August 25, 2009
Non-fiction Books
The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life – Alison Gopnik
“In The Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnik reveals the latest scientific discoveries--many of them quite surprising--about the developing minds of young children. She also presents a richly provocative and endlessly insightful story that unites the endearing other-worldliness of children's imaginations with some of the oldest and most profound questions in philosophy. This book is at once touching, eloquent, and masterful in its fascinating revelations about what makes us human." --Frank J. Suloway, author of Born to Rebel
A Grand Illusion: the Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-party Tyranny – Theresa A. Amato
"A must-read for those interested in getting beyond the status quo in America. Talking about change is easy; Amato offers ways to make it happen." -- Mark R. Brown "Newton D. Baker/Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law, Capital University"
Food, Inc.: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer—And What You Can do About It – Karl Weber
Food, Inc. is guaranteed to shake up our perceptions of what we eat. This powerful documentary deconstructing the corporate food industry in America was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “more than a terrific movie—it’s an important movie.” Aided by expert commentators such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the film poses questions such as: Where has my food come from, and who has processed it? What are the giant agribusinesses and what stake do they have in maintaining the status quo of food production and consumption? How can I feed my family healthy foods affordably?
Expanding on the film’s themes, the book Food, Inc. will answer those questions through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers. This book will encourage those inspired by the film to learn more about the issues, and act to change the world.
Underground: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen – Mark Rudd
With the war in Iraq provoking memories of Vietnam, Rudd gave up a 25-year silence on his role in the radical student movement of the 1960s when he led the Weathermen. The group grew out of the Student for Democratic Society behind massive anti-war and social-justice protests at Columbia University. Rudd recalls his personal journey from idealistic freshman to student radical and the escalating violence that led to the riot during the 1969 Democratic party convention in Chicago and the bombing of a townhouse in Greenwich Village. Rudd spent seven years, from 1970 until 1977, living underground as a federal fugitive before turning himself in. Rudd writes from the perspective of a middle-aged teacher living in New Mexico, still concerned about social justice and heartened by the new administration and growing involvement of young people in politics and civic engagement. He admits shame and guilt about some of the excesses and violence of the radical 1960s, but maintains an enduring pride in the passion and idealism of the time. An engrossing look back at a turbulent time by an iconic figure. --Vanessa Bush (Booklist)
Gringo: Coming of Age in Latin America – Chesa Boudin
“My four parents had always decried the labor abuses perpetuated around the world.” Four? Yes. When Boudin’s radical Jewish parents were imprisoned in New York from the early 1980s, he was raised in Chicago by Weathermen William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Over the last decade, the award-winning Rhodes and Rotary Scholar has interrupted his academic studies to travel to 25 countries across Latin America, and this gripping narrative weaves together his personal journey with his acute, on-the-ground political observation. There is no self-importance, no simplistic message, always the wry awareness that he is the privileged tourist gringo in his cargo pants and multipocketed vest, even as he witnesses ecological devastation, economic crises, and the struggle of the indigenous movements. Down a mine in Bolivia, he is reminded of his regular prison visits to his parents. Even readers who skip the detailed local politics from Venezuela to Colombia will be held by the broader issues, as he confronts the difference between need and want, the value of privacy, the luxury of space. --Hazel Rochman (Booklist)
New CD (Sound Recording)
The Kalahari Typing School for Men – Alexander McCall Smith
The fourth appearance of Precious Ramotswe, protagonist of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and two sequels, is once again a charming account of the everyday challenges facing a female private detective in Botswana. In his usual unassuming style, McCall Smith takes up Ramotswe's story soon after the events described in Tears of the Giraffe. Precious and her fiance, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, still have not set a wedding date, but they continue to nurture the sibling orphans in their care, as well as the entrepreneurial ambitions of Precious's assistant, Mma Makutsi, who sets out to open a typing school for men. Along the way, Ramotswe handles a few cases and negotiates the arrival of a rival detective in Gaborone. The competition, a sexist detective who boasts of New York City street smarts, proves a delicious foil to his distaff counterpart. A moral component enters the story in the person of a successful engineer who wishes to atone for his past sins. He enlists Ramotswe to help him find the woman he has wronged, and this case comes to a satisfying yet hardly sentimental conclusion. But the real appeal of this slender novel is Ramotswe's solid common sense, a proficient blend of folk wisdom, experience and simple intelligence. She is a bit of a throwback to the days of courtesy and manners, and casts disapproving glances at the apprentices in her fiance's auto shop who obsess about girls instead of garage protocol. A dose of easy humor laces the pages, as McCall Smith throws in wry observations, effortlessly commenting on the vagaries his protagonist encounters as she negotiates Botswana bureaucracy. This is another graceful entry in a pleasingly modest and wise series. – Publishers Weekly
Fiction Books
South of Broad: A Novel – Pat Conroy
The publishing event of the season: The one and only Pat Conroy returns, with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and to lifelong friendship.
Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Medusa: A Novel from the NUMA Files – Clive Cussler
Kurt Austin must stop a deadly virus from decimating the world in the latest NUMA Files novel. Research using a newly discovered jellyfish shows promising results, but before the tests even start, scientists studying these Blue Medusas start dying. As the pandemic threatens to spread through China, the NUMA team realizes that a Chinese triad is behind the outbreak. Now in their eighth adventure, Austin and partner Zavala are becoming almost as entertaining as Dirk Pitt and his gang. Some clunky dialogue and an ending right out of a Scooby Doo cartoon hurt a bit, but Cussler fans will stick around for the action. --Jeff Ayers (Booklist)
Relentless: A Novel – Dean R. Koontz
“An exquisite crafting of the thrilling, the unexplainable, and the personal, with the mirth and whimsy that Koontz throws in seemingly effortlessly just when it's most needed and least expected.”—Library Journal, starred review
That Old Cape Magic – Richard Russo
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
August 18, 2009
New Fiction
The Scarecrow – Michael Connelly
Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paper to write the definitive murder story of his career. He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. The kid might actually be innocent.
The Private Patient – P.D. James
In James's stellar 14th Adam Dalgliesh mystery (after 2006's The Lighthouse), the charismatic police commander knows the case of Rhoda Gradwyn, a 47-year-old journalist murdered soon after undergoing the removal of an old disfiguring scar at a private plastic surgery clinic in Dorset, may be his last; James's readers will fervently hope it isn't. Dalgliesh probes the convoluted tangle of motives and hidden desires that swirl around the clinic, Cheverell Manor, and its grimly fascinating suspects in the death of Gradwyn, herself a stalker of minds driven by her lifelong passion for rooting out the truth people would prefer left unknown and then selling it for money. Beyond the book's central moral concern, James meditates on universal problems like aging (the amorphous flattening of self) and the government's education policy, which targets 50% of the young as university-bound while ensuring that another 40% are uneducated on leaving secondary school. Against her relentless intellectual view of our dying earth, James pits the love she finally grants Dalgleish—sufficient to reinvigorate hope and faith so rare in both fiction and reality today. –Publishers Weekly
And Sometimes Why – Rebecca Johnson
In her first novel, And Sometimes Why, Rebecca Johnson has managed to do an unlikely thing: deliver a perfectly pleasant, even enjoyable, read about a sad subject: the tragic accident of a lovely 16-year-old girl. Readers hurrying away from such a depressing premise should be reassured. And Sometimes Why will not be painful to read, and it will not leave you devastated. It is smart, sharply observant, even gently funny, but it is interested in our haplessness as much as our grief, in our survival rather than our undoing. –Washington Post
The Language of Bees: A Mary Russell Novel – Laurie R. King
In a case that will push their relationship to the breaking point, Mary Russell must help reverse the greatest failure of her legendary husband’s storied past—a painful and personal defeat that still has the power to sting…this time fatally.
For Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, returning to the Sussex coast after seven months abroad was especially sweet. There was even a mystery to solve--the unexplained disappearance of an entire colony of bees from one of Holmes’s beloved hives. But the anticipated sweetness of their homecoming is quickly tempered by a galling memory from her husband’s past. Mary had met Damian Adler only once before, when the promising surrealist painter had been charged with--and exonerated from--murder. Now the talented and troubled young man was enlisting their help again, this time in a desperate search for his missing wife and child. When it comes to communal behavior, Russell has often observed that there are many kinds of madness. And before this case yields its shattering solution, she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to a bizarre religious cult, from the demimonde of the Café Royal at the heart of Bohemian London to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced--a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart.
Road Dogs – Elmore Leonard
Road Dogs opens with Foley on the van to prison with Cundo Rey, a pint-size Cuban who soon engineers their early release--legally, this time. Jack's happy to be out and enjoying the California hospitality of Cundo and his wife Dawn (both Leonard veterans too, from LaBrava and Riding the Rap). But Dawn is lovely and wily (and maybe a psychic), Cundo is a murderously jealous husband who may well think Jack owes him big-time, and Jack? Well, when you've robbed a hundred-twenty or so banks, is it that easy to go straight? As so often with Leonard, the real fun is less in the action than the talk, especially from Foley, the pleasure-minded, level-headed hood: an ex-con whose biggest con may be that he is exactly who he says he is. --Tom Nissley
The Long Fall – Walter Mosley
Mosley leaves behind the Los Angeles setting of his Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series (Devil in a Blue Dress, etc.) to introduce Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, who promises to be as complex and rewarding a character as Mosley's ever produced. McGill, a 53-year-old former boxer who's still a fighter, finds out that putting his past life behind him isn't easy when someone like Tony The Suit Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl. McGill shares Easy's knack for earning powerful friends by performing favors and has some of the toughness of Fearless, but he's got his own dark secrets and hard-won philosophy. New York's racial stew is different than Los Angeles's, and Mosley stirs the pot and concocts a perfect milieu for an engaging new hero and an entertaining new series. –Publishers Weekly
Off Season – Anne Rivers Siddons
No one does coastal melodrama like veteran Siddons (Homeplace). Lilly Constable McCall, 53, has led an enviable life—marriage and children with a successful architect, her own success as a sculptor—but husband Cam's death sends her spiraling. She returns to the coastal family cottage in Edgewater, Maine, where she spent her childhood, and where Cam died. There, she recalls the summer of 1962, and the arrival in town of new girl Peaches Davenport, who envies all Lilly has. That includes the attentions of attractive older boy Jon Lowell, who awakens grown-up feelings in Lilly's 11-year-old heart. But it's Lilly's place as the daughter of a Washington, D.C., professor and the sporadically successful painter and activist Elizabeth Constable—that makes Lilly's childhood most attractive to Peaches, and to readers. Jon may have shared her first kiss, and Cam her home and children, but it's the changing relationship between Lilly and the elusive, enigmatic Elizabeth that makes this story fresh. –Publishers Weekly
The Baptism of Billy Bean: A Novel – Roger Alan Skipper
Lane Hollar, the manly hero of Skipper's riveting second novel (after Tear Down the Mountain), feels right at home in his West Virginia bait shop, where he helps care for his 12-year-old grandson, Toby, when daughter-in-law Darlene is working. (Lane, a widower and Vietnam vet, is estranged from his only son, Frank, Toby's father.) One misty day, while Lane and Toby are fishing on a boat in the town lake, they hear a truck approaching that they recognize as belonging to fellow fisherman Billy Bean; they hear Billy's canoe slide into the water. Two men appear to be in the canoe, though Billy always fishes alone. Lane and Toby hear a splash. Later, the pair find Billy's empty canoe with blood on it. Certain Billy is still in the water, Lane calls the sheriff's department, and a search leads to Billy's body. When his death is written off as accidental, Lane is unconvinced and unable to let things be, even though his efforts to uncover the truth put him at odds with local lawmen and even endanger his family. Pitch-perfect dialogue, a skillfully drawn supporting cast and a memorable portrait of the changing face of Appalachia enhance this impressive character study. – Publishers Weekly
The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama. –Publishers Weekly
August 4, 2009
Non-fiction
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education – Craig M. Mullaney
Young Captain Mullaney’s admirable, literate autobiography, that of a veteran of combat in Afghanistan, adds much to knowledge of the modern army and makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate over what a “warrior” is these days. Mullaney wryly recounts his years at West Point and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, then writes eloquently of infantry combat and the persistent burden of guilt for not bringing all his men home even as he makes his account a tribute to his fellow warriors. He concludes with sidelights on his teaching post at the U.S. Naval Academy and the moving story of his younger brother’s graduation from West Point and subsequent passage into the ranks of the warriors himself. Almost impossible to put down for anyone interested in the modern U.S. Army or in modern warfare in general. --Roland Green (Booklist)
The End of Food – Paul Roberts
This potentially interesting investigation into the challenges of global food production and distribution is marred by the burial of its argument at the end of the book. Beneath a history of food (old news to any reader of Michael Pollan), factoid avalanches and future-tense fretting, Roberts (The End of Oil) makes a familiar plea for rethinking food systems. When the author illustrates his points with actual players, the narrative becomes affecting and memorable: a French meat packer shows how retail powerhouses dictate prices; a Kenyan farmer demonstrates how hunger-ending technologies are often poorly suited to the climates, soils and infrastructures in malnourished regions. Unfortunately, these anecdotes are overshadowed by colorless recitations of Internet research and data culled from interviews. Roberts worries about our vast and overworked [food] system and proffers the usual solutions: eat less (land-based) meat, farm more fish, support regional (not just local) agriculture and pressure food policy makers to fund research into more sustainable farming methods (including genetic modification). Despite the undeniable urgency of the issue, Roberts's arguments are as commonplace as his prescriptions. –Publishers Weekly
10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care – Mary O'Brien, Martha Livingston, and John Conyers
As the number of uninsured Americans reaches epic numbers, here's a concise and convincing guide that explains why national health care is the only approach that makes sense.
The iPhone Pocket Guide: All the Secrets of the iPhone – Christopher Breen
Here is your essential companion to Apple’s iPhone! The iPhone Pocket Guide, Third Edition covers all iPhone models including the new iPhone 3G. Unlike other iPhone books, The iPhone Pocket Guide, Third Edition was written based on the final release of iPhone 2.0 software and the iPhone 3G, and the content accurately reflects the design of your iPhone 3G and how you will use it.
Turn Me On: 100 Easy Ways to Use Solar Energy – Michelle Kodis
HERE COMES THE SUN! With page after page of creative and innovative ideas for using this limitless form of energy, as well as thoughtfully compiled lists of useful resources, Turn Me On is an introductory guide to understanding the exciting advances in a progressing technology that harnesses the boundless power of the sun to bring us clean, renewable energy.
The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champaign Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It – Tilar J. Mazzeo
The Widow Clicquot is someone we should all know about....Long a shadowy, legend-obscured figure, in Tilar Mazzeo's agile hands the widow sheds her weeds and takes form before our eyes as a distinctly modern entrepreneur....The result is narrative history that fizzes with life and feeling. --Benjamin Wallace, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Billionaire's Vinegar
Whole Foods Diet Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Optimal Health – Ivy Ingram Larson and Andrew Larson
For people who are tired of counting calories, carbs, fats, and points, this book makes nutrition count instead. Whole foods are nutrient-rich foods-those foods that offer a complete balance in nutritional value while in their natural, unrefined, unprocessed state. They are high in antioxidants, phytochemicals, and essential fats and oils, and low in saturated fats and sugar. Whole Foods Diet Cookbook includes chapters to educate the reader, and plenty of delicious menus for every occasion. It provides a three-prong culinary approach to healthy living, weight loss, and disease and illness prevention.
Prefab Green – Michelle Kaufmann
In PREFAB GREEN, architect Michelle Kaufmann shares her vision of creating thoughtful, sustainable design for everyone. Her firm, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, blends sustainable home layouts, eco-friendly materials, and low-energy options to create a "prepackaged" green solution to home design. Kaufmann tells about five eco-principles that are present in every design her firm creates-smart design, eco-materials, energy efficiency, water conservation, and healthy environment-and how each work together to create homes that make a difference.
Mariachi – Patricia Greathouse
Mariachi is more than the music of trumpets and violins: it is the makings of a celebration, a party, a wedding, a festival, or a concert. Mariachi music has evolved from local musicians playing in small Mexican villages to professional artists now appearing in concert halls, sports arenas, and performance stages throughout the world, including the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. It is taught in thousands of classrooms throughout the United States. In Mariachi, tales of life as a mariachi are interwoven with enlightening biographies and interviews of mariachi greats, favorite song lyrics, and recipes from the mariachi culture. Fascinating archival photos adorn the pages. This well-rounded book of history and celebration captures the world of mariachi within Mexico and the United States and how it has developed into a mainstream musical genre. Viva mariachi!
Hubert Harrison: the Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 – Jeffrey Babcock Perry
"Entrusted with the remains of Hubert Harrison's papers, Jeffrey B. Perry favors us with this meticulous chronicle of one of the century's most influential voices for democracy and freedom. Harrison, island-born, colonial subject, and immigrant, stirred the masses in Harlem, at the time the center of Black radical thought, to a "new race-consciousness" and an apprehension of "their powers and destiny"" in the United States and world. Hubert Harrison testifies to the remarkable durability of lives well lived and truths told straight." --Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University, and author of Island World: A History of Hawai'i and the United States
American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone – D.D. Guttenplan
At his death, reporter and amateur classicist I.F. Stone was hailed as an iconoclast of journalism, a dogged investigator and a concise and clever writer, an American institution and a journalist's journalist. At the same time, he was called wrongheaded and accused of being a KGB agent. In this sometimes workmanlike but often animated biography, Guttenplan (The Holocaust on Trial) provides a lively portrait of a journalist who was as passionate about radical politics and getting a story right as he was about ballroom dancing. Drawing on interviews with Stone's family and friends, the complete archive of Stone's writings—including fragments of letters—and two previous biographies of Stone, Guttenplan traces his subject's life and career from Stone's early upbringing as Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia and his days as a college dropout to his birth as one of America's premier journalists in the pages of the Nation, PM and eventually his own I.F. Stone's Weekly. A brilliant gadfly and independent thinker, Stone was at once cozy with New Deal politicians and union leaders. He reported undercover from Palestine as he accompanied Holocaust survivors through a British blockade and became a hero of America's Jews. Guttenplan's lively biography brings back to life a man whose work has often been forgotten but whose writing and life provide a model for the kind of freethinking journalism missing in society today. –Publishers Weekly