Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 1/8/2007

By Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 1/8/2007

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
Natalie Angier. Houghton Mifflin, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-0-618-24295-5

Pulitzer-winning science writer Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography) distills everything you've forgotten from your high school science classes and more into one enjoyable book, a guide for the scientifically perplexed adult who wants to understand what those guys in lab coats on the news are babbling about, in the realms of physics, chemistry, biology, geology or astronomy. More important even than the brief rundowns of atomic theory or evolution—enlivened by interviews with scientists like Brian Greene—are the first three chapters on scientific thinking, probability and measurement. These constitute the basis of a scientific examination of the world. Understand these principles, Angier argues, and suddenly, words like "theory" and "statistically significant" have new meaning. Angier focuses on a handful of key concepts, allowing her to go into some depth on each; even so, her explanations can feel rushed, though never dry. Angier's writing can also be overadorned with extended metaphors that obscure rather than explain, but she eloquently asks us to attend to the universe: to really look at the stars, at the plants, at the stones around us. This is a pleasurable and nonthreatening guide for anyone baffled by science. (May 8)

The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited
John Romer. Cambridge Univ., $40 (480p) ISBN 978-0-521-87166-2

The largest and most precise stone building in the world and a feat of Bronze Age technology, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2478 B.C. in the reign of King Khufu. But how did the Great Pyramid's makers go about their daily work? what were their timetables, their ambitions? Transposing to Giza some known facts about the building rates of the Red Pyramid during the reign of Khufu's father, Sneferu, archeologist Romer (Great Excavations) concludes that it would have taken 14 years to build the Great Pyramid and that a nationwide workforce of around 21,000 was employed during the first year of construction and almost half that number as it approached completion. Taking traditional Egyptologists to task, Romer warns readers against swallowing the "myth" that the Great Pyramid was built by a mindless rural labor force kidnapped from distant villages and enslaved by a bureaucracy governed by talented noblemen. Instead, he posits that the workers were intelligent and inventive. Moreover, the author believes that the builders worked from a single construction plan, a "hidden logic" denied by many scholars but that he claims he alone has recovered. Romer is a bracing writer with attitude to spare, yet highly technical data render this volume more suitable to architects than lay readers. Illus. (Apr.)

The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution
David O. Stewart. Simon & Schuster, $27 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8692-3

Since Catherine Drinker Bowen's Miracle at Philadelphia appeared in 1966, no work has challenged its classic status. Now, Stewart's work does. Briskly written, full of deft characterizations and drama, grounded firmly in the records of the Constitutional Convention and its members' letters, this is a splendid rendering of the document's creation. All the debates are here, as are all the convention's personalities. It detracts nothing from Stewart's lively story to point out that it's just that—a tale—and not an interpretation. Stewart, a constitutional lawyer in Washington, D.C., ignores the recent decades' penetrating scholarship about the Constitution's creation in favor of a fast-paced narrative of a long, hot summer's work. Only one choice mars the book. Stewart, like Bowen, wants us to see the four summer months as the only period when the Constitution was created. But as James Madison and others acknowledged soon afterward, the state ratifying conventions and the First Federal Congress, which added the Bill of Rights, also contributed to the Constitution as we know it. Stewart's excellent book will appeal to those looking for descriptive history at its best, not for a fresh take on the subject. B&w illus. (Apr.)

Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought
Michael Stephenson. HarperCollins, $27.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-073261-5

A former editor of the Military Book Club, Stephenson (Battlegrounds) aims to strip away "the slow accretion of national mythology and popular history" that has "embalmed" the American Revolution. The result is a well-documented, entertaining and mildly revisionist military history in two parts. In the first, Stephenson examines "The Nuts and Bolts of War," answering basic questions about who fought, how and why. He concludes, unsurprisingly, that "the war was not revolutionary in any military sense." What's intriguing is how similar the American and British armies were—Stephenson notes that for each, "It was like gazing into a mirror." To analyze prosaic details like supply and transport, weapons and medical care, the author uses an array of statistics and technical data—muzzle velocities, shot weights, equipment lists, etc.—but wisely leavens them with anecdotes. In part two, Stephenson turns to an analysis of the major battles of the war, from the opening skirmishes at Lexington and Concord to the climactic showdown at Yorktown, and concludes that the Continental Army's victory was always predicated on its numerical superiority. This excellent popular history should attract a wide audience with its fresh perspective. 16 maps. (Apr.)

Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life
Beverly Lowry. Doubleday, $26 (416p) ISBN 978-0-385-50291-7

No escaped slave's story grips the American imagination as deeply as Harriet Tubman's, with the melodrama and near mythic grandeur of her frequent returns to slave territory to rescue her family members and scores of others. Since Tubman (1822–1913) never learned to read or write, her story comes second or third hand, offering researchers a challenge and creative nonfiction writers an opportunity. Lowry, a novelist and author of a re-creation of the life of the first African-American woman entrepreneur, Madame C.J. Walker (Her Dream of Dreams, 2003), "reimagined" Tubman's life in four parts: her childhood as a field slave called Araminta; her marriage, escape and early "rescues" when she was known as Harriet; her legendary Underground Railroad years when she was called Moses; the Civil War years when she was scout and courier for the Union army (John Brown dubbed her "the General"); and her postbellum work with emancipated slaves. Lowry carries the reader through the milestones without slipping into a morass of detail, through legal thickets (largely created by treating persons as property) and Tubman's encounters with many abolitionists without meandering. Tubman's life invites imagining, and Lowry's reader-friendly book, which "does not pretend to be a work of intense scholarship," presents her story with a novelist's sense of pace, suspense and speculation. (Apr. 17)

What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
Chandra Manning. Knopf, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-307-26482-4

For this impressively researched Civil War social history, Georgetown assistant history professor Manning visited more than two dozen states to comb though archives and libraries for primary source material, mostly diaries and letters of men who fought on both sides in the Civil War, along with more than 100 regimental newspapers. The result is an engagingly written, convincingly argued social history with a point—that those who did the fighting in the Union and Confederate armies "plainly identified slavery as the root of the Civil War." Manning backs up her contention with hundreds of first-person testimonies written at the time, rather than often-unreliable after-the-fact memoirs. While most Civil War narratives lean heavily on officers, Easterners and men who fought in Virginia, Manning casts a much broader net. She includes immigrants, African-Americans and western fighters, in order, she says, "to approximate cross sections of the actual Union and Confederate ranks." Based on the author's dissertation, the book is free of academese and appeals to a general audience, though Manning's harsh condemnation of white Southerners' feelings about slavery and her unstinting praise of Union soldiers' "commitment to emancipation" take a step beyond scholarly objectivity. Photos. (Apr.)

A Nation Transformed: How the Civil War Changed America Forever
Gerald Henig and
Eric Niderost. Cumberland House, $18.95 paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-58182-579-4

In a rambling account, California State history professor Henig and Chabor College instructor Niderost seek to prove the obvious: that the watershed event of the Civil War marshaled enormous social, political, geographical, mechanical and medical changes, leaving nearly every aspect of the United States utterly revised. As Harvard professor George Ticknor wrote in 1869, because of the war, "It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born." After the war, blacks were free, emergency medical technology (not to mention funeral technology) was much improved, and the nation's naval options had been enhanced to include usable submarines and minesweepers. The war also left behind a new cynicism vis-à-vis the Constitution and its civil rights protections—this after Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Other legacies included a finely tuned (if unjust and corrupt) conscription system, the start of what would become a tradition of presidential assassination and the launch of the transcontinental railroad. While few can argue with Henig's and Niderost's catalogue of war-born innovations, their project remains just that—a laundry list, with little synthesis. Illus. (Apr.)

Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Amy Dockser Marcus. Viking, $27.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-670-03836-7

In Ottoman Jerusalem, families of different religions picnicked together at popular shrines and vouched for each other at the bank; Muslims and Jews were business partners and neighbors; and Arab children dressed in costumes for the Jewish holiday of Purim. How then did this city of ethnic diversity become a crucible of sectarian conflict? Marcus (The View from Nebo), a Pulitzer-winning former Wall Street Journal correspondent, focuses on the year 1913 as a turning point, when leaders at the Zionist Congress argued for both cultural and demographic domination of Palestine, while at the same time Jews and Arabs were negotiating a possible peace. Marcus also highlights three men who helped shape the destiny of the future Israeli capital. Albert Antebi was a non-Zionist Syrian Jew who advocated for Jewish economic solvency and strong relationships with Muslims; ardent Zionist Arthur Ruppin directed the establishment of Jewish settlements; and Ruhi Khalidi, a prominent Muslim , although not an Arab nationalist, actively opposed Jewish immigration and land purchases. Marcus masterfully brings a Jerusalem of almost a century ago to pungent life, and her political dissection of the era is lucid and well-meaning although she never explains the gulf between moderate Muslims of 1913 and today's Islamist and radical movements. (Apr. 23)

The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw GhettoEdited by
S.L. Shneiderman, new edition prepared and intro. by Susan Lee Pentlin, trans. by Norbert Guterman and Sylvia Glass. Oneworld (oneworld-publications.com), $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-85168-472-4

Today I am fifteen years old. I feel very old and lonely.... Everyone is afraid to go out. The Germans are here." So begins this extraordinary memoir of Jewish life in Lodz, Poland, and the Warsaw ghetto as the Nazis began to liquidate its starving and disease-ridden inmates. In 1940 Berg fled Lodz with her parents and sister. They lived in the Warsaw ghetto, and in July 1942 were transferred to Pawiak prison within the ghetto. Originally published in the U.S. in February 1945, the memoir is based on notebooks that Mary Berg (née Wattenberg) smuggled out of Europe when she and her interned family were traded for German prisoners and sailed to America. This powerful testament documents Nazi brutalities, and the difference between those without means, who starved and died of typhus, and the more privileged, like Berg's family (her mother was American and her father relatively wealthy), who, for a time, were able to patronize ghetto cafes and attend the theater. Berg is a remarkably clear-eyed, skillful and heart-breaking recorder of those terrible years. 23 illus. (Apr. 12)

Summer at Tiffany
Marjorie Hart. Morrow, $14.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-06-118952-4

At the age of 82, Hart, a professional cellist, recalls 1945, when she and her best friend, Marty, students at the University of Iowa, spent the summer in Manhattan, in this pleasant but slight memoir. Failing to obtain work at Lord & Taylor, the pair, self-described as long-limbed, blue-eyed blondes, were hired at Tiffany's—the first female floor sales pages, delivering packages to the repair and shipping department, for $20 a week. Hart details their stringent budget ("1. Two nickels for subway. 2. Sandwich at the Automat: 15 cents") and describes, somewhat breathlessly, what a thrill it was to see such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland shop at the fabled store. Her romance with a midshipman, the combat death of her cousin, the news of the dropping of the first atomic bomb and a vivid account of the celebration in Times Square after Japan's surrender convey a sense of the WWII era, but without adding much illumination. She does, however, evoke New York City as seen through the eyes of two innocent smalltown girls. 16 pages of b&w photos and illus. (Apr.)

Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, a Personal Biography
Charlotte Chandler. Simon & Schuster, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9421-8

The author of many Hollywood biographies, Chandler (Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho Marx) offers a straightforward account of one of the more intriguing Golden Age stars. Bergman died young of cancer on her 67th birthday in 1982. Her husbands, lovers, children, and the directors and actors with whom she worked, have been generous in granting interviews, and while there's not much new or exciting—aside from the well-known scandal Bergman caused when she deserted her dentist husband (Petter Lindstrom) for Italian director Roberto Rossellini (father of her twin daughters Isabella and Isotta)—there's a lot of warm reminiscences . Chandler's book will be nicely timed with Turner Classic Movies, which has made March Bergman month. 40 b&w photographs not seen by PW. (Mar.)

Memoir from a Swiss Prison
Ignazio Silone, trans. and edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Cross-Cultural Communications (www.cross-culturalcommunIcations.com), $15 (48p) ISBN 978-0-89304-087-8

Relatively unknown outside of academic communities, exiled author and progressive thinker Ignazio Silone has played an important role in modern history. A founding member of the Italian Communist Party (PSI), he was expelled from the Communist International in 1927 for refusing to back Stalin in his vilification of Trotsky. Forced into exile in Switzerland, Silone took to writing—novels, plays, satirical essays and theoretical works—while at the same time funneling money to colleagues in the anti-Fascist resistance in Italy. In this memoir, written in 1942 while in prison (and nicely translated here by Pugliese, currently at work on a biography of Silone), Silone tries to clear his name from nasty charges made against him: of trying to foment violence and subjugate sovereign states. He does not seek absolution—he considers imprisonment to be an honor and a sign of devotion—but rather an honest rendering of history. What he produces is more than a mere defense; it is a trenchant comment on the needs and prerequisites for a progressive, democratic Europe. Often compared to postwar thinkers like Albert Camus and André Malraux, Silone—recipient of the Jerusalem Prize and twice considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature—is a salient critic, whose words are as relevant now as ever. (Mar.)

Faking It: The Search for Authenticity in Popular Music
Hugh Barker and
Yuval Taylor. Norton, $25.95 (348p) ISBN 978-0-393-06078-2

Barker and Taylor's exploration of the idea of authenticity in modern music takes them from the falsely labeled "pure" and "primitive" style of Leadbelly to the first truly "autobiographical song" (Jimmie Rodger's version of "TB Blues"), the disintegration of the Monkees and Neil Young's "Drugged-out, driven, and death soaked" album Tonight's the Night—what the authors believe to be the most "honest" rock record of all time. Strangely, the book does not include a discussion of hip-hop, a surprising omission given the attention paid to other aspects of black music and the genre's particular concern with the book's themes. By the end, Barker (a musician and songwriter) and Taylor (I Was Born a Slave) find the distinction between real and fake "[b]reaking down and becoming increasingly meaningless." It becomes clear that even seemingly obvious examples of authentic and inauthentic defy easy categorization when scrutinized. After all, is disco's well-intentioned alternate reality any less "real" than the violent, "mocking pretenses" of the Sex Pistols? Though the book's final conclusions are not revelatory, it offers an intriguing take on the development of popular music. (Mar.)

Comes the Peace: My Journey to Forgiveness
Daja Wangchuk Meston with
Claire Ansberry. Free Press, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7432-8747-0

In this memoir, Meston tells the wrenching tale of being put in a Buddhist monastery as a child by his hippie parents, who had hopes of him becoming a monk. Meston was born in 1970 to a father who was a self-taught artist, and later descended into mental illness, and a mother who hailed from a wealthy Hollywood family and became so enraptured by Buddhist teachings that she became a nun in a Nepalese monastery. At age six, Meston was placed in a large Tibetan foster family before entering the Kopan temple. The only white-skinned boy, he was teasingly called White Eye and Rotten, and soon grew bored by the tedious study and chores. He became rebellious, and was eventually expelled for breaking his vow of celibacy and sent to live with relatives in California. Meston spoke little English, had no formal education, and spent years educating himself (he was eventually accepted at Brandeis). Meston later worked for Tibetan rights issues, traveling to Tibet, where he created a cause célèbre when he leaped out the window while under house arrest to avoid interrogation by Chinese officials. Meston's (and Ansberry's) style is journalistically cut-and-dried and occasionally stifles the emotional turbulence that drives Weston's psychic journey, from abandoned child to lonely immigrant and suicidal prisoner. (Mar.)

Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life
Hugh Brogan. Yale Univ., $35 (720p) ISBN 978-0-300-10803-3

This magisterial biography, selected by the Economist on its U.K. publication as one of the best 100 books of 2006, serves up all the interesting personal details (constant health struggles, an unsuitable marriage to a woman of lesser means) in the life of Tocqueville (1805–1859), the man who most influenced America and its self-perception. But the heart of the book is Tocqueville's travels in the United States and the writing of Democracy in America. Tocqueville both appreciated, and was discomfited by, American egalitarianism. Raised in a Catholic environment, the French aristocrat "could not see the logic" of Protestantism. (His visit to a Shaker settlement was especially unnerving.) British historian Brogan is not uncritical: he notes that Tocqueville never understood that democracy relies "principally on elections to control majorities," rather than on a system of legislative and judicial checks and balances. Brogan's greatest contribution may be his reading of the second volume of Democracy in America as autobiography, arguing that Tocqueville wrote it in part to justify his own break with the expectations of his elite family and social circle. All in all, this is an engrossing and erudite account. 16 b&w illus. (Mar.)

The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa
Caitlin O'Connell. Free Press, $24 (240p) ISBN 978-1-59463-018-7

Naturalist O'Connell's memoir of her 14 years researching the complexities of elephant behavior is a successful combination of science and soulfulness, explaining her groundbreaking theory of how elephants use seismic communication; she also sympathetically illuminates current social and ecological conditions in Africa. O'Connell's original goal in 1992 was to spend a year driving from South Africa to Kenya, but then she was hired for a three-year study of elephants in an area of northeastern Namibia, "where violent death is as much a part of the landscape as the capricious nature of rain." Fascinated by the "particular way that elephants seemed to be listening with their feet," she soon realized that the elephants were communicating with sound waves "that travel within the surface of the ground as opposed to the air." Her efforts over the next decade to prove this "unexpected and controversial" hypothesis took her "to the bayous of Texas, the Nevada desert, southern India, northern Zimbabwe, the Oakland Zoo, and then back to the scrub desert" of Namibia. Her account is studded with sympathetic insights and well-turned phrases, such as her delight when "100 tons of pachyderm pass by, almost tiptoeing, heads bobbing in their Groucho Marx gait." (Mar.)

Fly Me to the Moon: An Insider's Guide to the New Science of Space Travel
Edward Belbruno, foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Princeton Univ., $19.95 (176p) ISBN 978-0-691-12822-1

As astrophysicist and NASA consultant Belbruno explains in this short book, one of the reasons for the exorbitant cost of space flight is the need for huge amounts of fuel. In addition to the cost of the fuel itself, is its weight: "it is very expensive to bring one pound of anything to the Moon—about a quarter million dollars." By solving what are known as three-body equations (the three bodies, for example, being Earth, the Moon and a spacecraft), Belbruno has discovered trajectories between celestial bodies that make use of both chaos theory and gravitational forces, and enable space travel with a fraction of the fuel normally used. The downside is the greater time needed for travel. A trip to the Moon using Belbruno's method, might take three months rather than three days. But this difference poses no trouble for sending supplies and could dramatically lower the cost of building a permanent base on the Moon. Although Belbruno's main ideas are expressed simply enough for the average reader to appreciate, his account of his efforts is disjointed and not as rewarding as the underlying science. Illus. (Mar.)

The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team
Michael Weinreb. Gotham, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-592-40261-8

Weinreb, whose work has appeared three times in The Best American Sports Writing, offers the story of a year spent with Brooklyn's Edward R. Murrow High School chess team as it strives for a national championship. Weinreb makes several choices that work well for a year-in-the-life account. For one, he eschews unnecessary speculation about the teen chess prodigies' psychology, a strategy that taken with his deft reporting of how they view themselves and one another renders them more accessible, more natural and consequently more interesting. Weinreb also expands his arena by investigating the cultural milieu of the modern chess world. He describes what it takes to be a successful high-level chess player, the difficulties women have in this world, the very nature of the game and the phenomenon of the chess prodigy, using the experience of Josh Waitzkin, who has now retired from competitive chess and was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. All this is supported by well-chosen detail, intelligence and terrific writing. Weinreb clearly develops an affection for the eclectic members of the team, and because of the skill he brings to his project, so will his readers. B&w illus. (Mar. 1)

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family
Martha Raddatz. Putnam, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-399-15382-2

Violent resistance in post-invasion Iraq kicked into high gear on April 4, 2004, when American troops in Sadr City faced a massive assault that claimed eight soldiers' lives and wounded more than 70 others. Raddatz, an Emmy-winning correspondent for ABC News, clearly aims to equal the storytelling in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down in her account of the battle, and hits the mark with distinction. Extensive interviews with the commanding officers of the army's 1st Cavalry division and the soldiers pinned down in the streets provide a clear narrative of how U.S. troops, prepared for "a babysitting mission," found themselves in a bloodbath, as efforts to rescue the first soldiers fired upon met with even greater resistance from Mahdi militiamen who did not hesitate to use small children as frontline attackers. Heroic moments abound, like Casey Sheehan's volunteering to take another man's place on the rescue team, which resulted in his death. Raddatz touches upon the reaction of his mother, noted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, but this is just one of many perspectives from families on the home front. The gripping account eschews politics and focuses squarely on the soldiers and their sacrifices. (Mar. 1)

On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story
Commodore Richard Jadick with
Thomas Hayden. Caliber, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-451-22053-0

Blood-and-guts accounts of Fallujah are not in short supply, but Jadick—a career Marine officer and brigade surgeon who took a demotion to battalion surgeon to volunteer for service in Iraq in 2004—tells the story through the eyes of a doctor. Unlike colleagues who remained in battalion aid stations behind the lines, Jadick and his medics accompanied their unit in makeshift ambulances as it battled through the streets. This was not bravado, he writes, but a calculated strategy to reach, stabilize and rush wounded troops to hospitals more quickly. He makes his case many times over, with dramatic accounts of catastrophically injured men from his unit and others who would not have survived a journey to the aid station. This remarkable man's story is well worth telling, although his writer should have discouraged him from frequent pauses for memorial essays on every soldier who died, and to remind readers of the Marines' bravery, of the dedication of the medics, and how much he loves his wife, the Marines and America. Readers who can skim past these segments will find the book a memorable experience. (Mar. 6)

Iran: A People Interrupted
Hamid Dabashi. New Press, $24.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-59558-059-7

Declaring at the outset that he has an "ax to grind," Columbia University professor Dabashi focuses on the last 200 years of Iranian history, through the lens of a worldly cosmopolitan. He rejects the familiar dichotomy between the "traditional" and the "modern" in Iran, arguing that it's at best ill-conceived and at worst a tool of European/American colonialism. Instead, Dabashi suggests the notion of an "anticolonial modernity," predicated on Iranians' struggles "against the colonial robbery of the moral and material foundations of [their] historical agency." While he raises many worthy questions, Dabashi's thesis is weakened by a lack of nuance. He also exhibits many of the flaws he decries, establishing, for instance, his own dichotomies ("for us the world was squarely divided into two opposing parts: those who ruled it and those who resisted this tyranny") and using a historical terminology to dismiss people, ideas or national projects with which he disagrees (e.g., equating Iran's Islamic Republic with America's "Christian empire"). Peppered alternately with delightful vignettes from his Iranian youth and dense academic-speak, the result is a book that may please those who agree with its author, but is unlikely to win over the uninitiated. (Mar.)

Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior
Dick Couch. Crown, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-33938-6

Among America's Special Forces, the Green Berets stand out because they can "do it all," according to this enthusiastic account of their training. Ex-SEAL Couch (Down Range) explains that Green Berets not only fight, they teach: living in the world's hot spots, they speak the language, win the trust of the locals, and train and fight alongside them to defeat a common enemy. They are the "Peace Corps with guns" and the key to winning the war on terror, he asserts. Only the most fit, smart, stable and multilingual need apply, but training is so rigorous that recruits first undergo 25 days of pretraining, from which only one-third proceed to Green Beret school, where attrition continues. Military buffs will enjoy the descriptions of exhausting marches, realistic combat simulations, high-tech weapons and dramatic instructor/student interactions. Though Thomas Ricks showed in Making the Corps that one can write an admiring account of an elite military unit without neglecting its warts and missteps, Couch loves the Green Berets too much to look beneath the surface; still. he tells an entertaining story. 16-page full-color insert. (Mar.)

Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team
Michael Smith. St. Martin's, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-36272-0

Former British intelligence officer Smith (The Emperor's Codes) shines a light on one of the U.S. Army's blackest agencies and best-kept secrets, the Intelligence Support Activity—aka the Activity—in this extensively researched and crisply written exposé. The Activity was established, after the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran in 1980, as "a dedicated special operations intelligence unit" to provide signals, imagery and human intelligence to other black units: e.g., the army's Delta Force. Although opposed by army traditionalists, the Activity proved itself in operations from El Salvador to Iraq, playing important roles in tracking down Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar, Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed and several prominent Bosnian war criminals. Since 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom have exposed the shortcomings of U.S. intelligence, the size and scope of the Activity has, according to the author, "dramatically increased." Drawing on recently declassified documents and confidential interviews with key participants, Smith has produced an important primer for anyone hoping to understand the (usually quiet) successes and the (well-documented) failures of U.S. intelligence in the last 25 years. 16 pages color photo insert. (Mar.)

Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy
Jeffrey A. Engel. Harvard Univ., $35 (328p) ISBN 978-0-674-02461-8

The "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain did not extend to aircraft development during the Cold War, contends Engel in this thoroughly researched, well-reasoned case study. He presents aircraft technology as a critical area of competition between a rising superpower with prodigious production capacity and a state seeking to establish a lead in quality. Underlying this contest was an ideological tension between American commitment to free market competition and British movement toward a managed economy. In an emerging Cold War, the answer was complicated by the conflicting demands of security and sales. Corporations sought to distribute their products as widely as possible, while governments feared losing ground in the technological competition. Rigid control of exports, however, risked crippling the infant jet aircraft industry. Engel describes a series of policy conflicts that, through the 1960s, repeatedly, and seriously, shook the Anglo-American relationship. Britain consistently took "astounding" risks with its American relationship, while the U.S. judged its intimate ally by its acceptance of American security concerns. Yet both parties valued their relationship enough to stand together despite their differences over trade and security issues—a decision Engel considers cultural as well as political. (Mar.)

A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902
David J. Silbey. Hill & Wang, $25 (240p) ISBN 978-0-8090-7187-8

Silbey, a historian at Alvernia College, merits praise for the best brief introduction to the complex subject of the U.S. conquest of the Philippines now available. Synthesizing a broad spectrum of published scholarship from both Philippine and American sources, he convincingly establishes that the Philippine-American War included three separate conflicts. The first was a Filipino-American war against Spain, which the Filipinos were on the point of winning by themselves. In the second, the U.S. decisively outfought the embryonic Philippine Republic. Silbey establishes the U.S. decision to annex the Philippines as a transition from a frontier to a global ethos, incorporating spiritual, modernist and Darwinian elements, aided by the American army. However, that lost war defined Filipino national identity—far more so than the third war, which was a guerrilla conflict between the U.S. armed forces and an increasingly locally focused insurgency. Though the American victory involved episodes of brutality, Silbey demonstrates that it was sufficiently quick, decisive and humane, and the former opponents cooperated so amicably, that Americans were arguably deceived regarding the general prospects of reconciling enemies. As America contributed to Philippine nationalism by establishing economic, social and linguistic connections, he shows that Filipino defeat came to look like victory. (Mar.)

The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam
Daniel Allen Butler. Casemate (www.casematepublishing.com), $32.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-932033-54-0

This well-researched but reactionary history chronicles the little-known holy war (jihad) led by Sudanese cleric Muhammed Ahmed ibn 'Abdullah—known as the "Mahdi" or "expected one"—against the English Empire. The initial armed encounter took place in late 1882, when 50,000 of the Mahdi's men obliterated a British garrison in Kordofan, after the English became embroiled in regional affairs due to financial concerns about the Suez Canal. Enraged, British Prime Minister Gladstone sent decorated war veteran Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon to reassert British control. While Mahdi had sheer manpower, Gordon had superior ammunition. But after holding off a 317-day siege of Khartoum, Gordon's forces crumbled in January 1885, when an Egyptian lieutenant helped the Mahdi into the city. However, the Mahdi died shortly thereafter and in 1899, his short-lived empire was put to rest by a renewed English offensive. Butler lays important tracks into the study of terror, fundamentalism and the early clash between Islam and Christianity, but his account is tarnished by an angry narrative tone, in which he casts Islam as murderous, inflexible and impervious to modernization, while General Gordon is civilization's savior destroyed by savages. 16 pages illus., maps. (Mar.)

The Japanese Money Tree: How Investors Can Prosper from Japan's Economic Rebirth
Andrew H. Shipley. Pearson Education, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-13-134551-5

Declaring that "Japan is back," Shipley focuses on the "once-in-a-lifetime" investment opportunities currently available there in this dry but informative guide. Drawing largely on interviews and conversations with experts and investors, the former economist at Lehman Brothers Japan addresses topics ranging from intellectual property to real estate. Many chapters also feature brief summaries, which distill the author's complicated analysis into clearly articulated "investor implications." While Shipley proves incredibly optimistic about the outlook for investors in Japan, he also offers caveats and reservations along the way, directly addressing such key concerns as Japan's declining birthrate. Having lived in Japan for 15 years, Shipley writes with authority, but his book has extremely limited appeal for the casual reader, despite its thoughtful, far-reaching analysis of Japan's historical relationship with China. Those with the requisite economic knowledge and money to invest may learn from the book, but most readers will probably have a difficult time penetrating its challenging subject matter. (Mar.)

Ignited: Managers Light Up Your Company and Career for More Power, More Purpose, More Success
Vincent Thompson. Prentice Hall/FT, $25.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-13-149248-6

A former middle manager turned consultant, Thompson depicts the realm between upper management and the workforce as rife with turf battles, firestorms and ongoing struggles to keep the troops from revolting. Fighting the notion that the 5.4-million middle managers at 30,000 U.S. companies are in a vast career wasteland, he offers specific and practical solutions for good management. As corporate fulcrums, managers are in a position to exert more power than they think, he argues. He also examines the root causes of situations known to endanger career progress and zap spirits, such as communications gaps between new bosses and long-term managers, or the anxiety associated with headquarters' sudden infatuation with outsourcing. He then offers tools for successfully defusing such situations and even finding opportunity in them. The remainder of the text examines the skills required to achieve change. Using a combination of personal insights and short case studies, often quoting real people talking about their experiences at well-known companies, he brings an energy and enthusiasm that makes maintaining the middle ground seem both compelling and personally challenging, if not noble. (Mar.)

You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
Harry Beckwith and
Christine Clifford Beckwith. Warner Business, $23.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-446-57821-9

It really is all about you and improving the way you present yourself, declare the husband-and-wife Beckwiths (Selling the Invisible) in this refreshing career primer. Unlike many similar books, this is not an autobiography masquerading as wisdom. The Beckwiths stay out of the book except when Harry's experience as a bestselling business writer and head of a marketing firm or Christine's as an award-winning speaker and cancer-survivor is directly relevant. Instead, they offer practical advice for effective and memorable interpersonal interactions. Above all, they stress communicating with brevity and clarity—suggesting that every document be cut in half before sending and giving 30-minute speeches in 22 minutes. Their own prose is pared down to short, readable lessons on topics like the importance of making good first impressions and the secrets of successful selling, which they describe as the artful handling of information, presented with forethought and enough passion to be persuasive without making anyone uncomfortable. Readers at the start of their careers or in need of an inspirational brushup will find much of use. (Mar. 1)

Green Wealth: How to Turn Unusable Land into Moneymaking Assets (and Save the World)
Kevin F. Noon and
Judith A. Ward. Square One (www.squareonepublishers.com), $18.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7570-0282-3

This dense and informative introduction to environmental banking, written by two eco-bank cofounders, guides private investors in setting up a viable business that can help restore ecological balance. More abstract than financial banking, this environmental model allows the banker to cultivate an environmental project such as a wetland, and to "sell" its positive impact as "credits" to a company that might have harmed other wetlands, in an attempt to restore overall balance. The concept introduces entrepreneurialism and profitability into resource management, countering previous strategies of "command and control" that have allowed industry to ignore or simply pay fines for environmental transgressions, or to make inadequate moves to restore the environment. After defining the concept and providing an industry overview, the authors explain how to set up such a bank and instruct readers on evaluating profitability. In addition to supplying significant detail on the various bank types (particularly for wetlands, but also for endangered species, carbon, water quality and land development rights), they include an annotated business plan, prospectus and an appendix of resource recommendations. More than just an introduction to this complex subject, this comprehensive and definitive guide offers readers a blueprint for starting their own banks. (Mar.)

Fletcher StreetPhotographs by
Martha Camarillo, text by
Kathy Dobie. PowerHouse, $39.95 (128p) ISBN 978-1-57687-328-1

Self-taught photographer Camarillo gained rare access to an insulated and unexpected community of horsemen in inner-city Philadelphia, which she chronicles through dozens of vivid photographs of these African-American riders and their mounts. For nearly 50 years, real urban cowboys have kept horses in stables near Northwest Philly's Fletcher Street, while also mentoring the next generation. Some of the photos are truly striking: a tight composition focuses on a hand holding reins, drawing the viewer's eye first to a bling-encrusted bracelet and then to the blue eye of the stallion. Chaps-clad legs straddle a pony, while bright Adidas sneakers peek below the fringed leather. But what begins as a riveting photo essay eventually gets repetitive. The portraits of men proudly posing on or near their horses against an incongruous backdrop of vacant lots and dilapidated row houses repeats the same story without adding aesthetic variation or new dimensions to the basic premise. Nonetheless, Camarillo (coauthor of Remote Photos) provides an idiosyncratic slice of social history, while her best images challenge pervasive assumptions of life in the American ghetto. 65 full-color photos. (Feb.)

Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays
Joan Acocella. Pantheon, $30 (544p) ISBN 978-0-375-42416-8

Acocella is the New Yorker's dance critic, but dancers and choreographers comprise a minority of the artists featured in this elegant collection of writings mostly from the New Yorker. The dance pieces are literally the center of the book, sandwiched between Acocella's lucid assessments of writers (and one sculptor, Louise Bourgeois). She has a taste for early 20th-century European, often Jewish novelists who, she says, helped create the modern consciousness in literature: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Italo Svevo, among others. In featuring these long-forgotten writers, she fulfills what, in a fascinating profile of Susan Sontag, she calls "an essential function of criticism: that of introducing readers to... strange work, things they wouldn't ordinarily encounter." A particularly affecting look at Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1998 portrays a man long in search of an artistic home who had to find that home, finally, within himself. The essays that follow the dance pieces focus largely on American and British writers (Bellow, Philip Roth, Sybille Bedford). Acocella can flatten a book she dislikes with cool derision ("The less she knows, the more she tells us," Acocella says of Carol Shloss's biography of Lucia Joyce), but her passionate and penetrating endorsements of other works make you want to discover their pleasures firsthand—the best service a critic can render. (Feb. 6)

Lifestyle, Food & Entertaining

The Essential Baker: The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices, and Other Ingredients
Carole Bloom. Wiley, $40 (672p) ISBN 978-0-7645-7645-4

Bloom, the author of eight cookbooks whose work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food + Wine, adopts an unusual approach in this exhaustive and tantalizing look at baking. Instead of categorizing recipes by food type, she organizes them by primary ingredient—a useful approach for the baker with a craving or surplus of one ingredient. Sections include fruits and vegetables; nuts and seeds; chocolate; dairy products; spices and herbs; and coffee, tea, liqueurs and spirits. The recipes themselves are uniquely formatted in a table layout that lists the ingredients across from their steps to help with organization. Bloom includes a list of equipment needed for the dish along with instructions on storage, streamlining, altering the recipe and recovering from mishaps. The collection covers the gamut with 225 recipes, including such delectable gems as Pear and Walnut Layer Cake with Maple–Cream Cheese Icing; Coconut Biscotti; and Cranberry Nut Tea Loaf. Other highlights range from Chocolate Chip Cookies and Macadamia Nut Blondies to Malted Milk Chocolate Cheesecake and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Bloom also provides valuable instruction in sections on essential ingredients, equipment and supplies, and techniques. 32 full-color photos. (Apr.)

Italian Baking Secrets
Fr. Giuseppe Orsini. St. Martin's, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-35820-4

One might expect a baking book that doesn't include its first recipe until page 57 to have excessive information. But that's not the case in Fr. Giuseppe Orsini's seventh title (including Cooking Rice with an Italian Accent), which includes useful, well-written prose on the history of bread in Italy as well as baking basics, ingredients (including thorough entries on cheese and herbs) and tools. The 150-plus recipes are titled in their traditional Italian (with English translation listed below) and are divided into such concise chapters as Regional and Rustic Breads, Sweet and Holiday Breads, Tarts, and Cakes. Biscotti enthusiasts can indulge in enticing versions such as cinnamon and almond raisin, rum macadamia nut and triple ginger pecan. Staples such as pizza, focaccia and ciabatta are presented alongside seasonal holiday treats including Christmas-time Panettone and Pastiera di Grano (Easter Cooked Wheat Pie). Bakers will be glad Orsini shared this collection of Italian gems that span the boot from top to bottom. (Apr.)

Casual Cooking from Foster's Market
Sara Foster with
Carolynn Carreño. Clarkson Potter, $35 ISBN 978-0-307-33999-7

In her third cookbook, Foster, the owner of two gourmet markets in North Carolina, presents us with more of her trademark recipes; elegant, simple dishes with Southern flair. This time around she's focused on ways to prepare meals for what she calls "the way we eat today." She explains: "salads are meals, sandwiches and quesadillas qualify as a respectable grown-up dinner... and eggs can be eaten any time of the day." The recipes call for basic ingredients that are easy to keep in your refrigerator and pantry, and include plenty of tips on saving time and varying dishes. The Party Platters section includes recipes that can be made quickly with very few ingredients like Crispy Sweet Potato Chips with Caramelized Onion Dip, a simple antipasto platter with olives, nuts and dried fruit, and Warm Crab Dip. Simple Suppers, like Rosemary Grilled Leg of Lamb with Tuscan White Beans and Roasted Tomatoes have relatively short ingredient lists and also include Quick Fixes like using canned ingredients to save time. Last but not least is the "Simplest Sweets" chapter, which avoids complicated baking techniques with recipes for grilled apricots with buttermilk ice cream and lemon poached pears with lemon cream. Anyone with limited time and a real desire to cook will benefit from this solid, accessible cookbook. (Mar.)

Health

The Food-Mood Solution: All-Natural Ways to Banish Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Stress, Overeating and Alcohol and Drug Problems—and Feel Good Again
Jack Challem. Wiley, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-471-75610-5

Best known as the "Nutrition Reporter" for consumer health publications (Alternative Medicine; Body & Soul; etc.), Challem (The Inflammation Syndrome) describes a familiar scenario: rising levels of anger, impatience, frustration, fatigue and anxiety due to minor daily irritations. Citing studies of increased violence traced to mood disorders, Challem contends that basic but highly specific diet and lifestyle modifications can lower stress levels and radically improve behavior and health. While the effects of poor nutrition on health take years to manifest, he says, such effects on mood are readily apparent, and he urges readers to notice how certain foods and beverages lead to headaches, fatigue, poor sleep, depression, compulsive behavior, panic attacks, bipolar disorder and other increasingly common conditions. His plan targets neuronutrients (vitamins and minerals needed to make critical brain chemicals) and nutrisocial factors (family, workload, environment, advertising, etc.) to boost mood. After taking a few quizzes, readers will be guided through a four-part program: supplements, diet, exercise and lifestyle. While the information is not entirely new, Challem does solidly address the hardest part of his equation—and that's the lifestyle change itself. (Mar.)

Gardening

Rodale's Vegetable Garden Solver: The Best and Latest Advice for Beating Pests, Diseases, and Weeds and Staying a Step Ahead of Trouble in the Garden
Fern Marshall Bradley. Rodale, $26.95 (464p) ISBN 978-1-59486-308-0

This encyclopedic collection of gardening advice is, in the Rodale tradition, purely organic, albeit with a no-nonsense, 21st-century attitude. Extensive attention is given to tantalizing techniques such as cover cropping and dealing with deer damage (including what to protect, repellants and scare devices, and 10 kinds of antideer fences). The vegetable entries are equally comprehensive, with sections detailing "Crop Basics," "Secrets of Success," "Preventing Problems," "Regional Notes" and "Troubleshooting Problems." Drawings of pest-infested plants are helpful, and Bradley covers the gamut of solutions, from timed planting to crop rotation, barriers to repellants, wisely advising prevention as the first tactic and using (organic) insecticides as a last resort. The book is extensively illustrated with attractive drawings, although the choice of what to depict is sometimes mysterious; the image of flowering arugula is lovely, for example, although readers may wish they could see a picture of, say a disease called "aster yellows." the "new growth... pale and bushy, forming a witch's broom." For any gardener who needs to keep track of "crucial care" for squash, how to control cucumber beetles with a vacuum cleaner or any of the myriad details that arise every day in the garden, this book is a must. (Feb.)

The Way We Garden Now: 41 Pick-and-Choose Projects for Planting Your Paradise Large or Small
Katherine Whiteside. Clarkson Potter, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-0373-5135-7

A self-described "hands-on gardener with a healthy disregard for fancy tools, an aversion to spending, and no time to recover from extreme exhaustion," Whitestone (Forcing, Etc.) urges readers to forget "perfection" when it comes to gardening, and instead turn it into something pleasurable. Whiteside categorizes projects by size; gives a "recipe" for each one with numbered steps so that in case you get distracted in the middle, you can easily continue later; and, with 21st-century pragmatism, informs readers of "the payoff" for each project before they get their hands dirty. Her first 10 projects cover gardening basics, including such essentials as preparing beds (the no-dig easy way), purchasing and organizing tools, attracting birds and avoiding pests, and fertilization. The potpourri of remaining projects, including cutting gardens, pea trellises, and scented night gardens, as well as recipes scattered among the vegetable chapters, are likely to tickle the fancy of more experienced gardeners. Whiteside's philosophy is generally, although not strictly, organic, and her writing is clear and easygoing, if a bit cutesy. Generously illustrated with whimsical drawings, this book may entice nervous novices into their backyards and give tired old-timers unexpected inspiration. (Feb.)

The Organic Lawn Care Manual: A Natural, Low-Maintenance System for a Beautiful, Safe Lawn
Paul Tukey. Storey Communications, $29.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-58017-655-2; $19.95 paper ISBN 978-1-58017-649-1

For homeowners tired of their chemical-saturated lawns, this book provides step-by-step guidance for "get[ting] your lawn off drugs." Tukey, a lifelong lawn lover, started mowing as a teenager, and as the owner of a successful lawn care company, he was well entrenched in the "weed 'n' feed" method prevalent since the 1940s: "With one pass of a lawn spreader, we could feed the grass" (with chemical fertilizers), "kill the weeds" (with pesticides) "and still have time for a round of golf at the course we so envied"). When, after years on the job, he began to experience nosebleeds and shortness of breath, his doctor ordered him to stop using lawn chemicals, and that was the beginning of his commitment to organic lawn care. His lively and passionate instruction—on soil structure and how to improve it; grass varieties; "starting a lawn from scratch"; natural lawn foods; "watering dews and don'ts"; and how to deal with moles, voles, grubs and bugs—are interspersed with inspirational tales of natural-lawn activists. With an appendix on lawn games, from croquet to badminton, this book will delight lawn fanatics and provide sound advice for those who simply want to maintain their yard. (Feb.)