By Alan Caruba
My Picks of the Month
For anyone struggling to understand the actions of the present administration with its 32 “czars” advising the President, but free of congressional oversight as they shape policies and regulations, it is essential to school oneself in the rise of Communism and its lesser evil, Socialism. Suffice to say, neither economic system has every worked successfully and the former has historically been accompanied by murder on a scale that defies comprehension. This is why I recommend reading Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century by Dr. Paul Kengor ($29.95, ISI Books, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, DE), It is a hefty tome, running past 600 pages, but the good news is that the writing is lively, depicting how many intellectuals of the last century were completely duped by those behind the 1917 Communist revolution in Russia and how it created the Communist Party USA for the sole purpose of imposing communism on America by any means, deception at all levels being the primary instrument. What unfolded was, for one example, turning the American educational system into the means of preaching the “collective” rather than individual merit. It so debased education that past and present generations of students move through the system achieving ever lower scholastic levels while those in other nations far outstrip them. Politically, the “progressives” have given America its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, imposing entitlement programs that have bankrupted States and the Federal government alike. As former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, famously said, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” The history of America’s duped intellectual elites and those they went onto profoundly influence is great reading and essential if you are to understand our present crisis.
Our attention always is directed to nations experiencing wars or internal conflicts of one kind or another. One nation that lies at the heart of the Middle East, however, has proved to be a largely baffling enigma to the West. Pakistan was stuck from India when it declared its independence from Great Britain in the years following the end of World War II. Gandhi had hoped to have a united India, but many Muslims wanted a Muslim nation for themselves. The initial effort apportioned Pakistan in two pieces, the latter which ultimately became Bangladesh. Pakistan, A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven ($35.00, Public Affairs) is a hefty tome that examines the history, the culture, the military, and multifaceted other aspects of Pakistan. It is a nuclear nation and maintains a 500,000-strong military, as much a response to its fear of India as any other reason. The two have fought short, largely inconclusive wars over the years. Pakistan is held together by its military and is primarily threatened by militant Islam in the form of the Taliban and whatever is left of al Qaeda. Many Afghanis have sought refuge there. Lieven, a British journalist, has lived there and returned for long trips. His book is based on hundreds of interviews with Pakistanis from prime ministers to landless laborers. He warns against taking Pakistan lightly and provides a vivid portrait of the nation that is well worth reading.
Many myths surround China these days and Troy Parfitt has sent most of them packing in his book, Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas ($20.95, Western Hemisphere Press, New Brunswick, Canada, softcover). A Canadian, Parfitt has spent years in both Korea and Taiwan, and is fluent in Chinese. He decided to take three months to visit all the provinces of China and, in doing so, he produced an entertaining travelogue and a devastating dismissal of the media-driven myths that China is a nation on the rise when, in fact, it is both Communist and tied to an ancient culture that is unsuited to the demands of modern times. While it has adapted new technology, Parfitt notes China has been doing that for a century without really changing its way of thinking. “Politically, culturally, socially, and historically, China has practically nothing to offer the Western world…or any other non-Confucian country or culture.” Its economy is highly dependent on the West. “China’s economic advances are certainly impressive, although it’s important to remember that foreign companies are responsible for roughly 60 percent of all Chinese exports and 85 percent of all high-tech exports.” My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary ($26.00, Prometheus Books) by Baiqiano Tang with Damon DiMarco describes China from inside, a China in which its people are being imprisoned by their own government for the “crime” of wanting a more democratic republic instead of the communist regime that controls their lives. The dissidents include student leaders, journalists, bloggers, human rights activities and Buddhist monks. The book was written by one such political prisoner whose name became known during the Tiananmen Square massacre. Over the past 21 years he has remained on the front lines of pro-democracy movements. Now living in exile in New York, Tang is just one of many Chinese whose stories must be read if real change is ever to come to one of the world’s largest prison states.
Americans are increasingly concerned about the value of higher education and what it produces in terms of graduates that were often ill-prepared to attend and are ill-prepared when they leave. If it wasn’t so entertainingly written, with lively prose and a beguiling humor, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic by Professor X ($25.95, Viking) would be less fun as it offers further evidence for concern regarding “higher” education. That appellation seems to apply more to the cost than the value. There are 18.2 million college students and 66% of those graduating four-year colleges will leave with debt that averages $20,000 or more. Some 73% of these students are taught by adjuncts or graduate students rather than fulltime professors. The author calls today’s colleges “America’s most expensive Ponzi scheme.” The author has penned a partial memoir of an over-educated, under-employed and downwardly mobile father of three who became a college English teacher as a way to bring in more money with a second job. He paints an ugly picture of higher education as a business enterprise more interested in the bottom line than the well being of students. Walter Olsen paints a portrait of what the nation’s law schools are turning out in Schools for Misrule: Legal Academic and an Overlawyered America ($25.95, Encounter Books). The most renowned, Yale, Harvard and Chicago, are hotbeds of liberalism and have generated a number of U.S. presidents. They have created a society that is far too litigious, promoting class action suits and the right to sue anybody for any reason. Law schools have generated the movement for slavery reparations, court takeovers of school funding, and a multitude of really bad ideas with sense of moral superiority and the use of the courts to impose requirements on society that are widely rejected by most Americans. Both books are real eye-openers and well worth reading.
There are many ways in which American have been duped. Only now, after thirty years of deception regarding “global warming” has that hoax been revealed to have been based on manipulated “computer model” outcomes that did not and could relate to the actual science or climate data. The Cholesterol Delusion by Dr. Ernest N. Curtis, MD ($13.99, Dog Ear Publishing, Indianapolis, IN, softcover) is not only affordable, but it can save your life if any of the anti-cholesterol drugs are prescribed on the basis of a finding you have too high a level of cholesterol. As the author demonstrates in clear, lucid language, “Cholesterol is one of the most vital and important biochemical compounds in nature. It is a major component in every cell in the body. All cells are enclosed by a membrane that keeps the contents of the cell intact and regulates everything that enters or leaves the cell.” From birth to death, cholesterol protects the cells and these include the brain and nerve tissue that contain the highest proportion of cholesterol in the body. Why would anyone want to reduce this life enhancing element of health? What Dr. Curtis demonstrates is that physicians and the public alike have been sold a myth about cholesterol and its alleged role in causing heart disease. The pharmaceutical companies have grown wealthy maintaining this myth and, yet, as far back as 1978 it was known that the research behind this was far more political, than scientific. Indeed, most of the studies ultimately demonstrated no connection. Simply put, it does not matter what you eat. There is no connection between diet and heart disease. A whole host of other factors are involved including a family history that includes a genetic predisposition to heart disease.
I don’t know how long I have heard that coffee is bad for you, but you can be sure I always ignored it. So do millions of others who enjoy it. Indeed, I order Café du Monde, a special blend with chicory from New Orleans because it is my favorite. So, naturally, I enjoyed Coffee Talk by Morton Satin ($21.95, Prometheus Books), billed as “the stimulating story of the world’s most popular brew.” Even in places like China and even in India where tea has been the tradition brew of choice, coffee is making inroads because it is just so good. As Satin points out, in the intellectual capitols of the world, coffee houses have been the place where philosophy, the arts, and even sciences are discussed. The author traces the intriguing history of coffee, showing how coffee consumption evolved to fit the social and economic needs of different times. For any “foodie”, this book will prove a special treat. Another treat is The Handy Science Answer Book compiled by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, now in its fourth edition ($21.95, Visible Ink Press, softcover). In a world where so many issues and events involve matters of science, it is just so great to be able to reach for this book that explains them in plain English. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, climate and weather, ecology, plants and animals, health and medicine, energy and so many answers to so many questions can be found between its covers to quickly explain the complex in terms anyone can understand. For example, in the wake of Japan’s problems with its nuclear plants, the brief chapter on nuclear energy will make you the smartest person in the room. Indeed, brief is the key to this book’s value, because the many topic areas it covers are “handy” in the way that a quick, authoritative explanation always is.
Some books are special because they fill a gap and that is the case of At Ease, Soldier! How to Leave the War Downrange and Feel at Home Again ($19.95, http://www.soldiersathome.com/, softcover). Written by Gayle S. Rozantine, PhD, it addresses the needs and problems of soldiers who have been deployed at least once and maybe more into war zones and are having trouble readjusting to life at home. War presents physical and psychological effects that must be dealt with when the battlefield has been left behind. The warrior has to learn to manage their stress, anger, and deal with sleep problems, among a myriad of comparable problems. The author has over fifteen years of dealing with soldiers and their families and has great admiration for them. If you or someone you know has returned to civilian life or stateside duty and think this book would be helpful, you’re right.
Play ball! If you’re a Yankee fan or know one, you will enjoy The Ultimate Yankees Record Book ($14.95, Triumph Books, softcover) by David Fischer along with Donnie Baseball: The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly by Mike Shalin ($24.95, Triumph Books). The former is as complete a collection of records and statistics you will find anywhere and the latter is a worthy tribute to the 14 seasons Mattingly played to become one of the most beloved and popular players in the history of the team.
Some books are just extraordinary because of the care taken to create them; their text, their illustrations and artwork, their overall merit as they add to the body of knowledge in a particular area. This is the case for Guns of the Civil War by Dennis Adler ($40.00, Zenith Press) that is obviously a labor of love, but also a unique contribution to knowledge of that tremendous battle between the Northern and Southern States that took so many lives it dwarfs our nation’s other wars. Page after page is filled with full color photos of rifles and pistols of the first modern war. Anyone interested in this chapter of the nation’s history and, in particular, the weapons with which it was fought, will find this book a treasure.
Advice, Advice, Advice
Everything I learned about personal conduct, self-esteem, hard work, and respect for others, I learned from my parents and beyond them, my grandparents. These are generally grouped together as “values” needed to function well in life and to get along with others.
I have long wondered if this is the case today because, as a reviewer, I see an awful lot of books offering the kind of advice one used to receive in the course of growing up. Here then, are some books intended to teach you what you probably should have learned by now, but didn’t.
How to Be the One ($14.95, Centre Publishing, Bath, England, softcover) has crossed the Big Pond to offer commonplace advice on such things as “your emotional core” and “attitude.” If you are so bereft of a source of advice, you could do just as well to read this book to improve yourself, spread happiness and sunshine, and stop being a pain to everyone around you. Happy Crap: 8 Tools to Choose Your Thoughts for Prosperity, Productivity and Peace by Erika Oliver ($14.95, Affirmative Publishing, Portage, MI, softcover) has an amusing, cynical title by a “positive approach coach” and “recovering pessimists.” There are so many red flags about this book it is hard to know where to start. The title is “cute” and anyone can call themselves a “positive approach coach”, particularly if they have few other criteria to offer. Despite this, there is a lot of common sense advice in the book , especially if you walk around all day with a brain full of negativity and unhappiness. We tend to manufacture our own problems in this fashion and the book might just jolt you into a new frame of mind. Parenthetically, it appears to be directed more to women than men. Roy Sheppard bills himself as “a relationships specialist”, another one of those occupations that used to be served by family, friends, or member of the clergy.
I like advice books by people who have first lived out the advice they give and that describes Alissa Finerman, an MBA from the Wharton School, who left the gold-plated halls of Wall Street, having worked in some of its most prestigious firms, to follow a new path. She also plays a mean game of tennis having been an All-American at the University of California, Berkeley, and ranked #1 in the USTA National Women’s 40 Doubles in 2008 and 2009. So, as a life coach, when she sat down to write Living in Your Top 1%: Nine Essential Rituals to Achieve Your Ultimate Life Goals ($10.80, Amazon.com), she knew what she was talking about and the book reflects it. The book has garnered a lot of praise from other authors including Michael Milken, Chairman of The Milken Institute. It combines research with compelling stories to provide a very motivating, satisfying book worth reading. Want to be a winner? Learn from one!
The Lost Art of Happiness by Arthur Dobrin ($17.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) has the benefit of having a real publishing house behind it. Dobrin is billed as an “ethicist” and he argues—surprise—that one’s pervasive and gnawing sense of dissatisfaction is mainly self-inflicted. In short, it’s your fault. This is actually a rather serious book on the subject and the author concludes that we improve ourselves and our lives by developing and employing a large sense of compassion. The book is a meditation on how to be a good person. You can become one and, if you want to know how, then perhaps you should read this book. One of the problems that come with age is the loss of loved ones and friends. Sunie Levin has experienced this. She has written a book for boomers and seniors who, if they are to have friends late in life, must often start from scratch with new ones. Make New Friends…Live Longer ($13.95, plus $4.00 shipping, http://www.makenewfriendslivelonger.com/) offers a variety of recommendations in a breezy, warmhearted guide to developing meaningful friendships whether one is active or home bound. There are plenty of studies that demonstrate that a lack of friends and family in one’s older years can sap the life out of anyone. The author of four other easy to read self-help books, she’s come up with a good one to rejuvenate one’s life.
Disentangle: When You’ve Lost Yourself in Someone Else by Nancy L. Johnston, a licensed psychotherapist with three decades of clinical experience ($15.95, Central Recovery Press, softcover) at least has the blessing of being authored by someone with some training and experience to help people in difficult family, divorce, or matrimonial law disputes. The book is not how to win the case, but rather how to win one’s life back in a positive, non-adversarial way. It is a solution-oriented guide for people seeking to find emotional freedom within their relationships with an intimate partner, the parent-child relationship, other family, friends, or even in the workplace. It is a guide to creating some “emotional space”, a component of regaining a sense of one’s own worth. All things considered, this is a very useful book if it describes your condition or that of someone you know. In a lighter vein, Janice Holly Booth has written Only Pack What You Can Carry: My Path to Inner Strength, Confidence, and True Self-Knowledge ($24.00, National Geographic) in which she explores the joys and challenges of traveling solo, facing one's fears, and most of all, of being alone. It is a metaphor in many ways for the fact that we all, ultimately, travel alone even when surrounded by others. The book is relentlessly upbeat and that is actually a treat.
From Revell, a publisher specializing in themes based on Christian values, comes Coach Wooden by Pat Williams ($17.99) that discusses the seven principles that shaped the life of the renowned basketball coach who passed away in 2010. The author is a senior vice president of the Orlando Magic team. Wooden led the UCLA to ten NCAA national championships over twelve years, including seven in a row. He knew basketball, but he taught the values that made him and his teams champions. He taught that one must be true to themselves, help others, work at being a good friend, read the Bible and other great books, pray and give thanks for one’s blessings. It’s hard to find fault with values that made him a great coach, a winner, and a great man in his own right. In sharp contrast, if you want to read a case history of a thorough screw-up, by all means read I Know I Am, But What Are You? The author is Samantha Bee whose main credential is being a “senior correspondent on The Daily Show” starring Jon Stewart. She is known for being unpleasant to those who agree to be interviewed by her and this is what passes for comedy these days. I would suggest you pass on her book.
Here’s to the Ladies
Sisters of Fortune by Jehanne Wake ($27.00, Touchstone, Div. of Simon and Schuster) is subtitled “America’s Caton Sisters at Home and Abroad” and is devoted to Marianne, Bess, Louisa, and Emily Caton, all of whom enthralled English Regency society and were, as they say, the talk of the town, in this case, London. Descendents of the first settlers of Maryland, they were brought up by their wealthy grandfather, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. As often happened among the wealthy, the girls were well educated as opposed to being expected to merely marry into wealth. As a result, they became unusually independent, fascinated by politics, clever with money, and romantically inclined. After arriving in England, they became part of the Duke of Wellington’s circle. The Duke wanted to marry Marianne, but she shocked everyone by marrying his brother instead. Louisa became the Duchess of Leeds and a member of Queen Victoria’s court. Emily married a Scots-Canadian and stayed home in Maryland while Bess made a fortune speculating in the stock market. Intrigued? You will be when you read this delightful biography.
It is quite an achievement to change the way a government is elected and two ladies did just that by championing suffrage, the right of women to vote. Though written for the younger set, I would recommend Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship That Changed the World by Penny Colman ($18.99, Henry Holt, due out in May). It tells the story of their meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1851. Together, against fierce opposition, they challenged entrenched beliefs that only men should have the vote. In 2005 I reviewed an extraordinary book, “Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement” by Robert P.J. Cooney, Jr. (American Graphic Press, Santa Cruz, CA) a large format book for history buffs that I would recommend again and again. It would take 70 years to achieve the women’s right to vote with the passage of an amendment in 1920.
You may not have heard of her, but Mary Chesnut’s Diary by Mary Boykin Chestnut ($15.00, Penguin Classics Original, softcover) is considered one of the best accounts of the Civil War from the Southern perspective. Written between 1861 and 1865, she narrates the war from her vantage point in Charleston, S.C. Because she was married to a politically prominent husband, she was able to witness some of the significant sites of the war such as Montgomery, Alabama, and Richmond, Virginia where the Provisional Congress of the Confederate State of America convened. Her husband served as an aide to Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. The result is a one of the most cited memoirs of the war and still one of the most compelling to this day. A very different story of war is told in A Long Silence: Memoirs of a German Refugee Child, 1941-1958 by Sabina de Werth Neu ($19.00 Prometheus Books) insofar as there have been many Holocaust survivor memoirs, but few by the other victims of Germany’s Nazi regime, the children who came of age amidst the destruction of their homeland with little understanding of what was happening around them and often suffering severe trauma and physical abuse. Born in 1941 as the war raged around her, the author, her two sisters and mother, were often on the run and homeless. All were raped and beaten by marauding Russian soldiers. The American soldiers were a welcome sight, the U.S. Marshall Plan offered hope, critical to her and her nation’s survival in the wake of the totalitarian regime.
Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets by Carole Lieberman, M.D. ($16.95, Cogito Media Group, softcover), a Beverly Hills psychiatrist and host of the popular TV show, “Carole’s Couch”. This book is a follow-up to “Bad Boys” and it explores how these bad girls entice otherwise smart, savvy, successful men to fall in love with them and then break their hearts. Along the way they indulge in sex, drugs and spending other people’s money. The author says there are things that good girls can learn from them while avoiding their unsavory behavior and attitudes.
Getting Down to Business Books
I have a friend who built up a business over twenty-five years and one day fired his staff and returned it to the apartment in which he started it. It is now entirely virtual and hardly a day goes by without his telling me how relieved he is not to have to manage a bunch of people for whom the job was just a paycheck. He came to mind when I received a copy of You Can’t Fire Everyone and Other Lessons from an Accidental Manager by Hank Gilman, a deputy management editor for Fortune magazine ($25.95, Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Books). “In my business, we find bosses by taking talented writers, waving a wand and saying, ‘Hey, congratulations, you’re now supervising a dozen people. And, by the way, good luck.’ Gilman takes note of the fact that lots of managers start out that way, never asking, expecting or having been trained to be responsible for other people and the work they produce. He shares what he has learned through trial and error over two decades in what he calls one of the craziest businesses on the planet. It’s filled with unconventional advice that will surely resonate with anyone smart enough to read it. Personality Plus at Work by Florence Littauer and Rose Sweet ($13.99, Revell, softcover) is intended to help one manage employees or get along with co-workers. It’s objective is to help the reader understand the kind of people with whom they must deal daily, categorizing them for easy identification. Nothing here is new, but if you’re in a situation where you need such guidance, this book will provide it.
The Elements of Power: Lessons on Leadership and Influence by Terry R. Bacon ($27.95, Amacom) is one of those questions that people in the business world and other occupations that require it always wonder about. The author sheds light on eleven different sourses of power that contribute to a powerful person’s impact on a company, a movement, history, or individual lives. Drawing on wide ranging research as well as the authors original studies, this book will provide a lot of insight to the dynamics of leadership and why knowledge is the bedrock and the ability to communicate is the ladder. There is much to be said for character, reputation, and networking too. Also from the same publisher comes an Army of Entrepreneurs by Jennifer Prosek, ($23.00, Amacom), subtitled “Create an engaged and empowered workforce for exceptional business growth.” This is the author’s system to make entrepreneurial behavior business-as-usual throughout the ranks of her public relations and financial communications firm. She grew her company from one office and around $2 million in 1995 to three offices and $10 million today, so she’s obviously onto something. As she says, “The AOE model is not commonplace. To try it requires a leap. It asks you to be willing to think of your company, your employees, and your own job in new and different ways.” There’s a lot of good advice to be found in this book.
John Bradberry has penned 6 Secrets to Startup Success ($21.95, Amacom) and in these times when so many are being laid off quite a few are thinking of starting their own business. Indeed, according to the Small Business Association, six million Americans take a shot at it, but the bad news is that half of them fail after a few years and those that survive find themselves working longer hours, earning up to 35% less, and experiencing a lot of stress. Bradberry’s book is intended to help entrepreneurs avoid that fate, identifying the steps that should be taken to avoid the typical pitfalls involved. It’s good, solid advice. There are precious few books that teach teens the ins-and-outs of creating a business of their own to generate cash outside of an allowance and after-school jobs. Start It Up: The Complete Teen Business Guide to Turning Your Passions into Pay ($14.95, Zest Books, softcover) shows that it is never too early to learn the basics of business with information about establishing a support system, creating a business plan, making the business official, hiring and management, promotion and customer service, as well as financial protection measures. Kenra Ranklin lays it all out in easy to understand fashion. You can check out a lot of really good books for teens at www.zestbooks.net.
Business Fraud: From TrustBetrayal—How to Protect Your Business in 7 Easy Steps by Jack Hayes ($19.95, Bascom Hill Publishing Group, softcover) is one of those books that everyone should read if you are involved in corporate management. Hayes is one of the nation’s experts on business crime and his book takes a look at the mistakes management makes that invite fraud, why relying soley on auditors to keep the workplace free from fraud is a big mistake, the factors that create the opportunity for fraud. It is jammed packed with advice on how to spot the fraudsters, how to spot your company’s vulnerabilities, and how to combat fraud.
Novels, Novels, Novels!
For anyone who loves history and great fiction, they are in for a treat with Margaret George’s Elizabeth I ($30.00, Viking). She formerly scored a bestseller with “The Autobiography of Henry VIII.” Set to debut this month, the novel brings a fresh perspective to one of the most remarkable women in British history. It opens in 1588 when Elizabeth faces her reign’s greatest challenge, the Spanish Armada. As queen it fell to her to steer her nation through some of the most challenging times in its history that included a famine and further onslaughts, as well as an uprising in Ireland. There were, in addition, the machinations of her court. It was a time when William Shakespeare flourished and explorers like Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake sought fame and fortune in the name of their queen. All this is caught up in this thick volume that reflects the life and times of the Virgin Queen who held sway over her subjects and triumphed.
History is the backdrop for an excellent novel by Talia Carner, Jerusalem Maiden, ($14.99, Harper paperback original) official due out in June. It is the story of Esther Kaminsky and the time is early 20th century Jerusalem, a time in which a woman is expected to marry and bear many sons. This is especially the case for a woman raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish household during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Esther, however, believes she has more to offer than the role laid out for her. Encouraged by her French teacher she yearns for more, but when a sudden tragedy strikes her family, she believes God is expressing displeasure with her ambitions and untraditional attitude. She commits herself to being an obedient Jerusalem maiden until, in the years that follow, a surprising opportunity forces her to contemplate to whom she must be true, to God or to herself. This is a gripping piece of fiction that many women will find has reverberations in modern times as well.
History plays a role in My Wife’s Affair by Nancy Woodruff ($15.00, Berkeley, softcover) reflecting the true life 18th century actress, Dara Jordan, paired with her fictional modern day counterpart, Georgie Connolly. It is told through the eyes of Georgie’s husband Peter, as their marriage spirals downward in the wake of her affair. While Peter was a failed novelist, he was a successful businessman who took his family from the suburbs of New Jersey to London. Georgie, meanwhile, regretting she gave up a life on the stage, lands a one-woman show and an irresistible attraction to the show’s playwright in an affair that will alter her life and marriage. The real life Dara Jordan had thirteen illegitimate children, ten by the future King of England! In Faking It, Elisa Lorello ($13.95, Amazon Encore, softcover) tells a story of a thirty-something writing professor whose personal life is in flux after she breaks off her engagement and moves home to Long Island and a new teaching position at Brooklyn University. Everything is going just fine until she meets Devin, a male escort whose client list seems to include a least half of the accomplished women she knows! They strike a deal. He will teach her to be a better lover and she will teach him to be a writer. Both discover they have, in effect, been faking their lives in what is, surprisingly, a romantic comedy with a dash of drama.
If you’re looking for a bit of sleuthing, there’s Gayle Trent’s Murder Takes the Cake ($15.00, Gallery Books, softcover) starring cake decorator and amateur sleuth, Daphne Martin, whose routine cake delivery turns into a murder scene when she discovers a dead body. In the little town in southern Virginia where she’s been trying to get her business going, the murder of Yodel Watson gets all the tongue’s wagging and it seems like just about everyone had a reason to want to poison the town gossip. Daphne recruits her old flame, Ben Jacobs and they soon unearth a hidden family scandal that might hold the key to the killing. As a bonus, this novel comes with recipes for cakes, cupcakes, and frosting. Yum! Girls will enjoy Declaring Spinsterhood by Jamie Lynn Braziel ($13.95, Amazon Encore, softcover) in which Emma Bailey must confront the problems of nagging parents and relatives wanting to know when she will marry. She has a job she loves, running a children’s bookstore, and finally decides to get everyone off her back by declaring spinsterhood as her chosen lifestyle despite dating and dating and dating. This is a very entertaining, funny novel about life after thirty, about independence, about friendship, and—yes—about love.
For the men, there is a terrific novel by Tom Seligson, King of Hearts, ($14.00, Saugatuck Books, softcover, also on Kindle). The author is an Emmy Award winning television producer, journalist, and novelist. This novel asks what happened to Saddam Hussein’s more feared associates, two of whom remain at large despite a $1 million reward for each of them, one was the King of Hearts in the U.S. military’s “most wanted” deck of cards. Also, what happened to the $1.5 billion stolen from the Iraq Central Bank at the beginning of the war? These questions surface after the book begins with the murder of a mother while she is jogging and Ric Hill, a former New York City cop and veteran of the Iraq War, is called in to investigate. What begins on a quiet suburban street will lead back to the streets of Baghdad as well as the back rooms of the U.S. Capitol. On another level, the novel explores the impact the war had on those who fought it and the issue of post traumatic stress disorder. What emerges is a well-paced thriller that keeps one turning the pages.
That’s it for April! “Bookmark” Bookviews and come back next month for more news of the best in new fiction and non-fiction. Tell your book-loving friends and family. Spread the word!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Bookviews - March 2011
By Alan Caruba
My Picks of the Month
Of all the themes of literature I like, history is my top choice. This is greatly enhanced when the author can write well. This is the case of James Carroll’s Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World ($28.00 Houghton Mifflin). Just out this month, Carroll adds to his reputation that already includes a National Book Award and a PEN/Galbraith Award, among others. No other city on Earth so ignites the Judeo-Christian mind while remaining the object of desire for Muslims who lay claim to it by virtue of myth and past conquest. Carroll, a former Catholic priest before becoming a scholar, brings to his history of the city, the theme of human sacrifice, dating back to the story of Abraham and Isaac, and to earlier, pagan eras with the practice was common. Jerusalem is central to the religious imagination as the site of the most holy events for Judaism and Christianity. It is also the site of repeated conquests over the millennia and, today, the place where a renewed State of Israel, its original people, exists. Carroll takes the reader on a great journey that is the history of Western civilization as it played out in a city where great dramas occured, where armies clashed, where holy men sought the essence and presence of God, where its great temple was transformed into the torah, a book of worship and wonder. Turn off the TV, read this book. Learn about Jerusalem.
I always approach books by economists with caution because today’s trendy analysis is often tomorrow’s derided buffoonery. That said, Dambisa Moyo brings an impressive set of credentials to her latest book, How the West Was Lost: Fifty years of Economic Folly—and the Stark Choices Ahead ($25.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Born and raised in Zambia, the holds a PhD in economics from Oxford University and a Master’s from Harvard University’s JFK School of Government. She has been a consultant for the World Bank and worked for Goldman Sachs for eight years. Her first book, “Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working” drew raves. What worries the author (and lots of others including myself) is the way the U.S. is filling up with poorly educated, unskilled and unemployed people, directly affecting our wealth and standing in the world. We are, after all, a nation who elected someone who hadn’t finished even one term in the Senate, had never managed a business, and place of birth is a subject of controversy. The sheer folly of “social justice” programs like those that caused the meltdown of the U.S. housing market is just one of the foolish practices threatening recovery and growth. Ms. Moyo argues for the U.S. to remain open to the international economy. There’s not much that misses her keen eye and this book is well worth reading for the warning it issues.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have been friends with Tom DeWeese for some two decades and served as the director of communications for the American Policy Center, his grassroots activist organization addressing a wide range of assaults on everything from property rights to the American educational system. I was, therefore, delighted to receive his new book, Now Tell Me I Was Wrong: 15 years of unheralded wisdom and warnings in the battle for the Republic ($19.99, softcover, available at Amazon, $16.95, plus $2 shipping, direct from the Center. Tom has a love of America and a determination to thwart those who would take away our rights that is unrivaled. It would be easy to dismiss him as some kind of zealot, but as the book reveals, he has been ahead of the curve over the years in sounding warnings about the many ways those in the White House, Congress and special interest groups have sought to distort or over-ride the Constitution in order to limit the freedoms it bestows on Americans. I would recommend his book even if I did not know him because it addresses a broad spectrum of issues with an arsenal of facts that represent a one-stop fount of information to provide anyone valuable insights to the challenges America faces today, internally and beyond our shores. Tom is never boring! He would have been right at home at the Boston Tea Party or Valley Forge. I have been a fan of Jack Cashill’s writings since reading his book, “Hoodwinked.” A contributor to WorldNetDaily.com, I recall reading in September 2008, a speculative article that posited the view that it was former Weatherman, Bill Ayers, who had written Obama’s memoir, “Dreams of my Father.” He made a good case at that time by comparing the language of both books that strongly reflected Ayers’. In Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President ($25.00, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster) Cashill has written a very lengthy expansion on the WND theme and, about halfway through, I concluded that Cashill had said everything that could be said, but had managed to write even more. He is a very gifted writer and a serious one while also being entertaining. He does good research. If understanding who Obama’s mentors, friends and facilitators have been is your goal, this book will surely help fill in a lot of blank spots in his largely undocumented past. The near total lack of curiosity regarding the candidate for president by the mainstream media is another theme that is also explored. Two years into his first term, whatever credibility Obama had has been largely dissipated by the massive spending he initiated and the healthcare legislation to which his name is attached.
Confused by all the claims and predictions about global warming? Maybe you need to learn about the laws of thermodynamics. Physics and science is based on logic and, therefore, anyone can understand the world better if you approach it with a basic understanding of the physics that determines everything, much as Einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that light does not always travel in a straight line. The Handy Physics Answer Book by Dr. Paul W. Zitzewitz, PhD is now in its second edition ($21.95, Visible Ink, softcover) and even for someone like myself who never studied the subject, it is a fascinating journey toward greater understand of the universe and how it works. That’s why it’s definitely one of my picks of the month. Do you want to get all the information you will ever need to put the global warming (the claim that carbon dioxide causes the earth to heat up) hoax to rest? Some knowledge of physics and other sciences will help, but the one book that finally addresses all the lies is Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory by several contributing authors, that represent leading, physicists, scientists, a retired engineer, and a legal analyst with a specialty in the subject ($21.80, Stairway Press, softcover, $9.95 Kindle edition). This is not light reading as the science is presented in depth and the physics can be daunting to anyone not schooled in it. Overall, however, the book is a triumph of objectivity regarding a topic that has dominated the news and politics since the late 1980s when it was sprung on the world with a series of claims of impending doom that have never ceased. Then and now just about every natural phenomenon and weather event was blamed on global warming. Efforts have ensued to “reduce the carbon footprint”, to change the way electricity is provided, and to put a price on carbon dioxide so it could be bought and sold as a commodity. The sheer absurdity of this and the fact that it was little more than a get-rich scheme for those putting it forth has finally begun to dawn on people. For the record, carbon dioxide represents an infinitesimal 0.329% of the earth’s atmosphere and plays no role in heat absorption or transfer. I highly recommend this book.
On a lighter note, all of you who live to eat, not just eat to live, will enjoy A Feast at the Beach by William Widmaier ($14.95, 3L Publishing, softcover) has put together some brief stories of life in Provence, France, in the 1960s.with an emphasis on the tastes and smells of Southern France, complete with recipes of dishes that, though born in the U.S., evoke his memories of vacations spent at his French grandparent’s home in St. Tropez. My late Mother, Rebecca, a teacher of haute cuisine, used to say that food and memory go together. This book is proof of that. For those who love great dining, there’s Patricia Lewis Mote’s Great Menus: Seasonal Recipes for Entertaining ($25.00, Dicmar publishing, trade paperback) enhanced by David Harp’s photos that will make your mouth water. The author, the mother of two and grandmother of four, has lived in five foreign countries, England, Norway, France, Germany, and Japan. She resides now with her husband, Dan, the former president of the University of Maryland (1998-2010) in Annapolis. One recipe after another will inspire you to try them out and are sure to please your family or just yourself. This is a book for people who truly live to eat, to enjoy the dining experience. I grew up dining Mediterranean style on the foods of Italy and France, so when Zov Karamarian’s new book, Simply Zov: Rustic Classics with a Mediterranean Twist arrived ($39.00, Zov’s Publishing, Tustin, CA) I was instantly entranced with its large size format, page after page of mouthwatering full color photos and its recipes that will entice you to try them out, one by one, in your own kitchen. From appetizers like beef pirozhki with mushrooms to breakfast bananas foster French toast, or soups like coconut chicken chowder, a classic Tuscan tomato salad, main dishes to sweets, this cookbook stands out in so many ways. No wonder people come from all over the world to visit her restaurant in California. This book is an instant classic.
Real People: Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs
The bestselling memoir, Nomad: From Islam to America—a Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now in softcover ($16.00, Free Press) and well worth reading. Ms. Hirsi first captured attention with her memoir, “Infidel”, the story of her physical and emotional journey to freedom. It is testimony to the threat the Islam poses to the West and why she believes the U.S. is underestimating the threat of radical Islam. It is a horror story of the way Muslim women, even in the U.S., are thwarted from completing their education, and why some become victims of so-called honor killings. I would recommend you read this compelling book. In a very different story, one’s heart is touched by Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan ($25.99, William Morrow), an account of how Grennan volunteered to help the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal. Initially unsure he could help, he was soon won over by a herd of rambunctious, resilient children whom he learned were not orphans at all, but the victims of child trafficers who promised families in remote villages to protect them from the civil war by taking them to safety, for a fee. Instead, they were abandoned in Kathmandu, the nation’s capital. He set about returning them to their families despite great odds. He found a cause and he found a wife! Great reading.
Another woman says “Being an explorer isn’t my job. It’s who I am. Exploration is deeply embedded in my soul, coursing through my veins.” Aside from the florid rhetoric, there is an interesting autobiography of sorts to be found in Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey from NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer by Mireya Mayor, a host on the GEO Wild Channel ($26.00, National Geographic Books), just out this month. She was an overprotected child of a Cuban immigrant mother who didn’t even want her to join the Girl Scouts fearing that camping was “far too dangerous.” After graduating high school she became an actress and then a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. Her love of animals led her to an anthropology course in college and then to being a Fulbright Scholar and renowned primatologist and globetrotter. At age 30 she’s survived a plane crash in the jungle, been chased by an elephant and a gorilla, and stung by nasty insects. In short, an interesting life. An entertaining book is Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon ($15.00, Perigee Trade, softcover). As the author notes, from the ancient world to present day, women have caused wars, ruled empires, defied the rules laid down for them, and brought men to their knees. While women’s rights and power has been limited through much of history, that didn’t deter the women in Mahon’s book.
I am old enough to remember the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963, but Carolyn McKinstry was there in the church! Just 14 years old at the time, she had spoken to four of the victims just minutes before the bomb went off and killed them. While the World Watched ($17.99, Tyndale House Publishers) is the Civil Rights movement as experienced and told by Carolyn Maull McKinstry who saw it as a young black girl, as told to Denise George. This is the nitty-gritty of what it was like to grow up in the segregated South, through the courageous movement that ended that ugly chapter in American life. Writing fifty years later, this is the a book that a younger generation would benefit from reading and an older one can revisit. Black Faces of War: A Legacy of Honor from the American Revolution to Today by Robert V. Morris ($30.00, Zenith Press, Quayside Publishing Group) is a large format tribute the Afro-American men and women who fought and died for America, long before America showed them any appreciation or dignity. It was not until President Truman officially ended racial segregation in the U.S. Army, the Tuskegee Airmen had earned fame during World War Two, and even earlier, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry fought valiantly in the Civil War. From Crispus Attucks, the first man to die in the American Revolutions to Gen. Colin Powell, theirs is a great story and this book provides a fresh perspective.
The American Revolution was, of course, intended to overthrow England’s control of the colonies, but America was also passing through an intellectual revolution as well, one that lasted about eight-five years from 1725 to 1810. The leaders of American society were often men who challenged Christian orthodoxy, celebrated human reason, and saw nature as evidence of the creator’s handiwork. Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels by Kerry Walters ($20.00, Prometheus Books) explores that period of American history with its prominent figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others who were critical of orthodox Christianity. This was America’s first culture war and it lives on today. From the same publisher comes Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie’s biography of Marie Curie ($17.00, softcover), the iconic woman whose scientific achievements in an era when women were largely restricted to roles as wives and mothers. Curie (1867-1934) made history when she postulated that radiation was an atomic rather than a chemical property, a breakthrough in understanding the structure of matter. She coined the word radioactivity and her research isolated two new elements, polonium and radium. She would win two Nobel Prizes, one in physics (1903) and one in chemistry (1914). Born in Poland, she was the first of her sex to become a professor at the Sorbonne University. Ironically, her long exposure to radium led to her death from aplastic anemia. She was not just a brilliant scientist, but a courageous person who has since inspired others to enter the field of science.
Alan Arkin is one of those actors who has been around a very long time. He’s appeared in more than eighty films. He is also a director and musician, but mostly he is just very gifted, although you would not read him saying anything like that in An improvised Life: A Memoir ($17.00, Da Capo Press, softcover) in which he relates knowing he wanted to be an actor by age five. I have known any number of actors who have said the same thing. It has a lot to do with wanting to pretend to be someone else. Arkin’s memoir devotes a lot of space to the art of acting and, thus, will be of greater interest to those who love drama. Arkin, unlike many actors, has an intellect that takes in more than just acting. That said, you really have to be a fan to get too deep into this memoir.
To Your Health!
One of the most interesting new books of 2011 has to be The Longevity Project by Howard S. Friedman, PhD and Leslie R. Martin. PhD ($25.95. Hudson Street Press). It is the story of a landmark eight-decade study in psychology to answer the question of who lives longest—and why. Many of the common beliefs we have about living a long life are dispelled. For example, people do not die from working long hours at a challenging job. The study found that many who worked the longest lived the longest. It is commonly believed that getting and staying married was a guarantee of long life, but the study found this is not necessarily true, especially for women, nor is it the happy-go-lucky who thrive. It turns out it is the prudent and persistent who do best over the long run. The book even offers tests you can take yourself so that you can optimize your choices to increase your life. So much of life is outside one’s control such as your genetic inheritance or whether we are caught up in a war. How one handles stress is a significant factor, but a life built on successive successes is likely to be a longer one. Both my parents lived into their nineties, both enjoyed success in their fields of endeavor, both loved to eat well, both were free of any serious disease, so the odds are that I will be reviewing books for a very long time to come. Read this book and increase your chances, too.
Other than cancer, the most frightening diagnosis a person can receive is that of Alzheimer’s Disease, the slow degeneration of the brain that robs an individual of all memory and capacity to function. That’s why I would unhesitantly recommend Stop Alzheimer’s Now: How to Prevent and Reverse Dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis and other Neurode-generative Disorders ($19.95, Piccadilly Books, Ltd., Colorado Springs, CO, softcover). More than 35 million people have dementia today and each year 4.6 million new cases occur worldwide. Parkinson’s disease, another progressive brain disorder, affects about four million people worldwide. This book outlines a program using ketone therapy and diet backed by decades of medical and clinical research that has proven successful in restoring mental function and improving both brain and overall health. The best medicine is preventative medicine. This book will prove helpful to those suffering neurodegenerative diseases, as well as anyone who wants to be spared from ever encountering one. Protect your brain!
It is not uncommon for those who have suffered a heart attack to experience a second one. Prevent a Second Heart Attack: 8 foods, 8 weeks to reverse heart disease by Janet Bond Brill, PhD, RD, LDN ($15.00. Three Rivers Press, softcover) offers a program that will put the victim of a previous heart attack on the way to better health by providing a guide to good practices. The author discusses why the Mediterranean diet is the gold standards for heart-healthy eating, how “good carbs” like oatmeal lower bad cholesterol, why a glass of red wine with dinner is great for your heart, and much more. If you or someone you know has had a heart attack or looking for ways to ensure you don’t have one, this book is the one to read.
One of the most successful series from Workman Publishing is its “What to Expect” series devoted to topics such as what to expect when you’re expecting a baby and what to expect in the first year. This series has now been joined by What to Expect the Second Year by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel ($24.95/$15.95, hard and softcover). It picks up after an infant’s first birthday and takes parents through baby’s first steps, lightning-speed learning, and all manner of common toddler behavior from tantrums to picky eating, nighttime refusal to go to bed, and much more. Don’t “wing it.” Learn what countless other parents have before you encounter year two.
Kid’s Books
It’s no secret that I love children’s books and may be among only a handful of reviewers that try to include notice of them on a regular basis. The following are all from Kids Can Press.
For the very young, though to whom a parent might read a book, there’s Kitten’s Summer by Eugenie Fernandes ($14.95) in which various animals “dash”, “scramble” and leap as the child enjoys the illustrations and learns words about movement. Continuing the cat theme, there’s My Cat Isis by Catherine Austin and illustrated beautifully by Virginia Egger ($16.95) for the early reader and draws a comparison between a boy’s cat and the Egyptian goddess namesake in an entertaining tale (no pun intended!) A rather unusual twist on the story of the Three Little Pigs is found in Happy Birthday Big Bad Wolf by Frank Asch ($16.95) in which the pig family overwhelm the wolf with kindness and friendship. In the real world, this usually does not work, so I would suggest some caution with this version. You may recall that in the original version the pigs are saved from being the wolf’s dinner by a strong, brick house.
Melanie Watt’s squirrel stories adds a new one to the series with Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party ($16.95) in which the main character must overcome his fear of just about everything to plan a party. It’s funny at the same time it demonstrates how one can overcome fears. Friendship and its importance is the theme of Without You by Genevieve Cote ($16.95) when a pig and a rabbit, friends, go their separate ways after a minor disagreement. Both discover there’s a lot less fun in playing alone. Small Paul is a hilarious story written and illustrated by Ashley Spires ($16.95) about a little boy who wanted a life on the sea, but was rejected by the navy because he was too small. The pirates weren’t so picky, so he enrolled in Pirate College to learn how to be one. When he cleaned up the ship, the Rusty Squid, the pirates objected. They were lazy and dirty. They tossed him overboard, but soon discovered how stinky their ship really was and rushed back to rescue him. It is a great story for any little boy (or girl) who won’t clean up their room!
For early readers, ages 8 through 10, there are two books that are sure to please. As part of the Sam & Friends Mystery series, Book Four, there’s Witches’ Brew by Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux ($16.95) Sam, a detective dog, grows suspicious when “three strange sisters” move into a house on the street and all manner of strange things begin to happen. Sam and his human family begin to suspect awful things are happening. Told in text and cartoon illustrations, the story has a happy ending, but I won’t tell. Finally, for the older child who may find horrid endings of interest, there’s Dreadful Fates: What a Shocking Way to Go by Tracey Turner and illustrated by Sally Kindberg ($14.95) that uses text and cartoon illustration to relate the actual stories of how various people throughout history met a weird end.
The publisher, American Girl, is quite prolific, producing a variety of series designed to encourage girls to make the most of their talents, skills and interests. Adding to its Innerstar University series are two new titles, A Winning Goal and Into the Spotlight, both priced $8.95 and aimed at early readers, ages 8 and up. They are fun to read with the added twist of being “A book starring you with more than 20 endings!” These both reflect common experiences for the age group, seeking to stand out, but also fit in. American Girl also publishes mystery series featuring separate characters such as Rebecca, Samantha, and Julie. Well written and intriguing, I would think any pre-teen would enjoy them. They are priced at $6.95 so they don’t bite into any parent’s budget. With the arrival of spring, it’s time to think about places for playtime and Oddles of Ocean Fun ($12.95) offers lots of activities in what they describe as “this rip-it-out, tear-it-up, fold-it-open book.” It’s 80 pages of sea and sand inspired posters, crafts, puzzles, doodles, bookmarks, picture frames and more. Literally hours of craft activity
Finally, for young hoop fans, ages 7 and up, there’s the Ultimate Guide to Basketball by James Buckley, Jr. ($15.95/$7.99, Beach Ball Books, Santa Barbara, CA, hard and softcover editions). I have never seen an entire basketball game in my life, but I found the book to be quite interesting and handsomely illustrated. The truth is, this book would interest adults as well for the wealth of facts, stats, and information about the game’s stars over the years. This publisher has two other books, First Pitch: How Baseball Began and Weird Sports that will prove equally entertaining. If you have a young, sports minded member in your family, check out www.beachballbooks.com.
Novels, Novels, Novels
Too many novels today are fairly predictable in their choice of topic and the way they are written, so anyone seeking a new literary experience often has to search around. The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb ($25.95, Penguin Press) combines American and Vietnamese history from the not so distant past to present the story of Old Man Hung, the enlightened proprietor of a popular shop that served a soup and has served as a meeting place for a group of young dissident artists, but is now a makeshift stall where people leave Hanoi’s main streets to enjoy his beef noodle soup. A faithful customer is Tu, a young tour guide, often for American veterans visiting the nation in which they fought a war. The two men are joined by Maggie, an art curator who is Vietnamese by birth but has lived most of her life in the U.S. She has returned to search for clues to her dissident father’s disappearance. Their intertwined narrative will change their lives forever.
A selection of softcover novels offers a variety of reading experiences. From the University of North Texas Press comes A Bright Soothing Noise by Peter Brown ($14.95) a collection of short stories that grip the reader in ways that make some read several at one sitting. Filled with characters, young, old, black, white, male, female, crazy and sane, and all caught up in some defining moment of their lives, this is the kind of reading pleasure that can get lost in the stacks. Don’t miss out on it. Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum ($15.00, Gallery Books) is a story of family secrets that cannot be hidden or escaped. Set in the 1970s, Amaryllis has grown up with three older sisters, Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, and Mary Tessa. She, however, does not share their blond hair, fair skin, and pale blue eyes. Moreover, she possess the extrasensory gift of synesthesia, the ability to taste emotions, hear colors, and know when something bad is going to happen. Their mother, Seena, has built her life on deception and wants to protect her daughters from anything that might threaten the illusion of their happy home. To save that, her husband Dick, a physician, moves them from Michigan to Africa, hoping to heal the family in a new unfamiliar place. Suffice to say, it does not and watching it unfold, the reader is swept along in a very unusual tale that begins with Seena on trial for murdering Dick. A very different story, lighter and romantic, is also from Gallery Books. Swept Off Her Feet by Hester Browne ($15.00) takes the reader to Scotland and its famous reel, a complex dance, is at the heart of a novel about two very different sisters whose dreams may just come true at a romantic ball. Evie Nicholson is in love with the past. She is an antiques appraiser in a London shop. Alice, her sister, is in love with Fraser Graham, a dashing Scotsman who she secretly desires. She is a delightfully complex story of sisters swept off their feet, a modern Cinderella story that women will enjoy.
The Winter Thief by Jenny White ($13.95, W.W. Norton) continues her series of Kamil Pasha novels. I previously recommended “The Sultan’s Seal” and am happy to report that Istanbul’s wise and fiercely dedicated magistrate, Kamil Pasha, is on the job in the winter of 1888 when Vera Arti carries an Armenian translation of The Communist Manifesto into the offices of a prominent Ottoman publisher. Would he publish the work? “Everyone wants to offer us a utopia. No one offers us peace” he tells her. When she leaves, she does not realize that men from the Sultan’s secret police are following her. What she doesn’t know is that her husband, Gabriel, is behind the robbery at the Imperial Ottoman Bank, as well as the shipment of guns. She is captured, tortured, and interrogated. Kamil Pasha is on Gabriel’s trail but the secret police interfere. Their chief plans to slaughter some Armenian villages to gain the Sultan’s favor. History and fiction are a powerful mix in this page-turning thriller. The legendary curse that surrounds Shakespeare’s MacBeth is the background for Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Haunt Me Still ($15.00, Plume Books) whe the heroine, Kate Stanley, is called to Edinburgh to direct a private performance of the play using authentic relics from Shakespeare’s day. It doesn’t take long for the curse to stir. Some of the actors go missing. Kate finds a local woman dead under circumstances that reflect ancient pagan rituals and human sacrifice. Kate becomes both a suspect and possible figure victim. In short, some very intriguing reading.
For lovers of the macabre, two new titles. Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin ($14.95, Black Jackal Books, softcover) demonstrates his ability to write dark crime fiction. In this novel, a serial killer is targeting British politicians and the crime scenes are signature replicas of the Woodland Killings that took place 28 years earlier. The case became an obsession for Chief Inspector Frank Castle, one that he was not able to solve and close. This is just good, old fashioned detective fiction, reflective of the special skills that a British author brings to the genre. A very different setting is the background and time of Fire the Sky: Book Two of Contact—The Battle for America series by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear ($26.00, Gallary Books). They have made a reputation for themselves as chroniclers of early Native American life and the novel recreates the conflict-filled years following one of the first European invasions as seen through the eyes of a courage pair of Indians as it follows Hernando de Soto’s brutal expedition north from the Florida peninsula as the explorer looks for plunder. For anyone interested in this era and lost civilization, this book serves up a powerful love story as conflict moves inexorably toward to major battle.
That’s it for March! Please tell your book-loving friends and family members about Bookviews which, each month, provides notice of fiction and non-fiction that you likely will not learn about anywhere else. Bookmark Bookviews and come back every month.
My Picks of the Month
Of all the themes of literature I like, history is my top choice. This is greatly enhanced when the author can write well. This is the case of James Carroll’s Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World ($28.00 Houghton Mifflin). Just out this month, Carroll adds to his reputation that already includes a National Book Award and a PEN/Galbraith Award, among others. No other city on Earth so ignites the Judeo-Christian mind while remaining the object of desire for Muslims who lay claim to it by virtue of myth and past conquest. Carroll, a former Catholic priest before becoming a scholar, brings to his history of the city, the theme of human sacrifice, dating back to the story of Abraham and Isaac, and to earlier, pagan eras with the practice was common. Jerusalem is central to the religious imagination as the site of the most holy events for Judaism and Christianity. It is also the site of repeated conquests over the millennia and, today, the place where a renewed State of Israel, its original people, exists. Carroll takes the reader on a great journey that is the history of Western civilization as it played out in a city where great dramas occured, where armies clashed, where holy men sought the essence and presence of God, where its great temple was transformed into the torah, a book of worship and wonder. Turn off the TV, read this book. Learn about Jerusalem.
I always approach books by economists with caution because today’s trendy analysis is often tomorrow’s derided buffoonery. That said, Dambisa Moyo brings an impressive set of credentials to her latest book, How the West Was Lost: Fifty years of Economic Folly—and the Stark Choices Ahead ($25.00, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Born and raised in Zambia, the holds a PhD in economics from Oxford University and a Master’s from Harvard University’s JFK School of Government. She has been a consultant for the World Bank and worked for Goldman Sachs for eight years. Her first book, “Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working” drew raves. What worries the author (and lots of others including myself) is the way the U.S. is filling up with poorly educated, unskilled and unemployed people, directly affecting our wealth and standing in the world. We are, after all, a nation who elected someone who hadn’t finished even one term in the Senate, had never managed a business, and place of birth is a subject of controversy. The sheer folly of “social justice” programs like those that caused the meltdown of the U.S. housing market is just one of the foolish practices threatening recovery and growth. Ms. Moyo argues for the U.S. to remain open to the international economy. There’s not much that misses her keen eye and this book is well worth reading for the warning it issues.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have been friends with Tom DeWeese for some two decades and served as the director of communications for the American Policy Center, his grassroots activist organization addressing a wide range of assaults on everything from property rights to the American educational system. I was, therefore, delighted to receive his new book, Now Tell Me I Was Wrong: 15 years of unheralded wisdom and warnings in the battle for the Republic ($19.99, softcover, available at Amazon, $16.95, plus $2 shipping, direct from the Center. Tom has a love of America and a determination to thwart those who would take away our rights that is unrivaled. It would be easy to dismiss him as some kind of zealot, but as the book reveals, he has been ahead of the curve over the years in sounding warnings about the many ways those in the White House, Congress and special interest groups have sought to distort or over-ride the Constitution in order to limit the freedoms it bestows on Americans. I would recommend his book even if I did not know him because it addresses a broad spectrum of issues with an arsenal of facts that represent a one-stop fount of information to provide anyone valuable insights to the challenges America faces today, internally and beyond our shores. Tom is never boring! He would have been right at home at the Boston Tea Party or Valley Forge. I have been a fan of Jack Cashill’s writings since reading his book, “Hoodwinked.” A contributor to WorldNetDaily.com, I recall reading in September 2008, a speculative article that posited the view that it was former Weatherman, Bill Ayers, who had written Obama’s memoir, “Dreams of my Father.” He made a good case at that time by comparing the language of both books that strongly reflected Ayers’. In Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President ($25.00, Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster) Cashill has written a very lengthy expansion on the WND theme and, about halfway through, I concluded that Cashill had said everything that could be said, but had managed to write even more. He is a very gifted writer and a serious one while also being entertaining. He does good research. If understanding who Obama’s mentors, friends and facilitators have been is your goal, this book will surely help fill in a lot of blank spots in his largely undocumented past. The near total lack of curiosity regarding the candidate for president by the mainstream media is another theme that is also explored. Two years into his first term, whatever credibility Obama had has been largely dissipated by the massive spending he initiated and the healthcare legislation to which his name is attached.
Confused by all the claims and predictions about global warming? Maybe you need to learn about the laws of thermodynamics. Physics and science is based on logic and, therefore, anyone can understand the world better if you approach it with a basic understanding of the physics that determines everything, much as Einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that light does not always travel in a straight line. The Handy Physics Answer Book by Dr. Paul W. Zitzewitz, PhD is now in its second edition ($21.95, Visible Ink, softcover) and even for someone like myself who never studied the subject, it is a fascinating journey toward greater understand of the universe and how it works. That’s why it’s definitely one of my picks of the month. Do you want to get all the information you will ever need to put the global warming (the claim that carbon dioxide causes the earth to heat up) hoax to rest? Some knowledge of physics and other sciences will help, but the one book that finally addresses all the lies is Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory by several contributing authors, that represent leading, physicists, scientists, a retired engineer, and a legal analyst with a specialty in the subject ($21.80, Stairway Press, softcover, $9.95 Kindle edition). This is not light reading as the science is presented in depth and the physics can be daunting to anyone not schooled in it. Overall, however, the book is a triumph of objectivity regarding a topic that has dominated the news and politics since the late 1980s when it was sprung on the world with a series of claims of impending doom that have never ceased. Then and now just about every natural phenomenon and weather event was blamed on global warming. Efforts have ensued to “reduce the carbon footprint”, to change the way electricity is provided, and to put a price on carbon dioxide so it could be bought and sold as a commodity. The sheer absurdity of this and the fact that it was little more than a get-rich scheme for those putting it forth has finally begun to dawn on people. For the record, carbon dioxide represents an infinitesimal 0.329% of the earth’s atmosphere and plays no role in heat absorption or transfer. I highly recommend this book.
On a lighter note, all of you who live to eat, not just eat to live, will enjoy A Feast at the Beach by William Widmaier ($14.95, 3L Publishing, softcover) has put together some brief stories of life in Provence, France, in the 1960s.with an emphasis on the tastes and smells of Southern France, complete with recipes of dishes that, though born in the U.S., evoke his memories of vacations spent at his French grandparent’s home in St. Tropez. My late Mother, Rebecca, a teacher of haute cuisine, used to say that food and memory go together. This book is proof of that. For those who love great dining, there’s Patricia Lewis Mote’s Great Menus: Seasonal Recipes for Entertaining ($25.00, Dicmar publishing, trade paperback) enhanced by David Harp’s photos that will make your mouth water. The author, the mother of two and grandmother of four, has lived in five foreign countries, England, Norway, France, Germany, and Japan. She resides now with her husband, Dan, the former president of the University of Maryland (1998-2010) in Annapolis. One recipe after another will inspire you to try them out and are sure to please your family or just yourself. This is a book for people who truly live to eat, to enjoy the dining experience. I grew up dining Mediterranean style on the foods of Italy and France, so when Zov Karamarian’s new book, Simply Zov: Rustic Classics with a Mediterranean Twist arrived ($39.00, Zov’s Publishing, Tustin, CA) I was instantly entranced with its large size format, page after page of mouthwatering full color photos and its recipes that will entice you to try them out, one by one, in your own kitchen. From appetizers like beef pirozhki with mushrooms to breakfast bananas foster French toast, or soups like coconut chicken chowder, a classic Tuscan tomato salad, main dishes to sweets, this cookbook stands out in so many ways. No wonder people come from all over the world to visit her restaurant in California. This book is an instant classic.
Real People: Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs
The bestselling memoir, Nomad: From Islam to America—a Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now in softcover ($16.00, Free Press) and well worth reading. Ms. Hirsi first captured attention with her memoir, “Infidel”, the story of her physical and emotional journey to freedom. It is testimony to the threat the Islam poses to the West and why she believes the U.S. is underestimating the threat of radical Islam. It is a horror story of the way Muslim women, even in the U.S., are thwarted from completing their education, and why some become victims of so-called honor killings. I would recommend you read this compelling book. In a very different story, one’s heart is touched by Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan ($25.99, William Morrow), an account of how Grennan volunteered to help the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal. Initially unsure he could help, he was soon won over by a herd of rambunctious, resilient children whom he learned were not orphans at all, but the victims of child trafficers who promised families in remote villages to protect them from the civil war by taking them to safety, for a fee. Instead, they were abandoned in Kathmandu, the nation’s capital. He set about returning them to their families despite great odds. He found a cause and he found a wife! Great reading.
Another woman says “Being an explorer isn’t my job. It’s who I am. Exploration is deeply embedded in my soul, coursing through my veins.” Aside from the florid rhetoric, there is an interesting autobiography of sorts to be found in Pink Boots and a Machete: My Journey from NFL Cheerleader to National Geographic Explorer by Mireya Mayor, a host on the GEO Wild Channel ($26.00, National Geographic Books), just out this month. She was an overprotected child of a Cuban immigrant mother who didn’t even want her to join the Girl Scouts fearing that camping was “far too dangerous.” After graduating high school she became an actress and then a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. Her love of animals led her to an anthropology course in college and then to being a Fulbright Scholar and renowned primatologist and globetrotter. At age 30 she’s survived a plane crash in the jungle, been chased by an elephant and a gorilla, and stung by nasty insects. In short, an interesting life. An entertaining book is Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon ($15.00, Perigee Trade, softcover). As the author notes, from the ancient world to present day, women have caused wars, ruled empires, defied the rules laid down for them, and brought men to their knees. While women’s rights and power has been limited through much of history, that didn’t deter the women in Mahon’s book.
I am old enough to remember the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963, but Carolyn McKinstry was there in the church! Just 14 years old at the time, she had spoken to four of the victims just minutes before the bomb went off and killed them. While the World Watched ($17.99, Tyndale House Publishers) is the Civil Rights movement as experienced and told by Carolyn Maull McKinstry who saw it as a young black girl, as told to Denise George. This is the nitty-gritty of what it was like to grow up in the segregated South, through the courageous movement that ended that ugly chapter in American life. Writing fifty years later, this is the a book that a younger generation would benefit from reading and an older one can revisit. Black Faces of War: A Legacy of Honor from the American Revolution to Today by Robert V. Morris ($30.00, Zenith Press, Quayside Publishing Group) is a large format tribute the Afro-American men and women who fought and died for America, long before America showed them any appreciation or dignity. It was not until President Truman officially ended racial segregation in the U.S. Army, the Tuskegee Airmen had earned fame during World War Two, and even earlier, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry fought valiantly in the Civil War. From Crispus Attucks, the first man to die in the American Revolutions to Gen. Colin Powell, theirs is a great story and this book provides a fresh perspective.
The American Revolution was, of course, intended to overthrow England’s control of the colonies, but America was also passing through an intellectual revolution as well, one that lasted about eight-five years from 1725 to 1810. The leaders of American society were often men who challenged Christian orthodoxy, celebrated human reason, and saw nature as evidence of the creator’s handiwork. Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels by Kerry Walters ($20.00, Prometheus Books) explores that period of American history with its prominent figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others who were critical of orthodox Christianity. This was America’s first culture war and it lives on today. From the same publisher comes Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie’s biography of Marie Curie ($17.00, softcover), the iconic woman whose scientific achievements in an era when women were largely restricted to roles as wives and mothers. Curie (1867-1934) made history when she postulated that radiation was an atomic rather than a chemical property, a breakthrough in understanding the structure of matter. She coined the word radioactivity and her research isolated two new elements, polonium and radium. She would win two Nobel Prizes, one in physics (1903) and one in chemistry (1914). Born in Poland, she was the first of her sex to become a professor at the Sorbonne University. Ironically, her long exposure to radium led to her death from aplastic anemia. She was not just a brilliant scientist, but a courageous person who has since inspired others to enter the field of science.
Alan Arkin is one of those actors who has been around a very long time. He’s appeared in more than eighty films. He is also a director and musician, but mostly he is just very gifted, although you would not read him saying anything like that in An improvised Life: A Memoir ($17.00, Da Capo Press, softcover) in which he relates knowing he wanted to be an actor by age five. I have known any number of actors who have said the same thing. It has a lot to do with wanting to pretend to be someone else. Arkin’s memoir devotes a lot of space to the art of acting and, thus, will be of greater interest to those who love drama. Arkin, unlike many actors, has an intellect that takes in more than just acting. That said, you really have to be a fan to get too deep into this memoir.
To Your Health!
One of the most interesting new books of 2011 has to be The Longevity Project by Howard S. Friedman, PhD and Leslie R. Martin. PhD ($25.95. Hudson Street Press). It is the story of a landmark eight-decade study in psychology to answer the question of who lives longest—and why. Many of the common beliefs we have about living a long life are dispelled. For example, people do not die from working long hours at a challenging job. The study found that many who worked the longest lived the longest. It is commonly believed that getting and staying married was a guarantee of long life, but the study found this is not necessarily true, especially for women, nor is it the happy-go-lucky who thrive. It turns out it is the prudent and persistent who do best over the long run. The book even offers tests you can take yourself so that you can optimize your choices to increase your life. So much of life is outside one’s control such as your genetic inheritance or whether we are caught up in a war. How one handles stress is a significant factor, but a life built on successive successes is likely to be a longer one. Both my parents lived into their nineties, both enjoyed success in their fields of endeavor, both loved to eat well, both were free of any serious disease, so the odds are that I will be reviewing books for a very long time to come. Read this book and increase your chances, too.
Other than cancer, the most frightening diagnosis a person can receive is that of Alzheimer’s Disease, the slow degeneration of the brain that robs an individual of all memory and capacity to function. That’s why I would unhesitantly recommend Stop Alzheimer’s Now: How to Prevent and Reverse Dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis and other Neurode-generative Disorders ($19.95, Piccadilly Books, Ltd., Colorado Springs, CO, softcover). More than 35 million people have dementia today and each year 4.6 million new cases occur worldwide. Parkinson’s disease, another progressive brain disorder, affects about four million people worldwide. This book outlines a program using ketone therapy and diet backed by decades of medical and clinical research that has proven successful in restoring mental function and improving both brain and overall health. The best medicine is preventative medicine. This book will prove helpful to those suffering neurodegenerative diseases, as well as anyone who wants to be spared from ever encountering one. Protect your brain!
It is not uncommon for those who have suffered a heart attack to experience a second one. Prevent a Second Heart Attack: 8 foods, 8 weeks to reverse heart disease by Janet Bond Brill, PhD, RD, LDN ($15.00. Three Rivers Press, softcover) offers a program that will put the victim of a previous heart attack on the way to better health by providing a guide to good practices. The author discusses why the Mediterranean diet is the gold standards for heart-healthy eating, how “good carbs” like oatmeal lower bad cholesterol, why a glass of red wine with dinner is great for your heart, and much more. If you or someone you know has had a heart attack or looking for ways to ensure you don’t have one, this book is the one to read.
One of the most successful series from Workman Publishing is its “What to Expect” series devoted to topics such as what to expect when you’re expecting a baby and what to expect in the first year. This series has now been joined by What to Expect the Second Year by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel ($24.95/$15.95, hard and softcover). It picks up after an infant’s first birthday and takes parents through baby’s first steps, lightning-speed learning, and all manner of common toddler behavior from tantrums to picky eating, nighttime refusal to go to bed, and much more. Don’t “wing it.” Learn what countless other parents have before you encounter year two.
Kid’s Books
It’s no secret that I love children’s books and may be among only a handful of reviewers that try to include notice of them on a regular basis. The following are all from Kids Can Press.
For the very young, though to whom a parent might read a book, there’s Kitten’s Summer by Eugenie Fernandes ($14.95) in which various animals “dash”, “scramble” and leap as the child enjoys the illustrations and learns words about movement. Continuing the cat theme, there’s My Cat Isis by Catherine Austin and illustrated beautifully by Virginia Egger ($16.95) for the early reader and draws a comparison between a boy’s cat and the Egyptian goddess namesake in an entertaining tale (no pun intended!) A rather unusual twist on the story of the Three Little Pigs is found in Happy Birthday Big Bad Wolf by Frank Asch ($16.95) in which the pig family overwhelm the wolf with kindness and friendship. In the real world, this usually does not work, so I would suggest some caution with this version. You may recall that in the original version the pigs are saved from being the wolf’s dinner by a strong, brick house.
Melanie Watt’s squirrel stories adds a new one to the series with Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party ($16.95) in which the main character must overcome his fear of just about everything to plan a party. It’s funny at the same time it demonstrates how one can overcome fears. Friendship and its importance is the theme of Without You by Genevieve Cote ($16.95) when a pig and a rabbit, friends, go their separate ways after a minor disagreement. Both discover there’s a lot less fun in playing alone. Small Paul is a hilarious story written and illustrated by Ashley Spires ($16.95) about a little boy who wanted a life on the sea, but was rejected by the navy because he was too small. The pirates weren’t so picky, so he enrolled in Pirate College to learn how to be one. When he cleaned up the ship, the Rusty Squid, the pirates objected. They were lazy and dirty. They tossed him overboard, but soon discovered how stinky their ship really was and rushed back to rescue him. It is a great story for any little boy (or girl) who won’t clean up their room!
For early readers, ages 8 through 10, there are two books that are sure to please. As part of the Sam & Friends Mystery series, Book Four, there’s Witches’ Brew by Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux ($16.95) Sam, a detective dog, grows suspicious when “three strange sisters” move into a house on the street and all manner of strange things begin to happen. Sam and his human family begin to suspect awful things are happening. Told in text and cartoon illustrations, the story has a happy ending, but I won’t tell. Finally, for the older child who may find horrid endings of interest, there’s Dreadful Fates: What a Shocking Way to Go by Tracey Turner and illustrated by Sally Kindberg ($14.95) that uses text and cartoon illustration to relate the actual stories of how various people throughout history met a weird end.
The publisher, American Girl, is quite prolific, producing a variety of series designed to encourage girls to make the most of their talents, skills and interests. Adding to its Innerstar University series are two new titles, A Winning Goal and Into the Spotlight, both priced $8.95 and aimed at early readers, ages 8 and up. They are fun to read with the added twist of being “A book starring you with more than 20 endings!” These both reflect common experiences for the age group, seeking to stand out, but also fit in. American Girl also publishes mystery series featuring separate characters such as Rebecca, Samantha, and Julie. Well written and intriguing, I would think any pre-teen would enjoy them. They are priced at $6.95 so they don’t bite into any parent’s budget. With the arrival of spring, it’s time to think about places for playtime and Oddles of Ocean Fun ($12.95) offers lots of activities in what they describe as “this rip-it-out, tear-it-up, fold-it-open book.” It’s 80 pages of sea and sand inspired posters, crafts, puzzles, doodles, bookmarks, picture frames and more. Literally hours of craft activity
Finally, for young hoop fans, ages 7 and up, there’s the Ultimate Guide to Basketball by James Buckley, Jr. ($15.95/$7.99, Beach Ball Books, Santa Barbara, CA, hard and softcover editions). I have never seen an entire basketball game in my life, but I found the book to be quite interesting and handsomely illustrated. The truth is, this book would interest adults as well for the wealth of facts, stats, and information about the game’s stars over the years. This publisher has two other books, First Pitch: How Baseball Began and Weird Sports that will prove equally entertaining. If you have a young, sports minded member in your family, check out www.beachballbooks.com.
Novels, Novels, Novels
Too many novels today are fairly predictable in their choice of topic and the way they are written, so anyone seeking a new literary experience often has to search around. The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb ($25.95, Penguin Press) combines American and Vietnamese history from the not so distant past to present the story of Old Man Hung, the enlightened proprietor of a popular shop that served a soup and has served as a meeting place for a group of young dissident artists, but is now a makeshift stall where people leave Hanoi’s main streets to enjoy his beef noodle soup. A faithful customer is Tu, a young tour guide, often for American veterans visiting the nation in which they fought a war. The two men are joined by Maggie, an art curator who is Vietnamese by birth but has lived most of her life in the U.S. She has returned to search for clues to her dissident father’s disappearance. Their intertwined narrative will change their lives forever.
A selection of softcover novels offers a variety of reading experiences. From the University of North Texas Press comes A Bright Soothing Noise by Peter Brown ($14.95) a collection of short stories that grip the reader in ways that make some read several at one sitting. Filled with characters, young, old, black, white, male, female, crazy and sane, and all caught up in some defining moment of their lives, this is the kind of reading pleasure that can get lost in the stacks. Don’t miss out on it. Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum ($15.00, Gallery Books) is a story of family secrets that cannot be hidden or escaped. Set in the 1970s, Amaryllis has grown up with three older sisters, Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, and Mary Tessa. She, however, does not share their blond hair, fair skin, and pale blue eyes. Moreover, she possess the extrasensory gift of synesthesia, the ability to taste emotions, hear colors, and know when something bad is going to happen. Their mother, Seena, has built her life on deception and wants to protect her daughters from anything that might threaten the illusion of their happy home. To save that, her husband Dick, a physician, moves them from Michigan to Africa, hoping to heal the family in a new unfamiliar place. Suffice to say, it does not and watching it unfold, the reader is swept along in a very unusual tale that begins with Seena on trial for murdering Dick. A very different story, lighter and romantic, is also from Gallery Books. Swept Off Her Feet by Hester Browne ($15.00) takes the reader to Scotland and its famous reel, a complex dance, is at the heart of a novel about two very different sisters whose dreams may just come true at a romantic ball. Evie Nicholson is in love with the past. She is an antiques appraiser in a London shop. Alice, her sister, is in love with Fraser Graham, a dashing Scotsman who she secretly desires. She is a delightfully complex story of sisters swept off their feet, a modern Cinderella story that women will enjoy.
The Winter Thief by Jenny White ($13.95, W.W. Norton) continues her series of Kamil Pasha novels. I previously recommended “The Sultan’s Seal” and am happy to report that Istanbul’s wise and fiercely dedicated magistrate, Kamil Pasha, is on the job in the winter of 1888 when Vera Arti carries an Armenian translation of The Communist Manifesto into the offices of a prominent Ottoman publisher. Would he publish the work? “Everyone wants to offer us a utopia. No one offers us peace” he tells her. When she leaves, she does not realize that men from the Sultan’s secret police are following her. What she doesn’t know is that her husband, Gabriel, is behind the robbery at the Imperial Ottoman Bank, as well as the shipment of guns. She is captured, tortured, and interrogated. Kamil Pasha is on Gabriel’s trail but the secret police interfere. Their chief plans to slaughter some Armenian villages to gain the Sultan’s favor. History and fiction are a powerful mix in this page-turning thriller. The legendary curse that surrounds Shakespeare’s MacBeth is the background for Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Haunt Me Still ($15.00, Plume Books) whe the heroine, Kate Stanley, is called to Edinburgh to direct a private performance of the play using authentic relics from Shakespeare’s day. It doesn’t take long for the curse to stir. Some of the actors go missing. Kate finds a local woman dead under circumstances that reflect ancient pagan rituals and human sacrifice. Kate becomes both a suspect and possible figure victim. In short, some very intriguing reading.
For lovers of the macabre, two new titles. Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin ($14.95, Black Jackal Books, softcover) demonstrates his ability to write dark crime fiction. In this novel, a serial killer is targeting British politicians and the crime scenes are signature replicas of the Woodland Killings that took place 28 years earlier. The case became an obsession for Chief Inspector Frank Castle, one that he was not able to solve and close. This is just good, old fashioned detective fiction, reflective of the special skills that a British author brings to the genre. A very different setting is the background and time of Fire the Sky: Book Two of Contact—The Battle for America series by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear ($26.00, Gallary Books). They have made a reputation for themselves as chroniclers of early Native American life and the novel recreates the conflict-filled years following one of the first European invasions as seen through the eyes of a courage pair of Indians as it follows Hernando de Soto’s brutal expedition north from the Florida peninsula as the explorer looks for plunder. For anyone interested in this era and lost civilization, this book serves up a powerful love story as conflict moves inexorably toward to major battle.
That’s it for March! Please tell your book-loving friends and family members about Bookviews which, each month, provides notice of fiction and non-fiction that you likely will not learn about anywhere else. Bookmark Bookviews and come back every month.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Bookviews - February 2011
By Alan Caruba
My Picks of the Month
Have you ever wondered why we have all lived through two decades of talk about global warming only to learn that it was a complete fiction? That the science behind it was bogus? And then wondered why the federal government became so involved in this hoax that it wasted $50 billion on “research” to support it and is presently engaged in schemes involving millions more for “alternative” energy such as wind and solar power? Or electric cars? The answers can be found in Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our lives ($24.95, Cato Institute) will come off the presses official in April, but I suggest that you put in your order now if you want to learn the extraordinary role the federal government has played in misleading Americans to believe a hoax discredited in 2009 by the release of thousands of emails between the handful of its perpetrators on behalf of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by Patrick J. Michaels, it reveals how corrosive this massive hoax, international in scope, corrupted the U.S. government and endangered our lives. It continues to do so to this day.
The news is filled with coverage of Iran as well it should be given the threat of a prison nation under the control of fanatical ayatollahs, but there is much more to know and William R. Polk has written Understanding Iran ($17.00, Palgrave Macmillan, softcover), subtitled “Everything you need to know, from Persia to the Islamic Republic, from Cyrus to Ahmadinejad.” It is a very comprehensive examination of Iran’s history and the role it played in the rise of civilization. The author was a professor of history at the University of Chicago and established the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He has been active as an advisor to the Kennedy and LBJ administrations. Anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the history and modern events in Iran will find this book an excellent education on the subject. An older generation recalls the perils of the Cold War with the then-Soviet Union. Communism was understood to be a despotism, but a younger generation may not grasp this central fact and an entertaining and informative book about life under communism provides vivid insights. Slavenka Drakulic has authored a group of fables in A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism ($14.00, Penguin Books, softcover) in some ways reflects George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, a story in which animals represent the humans living with despotism. In this book, a mouse, a parrot, a bear, a cat, a mole, a pig, a dog and a raven tell their stories of life in the Balkins under communist rule. I would recommend it to younger readers in particular, but it works just as well for older ones. Most of the world’s inhabitants life in prison nations and we need to remind and inform ourselves what that truly means.
For a spotlight on science, three new books from Prometheus Books will provide some interesting reading. They are The Genesis of Science: The Story of Greek Imagination by Stephen Bertman ($27.00) who notes that, while historians often look to ancient Greece as the wellspring of Western civilization, perhaps the most significant achievement, other than democracy, was the early development of the sciences. The names of many of science’s branches have their roots in Greek words that first defined these disciplines. This is an excellent history. Science in America was of widespread interest to many of the Founding Fathers and, along with Franklin, one of the greatest, most inquiring minds was that of Thomas Jefferson. In A Professor, a President and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science, Cathryn J. Prince tells the story of a meteor crash in 1807 sparked the interest of a young chemistry professor at Yale College. His rigorous investigation of the event started a chain of events that lifted American science to international importance, unfortunately pitting him against then President Jefferson who took issue with it. It’s a lively story worth reading. Lastly, there’s The Wonder of Genetics: The Creepy, the Curious, and the Commonplace by Richard V. Knowles ($25.00) that provides a layman’s introduction and explanation of genetics, discussing its importance and scope. The author is an acclaimed geneticist who devotes chapter after chapter of a genuinely fascinating topic, discussing topics as diverse as genetically modified crops, cloning, genetic therapy, and how genes are related to many diseases, psychological disturbances, and possibly other behaviors. In short, you are your DNA! Finally, Quantum Physics for Poets by Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Laureate, and Christopher T. Hill ($28.00) have taken on the job of explaining the heart of contemporary physics, the basis for understanding matter in its tiniest dimensions and the vastness of the universe, and they have succeeded. They have transformed what is an enigma for most people into a highly entertaining, lucid and informative book. If you have always been curious about it, this is the book to read!
While it is trendy to be pessimistic about the future of the human race, given the present financial problems facing nations including our own, Ronald G. Havelock, PhD, has looked at history that includes the two world wars of the last century and trends in nuclear proliferation and population growth worldwide, and come up with a different, more optimistic trend that he describes in Acceleration: The Forces Driving Human Progress ($28.00, Prometheus Books). He reviews the extraordinary pace of the scientific revolution of the last two centuries, the explosive growth of knowledge, not just from generation to generation, but across cultural lines via the Internet, and other trends. Despite periodic setbacks, Havelock describes how progress is actually accelerating to positively affect the human experience and views fears of failure as wildly exaggerated. Grounded in a wealth of research, this book says humans are fully capable of solving even ore most challenging problems. An interesting companion book, The Art of Invention: The Creative Process of Discovery and Design by Steven J. Paley ($20.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) explores the process of invention and how it applies from something as simple as the paper clip to more complex inventions. The book concludes with an in-depth look at the business of invention and the typical inventor’s toolkit. It is filled with insight and advice for anyone with an innovative idea.
I am particularly fond of any book that can not only make me laugh, but make me think at the same time, occasionally actually teaching me something new as well. This is a perfect description of You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News from the editors of Cracked.com ($14.00, Plume, softcover). It is a compendium of truly astonishing scientific and other facts that taken individually or as a whole will blow a big hole in many of your cherished beliefs or just tell you something astonishing, but true. Enjoy the book and visit the website. Prepare to laugh. A lot. There are plenty of laughs to be had in The Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 2011 Edition ($14.95, Pelican Publishing Company, softcover). Edited by Charles Brooks, it is testimony to the way political cartoonists have the gift of capturing the absurdities and events in ways that makes us both think and laugh. It was not a particularly good year for President Obama, the object of many of the cartoons, along with the economy, the Tea Party movement, the Ground Zero Mosque, environment, the courts, and other issues of the past year.
We all take for granted, reading and writing. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish ($19.99, Harper) explores the way we externalize our thoughts through the creation of sentences and Fish is an aficionado of the finely wrought sentence. His book offers a literary tour of great writers throughout history and the way they captured their reader’s attention and imagination. I would go so far to say that anyone who wishes to write well should definitely read this book and, for that matter, anyone who loves literature should do so as well.
History Well Told
Everybody knows of the Tea Party movement that arose spontaneously in the first year of the Obama administration to oppose Obamacare and other initiatives, but I suspect that few know much about the original tea party that sparked the American Revolution. That has been remedied by American Tempest, ($26.00, Da Capo Press) written by Harlow Giles Unger, the author of more than seventeen books about the Founding Fathers and the Revolution. On December 15, 1773, an estimated seven dozen men, many dressed as Indians who were then a symbol of freedom, dumped more than 300 chests of tea worth the equivalent of $1 million today, into the Boston Harbor to protest British taxes, mostly levied to pay for its wars with France. This is a fascinating story considering they were taking on the greatest power of its time. I love reading history and especially American history, so you can imagine how pleased I was to receive The War of the Revolution by Christopher War ($19.95, Skyhorse Publishing, softcover) which is a complete history of the battles that resulted in the achievement of independence. From the first musket shot at Lexington and Concord to the final battle at Yorktown, this book brings the long effort to life with stories of those who participated, maps, and the realization that it took unbelievable tenacity to wage the war over six long years against tremendous odds and against what was, at the time, the greatest empire of the age. The way the Revolution is taught in our schools hardly begins to reveal how much we owe to Washington and his troops. This 1,000-page book has long been regarded as a classic and now, happily, it is available in an affordable softcover.
I loved the title of Eminent Gangsters which is subtitled “Immigrants and the Birth of Organized Crime in America” ($57.00, University Press of America). At a time when Americans are grappling with the issue of massive numbers of illegal aliens coming across the nation’s southern border or just visiting and over-staying their visas, this is a fascinating look at the way a handful of earlier immigrants, Italians, Jews and later the Irish, became the Five Families of the New York Mafia to include the Capone gang in Chicago, and others who cooperated to an extent that dominated crime from the days of Prohibition onward until exposed. Starting in the 1920s, these were men in a hurry to cash in on the American dream. From its origins in Sicily, the Mafia would control crime in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, eventually spawning a vast war in which the families emerged victorious. The ban on liquor, transport and sale was a bonanza for these criminals and laid the groundwork for the Mafia’s infiltration of many elements of American society. On a lighter note, I greatly enjoyed A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Lovers, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menkin, 1835-1868 by Barbara and Michael Foster ($24.95, Globe Pequot). Who is she? How about “the mother of theatrical and film nudity”? Adah drew overflow audiences from Broadway to Paris as her front-page scandals and under-the-counter nude photos made her an erotic sensation in the midst of the Victorian era. She married five times and her lovers included Alexandre Dumas and Algernon Swinburne, among others. She bedazzled a young reporter, Mark Twain, with her performance in gold rush San Francisco. He deemed her a magnificent spectacle.” If one was to create her as a character in a novel, even fiction could not compete with her real life. The daughter of a beautiful Creole mother, father unknown, with a series of step-fathers, one who endowed her with the Jewish faith, Adah grew up in Texas where she became a trick rider in the circus and then became an actress where, in New York, she performed comedy, tragedy, along with song and dance; in short, immensely talented and possessed of real intellect. Not until Marilyn Monroe, did any performer so captivate and titillate audiences.
God Sleeps in Rwanda: A Journey of Transformation by Joseph Sebarenzi ($15.00, Atria Books, softcover) with Laura Ann Mullane, is the story of how this native Rwandan lost his parents, seven siblings, and most of his relatives in the savage 1994 genocide of Tutsi tribal members by Hutu tribesmen. It is a tragic story, but the author would rise to become Speaker of the Rwandan parliament, intent on healing his nation. It is a reminder that humans are still capable of horrendous acts of mass murder just fifty years after gaining independence. The history of African nations for the past half century and more suggest they have a long way to go before they adopt Western values. For most, democracy is still just a charade.
To Your Health!
If you have your health, all your other problems in life can be solved. So, as we ease into the new year, let’s look at some books that address health and diet issues.
One of the great miracles of life is birth and two physicians, Michael F. Roizen, MD, and Mehmet C. Oz, MD, have gotten together to write YOU Having A Baby: The Owner’s Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy ($18.00, Free Press, imprint of Simon and Schuster, softcover) that is a large compendium of information that will prepare anyone for the birth of a child. This is truly an A-to-Z treasure of information on topics that range from the biology of pregnancy to the fundamentals of child rearing. Together, they have answered most of the questions any new parent might want to ask. Parents often encounter two common ailments in their children and there’s a book to help when they do. Allergies and Asthma: What Every Parent Needs to Know, edited by Dr. Michael J. Welch ($14.95, American Academy of Pediatrics, softcover) is now in its second edition this month. Allergies and asthma often start in childhood and continue throughout life. Asthma currently affects around 6.2 million Americans under age 18. These young people often also have allergies. This book, written in easily comprehensible language, provides the latest findings on food allergies and treatments, as well as new approaches for monitoring asthma control. It’s the real deal.
At the other end of the age spectrum is Dr. Marc Agronin’s How We Age ($25.00, Da Capo Press). A geriatric psychiatrist, the author is currently the medical director for Mental health and Clinical Research at Miami Jewish Health Systems. Out of his experience working with older folks, he has gained interesting insights regarding aging today. The result is that, while aging includes some inevitable decline, it can also be a period of vitality, wisdom, creativity, and hope. For anyone with aging parents or who is aging, this book can provide some comforting information. I personally had parents that both lived into their 90s and, despite some physical problems, remained mentally alert and involved to the end.
Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life by Claudia Welch ($17.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) is not officially due off the press until March 15. Directed to women in the workforce who must cope with the stresses of work and family life, the book is devoted to Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and Western science. The author explores the counterbalancing effects of sex and stress hormones, and provides easy-to-follow strategies for self care to combat stress-induced medical problems that can include painful periods, mood swings, fatigue and insomnia, among other physical problems. If these problems and others describe you or someone you know, make a note to pick up a copy of this interesting book. Somewhat along the same lines is The Mind-Body Mood Solution by Jeffrey Rossman, PhD ($25.99, Rodale Books) that offers a non-drug program for relief from depression. Reportedly, depression is ten times more prevalent today than in 1960 and the rate is doubling every decade. As new technologies and other life-enhancing conveniences have occurred, it may well be they are the cause of this phenomenon. Dr. Rossman is a clinical psychologist believes many of these changes in the way we live, eat, travel and work are creating mood disorders. His book describes how one can regain control of your life. Dividing the book into sections devoted to the mind and to the body, it is filled with advice that might work for you, from diet to exercise changes. The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future by Lucinda Bassett ($22.95, Sterling Publishing) addresses how one can control negative thoughts and behaviors that are linked to anxiety and stress. It offers a positive program for doing so through her stories of personal experience, inspiration, and proactive action. Instead of being fearful, uncertain and insecure, the book demonstrates how to turn one’s life around by turning around one’s thought processes and perceptions. As we have seen with the Tucson tragedy, depression and other mental illnesses can play a role in some tragic outcomes. Leo J. Battenhausen, a counselor, looks at the way depression can be overcome in Defeating Depression: The Calm and Sense Way to Find Happiness and Satisfaction ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover). We live in depressing times and it can take over our lives, affecting our relationships, work, social situations, and our health. This book spells out the way to cope with setbacks without turning a medications or bad choices such as alcohol or illegal drugs. He discusses how to rid the mind of negative thoughts, get past emotional pain, and how to gain control and find emotional peace. Though some will need professional help, many can overcome depression on their own and this book is surely a step in the right direction.
All healing begins with the body’s immune system. Dr. H. Robert Silverstein, MD, FACC, has written Maximum Healing ($16.95, North Atlantic Books, softcover) that takes the reader on a tour of antioxidants, minerals, healing foods, herbs and supplements, exercise and stress reduction. That a lot for a very affordable price and since I have taken vitamins and minerals for a very long time, I can testify to the way they ward off the common cold and other problems. If you or someone you know needs to heal from an injury or illness, this would be a great book to read as well as for its information on immune-related disorders such as allergies, asthma, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue, and rheumatoid arthritis, among others. This is the real deal. Return to Fitness: Getting Back in Shape after Injury, Illness, or Prolonged Inactivity is one of those titles that fully describe this book’s content. Written by Bill Katovsky ($16.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) founder of Tri-Athlete Magazine, he shares his own story of reclaiming his health after a decade-long period of illness and injury-laden inactivity. Katovsky discusses how our bodies age, provides nutritional advice, and advice on exercise, including information on the treatment and prevention of injuries. One of the most unusual books I have seen of late is just off the press. When Sex Hurts: A Woman’s Guide to Banishing Sexual Pain has three authors, two MDs and one PhD ($15.95, Da Capo Press). It is estimated that twenty million women experience some pain during sexual intercourse and as many as 40% will not seek medical care to relief it. The embarrassment of the experience and reluctance to address it is widespread to the extent that many doctors are in the dark regarding it. The commentary is supported by diagrams, lists of resources, and psychological exercises to help women get to the root of their pain and begin treatment. This is an authoritative, practical, and comprehensive guide.
There are many diet books that advise eating more fruits and vegetables, but Dr. Andrew Iverson, MD, says that your favorite fruit could be contributing to your growing waistline and even putting your at risk for diabetes and heart disease! Nature’s Diet ($24.95, Trilium Health Press, Tacoma, WA) explores the way what you eat can affect your energy, your memory, your mood, and even how you think. Certain foods can even make a child behave poorly and lose focus in school. This book explains why many of today’s most common health problems can be remedied. After seeing chronically ill patients every day in his practice, Dr. Iverson advises how to correctly feed yourself and detoxify from chemical waste to achieve amazing improvements in your health. Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes by Isa Chandra Moskowitz ($19.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) is hot of the press demonstrates that a vegan diet can also be a very tasty one while also being low-fat and low-calorie. As she says, healthy vegan food can be so good that it appeals to a meat-eater. Editor's Note: One caveat, though. If you examine one’s teeth, you will note that some are specific to meat-eating, suggesting that we humans need both meat and vegetables.
Maximum job performance is the focus of Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, MD, ($26.95, Harvard Business Review Press). The author has been a guest on many television shows discussing his philosophy and offers a five-step process to apply to any business culture. Though primarily a business-oriented book for managers, the advice can apply to many fields of endeavor. Though I am not and have never been a vegan, someone who avoids eating meat, there’s no denying that there have been many books advocating this life style in recent years. Your Mind at its Best ($13.99, Revell, softcover) has three authors who share forty activities and behavioral changes that scientific research has shown can support optimal brain health if they become part of your daily routine. Among the recommends is keeping one’s home free from carbon monoxide by checking for any gas leaks. Going to church is good for one’s brain as well as surfing the Internet to find things that interest and engage you. Making sure you give your heart a workout is yet another way to ensure brain health. In sum, this is an interesting, useful book. The same can be said of Be Excellent at Anything: The Four keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Life by Tony Schwartz ($16.00, Free Press, softcover) that debunks common myths about great performance such as the view that great performers get by on less sleep. Not so, they really average 8 ½ hours a night. The other myth is that a little anxiety helps motivate us when facing tough deadlines. False. The better we feel, the better we perform. My favorite is the myth of multitasking when, in fact, juggling multiple activities reduces the time to get one task done well. If you’re still in need of some motivation, try Tapping the Source by William Gladstone, Richard Greninger, and John Selby ($17.95, Sterling Publishing) that offers a practical daily process for changing one’s life for the better. It offers a system for improving one’s life and one’s opportunities using ancient meditative techniques and other methods.
How to Love: Choosing Well at Every Stage of Life by Gordon Livingston, MD ($12.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) takes note of the difficulties in finding life in a world of speed-dating and Internet match-up sites. He explores how to choose a partner and the types of hurtful personalities and behaviors to avoid. This is common sense advice that some people do not receive for one reason or another. If you or someone you know is encountering problems finding the right person, this book will prove helpful. One stage of life that is often filled with problems is the teen years and Rick Johnson has written That’s My Teenage Son: How Moms can Influence their Boys to Become Good Men ($12.99, Revell, softcover) in which he discusses the great influence a boy’s mother has on how well he sees himself as a man and interacts with the world as an adult. For any mother of a teenage son, this book is filled with a wealth of information on the way a boy’s maturing mind, body and emotions are affected during this years and how these changes influence their behavior and needs. It’s a critical time to teach self-discipline, help them develop a healthy emotion life, and prepare them to be healthy adults. These are the years, too, when many young men and women go off to college and Alex Chediak has written Thriving at College ($14.99, Tyndale House Publishers, softcover) to help the generation entering college. With the economy in the tank, it is no surprise that seven in ten graduates do not have a job lined up and many must move back in with mom and dad, often with large debt. Written from a Christian point of view, Chediak notes that at least a quarter of college professors are atheists, compared with just 4% of the U.S. population. Some 70% of young adults will stop attending church. Some useful advice is provided to cope with these and other problems encountered at this critical point in young lives.
Books for Younger Readers
There is a deluge of books for younger readers, particularly pre-teens and teenagers, so it is always a treat when one comes along that is just so thoroughly delightful you want to tell the whole world about it. That’s the case with Saltwater Taffy by Erick Delabarre, as illustrated by R.C. Nason ($15.95, Seven Publishing, distributed by Perseus Books). To date it has been endorsed by nine Teachers of the Year, Delabarre is an award-winning Hollywood director/writer of “Law & Order” fame. The illustrator is equally distinguished. Set in the seaside town of Port Townsend, Washington, the novel follows the lives of five friends as they uncover the secrets of a treasure map that once belonged to the New Orleans pirate, Jean Lafitte. It is one adventure after another as they try to outwit and out-maneuver everyone who wants to intimidate them and/or get their hands on the treasure. It is so well written that one does not want to put it down until the last page. Officially for “middle grade” students, it will please anyone of any age, including me!
A series for younger readers, “I See the Sun”, is a great way to introduce early readers, five to seven years, to the world. The second addition is I See the Sun in Nepal written by Dedie King and illustrated by Judith Inglese ($12.95, Satya House Publications, Hardwick, MA, softcover) It is bilingual, written in English and Nepalese, and it portrays the essential cultural elements of Nepal through the eyes of a child. It is an excellent way to introduce a child to the way the world is made up of different nations, cultures, languages, and such. Coming in 2011 are others in the series devoted to Afghanistan, Russia, and India. The exotic State of Hawaii is the setting for Aloha, Kanani by Lisa Yee ($6.95, American Girl, softcover) that debuted in January, kicking off American Girl’s 25th birthday celebration. Kanani Akina is the 2011 Girl of the Year. She is a warm and cheerful girl, blessed to grow up in Hawaii and sharing the “aloha spirit.” Girls from the middle to later years of elementary school will enjoy this one as Kanani welcomes her cousin from New York, helps to rescue a baby Hawaiian monk seal, or assists older people in her community. Also on the same them from American Girl, is Lend a Hand: Girl-Sized Ways of Helping Others ($9.95, softcover) that offers all kinds of ways to help friends, family, animals, and neighbors for the pre-teen set. You can learn more about it and other titles at www.americangirl.com.
Dog lovers will love Ted Kerasote’s Pukka: The Pup After Merle, the author’s previous dog about whom he wrote “Merle’s Door.” ($18.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Pukka more than fills the hole in Ted’s life after Merle passed away. Filled with color photos from beginning to end, the book is told through Pukka’s eyes as he grows up and discovers the world with his human companions. Any child, aged seven to ten who reads this book will surely want a Pukka in his or her life and, if there is a dog in the family, it will provide many insights regarding the way to raise them and enjoy them.
For the teenager who’s into “texting” there is the more serious problem called “sexting” that can lead to all kinds of trouble. The harsh realities of this are explored in a young adult novel, Never Been Kissed, by Melody Carlson ($9.99, Revell, softcover). All Elise wants is her first kiss before she turns 16, but when a friend’s poor advice and modern communications technology combine, she finds herself on a dangerous path. Accused of “sexting”, she gets kicked out of school. This novel shows teen girls the impact of their choices when it comes to respecting themselves. Revell is famed for practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life and the author has penned more than two hundred books. Check it out at http://www.revellbooks.com/. For the same young adult crowd, there’s The Princess of Las Pulgas by C. Lee McKenzie ($16.95, WestSide Books, Lodi, NJ). This is a gritty story of a girl’s life after her father’s death forces her mother to sell their oceanfront home and move to Las Pulgas, the site of a tough urban high school where Carlie is dubbed the princess for her aloof ways. This is a novel about a difficult process of transition and is timely in difficult economic times. It tells of a challenging learning experience as Carlie learns that not everything is as it seems. The eighth book in the Good Girlz series, Drama Queens, by Reshonda Tate Billingsley ($11.00, Gallery Books, softcover) is all about friendship. The Black Christian national booksellers list ranks the author number one on the list. In this novel, high school is coming to a close for the Good Girlz and Camille, Angel, Alexis, and Jasmine are ecstatic to discover they’ve all been accepted to the same Texas University, Prairie View A&M. Need it be said that changes, many unanticipated, lay ahead? The girls learn a lot about relying on their faith and each other when facing life’s tough decision.
Novels, Novels, Novels
World War II continues to provide the background for novels today and Honor Knows No Borders by John Sharer (iUniverse, softcover) asks a philosophical question of about enemies in war. A dangerous and often fatal pursuit, collecting pieces of bombs is a prime activity for boys in London during WWII in the early 1940s. Young Tom Sloan is no exception. While investigating one ravaged building, he finds more than he expects, an injured German pilot, Hauptman Heinrich Leuzinger, who had ejected from his plane. Leuzinger begs Tom not to turn him in to authorities, but rather to help him see his wife and children again. Tom understands this is a dangerous dilemma for which there could be serious consequences. More than a thousand miles away in the North African desert, the boy's father, Major Bernie Sloan, a British officer and the commandant of a German and Italian POW camp, meets captured German Colonel Hans Dieter Reichmann who tells an unbelievable story. Sloan, a Jew, harbors a deep hatred for Germany and its people. Sloan finds it difficult to believe that Reichmann may have actually saved a Jewish family by smuggling them out of Germany. Both father and son are about to discover that in war, as in life, things are not always as they appear, and people can't always be judged by the uniforms they wear. Rising Tides – Destroyermen: Book Five by Taylor Anderson ($25.95, New American Library) adds a parallel universe to a World War II drama, billed as an “alternative history” series. Apparently military science fiction is a new and popular genre. In this case it involves Lt. Commander Matthew Reddy and the crew of the U.S.S. Walker. As you might imagine, the first four novels in the series did quite well. This one is filled with drama and adventure, plus the extra element of a non-human species that gets involved in the conflict on the high seas.
The novel, Soul Mate, by Ronald Weaver ($14.99, QuestFiction Entertainment, Valley Village, CA) tells the story of Claudia de la Rosa, a 26-year-old, starry-eyed innocent who has just arrived in the glamour-charged world of Beverly Hills to become a high school teacher. One of her students is Lance Van Arden, a handsome, worldly-wise teenager from a wealthy family and both begin to connect in ways that go beyond the teacher-student relationship. Their steamy and blissful private world collides with social norms and raises his parent’s suspicions. In real life such liaisons are forbidden and unlawful, but in the book they become modern folk heroes when their story becomes public knowledge. The author is a senior producer for the soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. I confess, being a guy, I could appreciate The Black Widow Trainer ($14.95, Emerald Book Co., softcover) by Craig Odanovich because it appeals to what most men fantasize about, a hot woman, hot sex, wealth and swanky places. This is not a deep intellectual experience, but it is a highly entertaining one; the first of a series starring Misty the top trainer at a health club on Maui who becomes an independent fitness trainer to some of the world’s most sophisticated and wealthy men who are willing to pay a lot and go the limit to have Misty get them in shape and get them into her bed. This is just old fashion erotic storytelling.
On a far more realistic and, dare I say, mature level, there’s The Bird House by Kelly Simmons ($14.00, Washington Square Press, softcover) that tells the story of a 70-year-old woman’s slide into dementia and her growing bond with her eight-year-old granddaughter who explore family secrets of both the past and present that have the power to either destroy or heal. When her granddaughter asks for her help to work on a paper about the family, she jumps at the chance, but it will be a journey of discovery for both as classic family and personal problems are reexamined. This is Simmons second novel and she demonstrates again her ability to come to grips with powerful and frightening themes. The Mother Who Stayed is a trio of stories by Laura Furman ($15.00, Free Press, softcover.) They each involve a different set of characters whose lives are connected through family, location, or sheer coincidence. The stories were inspired by 23 diaries written between 1874 and 1902 that Furman found in a house she owned in upstate New York. They are an homage to the timeless, primal bond between mother and child, as well as other relationships. They are poignant, memorable, and inspiring. Furman has earned prestigious awards for previous books and this one demonstrates why.
Weeping Underwater Looks A Lot Like Laughter by Michael J. White ($15.00, Berkley, softcover) will further enhance the author’s reputation as one of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers for spring 2010. Teenager George Flynn and his family have just moved to Des Moines, Iowa and, on their first night in town, a young woman is murdered at the hotel in which they are staying. Is it an omen of things to come? By turns witty, charming, and heart-wrenching, this is the debut novel about a young man coming of age under the toughest of circumstances. It is a story of first lovers, unrequited emotions, second lovers, family secrets, and the untold truths that lurk in one’s heart years and years after they’re grown. George’s life will be influenced by the Schell sisters. He is immediately smitten with one, Emily, his classmate and peer, and the perfect counterpoint to her sister, Katie, who has been diagnosed with a baffling case of multiple sclerosis. You will want to go along to learn how these three deal with life’s challenges and upheavals. Finally, for sheer laughter and fun, pick up a copy of Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King’s Daughter by Simon Brett, the first of a series based on two of these characters ($14.95, Felony & Mayhem Press, softcover). Brett is best known for cozy mysteries set in a little English town as one of the grand old men of British mystery since 1975. Set in the 1920s we are introduced to siblings, Blotto, a handsome fellow whose low on brain power, and Twinks, his beautiful and brilliant sister. The result is that rarest of genres, a genuinely funny crime story when the daughter of the exiled king of Mittleleuropa is kidnapped on a visit to Tawcester Towers.
That’s it for February! Do tell all your book-loving friends and family members about Bookviews so they can visit and learn about many books that deserve readers but may not catch the eye of the loftier critics and reviewers. And do come back in March for even more news of the latest and best fiction and nonfiction.
My Picks of the Month
Have you ever wondered why we have all lived through two decades of talk about global warming only to learn that it was a complete fiction? That the science behind it was bogus? And then wondered why the federal government became so involved in this hoax that it wasted $50 billion on “research” to support it and is presently engaged in schemes involving millions more for “alternative” energy such as wind and solar power? Or electric cars? The answers can be found in Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our lives ($24.95, Cato Institute) will come off the presses official in April, but I suggest that you put in your order now if you want to learn the extraordinary role the federal government has played in misleading Americans to believe a hoax discredited in 2009 by the release of thousands of emails between the handful of its perpetrators on behalf of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Edited by Patrick J. Michaels, it reveals how corrosive this massive hoax, international in scope, corrupted the U.S. government and endangered our lives. It continues to do so to this day.
The news is filled with coverage of Iran as well it should be given the threat of a prison nation under the control of fanatical ayatollahs, but there is much more to know and William R. Polk has written Understanding Iran ($17.00, Palgrave Macmillan, softcover), subtitled “Everything you need to know, from Persia to the Islamic Republic, from Cyrus to Ahmadinejad.” It is a very comprehensive examination of Iran’s history and the role it played in the rise of civilization. The author was a professor of history at the University of Chicago and established the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He has been active as an advisor to the Kennedy and LBJ administrations. Anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the history and modern events in Iran will find this book an excellent education on the subject. An older generation recalls the perils of the Cold War with the then-Soviet Union. Communism was understood to be a despotism, but a younger generation may not grasp this central fact and an entertaining and informative book about life under communism provides vivid insights. Slavenka Drakulic has authored a group of fables in A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism ($14.00, Penguin Books, softcover) in some ways reflects George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, a story in which animals represent the humans living with despotism. In this book, a mouse, a parrot, a bear, a cat, a mole, a pig, a dog and a raven tell their stories of life in the Balkins under communist rule. I would recommend it to younger readers in particular, but it works just as well for older ones. Most of the world’s inhabitants life in prison nations and we need to remind and inform ourselves what that truly means.
For a spotlight on science, three new books from Prometheus Books will provide some interesting reading. They are The Genesis of Science: The Story of Greek Imagination by Stephen Bertman ($27.00) who notes that, while historians often look to ancient Greece as the wellspring of Western civilization, perhaps the most significant achievement, other than democracy, was the early development of the sciences. The names of many of science’s branches have their roots in Greek words that first defined these disciplines. This is an excellent history. Science in America was of widespread interest to many of the Founding Fathers and, along with Franklin, one of the greatest, most inquiring minds was that of Thomas Jefferson. In A Professor, a President and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science, Cathryn J. Prince tells the story of a meteor crash in 1807 sparked the interest of a young chemistry professor at Yale College. His rigorous investigation of the event started a chain of events that lifted American science to international importance, unfortunately pitting him against then President Jefferson who took issue with it. It’s a lively story worth reading. Lastly, there’s The Wonder of Genetics: The Creepy, the Curious, and the Commonplace by Richard V. Knowles ($25.00) that provides a layman’s introduction and explanation of genetics, discussing its importance and scope. The author is an acclaimed geneticist who devotes chapter after chapter of a genuinely fascinating topic, discussing topics as diverse as genetically modified crops, cloning, genetic therapy, and how genes are related to many diseases, psychological disturbances, and possibly other behaviors. In short, you are your DNA! Finally, Quantum Physics for Poets by Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Laureate, and Christopher T. Hill ($28.00) have taken on the job of explaining the heart of contemporary physics, the basis for understanding matter in its tiniest dimensions and the vastness of the universe, and they have succeeded. They have transformed what is an enigma for most people into a highly entertaining, lucid and informative book. If you have always been curious about it, this is the book to read!
While it is trendy to be pessimistic about the future of the human race, given the present financial problems facing nations including our own, Ronald G. Havelock, PhD, has looked at history that includes the two world wars of the last century and trends in nuclear proliferation and population growth worldwide, and come up with a different, more optimistic trend that he describes in Acceleration: The Forces Driving Human Progress ($28.00, Prometheus Books). He reviews the extraordinary pace of the scientific revolution of the last two centuries, the explosive growth of knowledge, not just from generation to generation, but across cultural lines via the Internet, and other trends. Despite periodic setbacks, Havelock describes how progress is actually accelerating to positively affect the human experience and views fears of failure as wildly exaggerated. Grounded in a wealth of research, this book says humans are fully capable of solving even ore most challenging problems. An interesting companion book, The Art of Invention: The Creative Process of Discovery and Design by Steven J. Paley ($20.00, Prometheus Books, softcover) explores the process of invention and how it applies from something as simple as the paper clip to more complex inventions. The book concludes with an in-depth look at the business of invention and the typical inventor’s toolkit. It is filled with insight and advice for anyone with an innovative idea.
I am particularly fond of any book that can not only make me laugh, but make me think at the same time, occasionally actually teaching me something new as well. This is a perfect description of You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News from the editors of Cracked.com ($14.00, Plume, softcover). It is a compendium of truly astonishing scientific and other facts that taken individually or as a whole will blow a big hole in many of your cherished beliefs or just tell you something astonishing, but true. Enjoy the book and visit the website. Prepare to laugh. A lot. There are plenty of laughs to be had in The Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 2011 Edition ($14.95, Pelican Publishing Company, softcover). Edited by Charles Brooks, it is testimony to the way political cartoonists have the gift of capturing the absurdities and events in ways that makes us both think and laugh. It was not a particularly good year for President Obama, the object of many of the cartoons, along with the economy, the Tea Party movement, the Ground Zero Mosque, environment, the courts, and other issues of the past year.
We all take for granted, reading and writing. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish ($19.99, Harper) explores the way we externalize our thoughts through the creation of sentences and Fish is an aficionado of the finely wrought sentence. His book offers a literary tour of great writers throughout history and the way they captured their reader’s attention and imagination. I would go so far to say that anyone who wishes to write well should definitely read this book and, for that matter, anyone who loves literature should do so as well.
History Well Told
Everybody knows of the Tea Party movement that arose spontaneously in the first year of the Obama administration to oppose Obamacare and other initiatives, but I suspect that few know much about the original tea party that sparked the American Revolution. That has been remedied by American Tempest, ($26.00, Da Capo Press) written by Harlow Giles Unger, the author of more than seventeen books about the Founding Fathers and the Revolution. On December 15, 1773, an estimated seven dozen men, many dressed as Indians who were then a symbol of freedom, dumped more than 300 chests of tea worth the equivalent of $1 million today, into the Boston Harbor to protest British taxes, mostly levied to pay for its wars with France. This is a fascinating story considering they were taking on the greatest power of its time. I love reading history and especially American history, so you can imagine how pleased I was to receive The War of the Revolution by Christopher War ($19.95, Skyhorse Publishing, softcover) which is a complete history of the battles that resulted in the achievement of independence. From the first musket shot at Lexington and Concord to the final battle at Yorktown, this book brings the long effort to life with stories of those who participated, maps, and the realization that it took unbelievable tenacity to wage the war over six long years against tremendous odds and against what was, at the time, the greatest empire of the age. The way the Revolution is taught in our schools hardly begins to reveal how much we owe to Washington and his troops. This 1,000-page book has long been regarded as a classic and now, happily, it is available in an affordable softcover.
I loved the title of Eminent Gangsters which is subtitled “Immigrants and the Birth of Organized Crime in America” ($57.00, University Press of America). At a time when Americans are grappling with the issue of massive numbers of illegal aliens coming across the nation’s southern border or just visiting and over-staying their visas, this is a fascinating look at the way a handful of earlier immigrants, Italians, Jews and later the Irish, became the Five Families of the New York Mafia to include the Capone gang in Chicago, and others who cooperated to an extent that dominated crime from the days of Prohibition onward until exposed. Starting in the 1920s, these were men in a hurry to cash in on the American dream. From its origins in Sicily, the Mafia would control crime in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, eventually spawning a vast war in which the families emerged victorious. The ban on liquor, transport and sale was a bonanza for these criminals and laid the groundwork for the Mafia’s infiltration of many elements of American society. On a lighter note, I greatly enjoyed A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Lovers, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menkin, 1835-1868 by Barbara and Michael Foster ($24.95, Globe Pequot). Who is she? How about “the mother of theatrical and film nudity”? Adah drew overflow audiences from Broadway to Paris as her front-page scandals and under-the-counter nude photos made her an erotic sensation in the midst of the Victorian era. She married five times and her lovers included Alexandre Dumas and Algernon Swinburne, among others. She bedazzled a young reporter, Mark Twain, with her performance in gold rush San Francisco. He deemed her a magnificent spectacle.” If one was to create her as a character in a novel, even fiction could not compete with her real life. The daughter of a beautiful Creole mother, father unknown, with a series of step-fathers, one who endowed her with the Jewish faith, Adah grew up in Texas where she became a trick rider in the circus and then became an actress where, in New York, she performed comedy, tragedy, along with song and dance; in short, immensely talented and possessed of real intellect. Not until Marilyn Monroe, did any performer so captivate and titillate audiences.
God Sleeps in Rwanda: A Journey of Transformation by Joseph Sebarenzi ($15.00, Atria Books, softcover) with Laura Ann Mullane, is the story of how this native Rwandan lost his parents, seven siblings, and most of his relatives in the savage 1994 genocide of Tutsi tribal members by Hutu tribesmen. It is a tragic story, but the author would rise to become Speaker of the Rwandan parliament, intent on healing his nation. It is a reminder that humans are still capable of horrendous acts of mass murder just fifty years after gaining independence. The history of African nations for the past half century and more suggest they have a long way to go before they adopt Western values. For most, democracy is still just a charade.
To Your Health!
If you have your health, all your other problems in life can be solved. So, as we ease into the new year, let’s look at some books that address health and diet issues.
One of the great miracles of life is birth and two physicians, Michael F. Roizen, MD, and Mehmet C. Oz, MD, have gotten together to write YOU Having A Baby: The Owner’s Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy ($18.00, Free Press, imprint of Simon and Schuster, softcover) that is a large compendium of information that will prepare anyone for the birth of a child. This is truly an A-to-Z treasure of information on topics that range from the biology of pregnancy to the fundamentals of child rearing. Together, they have answered most of the questions any new parent might want to ask. Parents often encounter two common ailments in their children and there’s a book to help when they do. Allergies and Asthma: What Every Parent Needs to Know, edited by Dr. Michael J. Welch ($14.95, American Academy of Pediatrics, softcover) is now in its second edition this month. Allergies and asthma often start in childhood and continue throughout life. Asthma currently affects around 6.2 million Americans under age 18. These young people often also have allergies. This book, written in easily comprehensible language, provides the latest findings on food allergies and treatments, as well as new approaches for monitoring asthma control. It’s the real deal.
At the other end of the age spectrum is Dr. Marc Agronin’s How We Age ($25.00, Da Capo Press). A geriatric psychiatrist, the author is currently the medical director for Mental health and Clinical Research at Miami Jewish Health Systems. Out of his experience working with older folks, he has gained interesting insights regarding aging today. The result is that, while aging includes some inevitable decline, it can also be a period of vitality, wisdom, creativity, and hope. For anyone with aging parents or who is aging, this book can provide some comforting information. I personally had parents that both lived into their 90s and, despite some physical problems, remained mentally alert and involved to the end.
Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life by Claudia Welch ($17.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) is not officially due off the press until March 15. Directed to women in the workforce who must cope with the stresses of work and family life, the book is devoted to Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and Western science. The author explores the counterbalancing effects of sex and stress hormones, and provides easy-to-follow strategies for self care to combat stress-induced medical problems that can include painful periods, mood swings, fatigue and insomnia, among other physical problems. If these problems and others describe you or someone you know, make a note to pick up a copy of this interesting book. Somewhat along the same lines is The Mind-Body Mood Solution by Jeffrey Rossman, PhD ($25.99, Rodale Books) that offers a non-drug program for relief from depression. Reportedly, depression is ten times more prevalent today than in 1960 and the rate is doubling every decade. As new technologies and other life-enhancing conveniences have occurred, it may well be they are the cause of this phenomenon. Dr. Rossman is a clinical psychologist believes many of these changes in the way we live, eat, travel and work are creating mood disorders. His book describes how one can regain control of your life. Dividing the book into sections devoted to the mind and to the body, it is filled with advice that might work for you, from diet to exercise changes. The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future by Lucinda Bassett ($22.95, Sterling Publishing) addresses how one can control negative thoughts and behaviors that are linked to anxiety and stress. It offers a positive program for doing so through her stories of personal experience, inspiration, and proactive action. Instead of being fearful, uncertain and insecure, the book demonstrates how to turn one’s life around by turning around one’s thought processes and perceptions. As we have seen with the Tucson tragedy, depression and other mental illnesses can play a role in some tragic outcomes. Leo J. Battenhausen, a counselor, looks at the way depression can be overcome in Defeating Depression: The Calm and Sense Way to Find Happiness and Satisfaction ($14.95, New Horizon Press, softcover). We live in depressing times and it can take over our lives, affecting our relationships, work, social situations, and our health. This book spells out the way to cope with setbacks without turning a medications or bad choices such as alcohol or illegal drugs. He discusses how to rid the mind of negative thoughts, get past emotional pain, and how to gain control and find emotional peace. Though some will need professional help, many can overcome depression on their own and this book is surely a step in the right direction.
All healing begins with the body’s immune system. Dr. H. Robert Silverstein, MD, FACC, has written Maximum Healing ($16.95, North Atlantic Books, softcover) that takes the reader on a tour of antioxidants, minerals, healing foods, herbs and supplements, exercise and stress reduction. That a lot for a very affordable price and since I have taken vitamins and minerals for a very long time, I can testify to the way they ward off the common cold and other problems. If you or someone you know needs to heal from an injury or illness, this would be a great book to read as well as for its information on immune-related disorders such as allergies, asthma, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue, and rheumatoid arthritis, among others. This is the real deal. Return to Fitness: Getting Back in Shape after Injury, Illness, or Prolonged Inactivity is one of those titles that fully describe this book’s content. Written by Bill Katovsky ($16.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) founder of Tri-Athlete Magazine, he shares his own story of reclaiming his health after a decade-long period of illness and injury-laden inactivity. Katovsky discusses how our bodies age, provides nutritional advice, and advice on exercise, including information on the treatment and prevention of injuries. One of the most unusual books I have seen of late is just off the press. When Sex Hurts: A Woman’s Guide to Banishing Sexual Pain has three authors, two MDs and one PhD ($15.95, Da Capo Press). It is estimated that twenty million women experience some pain during sexual intercourse and as many as 40% will not seek medical care to relief it. The embarrassment of the experience and reluctance to address it is widespread to the extent that many doctors are in the dark regarding it. The commentary is supported by diagrams, lists of resources, and psychological exercises to help women get to the root of their pain and begin treatment. This is an authoritative, practical, and comprehensive guide.
There are many diet books that advise eating more fruits and vegetables, but Dr. Andrew Iverson, MD, says that your favorite fruit could be contributing to your growing waistline and even putting your at risk for diabetes and heart disease! Nature’s Diet ($24.95, Trilium Health Press, Tacoma, WA) explores the way what you eat can affect your energy, your memory, your mood, and even how you think. Certain foods can even make a child behave poorly and lose focus in school. This book explains why many of today’s most common health problems can be remedied. After seeing chronically ill patients every day in his practice, Dr. Iverson advises how to correctly feed yourself and detoxify from chemical waste to achieve amazing improvements in your health. Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Vegan Recipes by Isa Chandra Moskowitz ($19.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) is hot of the press demonstrates that a vegan diet can also be a very tasty one while also being low-fat and low-calorie. As she says, healthy vegan food can be so good that it appeals to a meat-eater. Editor's Note: One caveat, though. If you examine one’s teeth, you will note that some are specific to meat-eating, suggesting that we humans need both meat and vegetables.
Maximum job performance is the focus of Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, MD, ($26.95, Harvard Business Review Press). The author has been a guest on many television shows discussing his philosophy and offers a five-step process to apply to any business culture. Though primarily a business-oriented book for managers, the advice can apply to many fields of endeavor. Though I am not and have never been a vegan, someone who avoids eating meat, there’s no denying that there have been many books advocating this life style in recent years. Your Mind at its Best ($13.99, Revell, softcover) has three authors who share forty activities and behavioral changes that scientific research has shown can support optimal brain health if they become part of your daily routine. Among the recommends is keeping one’s home free from carbon monoxide by checking for any gas leaks. Going to church is good for one’s brain as well as surfing the Internet to find things that interest and engage you. Making sure you give your heart a workout is yet another way to ensure brain health. In sum, this is an interesting, useful book. The same can be said of Be Excellent at Anything: The Four keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Life by Tony Schwartz ($16.00, Free Press, softcover) that debunks common myths about great performance such as the view that great performers get by on less sleep. Not so, they really average 8 ½ hours a night. The other myth is that a little anxiety helps motivate us when facing tough deadlines. False. The better we feel, the better we perform. My favorite is the myth of multitasking when, in fact, juggling multiple activities reduces the time to get one task done well. If you’re still in need of some motivation, try Tapping the Source by William Gladstone, Richard Greninger, and John Selby ($17.95, Sterling Publishing) that offers a practical daily process for changing one’s life for the better. It offers a system for improving one’s life and one’s opportunities using ancient meditative techniques and other methods.
How to Love: Choosing Well at Every Stage of Life by Gordon Livingston, MD ($12.95, Da Capo Press, softcover) takes note of the difficulties in finding life in a world of speed-dating and Internet match-up sites. He explores how to choose a partner and the types of hurtful personalities and behaviors to avoid. This is common sense advice that some people do not receive for one reason or another. If you or someone you know is encountering problems finding the right person, this book will prove helpful. One stage of life that is often filled with problems is the teen years and Rick Johnson has written That’s My Teenage Son: How Moms can Influence their Boys to Become Good Men ($12.99, Revell, softcover) in which he discusses the great influence a boy’s mother has on how well he sees himself as a man and interacts with the world as an adult. For any mother of a teenage son, this book is filled with a wealth of information on the way a boy’s maturing mind, body and emotions are affected during this years and how these changes influence their behavior and needs. It’s a critical time to teach self-discipline, help them develop a healthy emotion life, and prepare them to be healthy adults. These are the years, too, when many young men and women go off to college and Alex Chediak has written Thriving at College ($14.99, Tyndale House Publishers, softcover) to help the generation entering college. With the economy in the tank, it is no surprise that seven in ten graduates do not have a job lined up and many must move back in with mom and dad, often with large debt. Written from a Christian point of view, Chediak notes that at least a quarter of college professors are atheists, compared with just 4% of the U.S. population. Some 70% of young adults will stop attending church. Some useful advice is provided to cope with these and other problems encountered at this critical point in young lives.
Books for Younger Readers
There is a deluge of books for younger readers, particularly pre-teens and teenagers, so it is always a treat when one comes along that is just so thoroughly delightful you want to tell the whole world about it. That’s the case with Saltwater Taffy by Erick Delabarre, as illustrated by R.C. Nason ($15.95, Seven Publishing, distributed by Perseus Books). To date it has been endorsed by nine Teachers of the Year, Delabarre is an award-winning Hollywood director/writer of “Law & Order” fame. The illustrator is equally distinguished. Set in the seaside town of Port Townsend, Washington, the novel follows the lives of five friends as they uncover the secrets of a treasure map that once belonged to the New Orleans pirate, Jean Lafitte. It is one adventure after another as they try to outwit and out-maneuver everyone who wants to intimidate them and/or get their hands on the treasure. It is so well written that one does not want to put it down until the last page. Officially for “middle grade” students, it will please anyone of any age, including me!
A series for younger readers, “I See the Sun”, is a great way to introduce early readers, five to seven years, to the world. The second addition is I See the Sun in Nepal written by Dedie King and illustrated by Judith Inglese ($12.95, Satya House Publications, Hardwick, MA, softcover) It is bilingual, written in English and Nepalese, and it portrays the essential cultural elements of Nepal through the eyes of a child. It is an excellent way to introduce a child to the way the world is made up of different nations, cultures, languages, and such. Coming in 2011 are others in the series devoted to Afghanistan, Russia, and India. The exotic State of Hawaii is the setting for Aloha, Kanani by Lisa Yee ($6.95, American Girl, softcover) that debuted in January, kicking off American Girl’s 25th birthday celebration. Kanani Akina is the 2011 Girl of the Year. She is a warm and cheerful girl, blessed to grow up in Hawaii and sharing the “aloha spirit.” Girls from the middle to later years of elementary school will enjoy this one as Kanani welcomes her cousin from New York, helps to rescue a baby Hawaiian monk seal, or assists older people in her community. Also on the same them from American Girl, is Lend a Hand: Girl-Sized Ways of Helping Others ($9.95, softcover) that offers all kinds of ways to help friends, family, animals, and neighbors for the pre-teen set. You can learn more about it and other titles at www.americangirl.com.
Dog lovers will love Ted Kerasote’s Pukka: The Pup After Merle, the author’s previous dog about whom he wrote “Merle’s Door.” ($18.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Pukka more than fills the hole in Ted’s life after Merle passed away. Filled with color photos from beginning to end, the book is told through Pukka’s eyes as he grows up and discovers the world with his human companions. Any child, aged seven to ten who reads this book will surely want a Pukka in his or her life and, if there is a dog in the family, it will provide many insights regarding the way to raise them and enjoy them.
For the teenager who’s into “texting” there is the more serious problem called “sexting” that can lead to all kinds of trouble. The harsh realities of this are explored in a young adult novel, Never Been Kissed, by Melody Carlson ($9.99, Revell, softcover). All Elise wants is her first kiss before she turns 16, but when a friend’s poor advice and modern communications technology combine, she finds herself on a dangerous path. Accused of “sexting”, she gets kicked out of school. This novel shows teen girls the impact of their choices when it comes to respecting themselves. Revell is famed for practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life and the author has penned more than two hundred books. Check it out at http://www.revellbooks.com/. For the same young adult crowd, there’s The Princess of Las Pulgas by C. Lee McKenzie ($16.95, WestSide Books, Lodi, NJ). This is a gritty story of a girl’s life after her father’s death forces her mother to sell their oceanfront home and move to Las Pulgas, the site of a tough urban high school where Carlie is dubbed the princess for her aloof ways. This is a novel about a difficult process of transition and is timely in difficult economic times. It tells of a challenging learning experience as Carlie learns that not everything is as it seems. The eighth book in the Good Girlz series, Drama Queens, by Reshonda Tate Billingsley ($11.00, Gallery Books, softcover) is all about friendship. The Black Christian national booksellers list ranks the author number one on the list. In this novel, high school is coming to a close for the Good Girlz and Camille, Angel, Alexis, and Jasmine are ecstatic to discover they’ve all been accepted to the same Texas University, Prairie View A&M. Need it be said that changes, many unanticipated, lay ahead? The girls learn a lot about relying on their faith and each other when facing life’s tough decision.
Novels, Novels, Novels
World War II continues to provide the background for novels today and Honor Knows No Borders by John Sharer (iUniverse, softcover) asks a philosophical question of about enemies in war. A dangerous and often fatal pursuit, collecting pieces of bombs is a prime activity for boys in London during WWII in the early 1940s. Young Tom Sloan is no exception. While investigating one ravaged building, he finds more than he expects, an injured German pilot, Hauptman Heinrich Leuzinger, who had ejected from his plane. Leuzinger begs Tom not to turn him in to authorities, but rather to help him see his wife and children again. Tom understands this is a dangerous dilemma for which there could be serious consequences. More than a thousand miles away in the North African desert, the boy's father, Major Bernie Sloan, a British officer and the commandant of a German and Italian POW camp, meets captured German Colonel Hans Dieter Reichmann who tells an unbelievable story. Sloan, a Jew, harbors a deep hatred for Germany and its people. Sloan finds it difficult to believe that Reichmann may have actually saved a Jewish family by smuggling them out of Germany. Both father and son are about to discover that in war, as in life, things are not always as they appear, and people can't always be judged by the uniforms they wear. Rising Tides – Destroyermen: Book Five by Taylor Anderson ($25.95, New American Library) adds a parallel universe to a World War II drama, billed as an “alternative history” series. Apparently military science fiction is a new and popular genre. In this case it involves Lt. Commander Matthew Reddy and the crew of the U.S.S. Walker. As you might imagine, the first four novels in the series did quite well. This one is filled with drama and adventure, plus the extra element of a non-human species that gets involved in the conflict on the high seas.
The novel, Soul Mate, by Ronald Weaver ($14.99, QuestFiction Entertainment, Valley Village, CA) tells the story of Claudia de la Rosa, a 26-year-old, starry-eyed innocent who has just arrived in the glamour-charged world of Beverly Hills to become a high school teacher. One of her students is Lance Van Arden, a handsome, worldly-wise teenager from a wealthy family and both begin to connect in ways that go beyond the teacher-student relationship. Their steamy and blissful private world collides with social norms and raises his parent’s suspicions. In real life such liaisons are forbidden and unlawful, but in the book they become modern folk heroes when their story becomes public knowledge. The author is a senior producer for the soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. I confess, being a guy, I could appreciate The Black Widow Trainer ($14.95, Emerald Book Co., softcover) by Craig Odanovich because it appeals to what most men fantasize about, a hot woman, hot sex, wealth and swanky places. This is not a deep intellectual experience, but it is a highly entertaining one; the first of a series starring Misty the top trainer at a health club on Maui who becomes an independent fitness trainer to some of the world’s most sophisticated and wealthy men who are willing to pay a lot and go the limit to have Misty get them in shape and get them into her bed. This is just old fashion erotic storytelling.
On a far more realistic and, dare I say, mature level, there’s The Bird House by Kelly Simmons ($14.00, Washington Square Press, softcover) that tells the story of a 70-year-old woman’s slide into dementia and her growing bond with her eight-year-old granddaughter who explore family secrets of both the past and present that have the power to either destroy or heal. When her granddaughter asks for her help to work on a paper about the family, she jumps at the chance, but it will be a journey of discovery for both as classic family and personal problems are reexamined. This is Simmons second novel and she demonstrates again her ability to come to grips with powerful and frightening themes. The Mother Who Stayed is a trio of stories by Laura Furman ($15.00, Free Press, softcover.) They each involve a different set of characters whose lives are connected through family, location, or sheer coincidence. The stories were inspired by 23 diaries written between 1874 and 1902 that Furman found in a house she owned in upstate New York. They are an homage to the timeless, primal bond between mother and child, as well as other relationships. They are poignant, memorable, and inspiring. Furman has earned prestigious awards for previous books and this one demonstrates why.
Weeping Underwater Looks A Lot Like Laughter by Michael J. White ($15.00, Berkley, softcover) will further enhance the author’s reputation as one of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers for spring 2010. Teenager George Flynn and his family have just moved to Des Moines, Iowa and, on their first night in town, a young woman is murdered at the hotel in which they are staying. Is it an omen of things to come? By turns witty, charming, and heart-wrenching, this is the debut novel about a young man coming of age under the toughest of circumstances. It is a story of first lovers, unrequited emotions, second lovers, family secrets, and the untold truths that lurk in one’s heart years and years after they’re grown. George’s life will be influenced by the Schell sisters. He is immediately smitten with one, Emily, his classmate and peer, and the perfect counterpoint to her sister, Katie, who has been diagnosed with a baffling case of multiple sclerosis. You will want to go along to learn how these three deal with life’s challenges and upheavals. Finally, for sheer laughter and fun, pick up a copy of Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King’s Daughter by Simon Brett, the first of a series based on two of these characters ($14.95, Felony & Mayhem Press, softcover). Brett is best known for cozy mysteries set in a little English town as one of the grand old men of British mystery since 1975. Set in the 1920s we are introduced to siblings, Blotto, a handsome fellow whose low on brain power, and Twinks, his beautiful and brilliant sister. The result is that rarest of genres, a genuinely funny crime story when the daughter of the exiled king of Mittleleuropa is kidnapped on a visit to Tawcester Towers.
That’s it for February! Do tell all your book-loving friends and family members about Bookviews so they can visit and learn about many books that deserve readers but may not catch the eye of the loftier critics and reviewers. And do come back in March for even more news of the latest and best fiction and nonfiction.
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