Everyone's a Critic

The Village Voice Literary Supplement has long been a high profile yet casual meeting place for writers ranging from the avant-garde to the reactionary to the canonical. War of the Words: The VLS Anthology of Writing on Contemporary Literature, assembled by current Voice literary editor Joy Press, features dozens of critical essays by mostly renowned writers on even more renowned writers. Michele Wallace observes that Zora Neale Hurston "rejected the racial uplift agenda of the Talented Tenth on the premise that ordinary bloods had something to say, too." Mark Dery zeroes in on Amok Press's edgy (often disturbing) material, Bharati Mukherjee on Salman Rushdie's apocalyptic tragicomedy. The lit-crit crowd speaks up, too: Scott Malcomson discusses whiteness and anthropology vis-à-vis several cultural studies; Thulani Davis examines a handful of buppie writers. A great opportunity for revisiting quasi-fringe literary happenings (many of which have since become establishment) of the past 20 years. (Random/Three Rivers, $14 paper 340p ISBN 0-609-80853-2; Oct.)

Beginning with some 1865 articles about P.T. Barnum's American Museum and finishing up with an Arthur Danto piece on Damien Hirst from 2000, Brushes with History: Art of The Nation, 1865—2001 offers an abundance of taste-making art criticism from one of the country's oldest lefty magazines. Edited by Peter G. Meyer—director of the Public Works Project, "a non-profit organization that produces protest art for public interest organizations"—the compilation includes salvos from Henry James, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Stieglitz, Meyer Shapiro, Clement Greenberg, Marianne Moore and Max Kozloff, all the way up to current contributors Christopher Hitchens and Katha Pollitt, in a virtual overview of American popular art criticism. (Thunder's Mouth/Nation, $19.95 paper 540p ISBN 1-56025-329-0; Oct.)

Fourteen writers reflect on the impact of J.D. Salinger's oeuvre on their lives and work in With Love and Squalor, edited by literary agent Kip Kotzen and Open City founding editor Thomas Beller (The Sleepover Artist). Walter Kirn recalls having Catcher in the Rye snatched from his hands and hurled across the college dining hall immediately after John Lennon's murder by Mark David Chapman; Chapman believed the book gave him permission for the killing. Emma Forrest describes her effort to become the kind of young person " 'invented' in the fifties by the two J.D.s—Salinger and James Dean" in order to deliver the goods to her newspaper editor. Lucinda Rosenfeld weighs Franny and Zooey's unimpressive rebellions against what she sees as the nearly perfect prose of their eponymous book. (Broadway, $12.95 paper 208p ISBN 0-7679-0799-X; Oct. 16)

Art & Artists

Cajun artist George Rodrigue has painted the Blue Dog (derived from the Loup-Garou of Cajun folklore) in innumerable situations, and the dog's friendly if somewhat haunted aspect has enchanted viewers endlessly. Following Blue Dog, Blue Dog Man, Blue Dog Christmas and other titles, Blue Dog Love presents more than 50 previously unpublished Blue Dog paintings, accompanied by Wendy Rodrigue's remarks on meeting and falling in love with the artist. Sales of this book, which has a red velour cover with a heart-shaped cutout whence Blue Dog peers, should peak around Valentine's Day, but a 22-city author tour should bolster sales this fall. (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $35 112p ISBN 1-58479-088-1; Oct. 9)

Will Self on Damien Hirst, Nick Hornby on Richard Billingham, and A.S. Byatt on Patrick Heron are just a few of the 39 Writers on Artists to be found in this large-format collection. Each short essay is accompanied by careful reproductions of the artist in question's work and biographical sidebars on the writers. Unfortunately, with a preponderance of British writers and artists, and very few women (eight of a possible 78, including editor Karen White's introduction and Sister Wendy Beckett's comments on Salvador Dalí) represented, this book will be a tough sell to American art lovers. (DK, $40 344p ISBN 0-7894-8035-2; Nov.)

In Hopper, Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand (Blizzard of One) turns his attention to another medium in a series of short critical essays—cum—emotional responses to 30 paintings. His visceral reflections cut to the heart of Edward Hopper's appeal: the arresting geometry of his images; their stillness; their indifference to the viewer, which makes them all the more opaque and compelling. Strand's descriptions of many of his subjects are as deadpan as the originals: "In Nighthawks, three people are sitting in what must be an all-night diner. The diner is situated on a corner...." Fans of Strand will enjoy his cleanly wrought personal reactions to a much-loved American painter. (Knopf, $15 paper 96p ISBN 0-375-70871-1; Nov. 23)

Though certainly more famous for his oil paintings, Winslow Homer was one of the first major artists to take watercolor seriously and to herald its acceptance in the 20th century as an art form in its own right, undertaken by stars like O'Keeffe, Prendergast and Hopper. Nearly 700 of his watercolors survive; 150-some are reproduced in The Watercolors of Winslow Homer by Miles Unger, a contributing New York Times critic. It's clear why these paintings, which seem like top-drawer book or magazine illustrations, hover in relative obscurity: the thin quality of the paint doesn't enrich Homer's rural and sea-faring subjects as does the texture he wrought from oil and canvas. But serious fans of turn-of-the-century American art will be delighted with this high-quality collection and Unger's learned text. (Norton, $39.95 224p ISBN 0-393-02047-9; Oct. 22)

Nearly 20 years after the art world began to consider graffiti a contender, one of its most acclaimed progenitors from the '70s and '80s is honored in a retrospective called DONDI Style Master General: The Life and Art of Dondi White by Andrew Witten and Michael White. Raised in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood, White was part of an active culture of graffiti "writers": "Dondi and his generation perfected the energetic, edgy, probing styles of their predecessors, learning control, fitting the painting to the car/canvas." Gifted with vision, purpose and talent, White also stood out for crossing boundaries within graffiti-artist and gang culture. Photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant made his work visible to the art world and had a hand in transforming subway-art culture in the process. Color photos. (Regan Books, $35 56p ISBN 0-06-039427-7; Nov.)

The Stuff of Science

What do math equations look like when the numbers are translated into form and the form is rendered in, say, silk, or glass? In Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidoscope of Math and Art, Ivars Peterson (The Jungles of Randomness), a writer and editor at Science News, studies sculpture inspired by abstract math. Many among this breed appear in plazas and subway stations; others get little visibility, being too minute or fragile. Quasicrystals and hypercubes rendered in glass and metal; lattices transformed into different geometric patterns; Möbius strips made of everything from ribbon to bronze; computer sculpture generators—via numerous methods and media, the work examined explores "the beauty of embedded possibility." Helaman Ferguson, Harriet Brisson and William Webber are among the artists represented. 250-plus photos and illus. (Wiley, $29.95 252p ISBN 0-471-16558-1; Oct.)

Reader's Digest presents The Universe and How to See It: A Practical Guide to Viewing and Understanding the Night Sky, Giles Sparrow's accessible survey of the firmament as seen from terra firma. With color photographs and illustrations on every page (300 all together), the book starts with the solar system, its smallest area of concern, and proceeds through the Milky Way and beyond to other galaxies. Sparrow (DK Space Encyclopedia) decodes constellation and sky maps, explains the origins and development of our galaxy and its contents, describes different galactic formations (elliptical galaxies, colliding galaxies, etc.)—in short, he imparts a comprehensive essential grasp of astronomy. Serious amateur astronomers will be on cloud nine. ($32.95 224p ISBN 0-7621-0348-5; Oct.)

Can the bizarre and probabilistic world of quantum physics be used to prove the existence of the soul and its immortality? In Physics of the Soul: The Quantum Book of Living, Dying, Reincarnation, and Immortality, Amit Goswami (The Self-aware Universe; Quantum Creativity; etc.) details how cutting-edge science might be used to answer questions that religions have grappled with for millennia. The author hypothesizes that a "quantum monad" is involved in reincarnation, and draws upon UFO sightings, past-life regression, ghosts and angels to broaden the applicability of his ideas. New Age buffs should find this book appealing. (Hampton Roads, $22.95 292p ISBN 1-57174-250-6; Sept.)

Stars, Stripes and Air Power

A retired U.S. Air Force pilot, former director of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and a bestselling author, Walter J. Boyne (Aces in Command) has written hundreds of magazine articles during his 40-year secondary career in aviation journalism. In The Best of Wings Magazine, Boyne has collected 27 of his articles for the renowned magazines Wings and Airpower ("The two were really just one magazine, but Joe [Mizrahi, the founder of both] used two names as a marketing ploy"). The 27 selections originally appeared between 1971 ("Sky Tiger: Bell's Airacuda—Bomber Destroyer Without a Mission") and 1985 ("The Fabulous Phantom: McDonnell F-4 Phantom"). Armchair aviators will find expert investigations of numerous aircraft as well as vicarious flight delight. 205 photos. (Brassey's, $27.50 paper 256p ISBN 1-57488-368-2; Oct. 1)

Barn doors, smalltown porches, a sizable swath of pavement on the Mall in Washington, D.C., Jasper Johns paintings, digital art, neon lights and the big blue sky are some of Old Glory's backdrops in The American Flag, a photographic tribute. With an introduction by Whitney Smith, dozens of unattributed images and an actual three-foot-by-five-foot flag, readers can enjoy a ready-made, easy-on-the-eyes patriotism. Book and flag come in a nice package and would make a fine gift for the fervent. (Friedman/Fairfax [Sterling, dist.], $19.95 cloth 72p ISBN 1-56799-848-8; Nov.)

World War II Reexamined

A writer actively involved in veterans' rights and POW organizations, Judith Pearson offers Belly of the Beast, the harrowing story of WWII POW Estel Myers. From Kentucky sharecropper to naval medical corpsman, then malnourished POW, Myers was herded with many other American soldiers into the almost airless hold of the Japanese prison ship Oryuku Maru. Three-quarters of Myers's fellow prisoners died there. (New American Library, $13 paper 288p ISBN 0-451-20444-1; Oct.)

With James Bondesque devices, disguise and sabotage, secret agents became Britain's weapon against Germany after Britain's troops were forced off the continent. In Secret Agent: The True Story of the Special Operations Executive's Covert War Against Hitler, British wartime intelligence operations expert David Stafford (Churchill and the Secret Service, etc.) gives a thorough history of the British government's subversions of German incursions. The book, which includes a map and 38 b&w photographs, accompanies a BBC documentary produced last spring. (Overlook, $29.95 254p ISBN 1-58567-168-1; Oct.)

After imprisoning them in 1942, the U.S. government began drafting Japanese-Americans for military service two years later. In Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II, University of North Carolina law professor Eric L. Muller details a group of men caught in a horrific catch-22: ostracized by the Japanese-American community for not complying with Uncle Sam's call, yet without rights as citizens. The book is backed by years of research and personal interviews, and fills in an important chapter of United States history. (Univ. of Chicago, $27.50 236p ISBN 0-226-54822-8; Oct.)

A Different Way of Doing Business

Using the spirit of 1960s activism, Barbara Waugh was able to bring about change in a large corporation. The activist joined the recruiting department at Hewlett-Packard in the mid-'80s with the goal of finding "co-conspirators" and bringing about change by "doing well by doing good." To this end, she applied traditionally unbusinesslike techniques to the company's policies and strategies. She offers her own advice for bringing about "radical" change in a corporate environment in The Soul in the Computer: The Story of a Corporate Revolutionary. Among her recommendations are tried and true concepts that activists have used for years (e.g., finding the "deviants," "strength in numbers" and "bringing an issue home." (Inner Ocean, $21.95 272p ISBN 1-930722-03-6; Oct.)

In a similar vein, The Responsible Entrepreneur: How to Make Money and Make a Difference focuses on businesspersons in both the for-profit and nonprofit sector who took risks to help others and found rewards themselves. Author Craig Hall debunks common myths about entrepreneurs (that they only care about making money, etc.) and offers motivational tales from successful capitalists like Doraja Eberle, who fed the hungry in Sarajevo, and Albert Black, who provided employment opportunities for the underprivileged. (Career Press, $24.99 224p ISBN 1-56414-581-6; Oct.)

Although Brenda Laurel's start-up venture, Purple Moon (a company dedicated solely to creating software for girls) failed, she walked away from the experience with a cornucopia of knowledge about technology and economics. She shares those lessons in Utopian Entrepreneur, a guide to those seeking socially positive work in the business world. A stream-of-consciousness style and unique layout come together to present important messages, like "good research is never done," "be a realist" and "pay attention to what you learn." (MIT, $14.95 paper 112p ISBN 0-262-62153-3; Oct.)