M. Delaney and Lisa Walford addresses how diet can ward off health problems, delay the aging process, and extend life expectancy. This is the second edition of the book that focuses on a calorie restriction diet that the authors say can help with weight loss and prevent common ailments such as type 2 diabetes, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure, among other health related concerns. I cannot attest to its recommendations, but for anyone interested in this subject, there is sure to be something of value to be found in this book. I am in my seventh decade and, for most of my life, I dined at the table with parents who were dedicated to eating well. Good food and good wine is probably the best antidote to aging there is. My late Mother taught haute cuisine, the secrets of gourmet cooking and baking for thirty years, was an internationally famed authority on wine, and an author of several cookbooks. She lived to 98. My Father lived to 93 and would probably have lived longer had a trip to a hospital not contributed to shortening his life. A large consort of Americans is aging. A whole generation of Baby Boomers from the 1950s is beginning to retire or at least receive Social Security. Thus, Aging Gracefully, Aging Defiantly by Norma Roth ($18.95, Author House, softcover) not only proved to be interesting and inspiring reading to me, but will no doubt find a large audience among my contemporaries. The expression is that old age is not for sissies and there’s enough truth in that for Roth to have developed “ten tips to keep people off your back” when family and others begin to wonder if you are having “senior moments”, occasional forgetfulness that, in someone younger, would be ignored. This book is so full of really good advice on making the transition to one’s sixties and beyond that I cannot say enough good things about it. If you have an aging member in your family or a friend possibly having a problem or two as they age, I recommend you give them this book.
The Lives of Real People
Every so often someone writes a memoir that is so unique that is quite compelling. That’s the case with Black & Bulletproof : An African-American Warrior in the Israeli Army (24.95, New Horizon Press) that is officially due out in December. It is the story of Marcus Hardie, a man who was raised in the gang-infested streets of Los Angeles, but who through intelligence and pure grit escaped to graduate from college and law school, and became a special assistant to a California governor. Religion had always played a role in his life, but he found himself increasingly drawn to Judaism and, because he always amerced himself in anything that interested him, he volunteered to help out at a Jewish home for the aged, learning about the Holocaust from its survivors, discovering the pleasure of the discipline that Judaism offers through study of its holy book, the Torah, and finding a welcome from Jews who saw passed his skin color. He not only converted, but journeyed to Israel where he worked in the offices of the Mayor of Israel who later became Prime Minister. His commitment went further when, at age 28, he volunteered to join its Defense Force despite being told it was largely composed of people a decade younger. His experiences in the elite anti-terrorism unit are worth reading as is the entire book as proof that real faith is colorblind.
The life of Howard Hughes, the billionaire who took a company that made oil drill bits and multiplied it into a life making films in Hollywood, developing aircraft, and owning a number of Las Vegas casinos. He eventually became famed for his reclusive ways, avoiding the media, conducting the business of his empire by phone, and ultimately becoming the focus of a fake autobiography that made international news when he exposed its author who went to jail. Now his story takes an even more extraordinary turn in Boxes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes by Douglas Wellman ($10.95, softcover), available from WriteLife or via Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and other outlets. Wellman became friends with Eva McLelland and in the course of that friendship she confided to him that she and Hughes had been married for several decades before his passed away. When they met in Panama, he became smitten with her, but remained a mysterious figure, until they married and he revealed his true identity. With her help, Wellman delved into the way he literally enlisted a mentally ill, aging substitute to lead people to believe he was a man of bizarre behavior unable to function in society, a recluse. The real Hughes lived a quite normal life behind this clever ruse to avoid the Internal Revenue and an army of lawyers pursuing him. I have no doubt he was able to pull this off and this book documents how he did it. Another compelling story is told in Wanted: Gentleman Bank Robber – The True Story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, One of the FBI’s Most Elusive Criminals by Dane Batty ($15.95, Nish Publishing, Hillsboro, NC, softcover). For twenty years he robbed more than thirty banks without firing a shot. Caught and jailed twice, he escaped and went sailing around the Caribbean with his wife and dog! His life was filled with adventures that took him to Alaska, Antigua, and Cancun. For years the FBI tried to capture him, but it wasn’t until he turned himself in that his life of crime ended. In this book, he relates his successes, failures, robbery techniques, his passion for sailing and his love for his wife. If this interests you, then download the first chapter at www.nishpublishing.com. You will want to read the whole book after that. A very different tale of life on the water is told by Rick Rinehard in Men of Kent: Ten Boys, a Fast Boat, and the Coach Who Made Them Champions ($14.95, Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press, softcover). A private school in Kent, Connecticut and its rowing team became a sensation in 1972, meriting a banner headline in the New York Times’ sports section when it had a 46-0 winning streak, broke three course records, and claimed a national championship in the Royal Regatta in England. Rinehart was part of that team and he relates this extraordinary story of the team and its coach. The author now lives in Lafayette, Colorado, and he has written a story that is well worth reading.
World War Two has spawned enough books to fill an entire library. The greatest conflict in modern history, it continues to fascinate those whose interest is military history. Inside the Nazi War Machine: How Three Generals Unleashed Hitler’s Blitzkrieg Upon the World by Bevin Alexander ($26.95, NAL Caliber) is the story of how Rommel, von Manstein and Guderian turned the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) into a fearsome weapon of war in France in 1940 and elsewhere. The war began in 1939 with the invasion of Poland, drawing both Britain and France into it. America joined in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. Alexander, a renowned expert on military strategy and history, recounts how Hitler botched his best opportunity to defeat Great Britain. These generals changed the face of modern warfare forever. A later war in Vietnam produced a Medal of Honor winner for his role at Dai Do during a three-day battle in which the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, numbering only eight hundred men, victoriously fought back ten thousand North Vietnamese Army regulars. Noble Warrior ($28.00, Zenith Press) is told by that Medal of Honor recipient, James E. Livingston, along with Colin D. Heaton and Anne-Marie Lewis. He had been the commanding office of 2/4’s Echo Company. When you consider that 80% of all Medals of Honor are awarded posthumously, his story is even more inspiring because, despite wounds received, his service in the Marines was far from over after that battle. In 1975, he returned to Vietnam to help plan and execute the evacuation of Saigon. After the war he served in a variety of positions around the world, retiring as a major general in 1995. Our two most recent wars, ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan remind us of our need for such men.
Getting Down to Business Books
The Smart Swarm by Peter Miller ($26.00, Avery, an imprint of Penguin Group) is subtitled, “How understanding flocks, schools, and colonies can make us better at communicating, decision making, and getting things done.” Miller is a senior editor at National Geographic so it’s obvious where the idea for this interesting book originated. While not specifically a “business” book, it is a look at the basic principles behind how groups self-organize and tackle problems and how that applies to human activities in business, politics, and technology. Computer scientists studied ant colonies’ governing rules to write programs to streamline factory processes, telephone networks, and truck routes. Groups in nature have had millennia to develop their strategies and there is much to learn from them. The Connectors by Maribeth Kuzmeski ($22.95, Wiley) offers a pragmatic approach for many of today’s job seekers because the job market, such as it is, is flooded with competition and, in these days of online communication, it is essential to understand how to survive in a virtual world. It takes more than just a resume. The author says the key is networking, networking, networking, and then she tells you how. “You want to be the first person who comes to mind when someone in your network hears about a great job opening.” Good advice!
Competitive Selling: Out-Plan, Out-Think, Out-Sell to Win Every Time is one of those titles that tells you the author means business (no pun intended!). Landy Chase ($22.95, McGraw-Hill) discusses how the marketplace today offers many choices for consumers. As a result, today’s salesman or woman has to develop an attitude that says they are going to crush the competition. The author takes one through the gamut of obstacles to overcome in making the sale such as value versus price, how to evaluate client needs, the games people play, the need for face time, and the art of closing the sale, among many other aspects. Brian Tracy is the author of Time Power: A Proven System for Getting More Done in Less Time Than You Ever Thought Possible and now he has an audiobook version available ($39.98, Hachette Audio) in which he shares his system on how to make better decisions faster, set clear goals, overcome the people problems that sap your time, and the five tools and techniques you can use to make you more productive.
For anyone trying to understand what is happening to the U.S. economy Robert E. Wright’s Fubarnomics: A Lighthearted, Serious Look at America’s Economic Ills ($26.00, Prometheus Books) takes a stab at explaining it. “Fubar” is a WWII acronym for “fouled up beyond all repair.” The author is the Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. He formerly taught at NYU’s Stern School of Business for many years, so don’t let the small college credential fool you. I have one caveat and that is the style, not the content, of the book which tends to spend too much time explaining everything and trying to be clever in the process. Economics can be quite boring to everyone except economists and the author seems to be over-compensating for that. You will, however, if you hang in, learn why the nation experienced a financial crisis and what the author recommends we do to get out of the mess.
A Bounty of Books for Kids and Teens
September is traditional as the month the kids go back to school. Getting a child into the reading habit early in life is one of the greatest gifts any parent can give and Bookviews has received a bounty of books for ages from the very young (who must be read to) to those up through their teens.
Starting with toddlers, there’s a cleverly packaged group of four “early learning board books” with pop-up market and press-out characters called Market Day by Victoria Roberts and Tomislav Zlatic ($19.95, Kane Miller of Tulsa, Oklahoma. These books introduce them to colors, shapes, opposites, and numbers. They represent a great way to teach these concepts. Kane Miller is a major publisher of children’s books and the quality is always excellent. Here are a few more. The Gobble Gobble Moooo Tractor Book by Jez Alborough ($15.99) spins of tale of how, as Farmer Dougal sleeps, sheep and other animal friends board his tractor and take turns making noises. And what kid doesn’t love to do that? The illustrations are fun, too. For the very early, first readers there’s A Garden for Pig by Kathryn K. Thurman, illustrated by Lindsay Ward ($15.99). Pig lives on an apple farm and is frankly tired of apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He dreams of vegetables. His dream comes true after some fun adventures. Then there’s The Church Mouse by Graham Oakley ($16.99) in which Arthur the mouse invites the other mice to live there. It doesn’t take long for people to notice and Sampson the church case, Arthur’s friend, must confront the population explosion. When a burglar sneaks in to steal the candle holders, the mice and Sampson capture him and alert the townspeople and there is, of course, a happy ending. Based on a true story, Old Age, Eagle Hero ($15.99) recounts the story of an eagle raised and adopted by a northern army detachment during the Civil War as told by Patrick Young and illustrated by Anne Lee. A nice combination of animal and history story.
A great toddler and early reader series is the Howard B. Wigglebottom series for ages 4 to 8 by Howard Binkow and illustrated by Susan F. Cornelison. These are excellent teaching tools and includes Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, Listens to His Heart, Learns about Bullies, Learns About Mud and Rainbows, and Learns It’s OK to Back Away. They are priced at $15.00 each and produced by a non-profit organization, the We Do Listen Foundation of Sarasota, Florida, in association with Lerner Publishing Group of Minneapolis, MN. Teachers love these books because they use humor and real situations with which children can identify. They have won tons of awards such as Best Home School Product of the Year for Children, Learning Magazine Teacher’s Choice for Children, Independent Publishers Annual Award of Excellence, and others. To check them out, visit www.wedolisten.com.
The children’s book author, Jane Yolen, has had her 300th book published this month. She has won every award there is for her stories and poems. She marks the milestone with Elsie’s Bird ($17.99, Philamel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group), illustrated beautifully by David Small. For those aged seven to ten, this is a beautiful story of a young girl and her father after his wife had died. He leaves Boston for life as a farmer in Nebraska and Elsie’s only friend is a canary that sings to cheer her. There is a bit of drama to this story when it escapes its cage, but it has a very happy ending.
Raindrops: A Shower of Colors by Chieu Anh Urban and illustrated by Viviana Garofoli is another book for the pre-schooler, aged 3 to 5, that teaches what the various colors’ names are in a “board” book that will stand up to handling ($8.95, Sterling Publishing). The author was born in Vietnam in 1975 and fled to the U.S. with 7,000 others. She grew up in Northern Virginia and now lives near Washington, D.C. with her three daughters. Another book about the rain is full of poetry. One Big Rain was compiled by Rita Gray and illustrated by Ryan O’Rouke ($9.95, Charlesbridge Publishing). It will light up the imagination of any youngster, ages 7 to 10, and prove a perfect book to read on a rainy day. Charlesbridge is one of my favorite children’s book publishers and Boo Cow by Patricia Baehr, wonderfully illustrated by Margot Apple, is a hilarious story of how the Noodleman’s discovered, after leaving city life, that their chicken farm came with a ghost, a Boo Cow, that they thought was scaring the chickens who they though were not laying eggs. Turns out there was an egg thief lurking around. Any pre-schooler will love having this read to them and any early reader will get a lot of laughs out of it.
I started with Kane Miller and there still others to recommend to readers aged 10 to 14, small, short novels. A series called “Extreme Adventures” by Justin D’Ath includes Shark Bait and Scorpion Sting and there are “Chloe & Levesque” mysteries, Double Cross and Over the Edge, both by Norah McClintock, a charming story Hooray for Anne Hibiscus who loves to sing and has some serious stage fright when chosen to sing at school in front of the president. A visit to www.kanemiller.com will tell you more, but I can tell you these books, generally priced at $5.99, are just right to slip in a backpack or a pocket.
For parents who embrace a conservative philosophy and want to pass it on to their children, particularly those old enough to be asking questions of the direction the nation is taking, capitalism versus socialism, differences between Republicans and Democrats, then I would recommend Janie Johnson’s Don’t Take My Lemonade Stand: An American Philosophy ($24.95, Bascom Hill Publishing Group, Minneapolis, MN, softcover). This is one of the best books on these fundamental topics I have read in a very long time and it is written in a fashion that any teenager can understand (and smart pre-teens, too) and enjoy. As noted in my recommendation of “Generation iY” above, it is essential to get this new generation involved now if we are to have a future in which widely accepted American values continue to guide the nation.
Novels, Novels, Novels!
The fall is the season, along with spring, when publishers unleash an avalanche of new fiction and 2010 is no exception. I have stacks of hardcover and softcover novels to wade through and will do so this month and those ahead.
William Morrow, now an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, has been around the publishing scene a long time with many fine novels to its credit. If you like mysteries and thrillers, they have two, Judgment & Wrath by Matt Hilton ($24.99) and Bad Boy by Peter Robinson ($25.99). Hilton is already building a following as this is second novel starring Joe Hunter whom some would call a vigilante. When a father comes to him to help rescue his daughter from her abusive millionaire boyfriend, Hunter cannot say no. The problem is that the daughter does not want to be rescued and a psycho contract killer has been hired to kill her and her boyfriend. There are plenty of questions to be answers and plot twists to keep any guy turning the pages. The same holds true for Robinson’s novel in which Detective Inspector Alan Banks stars, as he has through a series of novels since 1987. He’s away on holiday in San Francisco when a distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to him. His partner Annie Cabbot steps in. She has found a loaded gun in her daughter’s bedroom, a punishable offense under British law (did I mention both authors are British and their novels reflect that?) but the situation quickly spins out of control. It turns out that her best friend and roommate is Banks’ daughter who was last seen running off to warn the owner of the gun, a very bad boy. Things get very shocking, very quickly. The Brits seem to have a special talent for such stories.
Venom by Joan Brady is subtitled “a novel of suspense” ($26.99, Touchstone, a Simon and Schuster imprint) and it more than lives up to its title starring two characters from a previous novel and takes the readers from Illinois to an Alabama bee farm, and into the high-stakes world of industrial espionage in London while shadowing the lives of those affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Complicated? Oh yes, but it never stops from the moment an ex-con, David Marion, opens the door to a man sent to kill him. Shortly after, he calmly walks away from his house, gets into his beat-up Volkswagen, and drives away as a huge explosion leaves his home a burning pit. It is assumed the body that’s found is him. Suffice to say, you will not be able to put this book down because it is filled with twists and turns that will keep you turning the pages. Power Slide is part of the Darcy Lott mysteries series by Susan Dunlap ($25.00, Counterpoint Press). Darcy, a stunt double, is on location at the Port of Oakland, positioned for a power slide, a dangerous trick in which she falls off a bike and skids under an 18-wheeler. An injury ensues, making for trouble between her and her boyfriend, a stunt driver, Damon Guthrie. Meanwhile, Darcy’s siblings are pressuring her to search for Mike, their missing brother. Complicated enough for you? Women authors seem especially adroit at complex stories and either one of these will prove a very satisfying piece of fiction.
It is a time of great turmoil in America. The United States, operating under the Articles of Confederation, is on the brink of total collapse. The military has been reduced to near extinction, economic turmoil is everywhere, and world powers are circling like vultures to pick off parts of the new nation and largely unknown continent. To address this, a group of fifty-five men meet secretly in Philadelphia starting in May 1787 to replace the Articles with a Constitution. That is the heart of the novel by James B. Best, Tempest at Dawn, ($28.95, Wheatmark, Tucson, AZ, available via Amazon.com). It took Best twelve years to research and write this novel, but it was worth it. While the story of the writing of the Constitution has been told many times, the novel captures the real drama that ensued behind closed doors as they hammered out what is now the oldest living constitution and the foundation of the nation. Read it for its historical value. Read it for its dramatic value. But read it!
Finally, there are two interesting novels about living in a different culture and nation than one’s place of birth. Cecile Garnst Berg is the author of Blonde Lotus ($15.00, Haven Books, softcover). When she ran away from her native Norway in the late 1980s in search of adventure, Berg knew little about China, but after a casual stop in Beijing she decided to visit for a while. That was over twenty years ago and she hasn’t left. The novel is reminiscent of “Lost in Translation” and “Sex and The City”, as her main character, Kat Glose, discovers a very different China while falling in love with it and its people. This is an interesting way to learn about the real China while being thoroughly entertained in the process. In a similar fashion, I Was an Elephant Salesman by Pap Khouma ($55.00/$18.95, Indiana University Press, hardcover and softcover) tells the story of an illegal immigrant, an African street vendor in Italy who has invented a life for himself as an itinerant trader of carved elephants, small ivories, and other trinkets. It is, in a larger sense, the story of a Europe coming to grips with multiracial, multi-religious, and multi-cultural realities while the main character struggles to hold on to his identity and dignity under very difficult circumstances. A bestseller in Italy, it has been translated by Rebecca Hopkins. It is a very rewarding reading experience in many ways.
That’s it for September! Remember to tell your friends about Bookviews so they too can learn about the many new books that can hold the key to their questions or just entertain with a lively story.
See you in October!
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Bookviews by Alan Caruba
December 2009
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Happy New Year!
My Picks of the Month
It’s the time of year we think about gifts for loved ones, friends, and colleagues. I have always thought of books as ideal, particularly if you know the particular interests of the person to receive one.
For the man in your life, The Immortals: History’s Fighting Elites by Nigel Cawthorne ($30.00, Zenith Press) is a large format book with 130 color photos, artwork and photos that reviews the history of warfare and the men who composed the force from which the book draws its title, the Persian Immortals, as well as the Spartans, the Roman Praetorian Guard, as well as famed elite fighting forces such as Japan’s ninjas, the Mongol hordes, the Prussian Guard, and the Stonewall Brigade, right up to the Green Berets and U.S. Navy Seals. The book spans centuries to shine a light on the most skilled, deadly, and respected warriors throughout history. With a great text and great illustrations on every page, this is sure to please the warrior spirit in any man. For those of you who, like myself, wonder why the U.S. has not decisively won a war since World War Two, despite having arguably the best fighting machine in the history of warfare, I recommend you read The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by Stephen L. Melton ($30.00, Zenith Press). Following more than twenty years of active duty as an army officer, the author is a member of the faculty at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. His book won’t win him any popularity contests at the Pentagon, but it is a brilliant, history-based analysis of why we only managed a stalemate in Korea in the 1950s, lost the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, and have found ourselves mired in the Middle East in this decade. In essence, the knowledge and experience that led to victories in the past has been jettisoned by the military in favor of a love affair with the writings of a Prussian general from Napoleon’s time. We have an entire cadre of officers right up to the top ranks who have no memory or knowledge of how the U.S. formerly waged and won wars. They need to read this book which is written for them as opposed to the layman, but it will prove just as interesting to those outside the military for its review of the American fighting machine and its current inability to address the necessity of governance following swift military victory. We did this well in the past, but no longer.
President Obama’s Asian tour focused attention once again on China and my friend, Michael J. Economides, along with Xina Xie, has just published Energy: China’s Choke Point ($29.99, Energy Tribune Publishing, Houston, TX), a book that should be required reading for every member of Congress, the White House, and the entire corps of journalists because it not only provides an excellent, brief history of China that adopted Mao Zedong’s communism, suffering the loss of millions in the wake of its failures, but then cast it aside to become America’s rival and partner as both nations take different approaches to energy, the master resource that determines success or failure, prosperity or poverty. Economides is one of the world’s leading authorities on energy and this book will prove a revelation concerning China’s quest for it as it strives to make up for lost time and the creation of jobs and a better life for its 1.3 billion citizens. Another book worth reading on this critical subject is Who Turned Out the Lights? Authors Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson offer a “guided tour to the energy crisis” America is facing as the result of decades of refusing access to its own vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Bittle is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org and Johnson is a co-founder. Their book is filled with good, solid information on the options facing Americans for whom securing abundant, affordable energy will require some tough, realistic decisions to be made. At this point, American has lost decades, failing to build a single new oil refinery or any new nuclear plants since the 1970s. At the same time, access to offshore oil remains under a de facto ban and the present administration is waging a war on coal. That makes the title particular apt given the fact that fifty percent of all the electricity generated in America comes from burning coal.
I know that The Law of Forgiveness works because I have applied it to my own life for a long time. The author, Connie Domino, MPH, RN ($12.00, Berkley, softcover) reveals the transformative power of forgiveness that includes not just others, but oneself as well. Regrets and anger over lost opportunities, hardened emotions over relationships with loved ones, friends, or workplace colleagues, all serve to hold one back because that’s what you’re doing, looking back instead of forward. The author provides clearly written guidelines and simple affirmation-based techniques that will free you up to move on with your life. Do you want to tackle The Big Questions? That’s the title of Steven E. Landsburg’s intriguing new book, subtitled, “Tackling the Programs of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics” ($26.00, Free Press). This economist has already made a name for himself with “The Armchair Economist” and “More Sex is Safer Sex.” Anyone who enjoys the mental exercise of philosophical questions will enjoy this virtual gymnasium of questions about moral choices and other conundrums. Perhaps the best part is the way he sets your mind to working in language and style that does not intimidate the reader.
On a lighter side, there’s Ultimate Catholic Trivia: 1001 Fun and Fascinating Facts by Scott Paul Frush, ($9.95, Marshall Rand Publishing, Royal Oak, MI, softcover) a history buff whose “Ultimate Italian Trivia” caught my attention because I am descended on my father’s side from Italians who had the good sense to get on the boat and come to America. Frush does not treat the subject in a trivial fashion. Instead he provides more insight into the history, traditions, and belief system of the Church than far more scholarly tomes. Catholics will thoroughly enjoy this book (the author is Catholic with a Masters degree from Notre Dame University) and even non-Catholics will find it both interesting and entertaining. It is filled with facts about Jesus, the Bible, saints, popes, the Vatican, the Mass, sacraments, organizations and clergy. For the believers in nothing at all there’s You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts of Naught by Joan Konner ($17.00, Prometheus Books) the author of “The Atheist’s Bible.” If there is such a thing as a happy atheist, I have yet to have met one, but it is amazing how many diverse people from ancient times to the present that have expressed themselves on the subject of nothing. Philosophers, mystics, artists, musicians, poets, geniuses and jokers have opined on nothingness and it must be said this collection of quotes is genuinely interesting. Page after page will tickle your brain. From the Free Press come two books, combined in one, suited to whatever your outlook on life may be, The Pessimist’s Handbook: A Companion to Despair and, between the same covers, The Optimist’s Handbook: A Companion to Hope ($9.99, softcover), both are identified as humor and well they should be because, read front to back or vice versa, it will have you laughing from beginning to end. I loved it! One of my favorite quotes is by Ben Hecht, a playwright and screen writer, who said, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
Milefi Kete Asante is a professor of African American Studies at Temple University and has authored 65 books. One of them, Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation has been revised and expanded ($19.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) and for anyone for whom this is a concern, this book offers some provocative ideas, not the least of which is his belief that America cannot continue as a cohesive society so long as racial injustice, in less obvious ways, continues. I am not in agreement with much of his thesis because African-Americans have had four decades since then to remedy cultural and other problems within their own community. There has been progress, but not enough. Simple, Not Easy: Reflections on Community, Social Responsibility, and Tolerance by Terrence Roberts ($24.95, Parkhurst Brothers Inc., Little Rock, AR) offers the viewpoint of one of the nine black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School some forty years ago. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to protect them. Roberts grew up to be a psychologist and brings a unique perspective to events since then. His book will be released next month and for anyone interested in the American Civil Rights movement, as well as themes that include education, leadership, integration, race and racism, this book is well worth reading. If you want to see what racism was like in its worst possible way, read Dominique Lapierre’s A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa ($26.00, Da Capo Press). It is one of the most profoundly disturbing books I’ve seen in a long time. The sheer horror of apartheid, the brutal and deliberate effort to separate and subjugate native Africans and colored races from the descendents of the white Dutch colonizers was a nightmare. When it gave way to the movement to reclaim South Africa, the world felt better about itself, but under new, native leadership that nation is encountering its own problems.
Given the revelations that prominent climate scientists, members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, engaged in rigging the data to support bogus global warming claims, two books stand out as the most idiotic of the year. I start with James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming ($20.00, Greystone Books). Written with Richard Littlemore, the author is the co-founder of DeSmogBlog.com and a public relations practitioner by trade. Among those providing a blurb for its back cover is actor Leonard DiCaprio who, unknown to us, apparently knows more about meteorology than real meteorologists. Suffice it to say, the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998 and that cycle is likely to last for several decades. Writing a book castigating the “deniers” of global warming is truly ironic in the wake of the IPCC revelations. The book neglects to mention that the computer models put forth as “proof” have now been demonstrated to have been found not just flawed but, in some cases, deliberately false. Only the “true believers” of the Green religion will take comfort in this book, but those wise enough to ignore it will be paying far more attention to the nation’s economy in the 2010 midterm elections. Joining in the sillyness is Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate by Stephen H. Schneider ($28.00, National Geographic Books). The author argues the usual end-of-the-world global warming scenarios, but does so at a time when all the “facts” put forth by people like Al Gore and others simply do not reflect what the general public has begun to understand; the Earth has been cooling since 1998. This is classic “junk science” and it comes at a time when a UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, December 7 to 18, will try to foist a treaty that few will want to sign. Global warming will be remembered as the greatest fraud of the modern era. It will damage the public faith in scientists for some time to come.
People, People, People
It sometimes seemed to me that the comedian George Carlin had been around forever. His life and mine were lived in parallel tracks, so as he appeared on the Merv Griffin Show in the 1960s, I saw him there. As he progressed to the Ed Sullivan Show, I saw him there, and over the decades we shared, Carlin evolved into one of the most remarkable observers of life in America that his later HBO specials reflected his unique and very funny take, one that was often quite brash and occasionally profane. He was a very funny man and his fans will enjoy Last Words by George Carlin, written with his longtime friend, Tony Hendra ($26.99, Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster). This is Carlin’s autobiography from growing up on the multicultural streets of New York to a stint in the Air Force, his discovery of radio as a DJ, his transition to stand-up comic, marriage, his addictions, the whole ball of wax as they say. I’d say that I miss him, but Carlin left such a body of work behind, including books, that it is really hard to think of him as dead. Happily, Leslie Caron is very much alive and has written a delightful memoir of her life as a movie star and thereafter. Thank Heaven ($25.95, Viking) tells what it was like to costar with some of the greatest dancers captured on film, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, but she also paired with Cary Grant and, off-screen, dated Warren Beatty. From “An American in Paris”, “Gigi”, and “Lili” to “The L-Shaped Room”, she demonstrated the talent that gained her a permanent place in Hollywood’s firmament of stars. She is honest about the painful insecurity with which she coped much of her life and about her triumphs and heartbreaks; married three times, mother of two, she lives in Paris. Her fans will love this memoir.
In a celebrity-obsessed society, I have no doubt that The Michael Jackson Tapes by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach ($25.95, Vanguard Press) will do quite well. In 2000-2001, Jackson sat down with his close friend and spiritual guide to record what the publisher says is the most intimate and revealing conversations of his life. He was, we’re told, his wish to bare his soul and unburden himself to a public that he knew was deeply suspicious of him (and with good reason). The result are revelations about his profound loneliness, his longing to be loved, and the emptiness of fame. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the book is how he bonded with a rabbi. From that same celebrity world comes the memoir of Mary Forsberg Weiland, a model and groupie of the Stone Temple Pilots and how she met Scott Weiland, then an aspiring musician, when he showed up to drive her to and from modeling gigs for $8 an hour. Falling to Pieces is subtitled “A Memoir of Drugs, Rock’n Roll, and Mental Illness” ($25.99, William Morrow) and it is a tale of extreme highs and lows that says a lot about drug and alcohol addictions that could have killed her, as well as her bipolar personality disorder. She now lives with her two children in Los Angeles where she is studying to secure certification as a drug and alcohol counselor.
I am betting you never heard of Frank Julian Sprague (1857-1934), but don’t feel bad, only a few probably have. Sprague, however, played a role in transforming urban transportation in America and, as such, deserves a biography, Frank Julian Sprague: Electrical Inventor and Engineer ($39.95, Indiana University Press) by William D. Middleton and William D. Middleton III, with a foreword by John O. Sprague has just been published. It was Sprague who invented a system for distributing electricity to streetcars from overhead wires. While we see photos and films of the era when electric streetcars changed the way Americans got around cities, replacing horse drawn vehicles, the inventor remained largely unknown. For modern Americans, it is impossible to imagine the tons of horse droppings (and the smell) that were a part of early urban life. His invention helped cities to grow, transforming the landscape of the 20th century. Anyone interested in American history, urban affairs, and related topics will find this book very interesting. Glen Scott Allen has penned a very entertaining book, Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards: Images of the American Scientist as Hero and Villain from Colonial Times to the Present ($29.95, University of Massachusetts Press, softcover). From the fame of Benjamin Franklin to today’s films and other media that reprocess the mad scientist theme, there is a consistent thread that runs from early novels to Dr. Strangelove. We still do celebrate scientists in America, but not as in former times when Thomas Edison was revered. This is an insight-filled look at a part of our cultural history.
Managing Your Finances, Business
As the economy worsens a lot of people are looking for answers to managing their business better and planning for retirement. There are always books on these subjects worth reading. Then, as always, it’s a matter of applying your own best judgment.
For those with retirement in mind, there’s Fasten Your Financial Seatbelt: What Surviving an Airline Crash Taught Me about Retirement Planning by Thomas C. Scott ($14.95, Platform Press). An investment advisor and Forbes.com contributor, the author survived the world’s first crash of a Boeing 747 in Nairobi, Kenya some 35 years ago as a crew member. He’s made a career out of rescuing people from financial disasters and his short, readable book in which he says that “money is the root of all anxiety when it could be the root of all happiness.” He describes the ten most common mistakes people make, the high cost of procrastination, and, interestingly, why successful people often fail when it comes to money management. When I’m 64: Planning for the Best of Your Life by Marvin Tolkin and Howard Massey ($14.95, Tributary Press, softcover) starts with the fact that at precisely January 1, 2010, America’s first baby boomer will turn 64 with some eighty million more to follow. Sixty-four used to be considered “old” but boomers can expect to live at least another two decades, a full quarter of their lives. The book’s central theme is that most boomers will need to engage in a least a little bit of planning or face the prospect of outliving their money. Both books emphasize planning your life, setting goals so you can control your destiny in retirement. Filled with stories and an outside-the-box investment plan, anyone approaching retirement in ten or fifteen years should surely read one or both of these books.
For those looking for a job these days, 201 Knockout Answers to Tough Interview Questions by Linda Matias ($13.95, Amacom, softcover) provides lots of good advice beginning with not expecting broad, open-ended questions because today’s employers aren’t interest in hearing job candidates describe themselves in general terms. They are looking to hire people with competence who can demonstrate their strengths and whatever achievements they have in the workplace. You don’t have to be great, just good at what you do. This book provides good preparation for that all-important interview. It is estimated that half of U.S. employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. Business strategist, Vaughan Evans has written Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success ($14.95, Business and Careers Press, softcover) that offers a systematic approach to finding and landing your dream job. It’s an easy read that tells you how to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and to identify where you want to go and how to get there. It’s the kind of pep talk we all need and frequently don’t get.
Running any kind of business these days is a real challenge. Creating Demand: Generate Cool, Custom Marketing Ideas by Geraldo V. Tabio and Sally Beamer ($19.00, Prometheus Books) is based on forty years of combined marketing experience that will teach you a solid marketing strategy with which to develop innovative ideas targeted to both large corporations and small, locally owned businesses. As one professor of mine once said, everything begins when one person sells something to someone else. Instead of spending years mastering marketing skills, why not read a book by two experts who share their knowledge with you? The Janus Principle: Focusing Your Company on Selling to Small Business ($14.95, Brick Tower Press, softcover) by Joann Mills Laing and Don Mazzella takes note of the fact that there are an estimated 27.2 million small businesses in the United States and if you are interested in reaching this market, there are things you have to know in order to effectively sell to the small business buyer. The authors have thirty years of combined experience, so you’re being offered a lot of insight and information that would otherwise take a long time to acquire.
When it was first published, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun became a managerial cult classic. Authored by Dr. Wess Roberts, PhD, its 20th anniversary is being celebrated with an audio edition from Hachette Audio ($19.98) in an unabridged edition on three CDs for a total playing time of about three hours. Forget about the stereotypes about Attila and learn how he conquered a big chunk of the ancient world and held it all together with some remarkable negotiating skills.
Marriage and Parenting Skills
The other day I had to ask a young person what was the device she was holding. It was an iPod and she looked at me like I was very old and she was right. The technologies with which younger grow up are having a profound effect on how they relate to each other, their parents, and the world. They impact the process of parenting. More books on parenting reflect this, along with timeless tips. Let’s look at a few.
Racing to Keep Up by Doug Fodemen and Marje Monroe ($14.95, Dog Ear Publishing, softcover) say that the Internet is nothing to LOL (laugh out loud) about. For parents who have no clue what acronyms like IPN, BEG, WTOP, and LMIRL mean, it’s time to play catch up. The authors believe that the rise of the Internet and its communication offshoots, Instant Messaging, File Sharing, Spam, Phishing, and the like have upped the anti when it comes to protecting your child. Their book offers strategies for parents to talk to their kids about technology and ways to keep the home computer safe. In a world where children are exposed to fraudulent advertising, scams, and sexual invitations, it is increasingly necessary to know the fundamentals. Fortunately, this book doesn’t bog you down with a lot of technical jargon. Instead if offers options to apply in a world where kids are increasingly targeted to generate sales and by far worst predators. Enjoy the Ride by Suzy Martyn ($12.95, Mother’s Friend Publishing, softcover) offers “tools, tips, and inspiration for the most common parenting challenges.” The author has three children of her own, plus a Masters in education and lots of other credentials. It’s a handy guide to the common problems such as sleep issues, feeding questions, potty training, handling anger, providing quick answers and practical advice. Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently by Dr. Kyle Pruett, MD, and Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett, PhD, ($15.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) say that all parents want to raise happy and healthy children, but that all parents have opinions on the best way to do so. What happens when two parents have opposing views? As fathers play an increasingly active role in child-rearing, it is clear that the opposite sexes often have different views and this shows up early when dad is expected to take on half the parenting duties that earlier generations ceded to mom. How to recognize and work out the differences is the subject of this book.
Two other Da Capo Press books examine child-rearing questions. Making Friends: What You Need to Know About Your Child’s Friendships by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer ($13.00, softcover) is filled with advice such as not to be alarmed during the back-to-school months if your child is bad-tempered or exhausted because he or she is facing heightened anxieties about friendships and social acceptance. Dozens of questions from what to do if you don’t like one of your child’s friends or how to deal with bullying and taunting are addressed. Schools are a hothouse of social problems, not to mention boredom. This is a very helpful book that is worth reading. The We Generations: Raising Socially Responsible Kids by Michael Ungar, PhD ($15.95, softcover) is about “nurturing the compassion and community interest that could next generation of adults” and, frankly, I think the author “over thinks” these questions with too much emphasis on indoctrination (they get enough of that in school) and too little thought to teaching good attitudes through one’s own actions and communication. The center of a young person’s universe is and should be his family. After that, he or she will learn, for good or ill, what the rest of the world is like from television and other inputs. Training a little world citizen is far less important than teaching the reality that other cultures do, in fact, differ and not always for the best.
The traditional stereotype is the wicked stepmother, but for real stepmothers, the process can be a difficult one. Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Wednesday Martin, PhD, ($15.00, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) takes a look at the fact that one in two women in America will marry or live with a man with children if the projections of those who study divorce and remarriage are correct. The author says it is harder for women to be a stepparent than for men. This is an empowering, original, and realistic book that provides a completely new way of look at women in such relationships. It is a difficult road to navigate no matter the age of the children, whether five or fifty-five. Many women enter marriage with the notion to change the man, not realizing that it can lead to a lot of friction and unhappiness. So, a book like Have a New Husband by Friday by Dr. Kevin Leman ($17.99, Revell), is fraught with potholes or even sinkholes for those who aren’t willing to change themselves as well. In fairness to the author, a psychologist, he is making an effort to help frustrated, disappointed wives by showing them a better way to achieve the change they want, as opposed to nagging, complaining, and demands. Dr. Leman says such men really want to please their wives, but do not know how. This is also a book about how wives can transition to a smoother, happier marriage. I Don’t Want a Divorce: A 90-Day Guide to Saving Your Marriage by Dr. David Clarke with William G. Clarke ($14.99, Revell, softcover) reflects the fact that half the marriages in America fail. The authors propose ways that couples can reclaim their marriage with a plan that has been used for the past twenty years to counsel hundreds of couples. It is a week-to-week plan comprised of clear steps and detailed, attainable goals. Divorce Sucks by Mary Jo Eustace ($19.95, Adams Media) who was married to Dean McDermott for thirteen years who divorced her after meeting actress Tori Spelling! He left Mary Jo with their newly adopted infant baby girl and a young son. This is not a self-help book like those above, but a voyeuristic glimpse into one of Hollywood’s most notorious divorces. For those who follow the tabloids and celebrity scene, this will prove diverting and shows that there is life after divorce.
Books for Kids and Teens
The books being created for the youngest readers these days are often just miracles of artwork and technology. An example can be found in Silver Dolphin Books, an imprint of Advantage Publishers Group of San Diego. California. With Christmas around the corner, visit www.silverdolphinbooks.com and consider, for example, Bugs & Spiders from their series, The Wonders Inside (19.95). I start off with that title because I know the first instinct is to say “eeeuuuu”, but kids are fascinated by such creatures and this book has extraordinary artwork and an informative text that brings to life the world of butterflies and moths, dragonflies, bees, ants and other insect species. This is just a knock-your-socks-off delight and a wonderful introduction to the science of entomology. In a similar fashion, their Sounds of the Wild series includes Safari by Maurice Pledger ($16.95) and, as the reader turns the pages, there are pop-ups and, amazingly, the actual sounds of the creatures of Africa from the Masai Mara to the Ngorongoro Crate to the Serengeti. It is a gorgeous book filled with animal pictures and one that is sure to delight the pre-schooler being read to and the early reader discovering African wildlife. This one is an amazing gift. For the youngster who likes putting things together, from the Action Files series comes Gladiators ($15.95) that includes a fact book, a foldout poster, stickers, a 3-D helmet, and info cards with their own box, plus a story book! This is just plain hands-on fun.
Also for the early reader, age 7 and up, there’s a basketball enthusiast’s story, Larry Bird: The Boy from French Lick ($17.95, Blue Martin Publications), written by Francine Poppo Rich and illustrated by Robert Casilla. This book focuses on his early years before he became the star of the Boston Celtics and emphasizes how practices, persistence, and a belief in himself led to his success in the game. For the older set called Young Adults, age 14 and up, there’s an award winning story, Rebound, by Bob Krech ($6.95, Marshal Cavendish Corp., softcover), lauded by the American Library Association, about Ray, a white boy with a passion for basketball, at Franklin High School where it is an unwritten rule that black kids play basketball and white kids wrestle. When Ray makes the basketball team, no one is happy for him and tensions build. This is a frank discussion of racial issues today. The sport of boxing is the background to The Ring by Bobbie Pryon ($15.95, WestSide Books, Lodi, NJ, softcover) in which it is a girl who reclaims her life as the lessons she learns at a girl’s boxing club in a nearby gym begin to be applied to school and at home. There’s plenty of action is this intriguing story of self-discovery and fulfillment. Though billed as being for boys and girls, I think the latter will like Ballerina Detective and the Missing Jeweled Tiara by Karen Rita Rautenberg ($9.95, DNA Press, softcover) for ages 8 to 13. When Amber’s tiara is stolen, 12-year-old Kayla and her friend Vicky decide to solve the mystery. It’s a hoot as she decides whether to take toe-dancing lessons to pursue her dream of becoming a ballerina while also developing a crush on Jason, and engaging in a variety of adventures typical of a contemporary American girl. Filled with humor, this will provide plenty of entertainment for a young reader.
Novels, Novels, Novels!
Lawyers offer an abundance of literary opportunities and John Grisham, a lawyer himself, is proof of that, but now comes David Schmahmann’s Nibble & Kuhn ($24.95, Academy Chicago Publishers), also a practicing lawyer and also an accomplished writer of fiction. For pure entertainment, this novel tells the story of an unraveling law firm, an unwinnable case, and an unworkable love. At the center is Derek Dover who is up for partner at Nibble & Kuhn at precisely the time the Boston law firm decides to “rebrand” itself for the Google era. The partners, pompous and arbitrary, hand him a high visibility case just weeks before trial and, Derek, who has fallen hard for Maria Parma, a new associate, must work with her and the handicap that she’s engaged to someone else. Therein are all the elements of disaster and the fun is watching everything unravel.
A good mystery is a great way to pass the time and Brad Parks serves up Faces of the Gone ($24.99, Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin Press.) I admit to being a tad biased because the novel is set in Newark, NJ where I once worked and near where I still live in a suburb. Then, too, its main character is an investigative reporter and I began my several careers long ago as a reporter. Parks was a staff writer for the Washington Post before joining the Newark Star-Ledger in 1998 where he would cover major sports events in America. In 2004 he switched to writing news, covering everything from Hurricane Katrina to small-town pizza wars. The novel revolves around a multiple homicide that leaves even jaded Newarkers shaken. Carter and the police want to find out who killed four alleged drug dealers and that means he must tread the city’s gang turf and take risks to earn their trust, and avoid becoming a victim himself as the killer catches wind of his pursuit. This is a very entertaining story and one that will prove hard to put down until you reach the last page.
Catholics in particular and anyone who finds the role of spirituality in one’s life will find Stealing Fatima ($15.95, Counterpoint Press) a real treat. Frank X. Gaspar has won many literary prizes and this intriguing novel is proof of his skills as he tells the story of Father Manuel Furtado, a Cape Cod pastor, whose nightly ritual includes gin, pills, and prayer, followed by hours writing in his journal. On one night, however, he hears a crash in the church, causing him to leave the rectory of Our Lady of Fatima. He finds a man who was a childhood friend whom he has not seen in decades who tells him of recurring visits from the Virgin Mary and, although he has doubts, Father Furtado takes him in, thereby setting off a series of events that challenge the faith of the fishing village, the parish, and his own.
I confess I find a new series based on the classic Jane Austin novels such as Pride and Prejudice, an enigma. More to the point, it is bizarre. The first in the series was “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” Though she died in 1817, Jane Austin is listed as a co-author, but it is Ben H. Winters who has incorporated the original novel into that one and now Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters ($12.95, Quirk, softcover). For those who love fantasy stories, this one begins as the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. Suffice it to say that the first Jane Austin knock-off was an enormous success and has been optioned to become a motion picture. No doubt this one will as well.
For those who enjoy short stories, you’re in for a treat with The Mammoth Book of the World’s Best Crime Stories, edited by Maxim Jakubowski ($13.95, Running Press, softcover) that includes 36 stories by authors from around the world, translations from Cuba, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, India, and other nations whose authors have been brought together in a fact collection that will provide hours of reading pleasure. Crime is the subject of two excellent audio books by top-notch authors, Joseph Wambaugh and James Patterson. In Hollywood Moon ($39.98, Hachette Audio, 10 CDs, approximately 12 hours listening time) Wambaugh, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective sergeant, puts the reader in the Hollywood Station where a full moon brings out the beast in the precinct’s hustlers, drug pushers, and troubled folk. A prowler has been violently attacking women and the team of Nate Weiss and Dana Vaughn are in hot pursuit. The author is in top form. James Patterson serves up I, Alex Cross ($24.98, Hachette Audio, 4 CDs, approximately 5 hours listening time) in which the detective is pulled from a family celebration and given the news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. He vows to find her killer and soon learns she was mixed up in one of Washington’s wildest scenes and that she was not the killer’s only victim. I don’t want to give away too much except to say the story takes one into the world of very powerful people and delivers the kind of suspense that Patterson is famous for.
That’s it for December 2009!
Do tell all your book-loving friends and colleagues to come visit Bookviews to learn about some of the best, if sometimes overlooked, non-fiction and fiction. Bookmark Bookviews to ensure you get the inside track for 2010!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Happy New Year!
My Picks of the Month
It’s the time of year we think about gifts for loved ones, friends, and colleagues. I have always thought of books as ideal, particularly if you know the particular interests of the person to receive one.
For the man in your life, The Immortals: History’s Fighting Elites by Nigel Cawthorne ($30.00, Zenith Press) is a large format book with 130 color photos, artwork and photos that reviews the history of warfare and the men who composed the force from which the book draws its title, the Persian Immortals, as well as the Spartans, the Roman Praetorian Guard, as well as famed elite fighting forces such as Japan’s ninjas, the Mongol hordes, the Prussian Guard, and the Stonewall Brigade, right up to the Green Berets and U.S. Navy Seals. The book spans centuries to shine a light on the most skilled, deadly, and respected warriors throughout history. With a great text and great illustrations on every page, this is sure to please the warrior spirit in any man. For those of you who, like myself, wonder why the U.S. has not decisively won a war since World War Two, despite having arguably the best fighting machine in the history of warfare, I recommend you read The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by Stephen L. Melton ($30.00, Zenith Press). Following more than twenty years of active duty as an army officer, the author is a member of the faculty at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. His book won’t win him any popularity contests at the Pentagon, but it is a brilliant, history-based analysis of why we only managed a stalemate in Korea in the 1950s, lost the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, and have found ourselves mired in the Middle East in this decade. In essence, the knowledge and experience that led to victories in the past has been jettisoned by the military in favor of a love affair with the writings of a Prussian general from Napoleon’s time. We have an entire cadre of officers right up to the top ranks who have no memory or knowledge of how the U.S. formerly waged and won wars. They need to read this book which is written for them as opposed to the layman, but it will prove just as interesting to those outside the military for its review of the American fighting machine and its current inability to address the necessity of governance following swift military victory. We did this well in the past, but no longer.
President Obama’s Asian tour focused attention once again on China and my friend, Michael J. Economides, along with Xina Xie, has just published Energy: China’s Choke Point ($29.99, Energy Tribune Publishing, Houston, TX), a book that should be required reading for every member of Congress, the White House, and the entire corps of journalists because it not only provides an excellent, brief history of China that adopted Mao Zedong’s communism, suffering the loss of millions in the wake of its failures, but then cast it aside to become America’s rival and partner as both nations take different approaches to energy, the master resource that determines success or failure, prosperity or poverty. Economides is one of the world’s leading authorities on energy and this book will prove a revelation concerning China’s quest for it as it strives to make up for lost time and the creation of jobs and a better life for its 1.3 billion citizens. Another book worth reading on this critical subject is Who Turned Out the Lights? Authors Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson offer a “guided tour to the energy crisis” America is facing as the result of decades of refusing access to its own vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Bittle is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org and Johnson is a co-founder. Their book is filled with good, solid information on the options facing Americans for whom securing abundant, affordable energy will require some tough, realistic decisions to be made. At this point, American has lost decades, failing to build a single new oil refinery or any new nuclear plants since the 1970s. At the same time, access to offshore oil remains under a de facto ban and the present administration is waging a war on coal. That makes the title particular apt given the fact that fifty percent of all the electricity generated in America comes from burning coal.
I know that The Law of Forgiveness works because I have applied it to my own life for a long time. The author, Connie Domino, MPH, RN ($12.00, Berkley, softcover) reveals the transformative power of forgiveness that includes not just others, but oneself as well. Regrets and anger over lost opportunities, hardened emotions over relationships with loved ones, friends, or workplace colleagues, all serve to hold one back because that’s what you’re doing, looking back instead of forward. The author provides clearly written guidelines and simple affirmation-based techniques that will free you up to move on with your life. Do you want to tackle The Big Questions? That’s the title of Steven E. Landsburg’s intriguing new book, subtitled, “Tackling the Programs of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics” ($26.00, Free Press). This economist has already made a name for himself with “The Armchair Economist” and “More Sex is Safer Sex.” Anyone who enjoys the mental exercise of philosophical questions will enjoy this virtual gymnasium of questions about moral choices and other conundrums. Perhaps the best part is the way he sets your mind to working in language and style that does not intimidate the reader.
On a lighter side, there’s Ultimate Catholic Trivia: 1001 Fun and Fascinating Facts by Scott Paul Frush, ($9.95, Marshall Rand Publishing, Royal Oak, MI, softcover) a history buff whose “Ultimate Italian Trivia” caught my attention because I am descended on my father’s side from Italians who had the good sense to get on the boat and come to America. Frush does not treat the subject in a trivial fashion. Instead he provides more insight into the history, traditions, and belief system of the Church than far more scholarly tomes. Catholics will thoroughly enjoy this book (the author is Catholic with a Masters degree from Notre Dame University) and even non-Catholics will find it both interesting and entertaining. It is filled with facts about Jesus, the Bible, saints, popes, the Vatican, the Mass, sacraments, organizations and clergy. For the believers in nothing at all there’s You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing: An Illustrious Collection of Thoughts of Naught by Joan Konner ($17.00, Prometheus Books) the author of “The Atheist’s Bible.” If there is such a thing as a happy atheist, I have yet to have met one, but it is amazing how many diverse people from ancient times to the present that have expressed themselves on the subject of nothing. Philosophers, mystics, artists, musicians, poets, geniuses and jokers have opined on nothingness and it must be said this collection of quotes is genuinely interesting. Page after page will tickle your brain. From the Free Press come two books, combined in one, suited to whatever your outlook on life may be, The Pessimist’s Handbook: A Companion to Despair and, between the same covers, The Optimist’s Handbook: A Companion to Hope ($9.99, softcover), both are identified as humor and well they should be because, read front to back or vice versa, it will have you laughing from beginning to end. I loved it! One of my favorite quotes is by Ben Hecht, a playwright and screen writer, who said, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
Milefi Kete Asante is a professor of African American Studies at Temple University and has authored 65 books. One of them, Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation has been revised and expanded ($19.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) and for anyone for whom this is a concern, this book offers some provocative ideas, not the least of which is his belief that America cannot continue as a cohesive society so long as racial injustice, in less obvious ways, continues. I am not in agreement with much of his thesis because African-Americans have had four decades since then to remedy cultural and other problems within their own community. There has been progress, but not enough. Simple, Not Easy: Reflections on Community, Social Responsibility, and Tolerance by Terrence Roberts ($24.95, Parkhurst Brothers Inc., Little Rock, AR) offers the viewpoint of one of the nine black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School some forty years ago. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to protect them. Roberts grew up to be a psychologist and brings a unique perspective to events since then. His book will be released next month and for anyone interested in the American Civil Rights movement, as well as themes that include education, leadership, integration, race and racism, this book is well worth reading. If you want to see what racism was like in its worst possible way, read Dominique Lapierre’s A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa ($26.00, Da Capo Press). It is one of the most profoundly disturbing books I’ve seen in a long time. The sheer horror of apartheid, the brutal and deliberate effort to separate and subjugate native Africans and colored races from the descendents of the white Dutch colonizers was a nightmare. When it gave way to the movement to reclaim South Africa, the world felt better about itself, but under new, native leadership that nation is encountering its own problems.
Given the revelations that prominent climate scientists, members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, engaged in rigging the data to support bogus global warming claims, two books stand out as the most idiotic of the year. I start with James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming ($20.00, Greystone Books). Written with Richard Littlemore, the author is the co-founder of DeSmogBlog.com and a public relations practitioner by trade. Among those providing a blurb for its back cover is actor Leonard DiCaprio who, unknown to us, apparently knows more about meteorology than real meteorologists. Suffice it to say, the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998 and that cycle is likely to last for several decades. Writing a book castigating the “deniers” of global warming is truly ironic in the wake of the IPCC revelations. The book neglects to mention that the computer models put forth as “proof” have now been demonstrated to have been found not just flawed but, in some cases, deliberately false. Only the “true believers” of the Green religion will take comfort in this book, but those wise enough to ignore it will be paying far more attention to the nation’s economy in the 2010 midterm elections. Joining in the sillyness is Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate by Stephen H. Schneider ($28.00, National Geographic Books). The author argues the usual end-of-the-world global warming scenarios, but does so at a time when all the “facts” put forth by people like Al Gore and others simply do not reflect what the general public has begun to understand; the Earth has been cooling since 1998. This is classic “junk science” and it comes at a time when a UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, December 7 to 18, will try to foist a treaty that few will want to sign. Global warming will be remembered as the greatest fraud of the modern era. It will damage the public faith in scientists for some time to come.
People, People, People
It sometimes seemed to me that the comedian George Carlin had been around forever. His life and mine were lived in parallel tracks, so as he appeared on the Merv Griffin Show in the 1960s, I saw him there. As he progressed to the Ed Sullivan Show, I saw him there, and over the decades we shared, Carlin evolved into one of the most remarkable observers of life in America that his later HBO specials reflected his unique and very funny take, one that was often quite brash and occasionally profane. He was a very funny man and his fans will enjoy Last Words by George Carlin, written with his longtime friend, Tony Hendra ($26.99, Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster). This is Carlin’s autobiography from growing up on the multicultural streets of New York to a stint in the Air Force, his discovery of radio as a DJ, his transition to stand-up comic, marriage, his addictions, the whole ball of wax as they say. I’d say that I miss him, but Carlin left such a body of work behind, including books, that it is really hard to think of him as dead. Happily, Leslie Caron is very much alive and has written a delightful memoir of her life as a movie star and thereafter. Thank Heaven ($25.95, Viking) tells what it was like to costar with some of the greatest dancers captured on film, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, but she also paired with Cary Grant and, off-screen, dated Warren Beatty. From “An American in Paris”, “Gigi”, and “Lili” to “The L-Shaped Room”, she demonstrated the talent that gained her a permanent place in Hollywood’s firmament of stars. She is honest about the painful insecurity with which she coped much of her life and about her triumphs and heartbreaks; married three times, mother of two, she lives in Paris. Her fans will love this memoir.
In a celebrity-obsessed society, I have no doubt that The Michael Jackson Tapes by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach ($25.95, Vanguard Press) will do quite well. In 2000-2001, Jackson sat down with his close friend and spiritual guide to record what the publisher says is the most intimate and revealing conversations of his life. He was, we’re told, his wish to bare his soul and unburden himself to a public that he knew was deeply suspicious of him (and with good reason). The result are revelations about his profound loneliness, his longing to be loved, and the emptiness of fame. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the book is how he bonded with a rabbi. From that same celebrity world comes the memoir of Mary Forsberg Weiland, a model and groupie of the Stone Temple Pilots and how she met Scott Weiland, then an aspiring musician, when he showed up to drive her to and from modeling gigs for $8 an hour. Falling to Pieces is subtitled “A Memoir of Drugs, Rock’n Roll, and Mental Illness” ($25.99, William Morrow) and it is a tale of extreme highs and lows that says a lot about drug and alcohol addictions that could have killed her, as well as her bipolar personality disorder. She now lives with her two children in Los Angeles where she is studying to secure certification as a drug and alcohol counselor.
I am betting you never heard of Frank Julian Sprague (1857-1934), but don’t feel bad, only a few probably have. Sprague, however, played a role in transforming urban transportation in America and, as such, deserves a biography, Frank Julian Sprague: Electrical Inventor and Engineer ($39.95, Indiana University Press) by William D. Middleton and William D. Middleton III, with a foreword by John O. Sprague has just been published. It was Sprague who invented a system for distributing electricity to streetcars from overhead wires. While we see photos and films of the era when electric streetcars changed the way Americans got around cities, replacing horse drawn vehicles, the inventor remained largely unknown. For modern Americans, it is impossible to imagine the tons of horse droppings (and the smell) that were a part of early urban life. His invention helped cities to grow, transforming the landscape of the 20th century. Anyone interested in American history, urban affairs, and related topics will find this book very interesting. Glen Scott Allen has penned a very entertaining book, Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards: Images of the American Scientist as Hero and Villain from Colonial Times to the Present ($29.95, University of Massachusetts Press, softcover). From the fame of Benjamin Franklin to today’s films and other media that reprocess the mad scientist theme, there is a consistent thread that runs from early novels to Dr. Strangelove. We still do celebrate scientists in America, but not as in former times when Thomas Edison was revered. This is an insight-filled look at a part of our cultural history.
Managing Your Finances, Business
As the economy worsens a lot of people are looking for answers to managing their business better and planning for retirement. There are always books on these subjects worth reading. Then, as always, it’s a matter of applying your own best judgment.
For those with retirement in mind, there’s Fasten Your Financial Seatbelt: What Surviving an Airline Crash Taught Me about Retirement Planning by Thomas C. Scott ($14.95, Platform Press). An investment advisor and Forbes.com contributor, the author survived the world’s first crash of a Boeing 747 in Nairobi, Kenya some 35 years ago as a crew member. He’s made a career out of rescuing people from financial disasters and his short, readable book in which he says that “money is the root of all anxiety when it could be the root of all happiness.” He describes the ten most common mistakes people make, the high cost of procrastination, and, interestingly, why successful people often fail when it comes to money management. When I’m 64: Planning for the Best of Your Life by Marvin Tolkin and Howard Massey ($14.95, Tributary Press, softcover) starts with the fact that at precisely January 1, 2010, America’s first baby boomer will turn 64 with some eighty million more to follow. Sixty-four used to be considered “old” but boomers can expect to live at least another two decades, a full quarter of their lives. The book’s central theme is that most boomers will need to engage in a least a little bit of planning or face the prospect of outliving their money. Both books emphasize planning your life, setting goals so you can control your destiny in retirement. Filled with stories and an outside-the-box investment plan, anyone approaching retirement in ten or fifteen years should surely read one or both of these books.
For those looking for a job these days, 201 Knockout Answers to Tough Interview Questions by Linda Matias ($13.95, Amacom, softcover) provides lots of good advice beginning with not expecting broad, open-ended questions because today’s employers aren’t interest in hearing job candidates describe themselves in general terms. They are looking to hire people with competence who can demonstrate their strengths and whatever achievements they have in the workplace. You don’t have to be great, just good at what you do. This book provides good preparation for that all-important interview. It is estimated that half of U.S. employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. Business strategist, Vaughan Evans has written Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success ($14.95, Business and Careers Press, softcover) that offers a systematic approach to finding and landing your dream job. It’s an easy read that tells you how to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and to identify where you want to go and how to get there. It’s the kind of pep talk we all need and frequently don’t get.
Running any kind of business these days is a real challenge. Creating Demand: Generate Cool, Custom Marketing Ideas by Geraldo V. Tabio and Sally Beamer ($19.00, Prometheus Books) is based on forty years of combined marketing experience that will teach you a solid marketing strategy with which to develop innovative ideas targeted to both large corporations and small, locally owned businesses. As one professor of mine once said, everything begins when one person sells something to someone else. Instead of spending years mastering marketing skills, why not read a book by two experts who share their knowledge with you? The Janus Principle: Focusing Your Company on Selling to Small Business ($14.95, Brick Tower Press, softcover) by Joann Mills Laing and Don Mazzella takes note of the fact that there are an estimated 27.2 million small businesses in the United States and if you are interested in reaching this market, there are things you have to know in order to effectively sell to the small business buyer. The authors have thirty years of combined experience, so you’re being offered a lot of insight and information that would otherwise take a long time to acquire.
When it was first published, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun became a managerial cult classic. Authored by Dr. Wess Roberts, PhD, its 20th anniversary is being celebrated with an audio edition from Hachette Audio ($19.98) in an unabridged edition on three CDs for a total playing time of about three hours. Forget about the stereotypes about Attila and learn how he conquered a big chunk of the ancient world and held it all together with some remarkable negotiating skills.
Marriage and Parenting Skills
The other day I had to ask a young person what was the device she was holding. It was an iPod and she looked at me like I was very old and she was right. The technologies with which younger grow up are having a profound effect on how they relate to each other, their parents, and the world. They impact the process of parenting. More books on parenting reflect this, along with timeless tips. Let’s look at a few.
Racing to Keep Up by Doug Fodemen and Marje Monroe ($14.95, Dog Ear Publishing, softcover) say that the Internet is nothing to LOL (laugh out loud) about. For parents who have no clue what acronyms like IPN, BEG, WTOP, and LMIRL mean, it’s time to play catch up. The authors believe that the rise of the Internet and its communication offshoots, Instant Messaging, File Sharing, Spam, Phishing, and the like have upped the anti when it comes to protecting your child. Their book offers strategies for parents to talk to their kids about technology and ways to keep the home computer safe. In a world where children are exposed to fraudulent advertising, scams, and sexual invitations, it is increasingly necessary to know the fundamentals. Fortunately, this book doesn’t bog you down with a lot of technical jargon. Instead if offers options to apply in a world where kids are increasingly targeted to generate sales and by far worst predators. Enjoy the Ride by Suzy Martyn ($12.95, Mother’s Friend Publishing, softcover) offers “tools, tips, and inspiration for the most common parenting challenges.” The author has three children of her own, plus a Masters in education and lots of other credentials. It’s a handy guide to the common problems such as sleep issues, feeding questions, potty training, handling anger, providing quick answers and practical advice. Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently by Dr. Kyle Pruett, MD, and Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett, PhD, ($15.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) say that all parents want to raise happy and healthy children, but that all parents have opinions on the best way to do so. What happens when two parents have opposing views? As fathers play an increasingly active role in child-rearing, it is clear that the opposite sexes often have different views and this shows up early when dad is expected to take on half the parenting duties that earlier generations ceded to mom. How to recognize and work out the differences is the subject of this book.
Two other Da Capo Press books examine child-rearing questions. Making Friends: What You Need to Know About Your Child’s Friendships by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer ($13.00, softcover) is filled with advice such as not to be alarmed during the back-to-school months if your child is bad-tempered or exhausted because he or she is facing heightened anxieties about friendships and social acceptance. Dozens of questions from what to do if you don’t like one of your child’s friends or how to deal with bullying and taunting are addressed. Schools are a hothouse of social problems, not to mention boredom. This is a very helpful book that is worth reading. The We Generations: Raising Socially Responsible Kids by Michael Ungar, PhD ($15.95, softcover) is about “nurturing the compassion and community interest that could next generation of adults” and, frankly, I think the author “over thinks” these questions with too much emphasis on indoctrination (they get enough of that in school) and too little thought to teaching good attitudes through one’s own actions and communication. The center of a young person’s universe is and should be his family. After that, he or she will learn, for good or ill, what the rest of the world is like from television and other inputs. Training a little world citizen is far less important than teaching the reality that other cultures do, in fact, differ and not always for the best.
The traditional stereotype is the wicked stepmother, but for real stepmothers, the process can be a difficult one. Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Wednesday Martin, PhD, ($15.00, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) takes a look at the fact that one in two women in America will marry or live with a man with children if the projections of those who study divorce and remarriage are correct. The author says it is harder for women to be a stepparent than for men. This is an empowering, original, and realistic book that provides a completely new way of look at women in such relationships. It is a difficult road to navigate no matter the age of the children, whether five or fifty-five. Many women enter marriage with the notion to change the man, not realizing that it can lead to a lot of friction and unhappiness. So, a book like Have a New Husband by Friday by Dr. Kevin Leman ($17.99, Revell), is fraught with potholes or even sinkholes for those who aren’t willing to change themselves as well. In fairness to the author, a psychologist, he is making an effort to help frustrated, disappointed wives by showing them a better way to achieve the change they want, as opposed to nagging, complaining, and demands. Dr. Leman says such men really want to please their wives, but do not know how. This is also a book about how wives can transition to a smoother, happier marriage. I Don’t Want a Divorce: A 90-Day Guide to Saving Your Marriage by Dr. David Clarke with William G. Clarke ($14.99, Revell, softcover) reflects the fact that half the marriages in America fail. The authors propose ways that couples can reclaim their marriage with a plan that has been used for the past twenty years to counsel hundreds of couples. It is a week-to-week plan comprised of clear steps and detailed, attainable goals. Divorce Sucks by Mary Jo Eustace ($19.95, Adams Media) who was married to Dean McDermott for thirteen years who divorced her after meeting actress Tori Spelling! He left Mary Jo with their newly adopted infant baby girl and a young son. This is not a self-help book like those above, but a voyeuristic glimpse into one of Hollywood’s most notorious divorces. For those who follow the tabloids and celebrity scene, this will prove diverting and shows that there is life after divorce.
Books for Kids and Teens
The books being created for the youngest readers these days are often just miracles of artwork and technology. An example can be found in Silver Dolphin Books, an imprint of Advantage Publishers Group of San Diego. California. With Christmas around the corner, visit www.silverdolphinbooks.com and consider, for example, Bugs & Spiders from their series, The Wonders Inside (19.95). I start off with that title because I know the first instinct is to say “eeeuuuu”, but kids are fascinated by such creatures and this book has extraordinary artwork and an informative text that brings to life the world of butterflies and moths, dragonflies, bees, ants and other insect species. This is just a knock-your-socks-off delight and a wonderful introduction to the science of entomology. In a similar fashion, their Sounds of the Wild series includes Safari by Maurice Pledger ($16.95) and, as the reader turns the pages, there are pop-ups and, amazingly, the actual sounds of the creatures of Africa from the Masai Mara to the Ngorongoro Crate to the Serengeti. It is a gorgeous book filled with animal pictures and one that is sure to delight the pre-schooler being read to and the early reader discovering African wildlife. This one is an amazing gift. For the youngster who likes putting things together, from the Action Files series comes Gladiators ($15.95) that includes a fact book, a foldout poster, stickers, a 3-D helmet, and info cards with their own box, plus a story book! This is just plain hands-on fun.
Also for the early reader, age 7 and up, there’s a basketball enthusiast’s story, Larry Bird: The Boy from French Lick ($17.95, Blue Martin Publications), written by Francine Poppo Rich and illustrated by Robert Casilla. This book focuses on his early years before he became the star of the Boston Celtics and emphasizes how practices, persistence, and a belief in himself led to his success in the game. For the older set called Young Adults, age 14 and up, there’s an award winning story, Rebound, by Bob Krech ($6.95, Marshal Cavendish Corp., softcover), lauded by the American Library Association, about Ray, a white boy with a passion for basketball, at Franklin High School where it is an unwritten rule that black kids play basketball and white kids wrestle. When Ray makes the basketball team, no one is happy for him and tensions build. This is a frank discussion of racial issues today. The sport of boxing is the background to The Ring by Bobbie Pryon ($15.95, WestSide Books, Lodi, NJ, softcover) in which it is a girl who reclaims her life as the lessons she learns at a girl’s boxing club in a nearby gym begin to be applied to school and at home. There’s plenty of action is this intriguing story of self-discovery and fulfillment. Though billed as being for boys and girls, I think the latter will like Ballerina Detective and the Missing Jeweled Tiara by Karen Rita Rautenberg ($9.95, DNA Press, softcover) for ages 8 to 13. When Amber’s tiara is stolen, 12-year-old Kayla and her friend Vicky decide to solve the mystery. It’s a hoot as she decides whether to take toe-dancing lessons to pursue her dream of becoming a ballerina while also developing a crush on Jason, and engaging in a variety of adventures typical of a contemporary American girl. Filled with humor, this will provide plenty of entertainment for a young reader.
Novels, Novels, Novels!
Lawyers offer an abundance of literary opportunities and John Grisham, a lawyer himself, is proof of that, but now comes David Schmahmann’s Nibble & Kuhn ($24.95, Academy Chicago Publishers), also a practicing lawyer and also an accomplished writer of fiction. For pure entertainment, this novel tells the story of an unraveling law firm, an unwinnable case, and an unworkable love. At the center is Derek Dover who is up for partner at Nibble & Kuhn at precisely the time the Boston law firm decides to “rebrand” itself for the Google era. The partners, pompous and arbitrary, hand him a high visibility case just weeks before trial and, Derek, who has fallen hard for Maria Parma, a new associate, must work with her and the handicap that she’s engaged to someone else. Therein are all the elements of disaster and the fun is watching everything unravel.
A good mystery is a great way to pass the time and Brad Parks serves up Faces of the Gone ($24.99, Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin Press.) I admit to being a tad biased because the novel is set in Newark, NJ where I once worked and near where I still live in a suburb. Then, too, its main character is an investigative reporter and I began my several careers long ago as a reporter. Parks was a staff writer for the Washington Post before joining the Newark Star-Ledger in 1998 where he would cover major sports events in America. In 2004 he switched to writing news, covering everything from Hurricane Katrina to small-town pizza wars. The novel revolves around a multiple homicide that leaves even jaded Newarkers shaken. Carter and the police want to find out who killed four alleged drug dealers and that means he must tread the city’s gang turf and take risks to earn their trust, and avoid becoming a victim himself as the killer catches wind of his pursuit. This is a very entertaining story and one that will prove hard to put down until you reach the last page.
Catholics in particular and anyone who finds the role of spirituality in one’s life will find Stealing Fatima ($15.95, Counterpoint Press) a real treat. Frank X. Gaspar has won many literary prizes and this intriguing novel is proof of his skills as he tells the story of Father Manuel Furtado, a Cape Cod pastor, whose nightly ritual includes gin, pills, and prayer, followed by hours writing in his journal. On one night, however, he hears a crash in the church, causing him to leave the rectory of Our Lady of Fatima. He finds a man who was a childhood friend whom he has not seen in decades who tells him of recurring visits from the Virgin Mary and, although he has doubts, Father Furtado takes him in, thereby setting off a series of events that challenge the faith of the fishing village, the parish, and his own.
I confess I find a new series based on the classic Jane Austin novels such as Pride and Prejudice, an enigma. More to the point, it is bizarre. The first in the series was “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” Though she died in 1817, Jane Austin is listed as a co-author, but it is Ben H. Winters who has incorporated the original novel into that one and now Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters ($12.95, Quirk, softcover). For those who love fantasy stories, this one begins as the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. Suffice it to say that the first Jane Austin knock-off was an enormous success and has been optioned to become a motion picture. No doubt this one will as well.
For those who enjoy short stories, you’re in for a treat with The Mammoth Book of the World’s Best Crime Stories, edited by Maxim Jakubowski ($13.95, Running Press, softcover) that includes 36 stories by authors from around the world, translations from Cuba, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, India, and other nations whose authors have been brought together in a fact collection that will provide hours of reading pleasure. Crime is the subject of two excellent audio books by top-notch authors, Joseph Wambaugh and James Patterson. In Hollywood Moon ($39.98, Hachette Audio, 10 CDs, approximately 12 hours listening time) Wambaugh, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective sergeant, puts the reader in the Hollywood Station where a full moon brings out the beast in the precinct’s hustlers, drug pushers, and troubled folk. A prowler has been violently attacking women and the team of Nate Weiss and Dana Vaughn are in hot pursuit. The author is in top form. James Patterson serves up I, Alex Cross ($24.98, Hachette Audio, 4 CDs, approximately 5 hours listening time) in which the detective is pulled from a family celebration and given the news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. He vows to find her killer and soon learns she was mixed up in one of Washington’s wildest scenes and that she was not the killer’s only victim. I don’t want to give away too much except to say the story takes one into the world of very powerful people and delivers the kind of suspense that Patterson is famous for.
That’s it for December 2009!
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Sunday, November 1, 2009
Bookviews by Alan Caruba
November 2009
My Picks of the Month, Reading History, People (Biographies and Autobiographies), Health, Military Matters, Kids and Teen Books, Novels
My Picks of the Month
Here’s a book to put on your Christmas list. It’s Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years ($75.00, Andrews McMeel Publishing) and it comes in a deluxe, slip cased edition. It is filled with all the many things a generation of Americans came to love about this wonderful comic strip creation by the late Charles Schultz. Peanuts fans will find quotes from Schultz that shed light on how his mind worked, how his life shaped the strip, and how in turn it shaped his life. There are more than 500 pages of classic Peanuts strips, including many full color Sundays. It doesn’t get much better than this. Another large format book that will please fans of the late actress Betty Davis is a tribute written by two noted film critics, Richard Schickel and George Perry. Betty Davis: Larger than Life ($35.00, Running Press) captures the life of a quite extraordinary woman, outspoken and unapologetic. Her career spanned six decades and more than 100 films and few actresses rival her for longevity and appeal. As she put it, “Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star” and she was the epitome of a star. “Of Human Bondage”, “Jezebel”, and “All About Eve” became classic films in part from her performances. She broke ground for actresses who followed her, but she left an indelible imprint on an era we sometimes call the golden age of Hollywood.
If you know someone who loves to travel or someone who prefers to do so from an armchair (that’s me), then one of the most fabulous gifts to give this year is Visions of Europe ($99.99, a boxed set of 12 programs on ten discs, Acorn Media), good for over 15 hours of some of the most extraordinary views of Europe, all shot in high definition video from a helicopter-mounted camera. Seen frequently on PBS, in this great set, you will find “Visions” of Italy, France, Greece, Germany and Austria. There’s also the “Great Cities of Europe”. Either for yourself or as a gift, you will float above places whose names reflect the history of Western civilization. The music and the narration is never intrusive. It’s a trip of a lifetime without every leaving home.
Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America is an intriguing book by Rich Benjamin ($24.99, Hyperion). He begins by pointing out that, by 2042, whites will no longer be the majority population in America. As people of color driven by the massive illegal immigration across our southern border increase, more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas that are predominantly, even extremely white. It goes way beyond prejudice and it goes straight to the heart of American values of “individual liberty, shared civic responsibility, and equal opportunity.” Benjamin writes, “Insecure over the strength and prospects of American values, many white Americans fear for the nation’s ability to absorb newcomers.” This is especially true when they arrive poorly educated and with cultural dispositions to neglect wherever they live. It is hard to claim prejudice given the fact that Americans elected the first black president in its history, though the election, says Benjamin, obscures the racial and economic segregation still vexing America. Benjamin advocates “diversity” even though it looks more and more to me like termites eating the foundations of American society. At the book’s conclusion, the author opts for a more liberal approach to the demographic changes occurring, something that struck me as the antithesis of the theme of his book.
For an administration that has promised greater “transparency”, it is increasingly clear that much of the information on which decisions are based is kept from public view. Over the years, the Freedom of Information Act has been utilized by journalists and those dealing with public affairs issues to learn more about what the government is doing and why. Jacqueline Klosek has written The Right to Know: Your Guide to Using and Defending Freedom of Information Law in the United States ($44.95, Praeger). An attorney practicing law in New York City, it need be said this book will be of greatest use to those engaged in these battles to pry open the doors of government agencies. There are, she notes, many exemptions to the law that prevent access, but she does provide practical methods for citizens to use the act to protect themselves and their communities. The most dangerous aspect of what is occurring is the increasing effort to deny Americans access to government generated information with which to make an informed analysis of what is really occurring. Tom Fenton is a four-time Emmy winner from his years with CBS News, so one might expect his analysis, Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century ($14.95, Fulcrum Publishing) to be more incisive. However, his association with CBS News reminds us of the expose of Dan Rather’s appalling bias (a court recently dismissed his case against CBS) and it similarly infects Fenton’s examination of trends. He now works as a freelance commentator for the BBC. This little book rather swiftly loses much of its credibility when he veers into political opinion, but is worth reading when Fenton addresses the actual mechanics and costs of news gathering. His lament about the closing of foreign bureaus by U.S. media rings true, along with some other complaints. He devotes too much time blaming the former Bush administration for all the ills of the world, much as the present administration does. Those of a liberal persuasion will enjoy this book.
Cornelia Dean has written Am I Making Myself Clear?: a Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public ($19.95, Harvard University Press). This is a book for scientists who want to share their expertise, analysis and opinions with the general public and I recommend it because I see lots of scientific information that often defies the understanding of even a seasoned science writer like myself. A distinguished science editor and reporter, Dean makes a case for the importance of scientists taking an active role in making their work accessible to the media and, through them, to the general public. This book is especially timely given the decades of junk science regarding a “global warming” that was a natural climate cycle, barely one degree Fahrenheit, to a previous “little ice age.” And the kicker is that the Earth has been in a new cooling cycle for at least ten years. It’s not likely you’ve heard about that!
One cannot help being impressed by The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries by Michele Borba, Ed.D. ($19.95, Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley, softcover). The initial reason being its sheer size. It’s truly a big book at nearly 700 pages as it addresses common parenting challenges for kids from age 3 to 13. The answers to bedtime battles, chores wars, tantrums, bad friends, sibling rivalry, cheating, growing up too fast, eating disorders, selfishness, anger and countless other common problems are addressed, along with Internet safety, stress and much more. The solutions are time-tested and, for today’s time-challenged parent, the ability to go to specific chapters on problems they are encountering is invaluable.
For the sports nut in your life, a great Christmas stocking-stuffer would be No Dribbling the Squid: Octopush, Shin Kicking, Elephant Polo, and other Oddball Sports are the subject of a book by Michael J. Rosen with Ben Kassoy ($12.99, Andrews McMeel, softcover. It would appear that just about anything humans do can be and has been turned into some kind of sporting activity as it takes a look at those from around the globe that are weird and entertaining, from Wife-Carrying races to professional Rock-Paper-Scissors competitions and Extreme Ironing. This book is just plain fun.
Reading History
There is no understanding of the present or hint of predicting the future if you have not read history.
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America its Name by Toby Lester ($30.00, Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster) tells of the way Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts, Europe, Africa and Asia. These parts of the world had been visited by traders and seafarers to an extent that they were known to exist. For the Europeans, they existed to be exploited, a noted trait. The “fourth part of the world”, however, was largely a land of myth until, in 1507, Martin Waldseemulller and Mathias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France created a map. It depicted a new world beyond the vast Atlantic Ocean. It would draw on the explorations of Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Columbus. It would set Nicholas Copernicus to thinking that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Thus was life in 16th century Europe. Eventually, in 2003, the Library of Congress paid $10 million to add it to its treasures. The story of the map is one of the great stories of discovery and it is fascinating.
From the earliest civilizations to our own there have always been people ready to predict the end of the world and people ready to believe them. As we draw closer to 2012, the ancient Mayan calendar, said to predict this is gaining renewed attention. Simply put, it does not make such a prediction, but the long, more complex story is told by John Major Jenkins in The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History ($25.95, Tarcher/Penguin). There have been some 200 books written concerning December 21, 2012 and some movies based on the myth. Jenkins is an expert on the Mayan civilization and that is the crux of his book and, if that interests you than you will not be disappointed by this portrait of the cultural and scientific roots of what, in fact, was a Mayan belief in transformation and renewal. (See the Novels section for one based on the end of the world theme.)
If you have been trying to figure out why the Middle East is such a mess, a good place to start is the Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East by Karl E. Mayer and Shareen Blair Brysac ($18.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) which looks at the Middle East as the geographic, geostrategic, and religious center of the world; one that Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon tried to control long before oil was discovered and in which, at varying times France, Britain, Germany, and the United States have all sought to extend their hegemony. The modern Middle East is the result of a secret treaty between England and France that divided it between them following World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. For anyone who loves to read history, this book is high adventure full of folly and a cast of characters Hollywood could not have invented. Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East by Stephen P. Cohen ($27.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) rapidly turns out to be a disappointment and the tip-off is the first sentence of its preface. “Right after the 1967 Six-Day War, I set out to educate myself about the Zionist conflict with the Arabs in Palestine.” The “Zionists”, not the Israelis. Because, despite the wars waged against it, the sovereign nation of Israel has demonstrated that Jews have a right to their ancient homeland. And, largely ignored or unmentioned is the fact that Israel has a million Arab citizens! Cohen, a Harvard-trained social psychologist is the founder and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development. He is a dreamer who, while he has a grasp of the basics of Middle East history, views it through the gauzy hope for a peace that has always been beyond reach in a region whose dominant faith and culture makes it impossible
People, People, People
The favorite subject for people to write about is, well, people. And, of course, there is often much to be learned by reading about people since one can hardly cram that much experience into a single life.
I will begin, for no particular reason, with a memoir by a wonderful singer and entertainer, Moon River and Me by Andy Williams ($25.95, Viking). I was surprised to learn that he is 82, but only because, being ten years younger, he has been a part of my life before and since he became a superstar on television by the 1960s. There are few achievements in show business he has not garnered, but it was his warm tenor voice and seemingly effortless delivery that earned him his position. The book tells of a humble beginning in Iowa, an ambitious father who encouraged his sons to form a singing group, a move to Los Angeles, and the gradual climb to a place in the hearts of Americans who embraced him. Along the way he became friends with other famous folk like Bobby Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and others. He relates stories about them and his success on television, in Las Vegas, and with his theatre in Branson, Missouri. This is a memoir worth waiting for.
William Rehnquist was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for a third of a century and served contiguously with four presidents and yet I cannot help but think that most Americans were and are largely unaware of him because of his modest demeanor. He did not seek the limelight, but now those for whom the Supreme Court, its decisions, and the men and women that made them in modern times are of interest, Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States meets the need for a greater insight and understanding of the man ($27.00, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster). Herman J. Obermayer provides a candid look at one of the most influential men to hold the job. He takes the reader on an interesting journey from his dissenting opinion in Roe v. Wade to his strongly stated positions on issues as various as freedom of the press, school prayer, and civil rights. It was Rehnquist who played a visible role in two very contentious events, the impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999 and the decision that made George W. Bush the winner in the presidential election of 2000. Obermayer, a journalist, was friends with him for nineteen years and the result is a book well worth reading for a better understanding of the man and times he influenced
From an earlier era, the 1920s and 30s, a name synonymous with those times is Amelia Earhart, one of the first women pilots and, in many ways, a woman who demonstrated that her sex could equal the exploits of men. Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It by Susan Wels ($35.00, Running Press) is a large format book to match her personality and exploits which famously ended with her mysterious disappearance somewhere in the Pacific in 1937. Well written and extensively illustrated, the woman that emerges from its pages does much more than fly planes. She was a polymath, a poet, photographer, fashion designer, wife, friend and lover. She was, above all, someone who lived for adventure. “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace,” she wrote. She lived life on her own terms and broke the glass ceiling long before the term existed.
The Holocaust, the deliberate killing of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War Two has generated hundreds, if not thousands of books, but it remains essential that later generations and humanity in general not forget it. Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri ($15.95, Tanglewood Press) is actually written for younger readers, aged twelve and up. One of the worst chapters of the Holocaust was the selection of some 300 twins for Dr. Josef Mengele’s cruel medical experiments. Only about 200 survived. The author and her sister were only ten years old at the time. A lesser known story from that period is told in They Dared Return: The Untold Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany by Patrick K. O’Donnell ($26.00, Da Capo Press). Some Jewish refugees, by 1942, had found safe haven in America, but with courage that is hard to imagine, were eager to serve in the armed forces to stop the persecution of their overseas families and friends, some of whom languished in concentration camps. The book focuses on “the Jewish five” who joined the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of today’s CIA, to become spies, parachuting into enemy territory to gather information for the Allied forces. O’Donnell, a military historian, has done a great service in writing this intriguing book. (See History section below for more on this topic)
Writers often find their own lives more interesting than anything they could invent or report, so it is not surprising that two books reflect that trait. The Face in the Mirror edited by Victoria Zackheim ($25.00, Prometheus Books) brings together recollections by writers such as Malachy McCourt, Joyce Maynard, among some twenty writers of fiction and non-fiction who relate the choices they made, their achievements, and their disappointments. Their stories are a cautionary tale for all would-be writers, but they answer the question of who it is they see when they look in the mirror. Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives ($24.99, Free Press) collects essays by writers ranging from Joyce Carol Oates to Edmund White, at least two are Pulitzer Prize winners, six won National Book Awards, and others who saw their work become bestsellers but who recall how either encouragement or criticism shaped their careers, each thriving or surviving to make a name for themselves.
After decades of reviewing, I have seen my share of memoirs. Most lives fit into comfortable patterns, but occasionally someone comes along with a truly nutty notion, divorced from reality, and a path to a life that strays from the ordinary. Such is the case of Jerramy Fine who was born in 1977 in western Colorado, but possessed of the idea that she was switched at birth and her “real” parents must surely be English aristocrats. Ms. Fine was convinced that she was born to marry into the British Royal Family. She is what is called an Anglophile, in love with things and men who are British. She writes about it in Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess (15.00, Gotham Books/Penguin Group, softcover) While attending the University of Rochester, she spent a semester working in the House of Commons and later completed her master’s at the London School of Economics. She did not marry an English prince, but she lives in London with an English boyfriend and she forgives him for being a commoner. The result of this is a whimsical real life story of a girl who began writing to Buckingham Palace around age six, gets to London, dives into the party scene and discovers life is not the fairy tale she imagined. Turns out that London is very expensive and too many British boys are a real pain. This one is strictly for the girls, but it will resonate with any one of them who wanted to be a princess.
The Topic is Health
Americans are taking a greater interest in maintaining their personal health these days, perhaps in response to the national debate on proposed, controversial revisions to Medicare, arguably the most popular government program other than Social Security. It also reflects the endless coverage of health-related topics in the nation’s media. An excellent place to start is The Intellectual Devotional: Health ($24.00, Rodale) with 365 daily entries on all aspects of health that cover seven categories on health and wellness such as drugs and alternative treatments, the men, sexuality and reproduction, children and adolescents, diseases and ailments. It is endlessly fascinating for its facts.
Smoking: 201 Reasons to Quit by Muriel L. Crawford ($19.95, plus $5.50 shipping and handling, from Dillion & Parker Publishing, softcover), is addressed to people like me and the thirty million other Americans who say they want to quit. It is one scary book, listing more than a hundred ways tobacco harms smoker’s health, often leading to prolonged disability and early death. It offers methods to quit smoking, and discusses all the other aspects of smoking such as social and relationship problems. I would hazard that this is the most comprehensive review of this problem and, who knows, it might just get me to quit, too. Visit www.ReasonsNotToSmoke.com.
I loved The Art of Overeating by Leslie Landis ($9.95, Sterling) and give it a big thumbs up! Written by a practicing clinical psychologist, the author has practical experience helping people who eat, spend, avoid, deny, and defy their way through life. As Americans continue to be hit over the head with endless discussion and even proposed legislation about what and how much we can eat, this book approaches the subject with lots of laughter. Peppered with fascinating food facts, plus the author’s natural wry style of making her case about food phobias, she exposing the uselessness of trying to shame over-eaters. Using humor, though, helps a lot. If you’re tired of the endless stream of diet books and advice, this is probably the book for you!
It seems like hardly a day or week goes by without the public being informed that some health threat is going to kill millions and now Dr. Brad Spellberg has written about the latest in Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them ($26.00, Prometheus Books). The focus of his book is on antibiotic-resistant microbes that are said to infect two million Americans and kill more than 100,000 every year. What makes this an even worse threat, according to the author, is that research and development of new antibiotics has “ground to a screeching halt.” This book is a major warning against the collapse of antibiotic R&D and for anyone with an interest in health issues, this is “must” reading.
A new memoir is The Sugarless Plum: A Ballerina’s Triumph Over Diabetes by Zippora Karz ($22.95, Harlequin) in which she tells how, by the age of 20 she had fulfilled her life’s dream. Having left home at the age of 15 to pursue her career, Karz became a rising star with the New York City Ballet. A year later, however, her body began to exhibit symptoms that were originally misdiagnosed as Type-2 diabetes when it was Type-1. This is an inspiring story for any woman facing this disease and it is enhanced as she writes about the behind-the-scenes life of a ballerina, a fantasy for little girls around the world.
Military Matters
I have long believed that history largely consists of the many wars of mankind and this is confirmed in an excellent new book, Little-Known Wars of Great and Lasting Impact: Turning Points in Our History We should Know More About by Alan Axelrod, PhD ($24.99, Fair Winds Press). That may qualify as one of the longest titles of any new book this year! The author has had a long, distinguished career in and out of publishing and a consultant to television documentaries. He takes the reader on a fascinating tour that include what he calls the “first Holocaust”, the battle when Simon bar Kokhba initiated a rebellion against Rome, triggering a response that cost the lives of many Jews living in Israel from 132-135 BC. Other wars cited include the first wars of terror, the Barbary pirates versus the United States, and the Meji Rebellion in Japan. There are many interesting chapters that recount wars that often are not taught in schools and colleges, but which shaped history, ancient and modern.
Zenith Press specializes in books about military affairs and among their latest releases are War Stories of D-Day: Operation Overlord—June 6, 1944 ($28.00) by Michael Green and James D. Brown. That titanic landing on the shores of France was a major turning point in World War Two. It put 150,000 troops in play against the Nazis and this book humanizes the event with first-person stories of those who took part in the invasion, including the paratroopers who dropped behind enemy lines. The book includes those from the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force who provided critical support. A little known story of WWII was the role of German Jews and it is told in The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II ($28.00) by Steven Karras. Though the Nazis rounded up and killed six million Jews, some German and Austrian Jews who had fled the Nazis were inducted into the Allied forces. The stories of 27 of them, including gripping recollections from Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, are documented. They displayed incredible courage. Courage, too, was displayed by McCoy’s Marines ($17.99) subtitled the “Darkside to Baghdad.” John Koopman tells the story of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, led by Lt. Col Byran P. McCoy whose radio call sign was “Darkside.” These were the men who pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein. As a reporter embedded with the unit, Koopman saw and lived it all. A former Marine himself, the author provides an insight-filled story of what it was like to battle into the center of Iraq’s capital and the aftermath.
At the forefront of American concerns is whether to continue the war in Afghanistan, now in its eighth year. For a powerful and disturbing insight, I recommend you read Hunting al Qaeda ($17.99, Zenith Press, softcover). It is the story of a National Guard Special Forces unit, Beast 85, a tight-knit group of ten men, green berets, sent to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 to capture or kill al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is a story of disillusionment because of the top-heavy, risk-averse command structure of today’s army and how it became the second front for men who actually captured a Taliban leader only to be told to release him! The war has drawn on without victory because “victory” is not attainable when it is a political issue, not a military objective.
Today we speak of Special Operations and think in terms of Green Berets and Navy SEALs, but preceding them were WWII Allied spies and they needed to be trained to operate behind enemy lines. The arts and skills of disrupting an enemy were described in Special Ops, 1939-1945: A Manuel of Covert Warfare and Training ($17.00, Zenith Press) put together by the British Special Operations Executive and American Office of Strategic Services. It is reproduced for today’s reader and the techniques described and illustrated mirror some that have been incorporated by today’s terrorist organizations.
Not all casualties of war occur on the battlefield. Healing Suicidal Veterans: Recognizing, Supporting and Answering Their Pleas for Help by Victor Montgomery II, CMAC, RAS, a former crisis intervention therapist for the National Veterans Suicide Crisis Hotline ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover) could save lives, particularly if read by the friends and relatives of returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It is filled with advice on effective strategies for veterans to cope and heal, checklists to identify symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and substance abuse. It provides information about resources for veterans seeking help.
Books for kids and Teens
For the very young who can be read to or those age 7-9, there’s a story first published in 1997 by Jane Yolen, the author of some 300 books for younger readers. The Seeing Stick ($16.95, Running Press) is the story of a Chinese emperor whose only daughter was born blind and who seeks a cure. One day a wise old man with a mysterious Seeing Stick visits the princess. It reveals that one can “see” the world in more ways than just her eyes. This book is particularly special for the illustrations of Daniela Jaglenko Terrazzini that are just dazzling. It is an inspiring story in many ways and likely to remain a treasure in any child’s library.
From Kids Can Press comes How to Build Your Own Country ($18.95), part of a series to teach kids about the world, but I am less thrilled about its intent “to be better global citizens.” That kind of One World outlook puts allegiance to one’s own nation down the list of priorities. That said, however, Valerie Wyatt, the author, and Fred Rix, the illustrator, have come up with a clever way to each what being a nation involves, including setting up a government, holding elections, writing a constitution, and other attributes of nations that function under the rule of law. Hoaxed! Fakes & Mistakes in the World of Science ($16.95) by the editors of Yes Magazine is another good book for younger readers, up to age ten or so. It explores a number of famous hoaxes like the Piltdown Man and provides advice on how to spot a hoax based often on dubious or spurious science. It neglects to include the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, still be talked about as real despite the fact the Earth has been cooling for a decade.
For the older, pre-teen and teenage set, there are a number of books worth reading. I am Jack by Susanne Gervay ($14.99, Tricycle Press, an imprint of Crown Publishing) deals with the topic of school bullying and how it hurts the victim and the bully and is frightening for witnesses who don’t know what to do. Jack is an eleven-year-old who has to learn what to do. This book should probably be in every school in America. A young adult novel, Saved by the Music ($16.95, West Side Books) is generating a lot of buzz. Selene Castrovilla tells the story of 15-year-old Willow who moves in with her aunt for the summer after her unstable mother kicks her out. Aunt Agatha is trying to turn a dilapidated barge into a classic music performance space. Willow must fend off the advances of a construction worker, but is befriended by an older teen who lives on a sailboat nearby. Together they meet some harrowing challenges together. It’s the kind of story that is impossible to put down once passed the first page. Music is at the core of another West Side Book, a young adult novel, Shattered by Kathi Baron ($16.95). In this story a teen violin prodigy, Cassie, runs away after her moody father destroys her violin, seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. From her shattered family, Cassie finds out why her father acted as he did and how she heals herself by helping others.
The author of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, Jeff Kinney, sold over 23 million copies with this series and is back with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days ($13.95, Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams) in which Greg, Rowley, Rodrick, Manny, Mom and Dad, and an entire cast of characters return along with an unexpected addition to the family that not only takes Greg’s attention, but his bed too. Just about everything he does involves some kind of turmoil, particularly anything that occurs outside when Greg would prefer to be in his room, the blinds closed, and playing video games. This is just plain fun!
For the older teen and some adults, there’s The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey ($17.99, Simon and Schuster), a very entertaining story that begins with the journal of Will Henry, orphaned assistant to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, a man whose specialty is the study of monsters. When a grave robber comes calling with a gruesome find, he brings with him their most deadly case yet. This is classic gothic literature and asks the question, when does a man become the very thing he hunts?
Two DVDs offer lots of entertainment for the toddler set. Gigi and the Royal Pink Circus by Sheila Walsh ($14.00, Thomas Nelson, kid’s division) is part of a popular series about Gigi and for those of the Christian faith, this comes with some valuable lessons, namely that it is not easy to be God’s little princess these days, but His message comes with much comfort. Also from the same publisher, part of the Max Lucado’s Hermie and Friends series, The Flo Show Creates a Buzz. It’s About Saying You’re Sorry($14.99) features the voices of Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence of the Carol Burnett Show fame. It is a rollicking story with a useful theme of forgiveness. Also in the arena of juvenile fiction, there’s School of Fear, an audio book from Hachette Audio ($19.98) by Gitty Daneshvari. For the younger set, it will prove fun to listen to as they follow the adventures of Madeleine Masterson who is deathly afraid of bugs, especially spiders, Theodore Bartholomew who is petrified of dying, Lulu Punchalower who is scared of confined spaces, and Garrison Feldman who is terrified of deep water. They are sent off to the School of Fear to learn how to conquer their fears. Very scary and very funny.
Novels, Novels, Novels
I have become a fan of Don Bruns “stuff” series that chronicles the lives of James and Skip, two loveable, bumbling best friends who are still stuck in dead-end jobs, still living in their ratty apartment in Carol City, Florida, and still dreaming and scheming to hit the big time. In Stuff to Spy For ($25.95, Oceanview Publishing), Skip lands a job to install a state-of-the-art security system for Synco Systems, but it comes with strings. To collect the cash, he will have to pretend to be the boyfriend of Sarah Crumbly, an employee who’s having an affair with Synco’s married president. When he is offered a tidy sum by the boss’ wife for the details of what’s going on at Synco, the friends decide to go into the business of being spies. What they discover is at the heart of this funny, fast-paced thriller. A very different kind of thriller is Crossings by Leonard Chang ($24.95, Black Heron Press), an unflinching look at the lives of Korean immigrants in the San Francisco Bay area. It centers on Sam, a widower who finds himself deeply in debt to a local gangsters and Unha, an illegal immigrant working at a nightclub. Their stories intertwine with other family members, other immigrants, all forming to portray a community trying to make a better life for themselves. One can learn a lot from such fiction, delving into the worlds of other people we might now otherwise know or, to be candid, care about, but in a very real way, they are classic American stories in a nation of immigrants. Korea is the backdrop for a new addition to “A Sergeants Sueno & Bascom Mystery” by Martin Limon. G.I. Bones unites the Military Police sergeants when they travel to Itawwon, Seoul’s red-light district in order to find out who killed a G.I. who had the unusual habit of stalking fortune tellers. Meanwhile, an officer’s daughter has gone missing and the murder of a wine-mongering gang lord remains unsolved. The time is the 1970s and the twists and turns of this novel will keep you turning the pages as fast as you can read them.
Anyone who is old enough to have gone through the Draft in the 1950s until it was discontinued, will find The Furax Connection a trip back to the days of basic training at Fort Leonard Wood ($16.95, Fireside Publications, Lady Lake, FL, softcover). Stephen L. Kanne makes his debut with a terrific novel that is evocative of that era and, at the same time, an old fashioned thriller about a shadowy organization within the military, a network of bribery and extortion emanating from Furax Unlimited. At the heart of the novel is Billy Rosen, a Harvard graduate who has volunteered for the Draft to get a taste of life beyond his privileged surroundings. Identified as a recruit for a secret society within the military affiliated with Furax, the story concludes with the North Korean invasion of the South and we suspect Billy will see action there. Indeed, we expect Kanne’s next novel will continue the thread begun in this very satisfying story.
I am not surprised to see novels arrive that are based on the end-of-the-world theme of December 21, 2012. The Twelve by William Gladstone ($19.95, Vanguard Press) tells the story of Max Doff. Not speaking until age six, his world filled with numbers of colors (Editor’s note: signs associated with autism), at age fifteen he has a near death experience during which he sees twelve names that he cannot remember when he awakes. Eight years later while on location in Peru for a film production company, Max meets Maria Magdelena Ramirez and he suddenly realizes, Maria’s name was one of the twelve he saw in his vision. Anyone drawn to the mysteries of myths while find this novel every entertaining as we follow Max’s life to the date alleged to mark the world’s end.
Among the softcover novels, there’s The Rules of Play Jennie Walker ($20.00, Soho). Actually it is a novella, a short novel that follows the story of a woman in the throes of an extra-marital affair. Told over the course of five days, the narrator seeks to navigate the rules of her affair at the same time she tried to understand the rules of a cricket match between England and India taking place. We’re told that Mick Jagger loved it, but he’s one up on Americans unfamiliar with cricket. Coming in January from Soho Press, there’s Leighton Gage’s Dying Gasp ($24.00) the third in a series starring Chief Inspector Mario Silva. Set in Brazil, the granddaughter of a prominent politician is missing and Silva and his team find her in Manaus, a jungle hellhole on the Amazon where a female doctor is making snuff films. Silva must overcome his own department’s indifference and corrupt local cops to bring some justice to the victims.
A Drunkard’s Path by Clare O’Donahue, ($13.00, Plume) is part of “A Someday Quilts Mystery” series featuring Nell Fitzgerald. As Nell is finishing her first quilt and recovering from a broken engagement, her new boyfriend, Police Chief Jesse Dewalt stands her up, he has a good reason. The body of a young woman has been discovered nearby. Nell’s taste for sleuthing gets the best of her and she enlists the aid of her quilting circle to help patch together the clues. Civil War history, the Reconstruction period, is the backdrop for Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon ($15.95, Counterpoint). Based on a true story, it is the account of a love affair and murder in a small Maryland town that is rebuilding. It is the days following President Lincoln’s assassination and the Confederate surrender. The various allegiances are told through the eyes of a dozen different perspectives, but the story is in many ways a timeless one.
If you love a good love story, pick up Giving Up on Ordinary by Isla Dewar ($14.99, St, Martin’s Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books), a beloved and prolific British writer. Meg is a woman at the end of her rope. A single mother of three, she has more bounced checks than reasons to be hopeful. After retiring her dream of making it big in a band, she’s bounced from job to job, and now she’s cleaning houses to make ends meet. When she is asked to work for Gilbert Christy, an educated, wealthy, lonely art historian, her life gets a shot of passion. Complete opposites, they fascinate each other and their affair is as much about curiosity as about love. You will be rooting for Megs from the very first page.
Finally, for some good listening, there are three Hachette Audio novels, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (19.98) in the voice of a murdered girl watching from heaven as friends and family, along with her murderer, try to fathom what happened. David Balacci never disappoints with his police thrillers and True Blue ($44.98, unabridged/$31.98 abridged) is read by actor Ron McLarty. It is a story of a cop seeking redemption. Michael Connelly’s Dragon’s ($39.98 unabridged/$29.98 abridged) is read by actor Len Cariou tells the story of the murder of the owner of a South LA small shop, Fortune Liquors, and Detective Harry Bosch has promised his family he will find the killer. It is a gripping tale.
That’s it for November! Tell your friends about Bookviews and bookmark it to return each month for news of the best in new fiction and non-fiction. You will often find books here that are not getting sufficient attention elsewhere.
My Picks of the Month, Reading History, People (Biographies and Autobiographies), Health, Military Matters, Kids and Teen Books, Novels
My Picks of the Month
Here’s a book to put on your Christmas list. It’s Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years ($75.00, Andrews McMeel Publishing) and it comes in a deluxe, slip cased edition. It is filled with all the many things a generation of Americans came to love about this wonderful comic strip creation by the late Charles Schultz. Peanuts fans will find quotes from Schultz that shed light on how his mind worked, how his life shaped the strip, and how in turn it shaped his life. There are more than 500 pages of classic Peanuts strips, including many full color Sundays. It doesn’t get much better than this. Another large format book that will please fans of the late actress Betty Davis is a tribute written by two noted film critics, Richard Schickel and George Perry. Betty Davis: Larger than Life ($35.00, Running Press) captures the life of a quite extraordinary woman, outspoken and unapologetic. Her career spanned six decades and more than 100 films and few actresses rival her for longevity and appeal. As she put it, “Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star” and she was the epitome of a star. “Of Human Bondage”, “Jezebel”, and “All About Eve” became classic films in part from her performances. She broke ground for actresses who followed her, but she left an indelible imprint on an era we sometimes call the golden age of Hollywood.
If you know someone who loves to travel or someone who prefers to do so from an armchair (that’s me), then one of the most fabulous gifts to give this year is Visions of Europe ($99.99, a boxed set of 12 programs on ten discs, Acorn Media), good for over 15 hours of some of the most extraordinary views of Europe, all shot in high definition video from a helicopter-mounted camera. Seen frequently on PBS, in this great set, you will find “Visions” of Italy, France, Greece, Germany and Austria. There’s also the “Great Cities of Europe”. Either for yourself or as a gift, you will float above places whose names reflect the history of Western civilization. The music and the narration is never intrusive. It’s a trip of a lifetime without every leaving home.
Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America is an intriguing book by Rich Benjamin ($24.99, Hyperion). He begins by pointing out that, by 2042, whites will no longer be the majority population in America. As people of color driven by the massive illegal immigration across our southern border increase, more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas that are predominantly, even extremely white. It goes way beyond prejudice and it goes straight to the heart of American values of “individual liberty, shared civic responsibility, and equal opportunity.” Benjamin writes, “Insecure over the strength and prospects of American values, many white Americans fear for the nation’s ability to absorb newcomers.” This is especially true when they arrive poorly educated and with cultural dispositions to neglect wherever they live. It is hard to claim prejudice given the fact that Americans elected the first black president in its history, though the election, says Benjamin, obscures the racial and economic segregation still vexing America. Benjamin advocates “diversity” even though it looks more and more to me like termites eating the foundations of American society. At the book’s conclusion, the author opts for a more liberal approach to the demographic changes occurring, something that struck me as the antithesis of the theme of his book.
For an administration that has promised greater “transparency”, it is increasingly clear that much of the information on which decisions are based is kept from public view. Over the years, the Freedom of Information Act has been utilized by journalists and those dealing with public affairs issues to learn more about what the government is doing and why. Jacqueline Klosek has written The Right to Know: Your Guide to Using and Defending Freedom of Information Law in the United States ($44.95, Praeger). An attorney practicing law in New York City, it need be said this book will be of greatest use to those engaged in these battles to pry open the doors of government agencies. There are, she notes, many exemptions to the law that prevent access, but she does provide practical methods for citizens to use the act to protect themselves and their communities. The most dangerous aspect of what is occurring is the increasing effort to deny Americans access to government generated information with which to make an informed analysis of what is really occurring. Tom Fenton is a four-time Emmy winner from his years with CBS News, so one might expect his analysis, Junk News: The Failure of the Media in the 21st Century ($14.95, Fulcrum Publishing) to be more incisive. However, his association with CBS News reminds us of the expose of Dan Rather’s appalling bias (a court recently dismissed his case against CBS) and it similarly infects Fenton’s examination of trends. He now works as a freelance commentator for the BBC. This little book rather swiftly loses much of its credibility when he veers into political opinion, but is worth reading when Fenton addresses the actual mechanics and costs of news gathering. His lament about the closing of foreign bureaus by U.S. media rings true, along with some other complaints. He devotes too much time blaming the former Bush administration for all the ills of the world, much as the present administration does. Those of a liberal persuasion will enjoy this book.
Cornelia Dean has written Am I Making Myself Clear?: a Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public ($19.95, Harvard University Press). This is a book for scientists who want to share their expertise, analysis and opinions with the general public and I recommend it because I see lots of scientific information that often defies the understanding of even a seasoned science writer like myself. A distinguished science editor and reporter, Dean makes a case for the importance of scientists taking an active role in making their work accessible to the media and, through them, to the general public. This book is especially timely given the decades of junk science regarding a “global warming” that was a natural climate cycle, barely one degree Fahrenheit, to a previous “little ice age.” And the kicker is that the Earth has been in a new cooling cycle for at least ten years. It’s not likely you’ve heard about that!
One cannot help being impressed by The Big Book of Parenting Solutions: 101 Answers to Your Everyday Challenges and Wildest Worries by Michele Borba, Ed.D. ($19.95, Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley, softcover). The initial reason being its sheer size. It’s truly a big book at nearly 700 pages as it addresses common parenting challenges for kids from age 3 to 13. The answers to bedtime battles, chores wars, tantrums, bad friends, sibling rivalry, cheating, growing up too fast, eating disorders, selfishness, anger and countless other common problems are addressed, along with Internet safety, stress and much more. The solutions are time-tested and, for today’s time-challenged parent, the ability to go to specific chapters on problems they are encountering is invaluable.
For the sports nut in your life, a great Christmas stocking-stuffer would be No Dribbling the Squid: Octopush, Shin Kicking, Elephant Polo, and other Oddball Sports are the subject of a book by Michael J. Rosen with Ben Kassoy ($12.99, Andrews McMeel, softcover. It would appear that just about anything humans do can be and has been turned into some kind of sporting activity as it takes a look at those from around the globe that are weird and entertaining, from Wife-Carrying races to professional Rock-Paper-Scissors competitions and Extreme Ironing. This book is just plain fun.
Reading History
There is no understanding of the present or hint of predicting the future if you have not read history.
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America its Name by Toby Lester ($30.00, Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster) tells of the way Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts, Europe, Africa and Asia. These parts of the world had been visited by traders and seafarers to an extent that they were known to exist. For the Europeans, they existed to be exploited, a noted trait. The “fourth part of the world”, however, was largely a land of myth until, in 1507, Martin Waldseemulller and Mathias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France created a map. It depicted a new world beyond the vast Atlantic Ocean. It would draw on the explorations of Amerigo Vespucci and Christopher Columbus. It would set Nicholas Copernicus to thinking that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Thus was life in 16th century Europe. Eventually, in 2003, the Library of Congress paid $10 million to add it to its treasures. The story of the map is one of the great stories of discovery and it is fascinating.
From the earliest civilizations to our own there have always been people ready to predict the end of the world and people ready to believe them. As we draw closer to 2012, the ancient Mayan calendar, said to predict this is gaining renewed attention. Simply put, it does not make such a prediction, but the long, more complex story is told by John Major Jenkins in The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History ($25.95, Tarcher/Penguin). There have been some 200 books written concerning December 21, 2012 and some movies based on the myth. Jenkins is an expert on the Mayan civilization and that is the crux of his book and, if that interests you than you will not be disappointed by this portrait of the cultural and scientific roots of what, in fact, was a Mayan belief in transformation and renewal. (See the Novels section for one based on the end of the world theme.)
If you have been trying to figure out why the Middle East is such a mess, a good place to start is the Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East by Karl E. Mayer and Shareen Blair Brysac ($18.95, W.W. Norton, softcover) which looks at the Middle East as the geographic, geostrategic, and religious center of the world; one that Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon tried to control long before oil was discovered and in which, at varying times France, Britain, Germany, and the United States have all sought to extend their hegemony. The modern Middle East is the result of a secret treaty between England and France that divided it between them following World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. For anyone who loves to read history, this book is high adventure full of folly and a cast of characters Hollywood could not have invented. Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East by Stephen P. Cohen ($27.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) rapidly turns out to be a disappointment and the tip-off is the first sentence of its preface. “Right after the 1967 Six-Day War, I set out to educate myself about the Zionist conflict with the Arabs in Palestine.” The “Zionists”, not the Israelis. Because, despite the wars waged against it, the sovereign nation of Israel has demonstrated that Jews have a right to their ancient homeland. And, largely ignored or unmentioned is the fact that Israel has a million Arab citizens! Cohen, a Harvard-trained social psychologist is the founder and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development. He is a dreamer who, while he has a grasp of the basics of Middle East history, views it through the gauzy hope for a peace that has always been beyond reach in a region whose dominant faith and culture makes it impossible
People, People, People
The favorite subject for people to write about is, well, people. And, of course, there is often much to be learned by reading about people since one can hardly cram that much experience into a single life.
I will begin, for no particular reason, with a memoir by a wonderful singer and entertainer, Moon River and Me by Andy Williams ($25.95, Viking). I was surprised to learn that he is 82, but only because, being ten years younger, he has been a part of my life before and since he became a superstar on television by the 1960s. There are few achievements in show business he has not garnered, but it was his warm tenor voice and seemingly effortless delivery that earned him his position. The book tells of a humble beginning in Iowa, an ambitious father who encouraged his sons to form a singing group, a move to Los Angeles, and the gradual climb to a place in the hearts of Americans who embraced him. Along the way he became friends with other famous folk like Bobby Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and others. He relates stories about them and his success on television, in Las Vegas, and with his theatre in Branson, Missouri. This is a memoir worth waiting for.
William Rehnquist was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for a third of a century and served contiguously with four presidents and yet I cannot help but think that most Americans were and are largely unaware of him because of his modest demeanor. He did not seek the limelight, but now those for whom the Supreme Court, its decisions, and the men and women that made them in modern times are of interest, Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States meets the need for a greater insight and understanding of the man ($27.00, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster). Herman J. Obermayer provides a candid look at one of the most influential men to hold the job. He takes the reader on an interesting journey from his dissenting opinion in Roe v. Wade to his strongly stated positions on issues as various as freedom of the press, school prayer, and civil rights. It was Rehnquist who played a visible role in two very contentious events, the impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999 and the decision that made George W. Bush the winner in the presidential election of 2000. Obermayer, a journalist, was friends with him for nineteen years and the result is a book well worth reading for a better understanding of the man and times he influenced
From an earlier era, the 1920s and 30s, a name synonymous with those times is Amelia Earhart, one of the first women pilots and, in many ways, a woman who demonstrated that her sex could equal the exploits of men. Amelia Earhart: The Thrill of It by Susan Wels ($35.00, Running Press) is a large format book to match her personality and exploits which famously ended with her mysterious disappearance somewhere in the Pacific in 1937. Well written and extensively illustrated, the woman that emerges from its pages does much more than fly planes. She was a polymath, a poet, photographer, fashion designer, wife, friend and lover. She was, above all, someone who lived for adventure. “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace,” she wrote. She lived life on her own terms and broke the glass ceiling long before the term existed.
The Holocaust, the deliberate killing of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War Two has generated hundreds, if not thousands of books, but it remains essential that later generations and humanity in general not forget it. Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri ($15.95, Tanglewood Press) is actually written for younger readers, aged twelve and up. One of the worst chapters of the Holocaust was the selection of some 300 twins for Dr. Josef Mengele’s cruel medical experiments. Only about 200 survived. The author and her sister were only ten years old at the time. A lesser known story from that period is told in They Dared Return: The Untold Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany by Patrick K. O’Donnell ($26.00, Da Capo Press). Some Jewish refugees, by 1942, had found safe haven in America, but with courage that is hard to imagine, were eager to serve in the armed forces to stop the persecution of their overseas families and friends, some of whom languished in concentration camps. The book focuses on “the Jewish five” who joined the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of today’s CIA, to become spies, parachuting into enemy territory to gather information for the Allied forces. O’Donnell, a military historian, has done a great service in writing this intriguing book. (See History section below for more on this topic)
Writers often find their own lives more interesting than anything they could invent or report, so it is not surprising that two books reflect that trait. The Face in the Mirror edited by Victoria Zackheim ($25.00, Prometheus Books) brings together recollections by writers such as Malachy McCourt, Joyce Maynard, among some twenty writers of fiction and non-fiction who relate the choices they made, their achievements, and their disappointments. Their stories are a cautionary tale for all would-be writers, but they answer the question of who it is they see when they look in the mirror. Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives ($24.99, Free Press) collects essays by writers ranging from Joyce Carol Oates to Edmund White, at least two are Pulitzer Prize winners, six won National Book Awards, and others who saw their work become bestsellers but who recall how either encouragement or criticism shaped their careers, each thriving or surviving to make a name for themselves.
After decades of reviewing, I have seen my share of memoirs. Most lives fit into comfortable patterns, but occasionally someone comes along with a truly nutty notion, divorced from reality, and a path to a life that strays from the ordinary. Such is the case of Jerramy Fine who was born in 1977 in western Colorado, but possessed of the idea that she was switched at birth and her “real” parents must surely be English aristocrats. Ms. Fine was convinced that she was born to marry into the British Royal Family. She is what is called an Anglophile, in love with things and men who are British. She writes about it in Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess (15.00, Gotham Books/Penguin Group, softcover) While attending the University of Rochester, she spent a semester working in the House of Commons and later completed her master’s at the London School of Economics. She did not marry an English prince, but she lives in London with an English boyfriend and she forgives him for being a commoner. The result of this is a whimsical real life story of a girl who began writing to Buckingham Palace around age six, gets to London, dives into the party scene and discovers life is not the fairy tale she imagined. Turns out that London is very expensive and too many British boys are a real pain. This one is strictly for the girls, but it will resonate with any one of them who wanted to be a princess.
The Topic is Health
Americans are taking a greater interest in maintaining their personal health these days, perhaps in response to the national debate on proposed, controversial revisions to Medicare, arguably the most popular government program other than Social Security. It also reflects the endless coverage of health-related topics in the nation’s media. An excellent place to start is The Intellectual Devotional: Health ($24.00, Rodale) with 365 daily entries on all aspects of health that cover seven categories on health and wellness such as drugs and alternative treatments, the men, sexuality and reproduction, children and adolescents, diseases and ailments. It is endlessly fascinating for its facts.
Smoking: 201 Reasons to Quit by Muriel L. Crawford ($19.95, plus $5.50 shipping and handling, from Dillion & Parker Publishing, softcover), is addressed to people like me and the thirty million other Americans who say they want to quit. It is one scary book, listing more than a hundred ways tobacco harms smoker’s health, often leading to prolonged disability and early death. It offers methods to quit smoking, and discusses all the other aspects of smoking such as social and relationship problems. I would hazard that this is the most comprehensive review of this problem and, who knows, it might just get me to quit, too. Visit www.ReasonsNotToSmoke.com.
I loved The Art of Overeating by Leslie Landis ($9.95, Sterling) and give it a big thumbs up! Written by a practicing clinical psychologist, the author has practical experience helping people who eat, spend, avoid, deny, and defy their way through life. As Americans continue to be hit over the head with endless discussion and even proposed legislation about what and how much we can eat, this book approaches the subject with lots of laughter. Peppered with fascinating food facts, plus the author’s natural wry style of making her case about food phobias, she exposing the uselessness of trying to shame over-eaters. Using humor, though, helps a lot. If you’re tired of the endless stream of diet books and advice, this is probably the book for you!
It seems like hardly a day or week goes by without the public being informed that some health threat is going to kill millions and now Dr. Brad Spellberg has written about the latest in Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them ($26.00, Prometheus Books). The focus of his book is on antibiotic-resistant microbes that are said to infect two million Americans and kill more than 100,000 every year. What makes this an even worse threat, according to the author, is that research and development of new antibiotics has “ground to a screeching halt.” This book is a major warning against the collapse of antibiotic R&D and for anyone with an interest in health issues, this is “must” reading.
A new memoir is The Sugarless Plum: A Ballerina’s Triumph Over Diabetes by Zippora Karz ($22.95, Harlequin) in which she tells how, by the age of 20 she had fulfilled her life’s dream. Having left home at the age of 15 to pursue her career, Karz became a rising star with the New York City Ballet. A year later, however, her body began to exhibit symptoms that were originally misdiagnosed as Type-2 diabetes when it was Type-1. This is an inspiring story for any woman facing this disease and it is enhanced as she writes about the behind-the-scenes life of a ballerina, a fantasy for little girls around the world.
Military Matters
I have long believed that history largely consists of the many wars of mankind and this is confirmed in an excellent new book, Little-Known Wars of Great and Lasting Impact: Turning Points in Our History We should Know More About by Alan Axelrod, PhD ($24.99, Fair Winds Press). That may qualify as one of the longest titles of any new book this year! The author has had a long, distinguished career in and out of publishing and a consultant to television documentaries. He takes the reader on a fascinating tour that include what he calls the “first Holocaust”, the battle when Simon bar Kokhba initiated a rebellion against Rome, triggering a response that cost the lives of many Jews living in Israel from 132-135 BC. Other wars cited include the first wars of terror, the Barbary pirates versus the United States, and the Meji Rebellion in Japan. There are many interesting chapters that recount wars that often are not taught in schools and colleges, but which shaped history, ancient and modern.
Zenith Press specializes in books about military affairs and among their latest releases are War Stories of D-Day: Operation Overlord—June 6, 1944 ($28.00) by Michael Green and James D. Brown. That titanic landing on the shores of France was a major turning point in World War Two. It put 150,000 troops in play against the Nazis and this book humanizes the event with first-person stories of those who took part in the invasion, including the paratroopers who dropped behind enemy lines. The book includes those from the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force who provided critical support. A little known story of WWII was the role of German Jews and it is told in The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II ($28.00) by Steven Karras. Though the Nazis rounded up and killed six million Jews, some German and Austrian Jews who had fled the Nazis were inducted into the Allied forces. The stories of 27 of them, including gripping recollections from Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, are documented. They displayed incredible courage. Courage, too, was displayed by McCoy’s Marines ($17.99) subtitled the “Darkside to Baghdad.” John Koopman tells the story of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, led by Lt. Col Byran P. McCoy whose radio call sign was “Darkside.” These were the men who pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein. As a reporter embedded with the unit, Koopman saw and lived it all. A former Marine himself, the author provides an insight-filled story of what it was like to battle into the center of Iraq’s capital and the aftermath.
At the forefront of American concerns is whether to continue the war in Afghanistan, now in its eighth year. For a powerful and disturbing insight, I recommend you read Hunting al Qaeda ($17.99, Zenith Press, softcover). It is the story of a National Guard Special Forces unit, Beast 85, a tight-knit group of ten men, green berets, sent to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 to capture or kill al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is a story of disillusionment because of the top-heavy, risk-averse command structure of today’s army and how it became the second front for men who actually captured a Taliban leader only to be told to release him! The war has drawn on without victory because “victory” is not attainable when it is a political issue, not a military objective.
Today we speak of Special Operations and think in terms of Green Berets and Navy SEALs, but preceding them were WWII Allied spies and they needed to be trained to operate behind enemy lines. The arts and skills of disrupting an enemy were described in Special Ops, 1939-1945: A Manuel of Covert Warfare and Training ($17.00, Zenith Press) put together by the British Special Operations Executive and American Office of Strategic Services. It is reproduced for today’s reader and the techniques described and illustrated mirror some that have been incorporated by today’s terrorist organizations.
Not all casualties of war occur on the battlefield. Healing Suicidal Veterans: Recognizing, Supporting and Answering Their Pleas for Help by Victor Montgomery II, CMAC, RAS, a former crisis intervention therapist for the National Veterans Suicide Crisis Hotline ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover) could save lives, particularly if read by the friends and relatives of returning veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It is filled with advice on effective strategies for veterans to cope and heal, checklists to identify symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and substance abuse. It provides information about resources for veterans seeking help.
Books for kids and Teens
For the very young who can be read to or those age 7-9, there’s a story first published in 1997 by Jane Yolen, the author of some 300 books for younger readers. The Seeing Stick ($16.95, Running Press) is the story of a Chinese emperor whose only daughter was born blind and who seeks a cure. One day a wise old man with a mysterious Seeing Stick visits the princess. It reveals that one can “see” the world in more ways than just her eyes. This book is particularly special for the illustrations of Daniela Jaglenko Terrazzini that are just dazzling. It is an inspiring story in many ways and likely to remain a treasure in any child’s library.
From Kids Can Press comes How to Build Your Own Country ($18.95), part of a series to teach kids about the world, but I am less thrilled about its intent “to be better global citizens.” That kind of One World outlook puts allegiance to one’s own nation down the list of priorities. That said, however, Valerie Wyatt, the author, and Fred Rix, the illustrator, have come up with a clever way to each what being a nation involves, including setting up a government, holding elections, writing a constitution, and other attributes of nations that function under the rule of law. Hoaxed! Fakes & Mistakes in the World of Science ($16.95) by the editors of Yes Magazine is another good book for younger readers, up to age ten or so. It explores a number of famous hoaxes like the Piltdown Man and provides advice on how to spot a hoax based often on dubious or spurious science. It neglects to include the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, still be talked about as real despite the fact the Earth has been cooling for a decade.
For the older, pre-teen and teenage set, there are a number of books worth reading. I am Jack by Susanne Gervay ($14.99, Tricycle Press, an imprint of Crown Publishing) deals with the topic of school bullying and how it hurts the victim and the bully and is frightening for witnesses who don’t know what to do. Jack is an eleven-year-old who has to learn what to do. This book should probably be in every school in America. A young adult novel, Saved by the Music ($16.95, West Side Books) is generating a lot of buzz. Selene Castrovilla tells the story of 15-year-old Willow who moves in with her aunt for the summer after her unstable mother kicks her out. Aunt Agatha is trying to turn a dilapidated barge into a classic music performance space. Willow must fend off the advances of a construction worker, but is befriended by an older teen who lives on a sailboat nearby. Together they meet some harrowing challenges together. It’s the kind of story that is impossible to put down once passed the first page. Music is at the core of another West Side Book, a young adult novel, Shattered by Kathi Baron ($16.95). In this story a teen violin prodigy, Cassie, runs away after her moody father destroys her violin, seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. From her shattered family, Cassie finds out why her father acted as he did and how she heals herself by helping others.
The author of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, Jeff Kinney, sold over 23 million copies with this series and is back with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days ($13.95, Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams) in which Greg, Rowley, Rodrick, Manny, Mom and Dad, and an entire cast of characters return along with an unexpected addition to the family that not only takes Greg’s attention, but his bed too. Just about everything he does involves some kind of turmoil, particularly anything that occurs outside when Greg would prefer to be in his room, the blinds closed, and playing video games. This is just plain fun!
For the older teen and some adults, there’s The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey ($17.99, Simon and Schuster), a very entertaining story that begins with the journal of Will Henry, orphaned assistant to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, a man whose specialty is the study of monsters. When a grave robber comes calling with a gruesome find, he brings with him their most deadly case yet. This is classic gothic literature and asks the question, when does a man become the very thing he hunts?
Two DVDs offer lots of entertainment for the toddler set. Gigi and the Royal Pink Circus by Sheila Walsh ($14.00, Thomas Nelson, kid’s division) is part of a popular series about Gigi and for those of the Christian faith, this comes with some valuable lessons, namely that it is not easy to be God’s little princess these days, but His message comes with much comfort. Also from the same publisher, part of the Max Lucado’s Hermie and Friends series, The Flo Show Creates a Buzz. It’s About Saying You’re Sorry($14.99) features the voices of Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence of the Carol Burnett Show fame. It is a rollicking story with a useful theme of forgiveness. Also in the arena of juvenile fiction, there’s School of Fear, an audio book from Hachette Audio ($19.98) by Gitty Daneshvari. For the younger set, it will prove fun to listen to as they follow the adventures of Madeleine Masterson who is deathly afraid of bugs, especially spiders, Theodore Bartholomew who is petrified of dying, Lulu Punchalower who is scared of confined spaces, and Garrison Feldman who is terrified of deep water. They are sent off to the School of Fear to learn how to conquer their fears. Very scary and very funny.
Novels, Novels, Novels
I have become a fan of Don Bruns “stuff” series that chronicles the lives of James and Skip, two loveable, bumbling best friends who are still stuck in dead-end jobs, still living in their ratty apartment in Carol City, Florida, and still dreaming and scheming to hit the big time. In Stuff to Spy For ($25.95, Oceanview Publishing), Skip lands a job to install a state-of-the-art security system for Synco Systems, but it comes with strings. To collect the cash, he will have to pretend to be the boyfriend of Sarah Crumbly, an employee who’s having an affair with Synco’s married president. When he is offered a tidy sum by the boss’ wife for the details of what’s going on at Synco, the friends decide to go into the business of being spies. What they discover is at the heart of this funny, fast-paced thriller. A very different kind of thriller is Crossings by Leonard Chang ($24.95, Black Heron Press), an unflinching look at the lives of Korean immigrants in the San Francisco Bay area. It centers on Sam, a widower who finds himself deeply in debt to a local gangsters and Unha, an illegal immigrant working at a nightclub. Their stories intertwine with other family members, other immigrants, all forming to portray a community trying to make a better life for themselves. One can learn a lot from such fiction, delving into the worlds of other people we might now otherwise know or, to be candid, care about, but in a very real way, they are classic American stories in a nation of immigrants. Korea is the backdrop for a new addition to “A Sergeants Sueno & Bascom Mystery” by Martin Limon. G.I. Bones unites the Military Police sergeants when they travel to Itawwon, Seoul’s red-light district in order to find out who killed a G.I. who had the unusual habit of stalking fortune tellers. Meanwhile, an officer’s daughter has gone missing and the murder of a wine-mongering gang lord remains unsolved. The time is the 1970s and the twists and turns of this novel will keep you turning the pages as fast as you can read them.
Anyone who is old enough to have gone through the Draft in the 1950s until it was discontinued, will find The Furax Connection a trip back to the days of basic training at Fort Leonard Wood ($16.95, Fireside Publications, Lady Lake, FL, softcover). Stephen L. Kanne makes his debut with a terrific novel that is evocative of that era and, at the same time, an old fashioned thriller about a shadowy organization within the military, a network of bribery and extortion emanating from Furax Unlimited. At the heart of the novel is Billy Rosen, a Harvard graduate who has volunteered for the Draft to get a taste of life beyond his privileged surroundings. Identified as a recruit for a secret society within the military affiliated with Furax, the story concludes with the North Korean invasion of the South and we suspect Billy will see action there. Indeed, we expect Kanne’s next novel will continue the thread begun in this very satisfying story.
I am not surprised to see novels arrive that are based on the end-of-the-world theme of December 21, 2012. The Twelve by William Gladstone ($19.95, Vanguard Press) tells the story of Max Doff. Not speaking until age six, his world filled with numbers of colors (Editor’s note: signs associated with autism), at age fifteen he has a near death experience during which he sees twelve names that he cannot remember when he awakes. Eight years later while on location in Peru for a film production company, Max meets Maria Magdelena Ramirez and he suddenly realizes, Maria’s name was one of the twelve he saw in his vision. Anyone drawn to the mysteries of myths while find this novel every entertaining as we follow Max’s life to the date alleged to mark the world’s end.
Among the softcover novels, there’s The Rules of Play Jennie Walker ($20.00, Soho). Actually it is a novella, a short novel that follows the story of a woman in the throes of an extra-marital affair. Told over the course of five days, the narrator seeks to navigate the rules of her affair at the same time she tried to understand the rules of a cricket match between England and India taking place. We’re told that Mick Jagger loved it, but he’s one up on Americans unfamiliar with cricket. Coming in January from Soho Press, there’s Leighton Gage’s Dying Gasp ($24.00) the third in a series starring Chief Inspector Mario Silva. Set in Brazil, the granddaughter of a prominent politician is missing and Silva and his team find her in Manaus, a jungle hellhole on the Amazon where a female doctor is making snuff films. Silva must overcome his own department’s indifference and corrupt local cops to bring some justice to the victims.
A Drunkard’s Path by Clare O’Donahue, ($13.00, Plume) is part of “A Someday Quilts Mystery” series featuring Nell Fitzgerald. As Nell is finishing her first quilt and recovering from a broken engagement, her new boyfriend, Police Chief Jesse Dewalt stands her up, he has a good reason. The body of a young woman has been discovered nearby. Nell’s taste for sleuthing gets the best of her and she enlists the aid of her quilting circle to help patch together the clues. Civil War history, the Reconstruction period, is the backdrop for Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon ($15.95, Counterpoint). Based on a true story, it is the account of a love affair and murder in a small Maryland town that is rebuilding. It is the days following President Lincoln’s assassination and the Confederate surrender. The various allegiances are told through the eyes of a dozen different perspectives, but the story is in many ways a timeless one.
If you love a good love story, pick up Giving Up on Ordinary by Isla Dewar ($14.99, St, Martin’s Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books), a beloved and prolific British writer. Meg is a woman at the end of her rope. A single mother of three, she has more bounced checks than reasons to be hopeful. After retiring her dream of making it big in a band, she’s bounced from job to job, and now she’s cleaning houses to make ends meet. When she is asked to work for Gilbert Christy, an educated, wealthy, lonely art historian, her life gets a shot of passion. Complete opposites, they fascinate each other and their affair is as much about curiosity as about love. You will be rooting for Megs from the very first page.
Finally, for some good listening, there are three Hachette Audio novels, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (19.98) in the voice of a murdered girl watching from heaven as friends and family, along with her murderer, try to fathom what happened. David Balacci never disappoints with his police thrillers and True Blue ($44.98, unabridged/$31.98 abridged) is read by actor Ron McLarty. It is a story of a cop seeking redemption. Michael Connelly’s Dragon’s ($39.98 unabridged/$29.98 abridged) is read by actor Len Cariou tells the story of the murder of the owner of a South LA small shop, Fortune Liquors, and Detective Harry Bosch has promised his family he will find the killer. It is a gripping tale.
That’s it for November! Tell your friends about Bookviews and bookmark it to return each month for news of the best in new fiction and non-fiction. You will often find books here that are not getting sufficient attention elsewhere.
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