New Last Week: Right Is Wrong by Arianna Huffington

Considering everything that’s been going on for the last eight years, we’re pretty confident in suggesting that Arianna Huffington is not the only card carrying Republican who has gone renegade. However, she’s certainly among the most visible.

In case there was ever any doubt, Huffington’s new book -- her 12th -- Right Is Wrong (Knopf), makes it clear what side of the party line she’s sitting on these days. It also has what I’m almost positive is the longest subtitle. Ever.

How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe.

Ah, sorry, Arianna, could you possibly make your feelings a little more clear? There might be someone, somewhere who doesn’t get it.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on the book and you want a dose of Ms. Huffington right this second, her popular Web site, The Huffington Post, is here.

Excerpt: Lust in Translation by Pamela Druckerman

Today in January Magazine, an excerpt of Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by former journalist Pamela Druckerman:

The morning after François Mitterrand's funeral, a photo showed the late president's mistress and illegitimate daughter standing by his grave alongside his wife and sons. That tableau has become famous internationally as proof that the French are uniquely tolerant of extramarital affairs.

In fact, although French presidents seem to have an infidelity record approaching 100 per cent, ordinary Frenchmen claim to be quite faithful. In a 2004 national survey, just 3.8 per cent of married men and 2 per cent of women said they had had more than one sex partner in the past year (the best approximation of infidelity) -- fewer than in similar surveys in the U.S. and the U.K.

If France isn't the world capital of adultery, which country is? I set off around the world to find out.

See the full excerpt of Pamela Druckerman’s Lust in Translation here.

Writing in Downward Dog

Many of us -- perhaps most -- wouldn’t think to lump yoga and creative writing together. For Jeff Davis, the connection came somewhat naturally when, as a writing teacher, he found himself pushed to his physical and emotional limits. According to Davis, he added a very basic yoga regime into his day to help him deal with the physical stresses of his work. To his surprise, regular yoga practice helped release his muse which led (more or less directly and perhaps not so startlingly, since this is a writing teacher) to him writing a book to help others get to the yoga writing special place in the same way he had.

Now revised and expanded, Davis’ The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing (Monkfish Publishing) is intended to help writers “forge a deeper connection with their muse through the use of simple yoga practices,” and other cool stuff. From the publisher:

Through the processes Davis suggests, writers gain the authentic insights needed to deepen their concentration, increase their self-discipline and bring new life to their writing. At once inspirational and instructional, The Journey from the Center to the Page artfully illustrates how yoga philosophies and practices can be an invaluable ally to the writing life.

If you’re already stuck in downward dog, this might be one to check out.

Celebrating Earth Day: Go Green by Nancy H. Taylor

Before you even pick the book up, Nancy H. Taylor’s Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community (Gibbs Smith) scores points for staying on target; on task. No glossy stock here, no nasty poison inks or sketchy varnishes. The slender paperback is all soft edges and recycled stock so, going in, it’s reassuring to see an author who encourages us to change the world by starting with “easy things like changing our lightbulbs, recycling and driving less” actually walking that walk in her own book.

Taylor’s book deals with all the issues central to recreating your life in a more conscious way. Remodeling your home with green as your guide; choosing greener vehicles, buying local and organic food; conserving water and getting to a place of awareness with your personal carbon footprint.

At its core, Go Green is a primer. If you’re already ankle-deep or more in the environmental movement, there’s probably not a great deal for you to learn here: most of this has been said before, albeit in more complicated ways. But if you, like millions of others, want to know where to begin and how you can start to help, you won’t go wrong with Go Green.

Further Adventures in Search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal

In this gorgeously produced and surprisingly thick book, Blumenthal looks at the preparation of exactly eight dishes: hamburger; fish pie; chicken tikka masala; risotto; peking duck; chilli con carne; baked alaska and trifle. However, he looks at the them so closely, there are times that they probably want to squirm. Blumenthal’s risotto, for example, takes only about 35 minutes to prepare... once you’ve dealt with the 10 hours of prep time required to make it in his way. While it’s likely that very (very, very) few people will make risotto in exactly the way Blumenthal recommends, on the way to the recipes, you’ll learn an awful lot about rice and starch and many other things you’ve probably never considered deeply until now.

Picking off where he left off in 2006’s In Search of Perfection, Further Adventures in Search of Perfection (Bloomsbury), Blumenthal goes to excessive (some would be say crazy ass) lengths to deconstruct a handful of favorites. “Ultimately,” writes Blumenthal, “that’s what this book is about the excitement and enjoyment of discovering new routes to the cooking of old favorites.”

The routes are extreme, to say the very, very least. For example, in order to determine if marinades actually do tenderize meat, at one point Blumenthal sticks chicken breasts into an MRI (this on the road to finding the perfect chicken tikka masala). If you’ve seen him on television, you know that some of the effort he goes through in his endless search for the perfection is… well… a little silly. Same here. But, at the same time, it’s a deeply interesting tour through a surprising number of ingredients and techniques by a man whose internationally acclaimed restaurant -- Fat Duck -- and OBE attest to the passion he brings to his quest.

“Increasingly,” Blumenthal writes, “I’ve realised that culinary perfection means not only mastery of technique, but also consideration of the sensory and psychological aspects of a dish.” If that’s a line that hits you where you live, you will love Further Adventures in Search of Perfection.

New This Month: Landscape Planning by Judith Adam

Six years ago, a top landscape architect and designer reviewed the first edition of Judith Adam’s Landscape Planning: Practical Techniques for the Home Gardener (Firefly Books) for January Magazine and liked it.

Back in 2002, Laura-Jean Kelly said, “Landscape Planning is formulated to assist gardeners in the eastern part of North America in their tasks and this is reflected in materials and plants that are suggested in this book. With that said, Judith Adam approaches an often daunting task in a straightforward manner and provides the homeowner with a thorough primer on landscape management. If you are a beginner, this is one book that will cut through the maze of trends and styles to educate with practical advice.”

In 2008, Adam and Firefly offer up a new revised edition, mainly enhanced by still more tools to help the home landscaper find garden gold in their own little plot of land. Kelly’s 2002 review is here. It’s all still true of the new edition. Only more so.

The Dawkins Effect

If you were to sit down and try to dream up a book intended to annoy the largest number of people possible, it would look a lot like this. And I don’t just mean the shiny silver cover with the bright orange die-cut, either. Rather, a book not only based on material that, for many of us was one of the forbidden dinner table conversation topics when we were growing up, it occasionally touches on still more.

The book, of course, is Richard Dawkins’ sensational The God Delusion (Mariner Books), first published to a growing thundercloud of readership in 2006, it was recently released in paperback in time for a new edition to (ahem) lord it over a whole flock of imitators and also rans: some taking up Dawkins’ refrain, others trying to rake a little muck and -- astonishingly -- a few even used Dawkins’ name in the title of their own books. Honestly, put up your hand if you think a book called God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins (Ignatius Press) can do anything but sell more of Dawkins book. And how about The Dawkins Delusion? (IVP Books and the question mark is part of the title.) Or the even stupider sounding The Ipod Tutor: The Argument Against Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. As the name sort of implies: you don’t even have to read that one. You can just listen along.

Let’s face it, though: Dawkins has here cooked up a powerful stew, one that sometimes reads as though it is meant to annoy the other side. For example, this snippet from Dawkins’ preface to the paperback edition seems like gasoline intended for the fire:

… I suspect that for many people the main reason they cling to religion is not that it is consoling, but that they have been let down by our educational system and don’t realize that non-belief is an option. This is certainly true for most people who think they are creationists. They have simply not been properly taught Darwin’s astounding alternative.

You can almost hear the flames jump at that one; hear people preparing to write still more books with “Dawkins” in the title. And it also helps you understand why The God Delusion has invited such a huge readership. The Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University as well as the author of many hugely popular and thought-provoking books, Dawkins delivers the scholarship necessary for us to even begin to take him seriously. But what really compels -- and makes some people mad enough that they even use the professor’s name in the title of their own books -- is that Dawkins doesn’t bother dancing the careful dance. “Darwin’s Rottweiler” is what Discovery called him. We get that -- really we do. But it just scratches the surface.

Spilling the Five Secrets

Suddenly, everything’s a bucket list. In fairness to him, author John Izzo might not merely be jumping on this bandwagon. As the author of Second Innocence and the co-author of Awakening Corporate Soul -- bestsellers both -- Izzo understands exactly the path you want to take. After all, as his bio tells us, he’s “spoken to over one million people on four continents about living more purposeful lives.” That’s a lot of speaking. A lot of souls.

If Izzo is trying to keep The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (Berrett-Koehler) an actual secret, he’s doing a terrible job. The press material that arrived with January’s copy of the book had them all lined up, one through five. Plus you don’t even have to read the book to figure out what they are: chapters three through seven are secrets one through five.

In the interest of spilling our guts and helping you get the fast track to everlasting happiness (and who the hell doesn’t want that?) here they are:

• Secret One: Be true to yourself
• Secret Two: Leave no regrets
• Secret Three: Become love (clearly that’s a tricky one if you haven’t also read the accompanying chapter.)
• Secret Four: Live the moment
• Secret Five: Give more than you take

Obviously, this is one of those deals where you don’t benefit from just reading the secrets. Heck: I just typed them and I’m not feeling any better.

Despite the fact that I am, here, having a little bit of fun, in his prologue, Izzo warns us that the title of the book “was not chosen lightly. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die has two key elements. The first is the idea that there are indeed ‘secrets’ to life .... The second element, ‘before you die,’ reminds us that there is urgency to discovering what really matters.”

New This Week: Green Chic by Christie Matheson

The shift was so subtle, for many of us, it happened right in front of our eyes while we weren’t looking.

It seems like, one day, saving the planet was like guerilla war-fare. Not only were people chaining themselves to trees, throwing paint on fur-wearers, and protesting all manner of protestable things, they were looking distinctly frumpy while doing it.

Then, almost overnight, green became the new black and a new breed of advocate picked up the banner. They were different because not only were they determined to save the world, they were convinced you could look good doing it.

Enter fashion writer Christie Matheson, author of Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style (Sourcebooks). Matheson wants us to “embrace the fabulousness of green living. And it is fabulous. Being green can help you look gorgeous, have a killer wardrobe, feel amazing, travel in style, create a home that’s an oasis, host fun parties, eat incredible food, and drink phenomenal wine, all while feeling more connected with your friends, family, and nature.”

Nor is any of this nearly as stupid as it sounds. I mean, it could have been. It really, really could. Matheson is, however, a talented and accomplished writer and it’s clear she really cares about her topic and has walked this particular walk. So it’s a good book. Despite the fact (or, perhaps, for some reason because of the fact) that she insists on saying things like “None of the designer cakes, martinis, or Italian sheets are even remotely as chic -- and I mean really, truly, deeply, timelessly, Jackie-O-and-Audrey-Hepburn chic -- as living green.”

Most of the book offers up fetchingly stated green living alternatives. (“Fetchingly stated” because, I assure you, this writer does not do things without style. Ev-ah. But you guessed that already.) She deals with all aspects of green living in the real world. Long story short: follow Matheson’s path, heed her advice and you will decrease your footprint. And, needless to say, you’ll look fabulous doing it.

Cosmetics Cop in Action

You don’t actually need a review of Don’t Go to the Cosmetic Counter Without Me (Beginning Press). You already know about this book. You just need to be told that the latest edition -- the seventh -- is available now. It’s been about 25 years since author Paula Begoun, a former make-up artist, put together the original version of the book that would lead to her being called “the Ralph Nader of Rouge” and “Cosmetics Cop” (a nickname she likes well enough to own the dot.com for).

This latest edition is right up to the minute and makes for some fascinating reading. Literally every product I’d heard some buzz about was listed and had been reviewed. (In fact, if I’d had the book a few weeks earlier, I would have saved some money: some of my most recent skincare purchases had earned Begoun’s frowns.)

The book is grouped into three major sections. Section one -- by far the largest – takes you through each product by company. You read that right: about 30,000 products in all. The second hits the highlights: summarizing the best in each category. And a third is a dictionary of cosmetic ingredients for those times when, say, you’re wondering exactly what that watercress extract in a moisturizer is actually going to do for (to?) your skin, or just what the hell Seamollient is, anyway. (Note: according to Begoun, “Seamollient” is a trade name for an algae extract. I would guess it costs more, though.)

I found it interesting that some of the technological changes I have sensed in the cosmetic industry over the past decade or so have been noted by the cosmetic cop herself. Changes in serums, for instance, have warranted a different kind of look than previously. And prefacing the “best powders” section, Begoun writes, “Quite honestly ... it is getting more and more difficult to find a bad loose or pressed powder.”

There is, for me, one huge mystery around Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me: as in previous editions, there’s a picture of Begoun right on the cover. How is it that, with every new edition, she appears even younger? Maybe testing 30,000 products will do that for you!

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green

Last week we told you about Christie Matheson’s engaging Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style (Sourcebooks). This week it’s Gillian Deacon talking about her new book Green for Life (Penguin).

“It’s so fulfilling and rewarding to take steps on your own and do something you know is making your family healthier or your home less toxic or your small personal footprint just a little smaller,” she said.

Is it just me, or is there lot of buzzing in the room? Ah well: it’s for a good cause, right? Canadian Press has more of the same here.

And while we’re on the topic of the environment, The Toronto Star reports that, when it comes to the publishing industry, Canada is winning the battle of the green:

U.S. publishers are gradually going green, but Canada remains the book industry leader when it comes to forest-friendly book production, a comparison of recent studies in each country indicates.

The Star story is here

Marley Story Optioned by Weinstein

Variety reports that the Weinstein Company has optioned rights to Rita Marley’s 2004 autobiography No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley (Hyperion), “with plans to develop and produce a biopic about the legendary Jamaican singer.”

The project is in early development, with a late 2009 release date anticipated.

Published by Hyperion in 2004, book chronicles the couple's tempestuous marriage, which began in 1966 and weathered numerous separations and affairs, the birth of four children together (Marley may have fathered as many as 22 in all, 10 legally recognized) and an assassination attempt in 1976.

The Variety piece is here. January ran an excerpt of the book when it was first published. You can see that excerpt here.

Author Snapshot: Kevin Bazzana

Music historian and biographer Kevin Bazzana holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley, a degree he puts to careful use in creating beautiful and lucid biographies of musical characters you just don’t think about every day. Not for this author either Madonna or Chopin: the objects of his interest tend to the more esoteric, the less known.

Bazzana’s first two books focused on various aspects of the life and work of Glenn Gould. Glen Gould: The Performer in the Work (Oxford University Press) was published in 1998 to international acclaim. As Library Journal pointed out, the book was much more than a biography, “this is instead a detailed critical study of Gould the musical interpreter, complete with a CD of pertinent recordings.”

Bazzana followed that up with Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (McLelland & Stewart) in 2003, arguably creating the author as the world’s leading expert on the brilliant and eccentric Canadian pianist.

Last year the publication of the biography of another eccentric and brilliant pianist brought Bazzana further acclaim. Lost Genius tells the story of the Hungarian-born Ervin Nyiregyházi, who spent his life struggling with his talent. New this month in paperback, Lost Genius is nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

While it’s difficult not to be curious about what will come next for this writer, we must resist the urge. As will be seen, it’s not his favorite question.



A Snapshot of Kevin Bazzana...

Born: Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
Resides: Near Victoria, Britsh Columbia (Brentwood Bay, actually.)
Birthday: July 27, 1963
Web site: I lack sufficient computer skills and self-esteem to create a personal Web site, and alas have no thoughts profound enough to justify one.

January Magazine: Please tell us about your most recent book.

Kevin Bazzana: Lost Genius is a biography of the Hungarian-American pianist and composer Ervin Nyiregyházi (1903-1987). He was a brilliant, highly original musician and eccentric character who led a bizarre life, though his story is almost unknown today. He was one of those gifted artists who was cursed psychologically in ways that sabotaged his career; his story is a tragedy about a great talent that cannot find its place in the world, and he left to posterity only tantalizing glimpses of his art in its prime.

He was one of the most remarkable prodigies in music history -- a psychologist wrote a book about his gifts when he was 13 -- and he had a sensational career in his childhood and youth. But in his early 20, though recognized as one of the greatest pianists of his day, he lost the momentum of his career, for complicated professional, artistic and personal reasons.

For the next half-century, he lived a restless and dissolute life, mostly anonymously in seedy neighborhoods of Los Angeles -- he lived in poverty, drank heavily, was sexually voracious (he married 10 times!). He occasionally performed in private or public, and even long after he was supposedly washed up he could amaze knowledgeable listeners with his playing, though efforts to revive his career always failed. (He spent most of his time composing -- more than 1000 works in a strange, old-fashioned, very personal style.) In the 1970s, he was rediscovered in old age, and enjoyed a brief, noisy, controversial renaissance -- he gave some concerts, made some recordings -- before slipping back into obscurity again.

In my opinion, Nyiregyházi’s is one of the most fascinating stories in music history, made all the more significant and interesting -- and ultimately tragic -- by his unquestionably great gifts.

What’s on your nightstand?

A few years ago, I realized that I was remarkably ignorant of all manner of literature, and since then have set about, more or less systematically, to remedy that defect -- reading Moby-Dick and Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina and Ulysses and all the other books I should have read in college but didn’t.

Recently, I’ve been having a bit of a Philip Roth fit. I just finished American Pastoral and am now cracking open I Married a Communist. But I should add that I divide my free time almost equally between books and movies -- I am a passionate film buff -- and so my nightstand is often piled with DVDs rather than books. My most recent weekful of rented DVDs ranged from Ichikawa, Bergman and Godard, to Laurel and Hardy and The Pajama Game.

What inspires you?

I usually feel presumptuous using the word “inspiration” about my work, since writing non-fiction consists so much of the prosaic donkey work of research. In my experience, writing non-fiction resembles Edison’s famous definition of genius: “one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.” (This is why I sometimes think that the phrase “literary non-fiction” is an oxymoron -- so much of the process involves routine detective work that hardly counts as literary.) But I suppose something like inspiration does give me the motivation to do the labor required to write a biography. In the case of Lost Genius, I can definitely say that I was inspired by genuine interest in and devotion to the subject, and by a desire to share his story and make a case for his significance with the public. I felt particularly passionate about the subject because he was so obviously brilliant and original and yet almost completely unknown; a kind of missionary zeal propelled me in this case.

My previous biography was about Glenn Gould, and though I was genuinely passionate about him, too, he was already famous enough when I came along that he didn’t really need my championship. But Nyiregyházi, it seemed, was going to remain a “lost genius” unless I roused myself and did something about it. That, I suppose, could be called inspiration.

What are you working on now?

For whatever reasons -- weariness? indecision? dread? -- my brain has been in stand-by mode in the year since Lost Genius was first published. I have kept up with the various freelance writing, editing and lecturing jobs that feed and clothe me, but I am not yet at work on a new book. I have been poking my nose into various subjects that interest me, and have been seriously considering moving away from my chosen field (classical music), but have not yet found a new topic. I suspect I may have to wait until a new topic finds me. Part of the problem may be that I am uncertain whether I want (or have the stamina) to write another biography. Writing a biography is a huge, engrossing, exhausting task, and at the end of the day it’s difficult to feel truly confident that you have successfully captured something as elusive as a human life and personality. Anyway, at the moment, when it comes to my “next book,” I can only say, “Stay tuned.”

Tell us about your process.

With a biography, I begin rather amorphously, simply musing about the subject, reading about his life, going through his work and so on, without (at first) any firm goal in mind. Once I have committed to undertaking a full biography, I begin to accumulate data and materials more systematically. Actual writing comes fairly late in the process. (My ten years of work on Lost Genius included less than two of actual writing and editing; the rest was sleuthing.)

When it finally becomes clear that I have enough material for a book, I start with a pen and a piece of paper. I first lay out the overall structure of the book, initially on just one or two pieces of paper, so I can see the whole book at a glance. I then expand on this skeleton, creating ever more detailed outlines, until I feel confident that I know the main divisions of the book -- how the story will unfold, how I will balance chronological narrative with essay-like passages, and so on. (I let the subject dictate the form: every life story suggests its own structure, balance of factors, style and tone.)

Detailed outline at hand, I go systematically through my groaning files and put each bit of information into its appropriate slot. Eventually, I come up with a somewhat orderly pile of information that I can begin sculpting into something that looks like prose. Of course, there are always surprises along the way -- last-minute discoveries and ideas that need to be incorporated, sometimes even major structural changes late in the day. But I find that if I begin with a detailed outline I can avoid getting lost in the mountains of data, and can handle whatever is thrown at me at the last minute.

Finally, when every word and comma is self-evidently perfect, I send the text to my editor, who points out all the self-evident imperfections -- and then a whole new round of fun begins...

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?

A small bedroom converted into an office. My computer sits on a desk that looks out over a half-acre of lawns, trees and gardens -- a view sometimes inspiring, sometimes distracting. Our cat, Sophie, occasionally perches on the desk to look out the window or sun herself while I work. Around me are filing cabinets, bookshelves, and CD cabinets -- all of them reaching satiation -- as well as stereo equipment, photos, diplomas, prizes and tchotchkes. On one of the few bits wall space, a poster of Samuel Beckett (one of my heroes) bearing a quotation that is, if not exactly inspirational, at least ... reassuring: “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I read voraciously as a kid and always had a lot of books around me. Early on, I dreamed that one day I might do the unimaginable and actually create one of these magic “book” things myself. But as an adult there was never an “Aha!” moment when I decided to be a writer. I studied first theatre and then music in university, and eventually got a Ph.D. in music, assuming that I would pursue an academic career. But my academic career effectively ended with my doctorate, as I realized that I preferred writing and lecturing about music to non-professional audiences, which I have done in a variety of forums.

The opportunity to write a trade biography of Glenn Gould came about, in 2000, in a rather roundabout way (old-boy network, friend-of-a-friend -- that sort of thing), and at that point it suddenly appeared that I was a real writer. Actually, I published my first article when I was 16, and have been writing for publication and profit off and on ever since; in fact, I can’t really do anything else. But for whatever reasons, I never thought of myself as a professional writer until quite recently. So I never decided to become a writer so much as realized, late in the day, that that is what I actually was.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?

I sometimes fantasize about pursuing one of my non-literary artistic interests -- music, theatre, film -- in a professional way. If a genie gave me one wish for a career and the chops to pull it off, I might choose film director, though the thought of being a pianist or conductor would also be tempting. (In real life, I can barely play a C-major scale on the piano without falling off the bench.) As it stands, I don’t have any apparent marketable skills besides writing, so I can’t imagine what I would be doing if I couldn’t write. Probably living, like one of Beckett’s characters, on “small charitable sums.”

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?

Certain specimens of recognition I have received have been particularly meaningful. High-profile reviews and prizes and such. Perhaps this is not surprising, given how long and difficult and lonely the process of writing a book can be, it’s nice to see signs that your work was not entirely in vain. I’m a long-standing New Yorker fan, and I experienced particularly rewarding feelings of having “arrived” when my books were reviewed (well, technically “Briefly Noted”) in The New Yorker. All of my reviews get filed, but those in The New Yorker are the only ones that I actually laminate.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?

The hours, the working conditions and the wardrobe requirements. Admittedly, my wife has a good, secure government job and is very supportive of my work, so I’m quite aware that the circumstances in which I work are pleasant entirely because of her. If I lived alone, I would be working in much drearier conditions -- if at all.

What’s the most difficult?

Knowing that it is impossible to make a decent living writing books in Canada -- at least, books on the kinds of subjects that interest me. When I weigh the amount of work involved in writing a comprehensive biography against the likely audience for a serious book about a classical musician, I know that I will be working for something far south of minimum wage. That realization can make getting up in the morning to start writing a little difficult.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often? What’s the question you’d like to be asked? What question would like never to be asked again?

These questions are difficult to answer, since I have had relatively little public experience as a writer -- relatively few readings and interviews and such -- so I can’t claim a wearisome overexposure to questions. I have never had to deal with, say, the particular woes of a high-profile author on his tenth book tour, and so have never felt the urge to run amok after hearing Question X for the umpteenth time. Still, I sometimes feel that any question about one of my books is one too many. This may seem a little odd, but think about it: publication represents the beginning of the public’s interest in the book, but often the end of the writer’s. Even when you’re genuinely devoted to a subject, it can be a race to the finish-line to see whether you will complete the book before growing sick of it! I think that’s inevitable with a biography, when you spend so much time cooped up at close quarters with the same person. Once the book’s done, you think you want nothing more than to ignore the subject for a decade or so. But it’s precisely then that people start reading the book and wanting to talk to you about it. Of course, given that I’m currently uncertain about what project to take up next, I guess I could say that there is one question I would like never to be asked again: “So, what’s next for Kevin Bazzana?”

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.

I memorized the Greek alphabet in Grade 7, to impress a girl who had one of those endless, unpronounceable Greek surnames -- 13 letters long, beginning with a silent “M.” Ever since then, whenever I want to write secret notes to myself I write them phonetically using Greek letters; this way, I can, for instance, write down things my wife wants for Christmas and keep the lists out in plain sight. (Thus, “Van Morrison’s new CD” becomes “ΥανΜωρρισονςνευΚΔ.”) I once read that Bertrand Russell hit upon this same encryption system as a teenager -- a case of great nerds thinking alike.

Review: The First Total War by David A. Bell

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews The First Total War by David A. Bell. Says Blanton:

In The First Total War, Bell suggests that though in the self-involved current age, we tend to think about the century just past as the one that caused all the trouble, it was the Napoleonic era that laid the groundwork for war as we would all come to know it. Or, as Bell himself says in the introduction:

Here, then, is the essential argument of The First Total War. The intellectual transformations of the Enlightenment, followed by the political fermentation of 1789-92, produced new understandings of war that made possible cataclysmic intensification of the fighting over the next twenty-three years. Ever since, the same developments have shaped the way Western societies have seen and engaged in military conflict.

And though that sounds as though it may a dry book make -- and if we consider the fact that the author is, after all, a scholar -- please keep in mind that the introduction intends to set things up only. The book itself… well, it often sings.

The full review is here.

Second Edition of Popular Parenting Book Announced

Back in 2000, we reviewed and liked How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children by Dr. Gerald Newmark.

“How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children feels like the culmination of a lifetime’s work and learning,” we said at the time. “A slender volume that nonetheless manages to get straight to the heart of the matter.”

A quarter of a million copies and nine years later, Newmark announces a second edition of his bestselling book “with an expanded vision of how parents can satisfy children’s emotional needs, and educators can create ... environments that significantly impact a child’s academic and social development.”

Newmark seems just as passionate about his mission as he was when the first edition was published. A parent, educator, researcher and consultant who works with parents, schools and youth, Newmark says he “wrote this book to raise public consciousness about the neglect of our children’s emotional needs, what I call the nation’s ‘missing agenda’.” According to Newmark, these things are usually addressed only in crisis, while he feels they should be addressed daily in all interactions with children.

Speaking of Cuba…

Talking about Havana puts us in mind of a book that really takes a special moment to warrant its discussion. After all, it’s not everyone who’s going to care about Fidel Castro Reader (Ocean Press, edited by David Deutschmann and Deborah Shnookal), but if you’re one of those, you’ll care very much. It truly is an essential resource for those who like to fancy they know a lot about Cuba’s charismatic dictator and the world he created, or would like to.

On the very first page of Fidel Castro Reader, a Che Guevara quote from 1965 sums up the place in history where this book fits:

Fidel has his own special way of fusing himself with the people, [which] can be appreciated only by seeing him in action.

Action in this context includes over five decades of Castro’s speeches, beginning with “History Will Absolve Me” given in Santiago de Cuba in 1953 and concluding with “In Answer to the Empire: Letters to President George W. Bush” from 2004.

A photographic section adds texture and some context but, make no mistake: Fidel Castro’s own words take center stage here.

Review: Good Food Tastes Good by Carol Hart

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Good Food Tastes Good by Carol Hart. Says Leach:

Where the self-help market was once awash in love books -- how to fall in, how to fall out, how to survive or thrive, we are now deluged with treatises dwelling on another unavoidable human pastime: eating. The average reader cannot walk into a bookshop, open a paper, or log online without falling over the latest gastronomic advice. Eat organic. Eat local. Eat low-fat. No butter! Margarine is poisonous! Eat carbs. Avoid carbs. No sugar! No red meat! Eat more leafy greens, except the bagged ones contaminated by e.coli. Eat more fish, but memorize your Monterey Bay Aquarium do’s and don’ts card, lest you buy fish nearing extinction, high in mercury, or otherwise toxic.

No question about it: food is a fraught issue.

Science writer Carol Hart enters the fray with Good Food Tastes Good. She contends that Americans are conditioned to ignore fresh, tasty foods in favor of boxed, canned, ultraprocessed products manufactured by a handful of megacorporations. The evil media has drilled into us that fresh foods like spinach or peas are just plain yucky, that the fresh ham from your local farmer is bad for you (ham fat!), that life is better if you never cook at all. Off you go to Food Mart, where, ever gullible, you buy wilted, sprayed produce shipped from Chile or February’s pallid greenhouse tomatoes.

The full review is here.

Writing For Love

Have you ever thought about writing a love story? Have you ever read a romance novel and wondered if you could write one? Do you have a story you want to tell, but don’t know how to begin? Have you ever wondered if a newcomer can break into the romance market?

These are some of the questions Vanessa Grant asks and answers in the third edition of Writing Romance (Self-Counsel Press). This edition is published more than a decade after the first one in 1997 and includes new chapters on writing for the burgeoning Christian and erotica markets. (Though it’s difficult not to chuckle at the irony of bringing those two together as very different parts of the market that have, nonetheless, grown in popularity for similar reasons.

One of the things I like least about this book is probably what has made it so popular throughout it’s publishing history: established romance novelist Grant deals less with the airy-fairy aspects of writing for the romance market and more with the nuts and bolts business end of things: plotting, computers, various aspects of research, editing, dealing with agents (or not). And though Grant -- herself the author of 30 romance novels, according to her bio -- keeps things focused on the romantic business at hand, there’s practical advice here that would likely benefit all types of writers of book-length manuscripts.

However if your preferences run to something more specific, Self-Counsel sends word that they’ve also recently released updated editions of Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy by Crawford Kilian and Writing for Children and Young Adults by Marion Crook.

Best Books of 2007: Non-Fiction

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation by Jim Rasenberger (Scribner) 320 pages
We think of our own times as being the fastest-paced, most astonishing in American history. But people living in 1908, the subject of ex-Vanity Fair editor Rasenberger’s delightful new book, must have felt the same. Packed into that single 12-month period were Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T; a thrilling 20,000-mile car race from New York to Paris; the supposed deaths of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia; President Theodore Roosevelt’s dispatching of the Great White Fleet on a round-the-world display of U.S. military potency; the second insanity trial of wealthy Pittsburgh scion Harry K. Thaw for the slaying of renowned architect Stanford White; explorer Robert Peary’s final assault on the North Pole; the “Tunguska event,” a massive explosion -- likely caused by a descending comet -- that felled some 80 million trees; and the very first passenger death in an airplane, flown by Orville Wright. By comparison, today’s redundant White House scandals, continuing disaster in Iraq, and tawdry doings among the rich young starlet set hardly seem to measure up. Rasenberger’s many-layered narrative balances out the optimism of 1908 and the sense of a country taking center stage, against the adversities -- lynchings in the South, terrorist explosions in Manhattan -- that lurked just beneath America’s idealized vision of itself. -- J. Kingston Pierce

A Memoir of Friendship, The Letters between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard by Blanche & Allison Howard (Viking Canada)
This mother and daughter team have edited a mountain of correspondence between two literary women who became fast friends. Beginning in 1971, and ending with Shields’ death in 2003, the correspondence begins tentatively and superficially but soon becomes more intimate and heartfelt as the women get to know one another better. Evolving from hand-written letters sent by snail mail to word processing and on to e-mail, the writing chronicles far more than just the relationship between two writers. Because of the nature of the women, their communication is full of juicy details about publishing, professional associations, critics, writers, the latest hot books and authors, travel and even politics. Even readers who know nothing about the Canadian literary scene will enjoy the chronicling of a friendship, and the thoughts and concerns of brilliant and creative woman as they discuss family, children, mutual friends, grandchildren, husband, work, travel and the challenge of balancing them all. Looming over it all, of course, is the presence of Carol Shields herself. A great literary treasure, she died all too soon. -- Cherie Thiessen

… and His Lovely Wife by Connie Schultz (Random House) 304 pages
Connie Schultz and Sherrod Brown, middle-aged and divorced with two children each, married in 2004. A year later, Brown, the Democratic Congressman from Ohio, decided to give up his Congressional seat to run against Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican Senator, in a state where no Democrat had won office for 12 years. In … and his Lovely Wife, Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer/Creators Syndicate and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, writes candidly about the challenges facing her as an outspoken journalist, feminist and the wife of a political candidate: her newspaper’s decision not to endorse Brown; friendly co-workers who suddenly became adversaries and the growing consensus that a leave-of-absence from her job was in order; politicians’ wives who “saw themselves … through the lens of their husbands’ lives” instead of as the talented individuals she knew them to be (“Honey, my husband is my career,” a senator’s wife told her); and the unexpected death of her adored father who had become an important part of the campaign. -- Mary Ward Menke

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins) 370 pages
Kingsolver’s chronicle of her family’s year spent off the petroleum grid come to us in a year of too many food books, books that were often trite, silly, or hopelessly alarmist. Kingsolver’s is none of these, managing instead to be informative, engaging and often highly amusing. Life on the Kingsolver-Hopp Appalachia farm -- youngest daughter Lily’s chickens, the complexities of raising turkeys who mate naturally, how to eat locally during the freezing months, the wondrous mushroom patch -- is never dull. Steven Hopp’s informative sidebars will frighten and anger you, as will descriptions of the appalling living conditions battery chickens and agribusiness cattle endure. But Camille’s family anecdotes and recipes soften the bad news while offering simple solutions. You gotta love a girl who, in an effort to eradicate the zucchini glut, sneaks the veggie into her little sister’s chocolate chip cookies. (All without being married to a famous comedian ... ahem.) As for Lily, who was too young to sign the book contract, well, look out. This enterprising young lady, after calling “Oh, look, Mama! The tranquils are blooming!” embarks on her chicken and egg business with amazing acumen. After all, if she can earn her half (approximately $500), well, Mama will put up the rest of the money for a horse. I’m certain by now an equine has joined the Kingsolver-Hopp household. -- Diane Leach

The Archimedes Codex: How A Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist by Reviel Netz and William Noel (DaCapo) 313 pages
Who would pay 2.2 million dollars for a book that not only was literally falling apart at the seams and mouldy but was also nearly illegible? Well, not so much illegible as actually erased and that written over by someone else: A prayer book written over 800 years ago using recycled vellum (sheepskin) which originally contained a major work by history’s most famous mathematical genius, Archimedes of Syracuse. In ancient times as cumbersome scrolls gave way to the new technology of neatly stacking pages between hard covers -- and before it was called a book -- it was known as a codex. A book or codex which has been written over is called a palimpsest. With The Archimedes Codex not only do we get an almost Indiana Jones type story detailing the amazing adventures the book has been through, we also get to see Archimedes’ work come to life.
The Archimedes Codex is a most fascinating tale about the history of a book. Taking the reader back 1800 years to the life and work of Archimedes and through the actual destruction of his work all the way through to the work's resurrection by a team of passionate and talented individuals who never gave up the hope that the brilliant mathematician’s work would be seen by modern eyes. -- David Middleton

Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda (Harcourt) 352 pages
In Classics for Pleasure Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic, Michael Dirda, gives us breezy and elegant introductions to some of the most important literature and authors from history. Publishers Weekly described the book as casually brilliant and the description fits perfectly. Classics for Pleasure is just what the title promises: pleasurable. It’s like sitting down with a good but incredibly erudite and well read friend and talking about work by Edward Gorey and Bram Stoker and Isak Dinesen and Willa Cather and Dashiell Hammett and Eudora Welty and... well, you get the idea: close to 90 of the most important and entertaining literary works of all time. “What, precisely,” Dirda asks in the introduction, “is gained by skipping right by so many of the world’s established masterpieces? A great deal, I think.” A rich and enjoyable read I’ve found myself coming back to again and again. -- Linda L. Richards

The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books) 242 pages
From the very first line of the first chapter of The Dead Travel Fast, pop culture commentator Eric Nuzum tells us what kind of ride this is going to be: “Watching my own blood drip down the bathroom mirror, there’s only one thought running through my head: In a lifetime of questionable decision making, this is not one of my finer moments.” This is not your usual coffeetable-style peek at something offbeat. Nuzum immerses himself in this topic, walking the walk so completely, sometimes you just want to shut your eyes. Nuzum heads out on the trail of the vampire myth and comes up with some surprises. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a vampire hunting journey if at some point he didn’t head for Transylvania. He does this with a group of 25 “vampire enthusiasts on a Dracula-themed tour.” The tour even boasts a celebrity host: Butch Patrick from The Munsters. The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula is often funny, sometimes frightening and occasionally even sweet. Nuzum has the knack for finding both humor and humanity in the most unlikely places. Nuzum could develop into the Paul Theroux or the Bill Bryson of his era. Though he is an accomplished writer and a Murrow Award-winning reporter, The Dead Travel Fast is only Eric Nuzum’s second book (after 2001’s Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America). But you get to understand very quickly that this is a writer of merit. -- Lincoln Cho

Don’t Sleep with a Bubba: Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs by Susan Reinhardt (Kensington) 256 pages
Susan Reinhardt is the South’s answer to Erma Bombeck. Her first book, Not Tonight Honey: Wait Til I’m a Size Six, was a laugh-out-loud funny introduction to her off-kilter, wildly inappropriate take on life for those of us not fortunate enough to have access to her syndicated column. Don’t Sleep with a Bubba is just as funny, although Reinhardt’s experiences with alcoholism and depression are interspersed throughout, revealing vulnerabilities not uncommon among the world’s greatest humorists. -- Mary Ward Menke

The End of the World as We Know It by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) 224 pages
Disclosure: I once worked for Robert Goolrick. It was my first job in New York; I was an advertising copywriter, and Robbie was my creative director. As two Southern boys, we used to sit around together and tell stories. I was always amazed at the yarns he spun, and secretly wished he would sit down and put fingers to keys. Well, he finally did it and, while this book isn't quite the laugh riot I was hoping for, it’s one of the most affecting and riveting books of the year (and I’d say that even if I hadn’t worked with the author). Rather than a book of living room tales about his eccentric family, this memoir of Goolrick’s boyhood is searing in its honesty and tragic in its utter reality. A Southern childhood gone mad, written in clear, precise, just barely emotional language that allows the images Goolrick paints to pop off the page. The words perfectly depict the man’s horrifying truth. One wonders how the hell he got through it. -- Tony Buchsbaum

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve Books) 307 pages
Even when he’s being contrarian (OK: that’s a lot of the time) this is a writer of great style and deep thought. If you disagreed with his positions, you might occasionally find him annoying. A lot of people do. Not to mention offensive. He probably even prides himself on that. But I love his style: alternately self-deprecating and arms akimbo. He shoots from the hip, but with uncanny wit and grace. In God Is Not Great, Hitchens seems intent on pissing off as many people as possible. And, despite having been shortlisted for the National Book Award, he does. Critics have alternately called the book a masterwork and absurd, not to mention a lot of stuff in between. The reason I’ve not offered up a full-length review is that I can’t decide who is right: not really. All the same, I could read God Is Not Great all day, partly because it’s delicious to see Hitch kicking up all this stink (but is it stink for stink’s sake?) and partly because -- as always with this author -- the writing is brilliant. Love it or hate it, it’s impossible not to include Hitchens’ 17th book as one of 2007’s most noteworthy works of non-fiction. -- Linda L. Richards

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy (Da Capo) 421 pages
There was a time when most of us in the West didn’t care very much about Islam. Or rather, it wasn’t that we didn’t care, exactly. More like we were fine with them doing their stuff wherever, as long as they left us to likewise do ours. No longer. Now there are many reasons -- too many for me to go into here -- for Westerners to have a good, working picture of Islamic culture and an understanding of how it came to be. For this latter, there is perhaps no better -- or more lucid -- guide than Hugh Kennedy’s The Great Arab Conquests. Kennedy is that rare and special combination: an actual authority -- an expert in his field -- with the sensibilities of a storyteller. Kennedy here brings history to glowing life and, in the process, illuminates a part of our present in rich and meaningful ways. Unforgettable. -- Aaron Blanton

Holocaust by Angela Gluck Wood (DK Children) 192 pages
One could fill libraries only with books about the Holocaust, but one should have a special place. Created in the easily accessible style of so many of DK’s books, this one contains text disguised as captions, and the little bits and bites add up to an extraordinary story of racism, bigotry, murder and loss. As clear-headed and fact-filled as the words are, though, the real treasure of this book is the illustrations. There are portraits, maps, charts, archival photos, images of Nazi-era propaganda and on and on. One could almost flip through without reading a single word and glean the whole story. The book is divided up into sections on Europe’s Jews, Nazi Rule, the Ghettos, the murders, resistance, the war’s end and the aftermath. Throughout, thankfully, in high contrast to the dark tales, are survivor’s stories taken from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, the brainchild of Steven Spielberg that was founded after he directed Schindler’s List. The Institute has recorded nearly 52,000 testimonies, and while this book can only hint at their emotional thunder, a DVD (included) provides even more insight. To say this book is unique is quite an understatement. It is a document unlike any other I have seen, both encyclopedic in scope and somehow both devastating and hopeful in its message. While DK publishes this book for children, I felt the book was more adult than that. Holocaust is actually very grown up and graphic in places. I rather think younger children would be freaked by some of it. Hence: I’ve included it in my picks for best of non-fiction. It’s a wonderful book, but really not appropriate for some children. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Jekka’s Complete Herb Book by Jekka McVicar (Raincoast Books) 304 pages
For some time, there has been a need for a lucid, intelligent, clearly illustrated book on herbs that is neither too new-age nor too high brow. An easy-to-use reference that put all the information at your fingertips, in a simple, lovely volume. And not an old time herbal, but one that incorporates the way we live and use herbs now. Jekka’s Complete Herb Book is that single, well-planned volume. A newly revised and expanded edition of her classic herbal work of the same title, each herb gets one, two or four pages, depending on importance. For instance, lavender is an important herb with many species and uses. It gets four page. Sea Fennel is not widely known or used and is given a single page. For each herb we’re given photographic examples, information on varietals, cultivation as well as details on medicinal and culinary uses of the herb under discussion. My single quibble is with the reproduction of some of the photos. Though most are good, some are badly rasterized, as though taken at low resolution by a digital camera. Fortunately, these not-so-great photos are far outnumbered by really superior ones. In all other regards Jekka’s Complete Herb Book is a stunning production. A welcome addition to the amateur herbalist’s bookshelf. -- India Wilson

The Knowledge Book (National Geographic) 512 pages
Every few years, someone publishes a compendium of the latest knowledge required to exist in our world. This year, the friendly people at National Geographic drew the short straw. And that’s lucky for us, because The Knowledge Book is one hell of a compendium. It clocks in at about a zillion pages (okay, 512 ... but still) and contains more stuff than you can count on about a million people’s hands. Honestly, every single page is a treasure trove, laid out in concise text that’s supplemented by expertly drawn charts, photos, sketches and every other manner of illustration, as well as by Key Facts boxes, Insider Knowledge boxes and hundreds of sidebars. Each and every spread contains one general theme, and scores of themes are contained in each section, which cover things like the stars and planets, life on Earth, social issues, the arts and modern life, oceans and seas, the world of plants, materials of tomorrow, automotive engineering, old and new math, the business of business, the religions of China and Japan, knowledge and faith, psychoanalysis, baroque, classical architecture, realism and naturalism, modern music, film and health. And by the way, I’ve barely scratched the surface. If last century’s encyclopedias were text-heavy affairs that left you exhausted for all the reading you had to do, this book is just the opposite, created for our visual-oriented kids (and our visual-oriented selves) and it will leave every reader invigorated and hungry for more. Thankfully, more is what this amazing book is all about. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America by Andrew Ferguson (Atlantic Monthly Press) 288 pages
Abraham Lincoln has been dead and buried for more than 140 years, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of folks from thinking about him -- a lot. That’s the central theme of Ferguson’s new book, an exploration of Lincoln’s presence in modern American culture. It’s a marvelous addition to anyone’s reading list. Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, was awakened to the ongoing passion about Lincoln when he read in The Washington Post of an intense protest surrounding the dedication of a Lincoln statue in Richmond, Virginia, near the Tredegar Iron Works, where Confederate cannonballs were manufactured during the “war of Northern aggression.” The statue depicted Lincoln and his young son Tad at the conclusion of their tour of Richmond, shortly after the city’s fall to Union troops in 1865. The Sons of Confederate Veterans set up a Web site and peppered local officials to try and derail the statue’s installation. There was no middle ground to be sought, no compromise to be reached. Ferguson enjoys taking potshots at turn-back-the-clock Confederates, but there are plenty of other things to catch his eye. There’s the annual convention of Abraham Lincoln impersonators, called the Association of Lincoln Presenters. They gather at Santa Claus, Indiana, to discuss such weighty subjects as how much to charge for a presentation and how to generate publicity with local newspapers. As Lincoln enthusiasts go, they’re a fairly madcap bunch. Unlike many cultural commentators who sacrifice reporting in pursuit of a good one-liner, Ferguson treats his subject with just the right ratio of humor and sobriety. That’s not to say the book isn't often laugh-out-loud funny: it is. Land of Lincoln is ultimately a slightly nutty road trip through the hearts and minds of those who still have a tendency to think about and discuss Lincoln in the barely past tense. -- Stephen Miller

Life: The Most Notorious Crimes in American History (Time Inc.) 144 pages
Featuring material culled from the pages of Life magazine and other sources, this is one coffee table book that’s hard to resist -- even for those who claim they’re not interested in true crime. Ambitious in its scope, even if it eventually settles for only “Fifty Fascinating Cases from the Files,” this is an utterly engaging romp through the history of American crime, covering everything from Abraham Lincoln’s assassination to school shootings, with forays into Lizzie Borden, Patty Hearst, the Boston Strangler, the Lindbergh kidnapping and even the recent rash of school shootings -- proof, I guess, if any were needed, that violence and our culture continue to be somehow intrinsically linked. Well-presented, generously illustrated and sporting concise but engaging overviews of each crime, this volume is almost impossible to put down once you start browsing through it; the literary equivalent of a bag of chips. Alternative theories concerning individual crimes are included, and weighed fairly, leaving the sensationalism for others to explore. The brief but informative essays in this book are plenty sensational enough. The editors are to be commended for playing it straight -- letting the facts, and the often disturbing but compelling photos, tell the story. The only real disappointment to be found is in the aftermath, when you read the final pages and close the book at last, and realize that the editors missed several interesting -- and equally notorious -- crimes. The assassination of Jesse James? University of Texas gunman Charles Whitman? Bonnie and Clyde? I can hardly wait for Volume Two. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Penguins of the World by Wayne Lynch (Firefly Books) 175 pages
In the late 1970s, Wayne Lynch left a successful career in emergency medicine to become a full-time wildlife photographer and science writer. The passion Lynch brought to his new career shows up in every corner of Penguins of the World. As the author writes in his introduction, “For the past 28 years, I have devoted my life to the study and photography of wildlife behaviour, and no group of creatures has interested me more than penguins.” If you loved any of the penguin-related films that have done so well in the last few years, not only will you enjoy Penguins of the World, but you’ll find that, in terms of stunning photography, clear presentation and a wealth of information, Lynch’s book doesn’t suffer by comparison. Lynch delves into every aspect of penguin lives and loves and shares the result with us beautifully. Penguins of the World is stunning. -- David Middleton

Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields by Eleanor Wachtel (Goose Lane) 181 pages
One of the reasons so many of us continue to be hungry for pieces of the writer Carol Shields -- beyond, of course, the fact that, at 68, she died too soon -- was that her body of work, while impressive, was not as large as we’d like. And what exists of Shields’ writing is so wonderful that even though she died in 2003 after battling breast cancer, we still can’t bring ourselves to believe that this is all there will be: that there will no more. Ten novels. Four short story collections. Three books of poetry. Six plays. A biography and a book of criticism. Two anthologies edited. OK: it sounds like a lot, does it not? But it’s not enough. But there are bits of here out there and, as they’re published, we want to know. For instance, earlier this year, we saw the publication of A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard. And now, a similar yet somehow completely different book, Random Illuminations by the master interviewer Eleanor Wachtel, who understands our hunger for Shields and who, in her preface, says that she wants the book “to honour Carol’s memory and to celebrate how alive her voice is in today’s world.” Wachtel’s book offers up a series of conversations, interviews as well as snatches of correspondence. The resulting book gives us a portrait of a wonderful writer whose voice we would not see stilled. -- Monica Stark

Sad, Mad and Bad: Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 by Lisa Appignanesi (McArthur & Company) 531 pages
Polish-born novelist and award-winning biographer Lisa Appignanesi brings us the fascinating history of women and madness with the eye -- and heart -- of a fictionist. “The simplest way to begin,” Appignanesi writes in her introduction, “is to say that this is the story of madness, badness and sadness and the ways in which we have understood them over the last two hundred years.” And this thought, also from the introduction, really sets up both the tone and the direction of Sad, Mad and Bad: “I have long been aware of the shallowness of sanity. Most of us are, in one way or another. Madness, certainly a leap of the irrational, is ever close.” And more. At times her descriptions read like some weird and touching poetry. But it isn’t just the poetic end of madness Appignanesi approaches, but how we have understood -- or more to the point misunderstood -- sanity and what it is made of and what our culture has done both with it and about it. At times, Appignanesi looks at the various mental diseases through the lens of some of the best known sufferers. This device brings the author’s points home neatly when, for instance, we see Virginia Woolfe struggling with what we now know was manic depression while Zelda Fitzgerald battled schizophrenia. Just to keep you on your toes, while the book was published in Canada by McArthur & Company late in 2007 as Sad, Mad and Bad, the UK and the US won’t see the book until April 2008 when it will be published as Mad, Bad, Sad. I have no explanation, but I will say that it’s a tremendous book that will probably make a lot of other publication’s best of lists in 2008. -- Linda L. Richards

Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century by Mike Dash (Crown Books) 464 pages
Crooked lawmen, political strivers, grafters and gamblers, low dives and criminal hijinks -- Satan’s Circus has those attractions and more, all centered around the tale of the only police officer in U.S. history to be executed for murder. British writer Mike Dash’s record of the rise and fall of Charley Becker, a handsome, German-descended New York City cop, is a colorful, captivating lesson in dishonor among thieves. Despite being trusted by his superiors and given responsibility for taming vice in early 1900s Manhattan, Becker was living a double life as the head of a widespread extortion racket. He thought himself invulnerable. But the murder of a casino owner who’d threatened to expose Becker made this decorated cop a target of ambitious journalists and prosecutors. Turned on by his fellow brigands, and despite his wife’s efforts to clear him of wrongdoing, Becker wound up paying with his life for Gotham’s rank corruption. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley edited with an introduction by James Sexton (Ivan R. Dee) 500 pages
“In a letter of May 9 1929,” James Sexton writes in his introduction to Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley, “Aldous Huxley advised that he was ‘not one of nature’s letter-writers. Self-contained and placid misanthropists are bad correspondents.’” Nonetheless, this collection of Huxley’s correspondence -- the first to be published since the late 1960s -- makes for fascinating reading. Even if Huxley were not, as Sexton informs us, “a born epistolarian,” the times in which he lived and the people he both surrounded himself with and with whom he corresponded together create a fascinating portrait of a deeply talented man. Add to this the transition readers who choose to move chronologically through the book will see: from serious artist with a touch of philosopher in his formative years to someone with strong views on the way things ought to be later on. Masterfully edited, this collection of Huxley’s letters in the end provide an almost living, breathing biography in the author’s own hand. -- Aaron Blanton

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster) 400 pages
In 2004, A.J. Jacobs, editor of Esquire, wrote about his experience reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year in The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. He has now undertaken a feat of similar magnitude by following the Bible literally (okay, as literally as possible without getting arrested or murdered) in the logically titled, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Both books are more entertaining than educational, and both are well worth reading. A word of warning regarding The Year of Living Biblically, though: if you don’t have a sense of humor, you may be disappointed. Everyone else, read on! -- Mary Ward Menke

Holiday Gift Guide: Non-Fiction

Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery (Viking) 608 pages
Brash but beautiful, an assiduous rules-breaker known for smoking in public and speaking her mind, Alice Longworth, the oldest child of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, turned a desire to gain her father’s attention into a determination to influence politicians for most of the 20th century. She wed a Republican congressman from Ohio, who went on to become Speaker of the House and cheat on their marriage (which led Alice to bear a child with renowned Senator William Borah of Idaho). A great one for cross-party manipulations, she did her damnedest to undermine Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations and denounced her cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. But she later ditched the GOP and voted for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, only to go on and encourage Richard Nixon’s second run for the presidency. A vigorous gossip, Alice Longworth was famous for the adage, “If you haven’t anything nice to say, come sit by me.” Cordery captures her in all her defiant finery. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Alone Against the Arctic by Anthony Dalton (Heritage House) 192 pages
At times during Alone Against the Arctic you can’t help but wonder what the hell author Anthony Dalton thinks he’s doing. “All around me, in and out of the mist, the frigid grey Bering Sea heaved and rolled with the storm .... The wind shrieked and moaned its displeasure at my presence. Audacity jerked viciously from right to left and back again, making it difficult for me to stay upright.” And just in case you’re imagining some grown-up sized boat, think again: Audacity was the four-metre long open speedboat Dalton had chosen to attempt a solo transit of the Northwest Passage. The journey was a near fatal adventure and Dalton describes it wonderfully in Alone Against the Arctic. As close as I’d want to being there. -- Aaron Blanton

America in Space: NASA’s First Fifty Years foreword by Neil Armstrong (Abrams) 351 pages
America in Space sweeps you away. This is one of those large format coffee table books that never fail to make booklovers drool. In this case, some of that book envy (or appreciation, in the case of a gift) will be coming from space enthusiasts. Published in collaboration with NASA, this is the real deal, a book quite worthy of launching NASA’s 50 year anniversary celebration that began this fall. Here we have the story of the American space program, told in part by 480 photographs -- many of them previously unpublished -- directly from NASA’s archives. As befits a NASA co-production, the story is told chronologically and though it seems a bit arrogant to start chapter one with the words “In the beginning,” it does describe that starting point in the darkness of the cold war. The book concludes, appropriately enough, on some super two-page spread reproductions of photographs taken with the aid of the Hubble telescope. Since most of us have only ever seen these on Web pages or small in magazines, it’s a real treat -- and entirely germane to the subject matter -- to include them here. An amazing book and an absolute must for anyone with a strong interest in the American space program. -- David Middleton

The Associates: How Four Capitalists Created Califo