Fashion History

Tiny, glamorous, with cheekbones and lips to rival those of Hollywood sirens, miniature countertop mannequins graced stores from the 1920s to the 1960s. Eventually abandoned by retailers, these delicately detailed statuettes, now collectors' items, are documented by New York Times art director Steven Heller and designer Louise Fili in Counter Culture: The Allure of Mini-Mannequins. Color photographs show off the intricacy of the Lilliputian figures (whose clothing was sometimes an exact replica of the full-size version, down to the zippers and hooks), while the authors describe how the mannequins were designed, cast and exhibited in an age when in-store displays were a vital form of advertising. And at 61/4"×47/8", the book is perfectly scaled. (Princeton Architectural, $20 256p ISBN 1-56898-304-2; Nov.)

High-heeled shoes, push-up bras, Elizabethan ruffs and Japanese platform clogs are just a few examples of clothing that has pushed and pulled the human form into new shapes in the last few centuries. With color photos and illustrations, Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, which accompanies a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit of the same name, traces the role of fashion in manipulating the body to fit physical ideals. Harold Koda, curator of the Met's Costume Institute, focuses on extreme exaggerations of human form like the European 19th-century bustle, tiny corseted waists or the enormous-hipped dresses of the 18th-century French court, but also shows how today's designers quote and send up these iconic shapes. (Yale, $40 168p ISBN 0-300-09117-6; Dec.)

One of the best known, most torturous examples of fashionable alteration is Chinese foot binding. In Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet, Barnard College history professor Dorothy Ko looks at the making and wearing of lotus shoes, the footwear for women with bound feet. Along the way she discredits some simplistic popular notions about foot binding and emphasizes the economic and social problems that it addressed. While the practice began as an exclusive custom of leisured elites, Ko explains, it spread to the peasantry in the 17th and 18th centuries, resulting in such incongruous artifacts as lotus rainboots and galoshes. Color photographs throughout the book illustrate Ko's explanation of shoemaking, foot binding and the symbolism of the shoes' decorations, though the beauty of the shoes (and this book, which includes step-by-step, how-to instructions for binding) belies the pain of the wearers. (Univ. of California, $45 168p ISBN 0-520-23283-6; Dec.)

Another Eastern fashion innovation is spotlighted by anthropologist Liza Dalby (Geisha) in Kimono: Fashioning Culture. When Dalby spent a year as a geisha in Kyoto in the 1970s, she found that the most difficult part of her work was wearing the kimono. Her experience inspired this exhaustive chronicle of the history and social meanings of the robe. Dalby is particularly concerned with how the confining robe—in which women can't, among other things, cross their legs—clashed with creeping Westernization in the last century, giving rise to such controversies as the 1920s skirmish over what kind of underwear should properly be worn with the kimono. (Univ. of Washington, $24.95 paper 400p ISBN 0-295-98155-5; Feb.)

Personal Finance

A companion to the bestseller The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, Suze Orman's Financial Guidebook distills the most important points in 9 Steps, providing work sheets and self-assessment tests for each step that allow readers to take full inventory of their spending habits and attitudes toward money. Through probing questions and quizzes, Orman helps readers explore formative childhood experiences with money and understand how these influence their current financial anxieties. She also gives a crash course in wills, retirement plans and mutual funds, as well as guidance for getting out of debt. (Three Rivers, $11.95 paper 192p ISBN 0-609-80893-1; Feb.)

Today's investors hardly need to be reminded that the stock market is full of short-term risks. What they do need to keep in mind, argues investing columnist James K. Glassman (Dow 36,000), is that stocks are a sure bet in the long run. The Secret Code of the Superior Investor: How to Be a Long-Term Winner in a Short-Term World is an investing guide "for the perplexed." Glassman explains the basic principles of investing and advises readers how to choose stocks with the long-term future in mind. He stresses minimal trading, arguing that even the most experienced investors don't really know how to predict short-term fluctuations. His is a useful, reassuring guide, particularly for the novice. (Crown Business, $25 288p ISBN 0-8129-9108-7; Jan. 9)

February Publication

Early cave paintings show Stone Agers plucking out facial hair with sea shells, suggesting that the decision to grow or not grow a beard is almost as old as human society itself. Allan Peterkin's One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair traces the beard's (and the razor's) storied past, including styles, regulations and cultural significance from the ancient Egyptians to the present day. The breezy and concise illustrated volume also covers the various religious meanings of beards, facial hair in gay culture, bearded ladies and the beard as interpreted by Freud. Peterkin includes instructions for washing, dying, trimming and shaving all kinds of beards from Amish-style to the Franz Josef. (Arsenal Pulp, $16.95 paper 240p ISBN 1-55152-107-5)

January Publications

A lucid, thorough guide to every aspect of living with bipolar disorder, Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families and Providers covers symptoms, treatment and advocacy. E. Fuller Torrey (Surviving Schizophrenia), psychiatry professor and Treatment Advocacy Center president, and psychiatry instructor Michael B. Knable explain what mania and depression feel like from the inside, the causes and risk factors, the range of possible medications and treatments, and 10 special problems for manic depressives like alcohol abuse and medical noncompliance. There's also a section on bipolar disorder in children and a list of frequently asked questions. This is a valuable resource for anyone touched by the illness. (Basic, $28 384p ISBN 0-465-08663-2)

Child welfare agencies are systematically destroying black families. That's the provocative argument Northwestern University law professor Dorothy Roberts (Killing the Black Body) puts forward in Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare. Roberts contends that black children are disproportionately represented in the foster care system, that they are kept in it longer, moved around more and are less likely to be returned home or adopted. She explores the racial bias still inherent in child welfare, suggests that family preservation isn't given a fair chance and shows how the new political climate (which favors severing parental ties over reunification) is only worsening the domestic situations of black children. (Basic/Civitas, $27.50 352p ISBN 0-465-07058-2)

Time reporters Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman delve into the tale of the "American Judas" in The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in U.S. History. The title says it all—almost: the authors trace his espionage and the investigations that eventually uncovered it in lucid, well-paced prose, but they also recount his erotic Internet postings and his friendship with a down-and-out stripper, his fascination with spy novels and his conversion to Catholicism. How could such a "good family man" and a devoted churchgoer betray his country with such dedication for so many years? Easy, say the authors, his life was the "perfect cover." (Little, Brown, $25.95 236p ISBN 0-316-71821-1; Jan. 2)

December Publication

Mark A. Williams, founder of the Diversity Channel (which gives diversity training to organizations like the CIA and the Peace Corps), describes a distinctive approach to life inside and outside the office in The 10 Lenses: Your Guide to Living and Working in a Multicultural World. Williams believes there are 10 basic perspectives on race relations, "lenses" like Assimilationist, Meritocratist or Culturalcentrist. He describes the belief systems, strengths, weaknesses and history of each lens, citing examples of how they function in the workplace. Employers can identify the lenses that dominate their office and see how they affect recruitment, hiring and promotion, while general readers can better understand their own views on race. (Capital, $24.95 256p ISBN 1-892123-75-4; paper $14.95 ISBN -59-2)