Book News and New Book Reviews
Just a sampling of our new materials (right side)!
by Alan Ehrenhalt (Get the Book)
In the future, American cities could look like late-nineteenth-century Vienna, with lively, affluent metropolitan core areas and the lower classes consigned to life in peripheral suburbs. Such cities will go well beyond gentrification and involve the displacement of the poor in inner-city areas by the wealthy, according to urbanologist Ehrenhalt. He details how the trend toward such cities is already apparent in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Houston, and other metropolitan areas. Drawing on census data and economic research, he examines the factors behind the trend, including mass transit, retail and housing development in downtown locations, and the declining appeal of long commutes to distant suburbs. Ehrenhalt also offers detailed portraits of the future of suburban sprawl in areas struggling to re-create the appeal of cities by developing more accessible commercial zones. This is an engaging look at demographic changes that promise a very different future for cities and suburbs. --Booklist
by Jonathan Dee (Get the Book)
A Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Privileges (2010), Dee is adept at meshing the complexities of marriage and family life with the paradoxes of the zeitgeist. In his sixth meticulously lathed and magnetizing novel, he riffs on the practice of crisis management, beginning with the abrupt end to the seemingly happy home of lawyer Ben, housewife Helen, and their 14-year-old adopted Chinese daughter, Sara. After Ben's scandalous self-destruction, Helen heads resolutely into Manhattan and manages to get a job at a shabby little public-relations agency. There she convinces clients desperate to repair their public image to apologize for their bad behavior and ask for forgiveness, a radical approach in a field dedicated to deception. When she tries to help movie megastar Hamilton, with whom she grew up and who is now facing the abyss, everything comes to a boil. In this cunning novel of selfishness, despair, and second chances, Dee nets the absurdities of a society geared to communicate in a thousand electronic modes while those closest to each other can barely make eye connect. --Booklist
by Chip Heath (Get the Book)
The Heath brothers, a Stanford University Graduate School of Business professor and a senior fellow at Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship respectively and coauthors of Switch and Made to Stick, tackle the problems of decision-making, and all the failures that come with it. To help with the decision making process, the authors approached it from four principles that they refer to as the "WRAP model": Widen your options; Reality test your assumptions; Attain distance before deciding; and Prepare to be wrong. Each principle is given several chapters, with examples provided for putting these approaches into practice. Breaking out of a narrow framework to recognize other options, for example, is approached through methods such as considering opportunity costs and the vanishing options test. The writing is humorous and often surprising, a tool that the authors use to great effect when sharing such examples as David Lee Roth's obsession with brown M&Ms. Coupled with their insightful analyses, the book proves particularly insightful. --Publishers Weekly
by Karen Russell (Get the Book)
Russell's electrically original short stories propelled her into the literary limelight, then her first novel, Swamplandia! (2011), was chosen as finalist for the Pulitzer and the first Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. In her third book, she returns to the story form with renewed daring, leading us again into uncharted terrain, though as fantastic as the predicaments she imagines are, the emotions couldn't be truer to life as we usually know it. So even though the troubles of a long-married couple are complicated by the fact that they are vampires, and she can transform herself into a bat while he can only pose as a small, kindly Italian grandfather, their catastrophic heartache is all human. The same holds true for the courage and ingenuity Kitsune summons in confronting the horror of her brutal metamorphosis and enslavement in a Japanese silk mill. Ditto for President Rutherford Hayes when he finds himself reincarnated in the body of a horse. From the grueling Food Chain Games in Antarctica to terror on the prairie in the sod-house era, Russell, in the same vein as Jim Shepard and George Saunders though unique in her outlook, continues her mind-blowing, mythic, macabre, hilarious, and tender inquiry into the profound link between humans and animals, and what separates us. --Booklist
by Oliver Horowitz (Get the Book)
Horovitz, a wunderkind of sorts, chronicles his glorious times as a caddie trainee at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland, a prestigious golf landmark. With the energy and joy of youth, he describes his "gap year," when he took time off before entering Harvard, to which he was accepted at age 17. During that year, he joined the caddie squad at the historic site, with its challenging fairways. A caddie since age 12, Horovitz enjoys the competition of the caddies, the oft-repeated golf tales, the stern discipline of his by-the-book caddie master in the shack, and the pressure to excel at his duties of looping on the links. His interaction with the group of "pretty" university girls, deemed "Model Caddies," is wondrous, as he learns several life lessons from them and the other caddies buzzing around them. Taking a full course load at Harvard while juggling caddie summers at St. Andrews, Horovitz shares his deeply felt memories of golf, girls, and the academy boldly, never taking himself too seriously or being irreverent about the caddie tradition on the time-honored Old Course links. --Publishers Weekly
by Glenn Frankel (Get the Book)
This is not your typical making-of book. Frankel covers the production of the classic 1956 John Ford movie based on Alan LeMay's equally respected novel, but he also discusses in a lot more detail the story on which LeMay's book was based. It might come as a surprise to fans of the movie and its literary inspiration to learn the basic story is true. In nineteenth-century Texas, Comanches really did attack a homestead, killing many people and making off with several others, including nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker, who was found years later and restored to her family. LeMay and, later, Ford fictionalized the story, altering its chronology (in reality, Cynthia Ann Parker lived with the Comanches for 24 years) and added new elements (John Wayne's character veers rather sharply from its historical inspiration). The author takes us through the historical story before examining the production of Ford's film, allowing us to see not just how a movie is made but also how it can alter reality while maintaining the real story's power. A must-read for film students, making-of fans, and students of American history. --Booklist
by Susan Elizabeth (Get the Book)
Phillips, the only four-time winner of the Romance Writers of America's Favorite Book of the Year Award, picks up the story she began in Call Me Irresistible (2011) with Lucy Jorick, an ex-president's daughter who knows that beggars can't be choosers. Especially one who has just abandoned her too-good-to-be-true fiance, Ted Beaudine, at the altar and now has the entire town of Wynette hot on her tail. So when bad-to-the-bone biker Panda offers Lucy a lift on his motorcycle, Lucy swallows any and all hesitations and climbs on board. What starts out as a fast getaway quickly turns into an unforgettable road trip with a man who would be right at home in a cave with a club. When Lucy begins investigating her road warrior, she discovers a few unexpected things about Panda, but learns even more about herself. With her latest flawlessly written romance, Phillips delivers the kind of complex, realistically complicated characters and richly emotional love story her fans have come to expect. Fueled with incendiary sexual chemistry, and deliciously witty, The Great Escape is another jewel from one of the genre's most incandescent stars. --Booklist
by Karen Houppert (Get the Book)
Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court guaranteed in Gideon v. Wainright the right to free counsel to all defendants facing the possibility of imprisonment if they were unable to procure it themselves. Today, more than 80 percent of defendants are represented by public defenders. Here, Houppert (contributing writer, Washington Post Magazine; Home Fires Burning: Married to the Military-for Better or Worse) takes up the call of Anthony Lewis's classic Gideon's Trumpet and examines what has changed-and what has not-in the past five decades. What results is a stinging indictment of a system of indigent defense, a widespread failure that, the author claims, dooms the nation's poor to being represented by insufficient counsel, unwise plea bargains, and wrongful convictions. Houppert examines public defense systems in Washington, Louisiana, and Georgia and follows illustrative cases: a teenager facing vehicular manslaughter charges, a prisoner who has served nearly 30 years for a crime he did not commit, and a defendant facing the death penalty. -VERDICT Fluent and fluid, Houppert's book has all the urgency this subject demands and is a page-turner. Alternately thrilling and gut-riling, this book will grab and hold lovers of great nonfiction. --Library Journal
by Gregory David Roberts (Get the Book)
A thousand pages is like a thousand pounds--it sounds like too much to deal with. Nevertheless, Roberts' very long novel sails along at an amazingly fast clip. Readers in the author's native Australia apparently finished every page of it, for they handed it considerable praise. Now U.S. readers can enjoy this rich saga based on Roberts' own life: escape from a prison in Australia and a subsequent flight to Bombay, which is exactly what happens to Lindsay, the main character in the novel; once in Bombay, he joins the city's underground. Roberts graphically, even beautifully, evokes that milieu--he is as effective at imparting impressions as any good travel writer--in this complex but cohesive story about freedom and the lack of it, about survival, spiritual meaning, love, and sex; in other words, about life in what has to be one of the most fascinating cities in the world. One's first impression of this novel is that it is simply a good story, but one soon comes to realize that Roberts is also a gifted creator of characters--not only Lindsay but also Prabaker, who becomes Lindsay's guide, caretaker, and entree into various elements of Bombay society. Soon, too, one becomes aware and appreciative of Roberts' felicitous writing style. In all, despite the novel's length, it is difficult not to be ensnared by it. And, be forewarned, it will be popular. --Booklist
by George Dickie (Get the Book)
Dickie provides an excellent introduction to the arcane process of evaluating art. Although he writes for an audience already familiar with the current philosophical debates on art, his style is clear enough that anyone can follow his arguments. By analyzing the crucial points in the writings of philosophers like Nelson Goodman and Monroe Beardsley, Dickie provides simultaneously an overview of the most important theories and the justifications for his own position. Dickie reaches the conclusion that there are no "strong principles" by which art can be judged, only "weak principles." He states that is only "possible to grade works of art by their position in comparison matrices." No single matrix exists for all works of art. This book offers the undergraduate and advanced philosophy student a ready guide through the intricacies of contemporary aesthetics. For readers more interested in learning about actual art criticism, a better book would be David Carrier's Artwriting. --Choice
by Matthew Quick (Get the Book)
Pat Peoples, the endearing narrator of this touching and funny debut, is down on his luck. The former high school history teacher has just been released from a mental institution and placed in the care of his mother. Not one to be discouraged, Pat believes he has only been on the inside for a few months--rather than four years--and plans on reconciling with his estranged wife. Refusing to accept that their "apart time" is actually a permanent separation, Pat spends his days and nights feverishly trying to become the man she had always desired. Our hapless hero makes a "friend" in Tiffany, the mentally unstable, widowed sister-in-law of his best friend, Ronnie. Each day as Pat heads out for his 10-mile run, Tiffany silently trails him, refusing to be shaken off by the object of her affection. The odd pair try to navigate a timid friendship, but as Pat is unable to discern friend from foe and reality from deranged optimism, every day proves to be a cringe-worthy adventure. Pat is as sweet as a puppy, and his offbeat story has all the markings of a crowd-pleaser. --Publishers Weekly
by Leila Schneps (Get the Book)
A mother-daughter team of mathematicians turn the potentially dry topic of statistics and probability theory into an entertaining tour of courtroom calculations gone wrong. Schneps and Colmez structure their investigation around high-profile trials in which a mathematical premise was misused, therefore resulting in a possible miscarriage of justice. The cases they describe are independently interesting, and the mathematical overlay makes them doubly so. Each of the 10 chapters begins with a description of the relevant misapplied mathematical premise, then dives into the details of the cases themselves. Defendants past and present people the pages, including Alfred Dreyfus, the scapegoat for an infamous late-19th-century French spy scandal; Hetty Green, "the witch of Wall Street;" Charles Ponzi, whose eponymous scheme was his and-nearly 90 years later-Bernie Madoff's downfall; and Amanda Knox, the supposed culprit of an internationally notorious 2009 murder in Italy. The mathematics tackled are not trivial, but as the problems are unraveled and the correct analyses explained, readers will enjoy a satisfying sense of discovery. Schneps and Coleman write with lucidity and an infectious enthusiasm, making this an engaging and unique blend of true crime and mathematics. --Publishers Weekly
by Jojo Moyes (Get the Book)
In The Last Letter from Your Lover (2011), Moyes presented a heavily plotted novel that spanned decades and featured parallel romances. Her newest work dials down the intricacy, and the result is a far more intimate novel. Moyes introduces us first to Will Traynor, a formerly high-flying, thrill-seeking executive now confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. Twentysomething Louisa Lou Clark has been hired as his caretaker, despite a total lack of experience. As the prickly Will and plainspoken Lou gradually warm to each other, she learns that the six-month length of her contract coincides with the amount of time Will has agreed, for his parents' sake, to postpone his planned assisted suicide, a subject Moyes treats evenhandedly. Armed with this information, Lou sets about creating adventures for Will, hoping to give him a reason to live. Simultaneously, Will encourages Lou to expand the expectations of what her life could be. All signs point to romance and a happy ending for the pair, but Moyes has something more heartbreakingly truthful in mind: Sometimes love isn't enough. --Booklist
by Julianne Couch (Get the Book)
Flip a switch and voila, the lights come on. Bump up the thermostat, and kiss that winter chill goodbye. It's magic, really, or might as well be for all the average user knows about the origin of the electricity that makes one's life run smoother, brighter, warmer, faster. To investigate such established sources of energy as nuclear, natural gas, and coal as well as cutting-edge technologies involving wind, solar, hydropower, tidal, and biomass production, Couch traveled from her resource-rich home state, Wyoming, to visit producers of various forms of electrical power around the country. Whether motivated by concerns over global warming, disturbed by the nation's dependency on foreign suppliers, or troubled by the depletion of natural resources, the debate over how to become a more energy-efficient nation is, well, a highly charged one. There is no simple solution, and no process is perfect, but as Couch demonstrates, all have important roles to play in our nation's energy policy. In clear and straightforward terms, Couch demystifies the science and takes an equitable and even-handed approach to the politics involved in energy production. The result is an accessible primer and essential guide to crucial issues surrounding critical challenges. --Booklist
by Eleanor Lincoln Morse (Get the Book)
When he sees his activist friend thrown under a train by the apartheid defense force in 1976, medical student Isaac Muthe the gets himself smuggled in a hearse across the border from South Aftrica to Botswana, where he finds work as a gardener for Alice Mendelssohn (Don't call me Madam), from Rhode Island, who is studying the cave paintings of the earliest humans, the ancient San people. Can Isaac get a letter to his mother in South Africa? Alice is in love with Ian, her English neighbor, whose secret mission is to cut cattle-farm wire fences so that wild animals can roam free and not perish for lack of water. Then Isaac is extradited and tortured. From the first page, the moving personal stories dramatize the big issues of ecology, politics, borders, race relations, art, and history. The rock art of the first nomadic peoples is beyond tourism. And the loss of thousands of wild animals left dying of thirst by fences put up to protect cattle ranches will strike a universal chord. --Booklist
by Taylor Branch (Get the Book)
In this brief book, Pulitzer Prize-winner Branch draws on his Parting the Waters (1989), Pillar of Fire (1998), and At Canaan's Edge (2006) to recall the pivotal moments of the civil rights struggle. He focuses on 18 historical turning points, includingMartin Luther King's first public address, before the Montgomery bus boycott, in 1955; the March on Washington, in 1963; King's Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964; the expansion of the civil rights movement into an antiwar movement; the expansion of the struggle from the South to the North in the campaign to end segregated housing in Chicago; King's response to the rising black power movement; the antipoverty crusade, of 1967; and King's death in Memphis, in 1968. Each turning point is treated in a separate chapter that begins with a brief historical context that links them together. Photographs enhance this sweeping review of the civil rights movement and King's relationships with several major figures, including J. Edgar Hoover, John and Robert Kennedy, and President Johnson, as the movement broadened its scope from civil rights to human rights. --Booklist
by Dana Stabenow (Get the Book)
In the twentieth novel in the Kate Shugak series, the part-time private investigator teams with her friend and occasional lover, Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, to try to solve the murder of a young man. It's a complicated situation. The murdered man lived in the village of Kushtaka, and the prime suspect lives in the neighboring village of Kuskulana. The two villages have been bitter rivals for a long time (Kushtaka is a traditional Alaskan village; Kuskulana is more modern and more prosperous), and the elders of neither village seem interested in helping Jim and Kate get to the bottom of things. Jim, a representative of the state, is counting on Kate's tribal connections to help smooth the investigation, but Kate, a native Aleut, soon discovers her connections don't seem to mean much here. Long-time devotees of this popular series will devour the book in a single sitting, and if there happen to be any fans of Alaska-set mystery fiction books by John Straley, for example, or Sue Henry who have not yet made the acquaintance of Kate Shugak, they should change that sooner rather than later. --Booklist
by Fawzia Koofi (Get the Book)
Koofi, Afghanistan's first female parliament deputy speaker, tells her heartbreaking life story and, through the letters she writes to her two daughters, shares her hopes for their future, which are interspersed throughout the book. The unwanted 19th daughter of an MP of Badakhshan-one of the country's poorest, wildest, and most remote provinces-Koofi learns early on how difficult it is to be female in Afghanistan's patriarchal society, where wives of poor rural farmers are considered less valuable than the goats they tend. She grows up among her extended family (until her father's assassination in 1978 results in her eventually moving to Kabul with her mother and becoming the first girl in her family to attend school). Set against Afghanistan's war-torn history-the invasion of the Soviets, the mujahedeen's civil war, the brutality of the Taliban-Koofi's amazing life reveals itself in a series of candid chapters. Coming of age as the Taliban takes control, she's forced to interrupt her medical studies and witness her country's regression to the "Dark Ages." She flees to her native province, eventually becoming an MP in Hamid Karzai's new government, where she represents the same people her father did. Highlighting the resilience, values, and culture of the Afghan people, this moving narrative provides an evocative portrait of a battered country as it pleads with the world's powers not to abandon the fight and risk the government's fragile stability. --Publishers Weekly
by Anne Canadeo (Get the Book)
Yarn shop owner Maggie Messina is heading to the country with her knitting group for a relaxing day at Laughing Llama Farm. The opening day at Ben and Ellie Krueger's farm was supposed to be their dream come true, but instead the fiber festival devolves into chaos when someone shoots at the llamas. Maggie's group soon learns this is not the first time the Kruegers have been victims of harassment; their conflicts with local land preservationists and other farmers make for a long list of suspects. When the malice turns deadly, Maggie and her knitters struggle to discover who would want to harm such gentle beasts and drive their friends away. VERDICT In her fifth appearance (after Till Death Do Us Purl), Maggie and her group are as efficient with their investigation as they are with their knitting needles, and the issues of land preservation give a focal point to the story.
by Becky Aikman (Get the Book)
Former Newsday reporter Aikman lost her husband to cancer while still in her forties. After several discouraging experiences in bereavement support groups, she assembled her own collection of young widowed women like herself, who sought to honor their husbands' memories and rebuild their lives. It was an eclectic ensemble: Tara, a well-put-together mother of two whose husband died of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Marcia, a corporate lawyer with a crooked smile and a hidden wit; contemplative Denise, who found solace in yoga; sensuous self-made entrepreneur Dawn; and Lesley, a homemaker who returned home one day to find that her husband had taken his life. The women met once a month, sharing meals, visiting museums, and even traveling to Morocco in an adventure that is one of the highlights of the book. Laughter and tears abounded as they comforted and confided in one another. Aikman tells this life-affirming tale with compassion and candor, revealing her own emotional journey and eventual romance with a man who has her considering marriage again. --Booklist
by Ann Leary (Get the Book)
Wendover's top-flight real-estate agent, Hildy Good, was always the life of the party. Not only could she drink everyone under the table; she'd also capitalize on her heritage as the descendant of one of Salem's persecuted witches by performing convincing mind-reading tricks that wowed with their accuracy. While Hildy admits the mentalist bit is a sham, the drinking's the real thing, one that forces her family to stage an intervention that lands her in rehab. Alas, the treatment doesn't take. Once out, Hildy drinks alone and in secret, until newcomer Rebecca McAllister comes to town. A kindred spirit burdened by an unhappy marriage, Rebecca shares her wine and her secrets about her affair with local psychologist Peter Newbold, insidiously pulling Hildy into her Fatal Attraction-like obsession. As Hildy recoils from Rebecca's delusional fantasies, her drinking escalates to dangerous levels. Leary's powerfully perceptive and smartly nuanced portrait of the perils of alcoholism is enhanced by her spot-on depiction of staid New England village life and the redemption to be found in traditions and community. --Booklist
by Daniel Brook (Get the Book)
As different as the origins of St. Petersburg, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Dubai are, they share a characteristic as historical outposts of Western trade, architecture, and culture. Author Brook explores the ramifications in chronicles of each city, prominent among which are tensions between the modernizing influences of these cities and the traditional customs of the countries in which they are situated. If these four cities have looked outward as nodes of international commerce, at their backs in their hinterlands were always social forces and political movements with the potential to throttle the capitalist festivities. Within general narratives of when this happened the Communist revolutions in Russia and China; socialist economics in India Brook expresses a visual sense of each city's major streets and landmark buildings, describing and interpreting them through their builders' ambitions for the future, be it a grand train station in colonial Bombay or the world's tallest building in Dubai. Priming readers with the histories of these cities, including their politics and cosmopolitan demographics, Brook enthusiastically engages at the intersection of urban affairs and globalization. --Booklist
by Jamaica Kinkaid (Get the Book)
A decade after her last novel, Mr. Potter (2002), Kincaid returns to fiction with a vengeance. Her urgent subject has always been her life in Antigua and America imaginatively and courageously transformed into a microcosm of the crimes, psychic pain, and social aberration unleashed in the fateful year of 1492. In this furious, funny, and sorrowful tirade and lament, Kincaid meshes autobiography with archetypes as the unraveling of an unlikely marriage turns into a heightened, hypnotic, and shrewdly complex inquiry into time, alienation, and metamorphosis. Mrs. Sweet, a wife, mother, gardener, and writer living in Vermont, loves and adores her children, no matter how much they baffle and exhaust her. Athletic Heracles surrounds himself with toy armies. Persephone is often hidden and out of reach. Kincaid's foray into myth is profound and unnervingly surreal as Mrs. Sweet is forced to recognize that small, brooding Mr. Sweet, a frustrated musician and composer, now hates her. The gathering storm of her rage, anguish, and regret propels her on a holy journey into her past and our collective history. Kincaid has created a measured, bewitching, and metaphysical fable, as well as a venomous, acidly comic, and plangent tale of love, betrayal, and loss that is at once slashingly personal and radiantly universal in its mystery, passion, and catharsis. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A national tour and publicity campaign will herald the publication of the first novel in 10 years by the distinctive, much-acclaimed, and fearless Kincaid. --Booklist
by Pete Fornatale (Get the Book)
Fornatale, the noted disc jockey, radio host, and musical historian who died in 2012, opened the first program of his brand-new radio show in 1969 with a Rolling Stones song. By then the Stones were worldwide superstars, but, as Fornatale recounts in this profusely illustrated oral history of the band, there were some rocky times in the early days. Then back-to-back singles of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and Get Off of My Cloud catapulted them into international stardom. That was 47 years ago. The book features interviews with not only the Stones but also fellow musicians, film directors, music-industry execs, journalists. Given its wide scope 50 years of Stones history the text necessarily skims the surface, and readers looking, for example, for new revelations about the death of original guitarist Brian Jones, or Mick's relationship with Marianne Faithfull, might be a bit disappointed. On the other hand, the book does a good job of covering the band's half-century history in broad strokes, giving us a nice look at the Stones as musicians, celebrities, and young men growing to maturity in the public eye. --Booklist
by Manu Joseph (Get the Book)
Joseph's sublime new novel takes place in early 1990s Madras, India, where Ousep Chacko has reinvigorated his pursuit for the truth about his son Unni's inexplicable death three years ago. An aspiring cartoonist well known in the community, Unni was mere weeks from his eighteenth birthday when he deliberately lept from his family's third-floor balcony. The question that no one can answer, of course, is why. Ousep, a journalist and neighborhood drunk, obsessively pours through Unni's drawings, searching for clues his son may have left behind, and relentlessly hounds his son's former classmates and fellow cartoon enthusiasts for information. Meanwhile, Ousep's fixation impacts his wife, Mariamma, a fiercely protective woman who has long-suffered Ousep's nightly alcohol-induced obstreperousness. Also affected is their young son, Thoma, who is drawn to the older girl next door, who holds her own secrets about Unni. As Ousep's investigation continues, the fissures in Unni's story are slowly revealed. Joseph's witty narrative adds depth and vigor to the Chacko family's tale and assuredly explores the complexity of self-perception amidst present-day life. --Booklist
