BookPage December 2010

discover your next great book www.bookpage.com

dec. 2010

america’s book review

Y R E V I L E SPECIAL D

+ 300 books inside

Holiday Gifts For everyone on your list

PAT CONROY Why I love books

SUPER SLEUTH

20 years on the case with Kay Scarpetta

contents

december 2010 w w w. B o o k Pa g e . c o m

features

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28 christmas fiction Stories that celebrate the season

interview

Twenty years after publishing the first Scarpetta novel, Patricia Cornwell is still fascinated by forensics— and still breaking new ground in the genre she created

29 donna vanliere Meet the author of The Christmas Journey

30 true holiday tales

Cover illustration and holiday catalog art © iStockphoto.com/chuwy

Four new books that entertain and inspire

32 gift books: music Making some noise, onstage and off

33 gift books: photography Picture these books under the tree

34 gift books: design Celebrate in style this season

patricia cornwell

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interview

pat conroy

The prolific author waxes poetic about his love of books, and his delight at being called a Southern writer

36 gift books: religion A rich tapestry of religious traditions

37 gift books: literary For the bibliophile in your life

38 gift books: guys Sports, cigars and other manly pursuits

40 gift books: humor Fill your house with laughter

45 children’s holiday books

reviews 42 Fiction

top pick:

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin a l s o r e v i e w e d : Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie; Rescue by Anita Shreve; I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg

44 NonFiction top pick:

Hero by Michael Korda Reading Jackie by William Kuhn; Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris also reviewed:

The best seasonal stories for little ones

46 gift books: children Treasures for kids—and kids at heart

47 james ransome Meet the illustrator of A Joyful Christmas

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departments 20 20 21 22 22 23 24 25

buzz girl author enablers romance audio well read whodunit lifestyles cooking

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19

columns

by kathi kamen goldmark & Sam Barry

charismatic is nothing less than complex, and it’s that complexity that [DiCaprio] is drawn to.”

That’s not Auel!

Our publishing insider gets the skinny on tomorrow’s bestsellers

ALL ABOUT SALINGER Kenneth Slawenski, founder of the website “Dead Caulfields,” has signed a deal with Random House to publish Salinger: A Life in the United States. The book will come out on January 25th, 2011—two days before the one-year anniversary of J.D. Salinger’s death.

The biography was published in the U.K. in March and the Telegraph called it “a first-rate book.”

According to a press release from Random House, Salinger will give us “a tremendous amount of new information” on the mysterious author’s life.

the devil is dicaprio

20

Leonardo DiCaprio and production companies Appian Way and Double Feature have acquired the rights to Erik Larson’s 2003 blockbuster, The Devil in the White City.

DiCaprio will take on the role of the titular “devil”—Dr. H.H. Holmes, considered America’s first serial killer, who lured anywhere from 20 to 200 women to their deaths in his hotel during the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

In the novel, Holmes’ murders are framed by the story of dicaprio architect Daniel Burnham, who designed the fair.

As author Larson put it in a 2003 interview with BookPage, “One guy built this marvelous fair. The other guy built this twisted hotel. They were both architects in a way.”

DiCaprio’s business partner, Jennifer Killoran, says, “I think that a guy who is that intelligent and that

author enablers

Buzz Girl

Excuse the bad pun, but there’s no time to dither over headlines when one has breaking news to report. In an interview with The Associated Press, novelist Jean Auel says that the sixth book in the Earth’s Children series, The Land of Painted Caves (on sale March 29th from Crown), may not be Jondalar and Ayla’s last adventure.

“To be honest, I don’t feel like I’m through,” the author, 74, told the AP during a recent telephone interview. “I still have some material and I’m going to keep on writing. It’s what I do.”

Music to our ears, indeed.

more from gregory Philippa Gregory, author of bestselling English historical fiction, has signed a deal to write three more books with Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone imprint.

The Kingmakers’ Daughters will be out in 2012, followed by The White Princess and The Last Rose.

These novels are part of Gregory’s War of the Roses series, the most recent of which was The Red Queen.

bestseller watch Release dates for some of the guaranteed blockbusters hitting shelves in December:

7 Straight talk, no chaser

By Steve Harvey

Amistad, $24.99, ISBN 9780061728990 Harvey teaches you how to “find, keep, and understand a man” in his follow-up to Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

7 dead or alive

By Tom Clancy

Putnam, $28.95, ISBN 9780399157233 Jack Ryan and his colleagues are on the hunt for the Emir, one of the most dangerous terrorists they have encountered, in Clancy’s latest.

28 what the night knows

By Dean Koontz

Bantam, $28, ISBN 9780553807721 A crazed serial killer returns from the dead to haunt the only survivor of one of his most gruesome crimes. Classic Koontz at his spine-tingling best.

Practical advice on writing and publishing for aspiring authors

OUR PICKS FOR WRITERS We have a time-honored tradition of providing our readers with gift book suggestions from noted authors. This year, we’ve decided to put in our own two cents with a list of the very best books—some new and some classics—for the writer in your life, even if that writer is you.

The Forest for the Trees (Revised and Updated): An Editor’s Advice to Writers (Riverhead, $16, 304 pages, ISBN 9781594484834) by Betsy Lerner offers a glimpse of the publishing process from the point of view of an editor-turned-literary agent. Lerner shares her impressive experience working with writers, along with insight into what editors and agents look for when considering a manuscript for publication.

Chatty and anecdotal, The Forest for the Trees evokes the no-nonsense advice you might get from a big sister.

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay (Ten Speed, $14.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9781580084802) by Adair Lara is a brand-new book about the craft of writing what you know. A teacher, memoirist and former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lara offers down-to-earth advice on finding your angle. She’ll help you get over your inhibitions, your procrastination and yourself, and get those words on the page.

This Year You Write Your Novel (Little, Brown, $9.99, 128 pages, ISBN 9780316065498) by Walter Mosley offers the kick in the butt many beginning writers need to get on—and stick to—the discipline of daily writing practice. Accessible to adults and recommended for teens, Mosley’s message boils down to: Write every day, no matter what— no excuses.

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It . . . Successfully (Workman, $15.95, 480 pages, ISBN 9780761160854) by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry is an updated version of Putting Your Passion into Print, a book we’ve recommended before. Eckstut and Sterry leave no stone unturned in this comprehensive look at the current landscape of publishing.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor, $15, 239 pages, ISBN 9780385480017)

by Anne Lamott gives us permission to produce a lousy first draft and take off from there. You’ll learn about your unique voice as you find the courage to write with passion—from a writer whose selfdeprecating honesty and wit never fail to charm.

On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft (Scribner, $16, 288 pages, ISBN 9781439156810) by Stephen King is a beloved favorite of ours—and not only because one of us is mentioned in the foreword. Our Rock Bottom Remainders bandmate intertwines memoir and writing advice in a way that only a true believer (and a passionate reader and teacher) could; readers get an intimate look at both the writing process and the writer.

The Secret Miracle: The Novelist’s Handbook (Holt, $16, 368 pages, ISBN 9780805087147) edited

by Daniel Alarcón asks accomplished authors and other creative types to answer a list of questions about their craft. This is the perfect book to pick up when you’re stuck, since you don’t have to read in any particular order to get inspiration and encouragement. If nothing else, you’ll discover that many famous writers are as neurotic as you are.

And, last but (we hope) not least—our own new book, Write That Book Already!: The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now (Adams Media, $14.95, 240 pages, ISBN 9781605501475), was inspired by this BookPage column.

Our new book provides an overview of the publishing process from inspiration to publication and beyond, along with celebrity-author cameos and a magnificent glossary, if we do say so ourselves.

There are other wonderful books about writing, and we’d love to hear about your favorites. You can reach us at authorenablers@gmail.com, find us on Facebook or Twitter, or visit www.kathiandsam.net. Happy holidays and happy writing!

romance b y c h r i s t i e r i d g way

To be jolly Phillipa Ashley offers a charmer of a Christmas story in Dating Mr. December (Sourcebooks, $9.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9781402241420). Six months earlier, Emma Tremayne lost her job and her cheating ex. She flees to the wilds of England’s Lake District to nurse her wounds and live out life as a virtual nun. Now employed by the local tourist board, Emma conceives a plan to raise money for the mountain rescue unit: She wants the team to pose for a naked—but tasteful—calendar.

Her biggest opposition comes from hunky Will Tennant, who doesn’t

like the idea. But it’s hard for Will to refute the financials Emma provides, and then there is the persuasiveness of Emma herself.

Will has a reputation, though—supposedly he left his fiancée at the altar—and that’s enough to put the recently jilted Emma on edge. Still, they wind up in each other’s arms.

Can they go the distance—or even make it until Christmas? Will is as cautious as the woman he loves, but he’ll have to admit to that—and more—before he can have her.

A season for secrets Will two wary hearts come together before Christmas? That’s the question in Jennifer Haymore’s historical, A Season of Seduction (Forever, $6.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9780446540285). After four years of widowhood, Lady Rebecca decides to take a lover. Once Rebecca had trusted her heart and eloped with a man who later betrayed her. Now she only looks to warm her lonely life with a man’s body. Her choice, Jack Fulton, is rugged, handsome and seems equally uninterested in anything more than a physical relationship. The truth, however, is that Jack does have an interest in something of Becky’s beyond sexual charms: her wealth. A blackmailer’s demands mean he must marry into money by mid-December in order

to keep his secrets safe.

His coldblooded intentions are challenged as Becky proves to be an elusive bride—and yet an exciting bedmate. If she discovers his motives, surely she’ll despise him—and Jack is discovering that’s not the emotion he wants to evoke in this beautiful woman.

Haymore has crafted a sensual story of reluctant passion.

Romance of the Month The story stocking is full of fun in Lisa Plumley’s Holiday Affair.

Charming children, delightful Christmas traditions and a hero and heroine to root for make this a seasonal delight. Suburban divorcée Karina Barrett hopes to make a perfect holiday for her three children when she gets a chance to evaluate the famed Christmas House B&B in Kismet, Michigan. There she meets globetrotting adventure guide Reid Sullivan and his two daughters. A delirious night of passion with Reid feels like a big mistake the next day when she learns he’s running the B&B over the holidays. A fling with the man-in-charge is a complication she should avoid, but the attraction runs hot, even though Reid insists he’s eager to return to his wandering ways as soon as his temp duties are over. Still, his daughters are waxing poetic about life in the States, and he’s tickled by Karina’s brood—and captivated by the woman herself. Complicating matters are strange mishaps at the B&B that bring the two even closer.

While this feels like love, can they really make a go of something that seems like a Christmas miracle?

Holiday Affair is as warm and sweet as hot chocolate on a snowy day.

Holiday Affair

By Lisa Plumley Zebra $6.99, 352 pages ISBN 9781420105698

Contemporary

by

Novel Reads

HARPERCOLLINS HarperCollins.com • AvonRomance.com The Babylonian Codex

by C.S. Graham

CIA agent Jax Alexander and remote viewer Tobie Guinness are back, racing to solve an ancient riddle and diffuse a plot to destroy the world. A relentlessly gripping thriller that takes off like a rocket and never slows down, The Babylonian Codex features apocalyptic prophecies, a mysterious inscription on a long-lost mosaic, and the assassination of the U.S. vice president.

9780061689369, $7.99

Black Wolf

by Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice A notorious group of legendary assassins, code-named “Wolves,” plan to disrupt an important NATO meeting and, if they can’t be stopped, deadly chaos will reign. Black Wolf is a riveting adventure from two acknowledged masters at the top of their form— combining political intrigue, cutting edge military technology, and ripped-from-the-headlines immediacy.

9780061713019, $9.99

His Christmas Pleasure

by Cathy Maxwell

When her father threatens to marry Abigail Montross off to a man twice her age (and with thirteen children!), she decides to elope instead with the irresistibly handsome Barón de Vasconia. She knows all about his notorious reputation. He is the most seductive man in all of London, but he’s vowed to protect her, so she allows herself to be tempted into his bed, promising to guard her heart at all costs.

9780061772061, $7.99

In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

She was only 12 when she saw the silver boy on the beach, but Jenny has never stopped dreaming about him. Now she is grown, a marine biologist charting her own course in the family business—a corporation that covertly crosses the boundaries of science into realms of the unknown…and the incredible.

9780062020161, $7.99

Passions of a Notorious Gentleman

by Lorraine Heath

As the black sheep second son of an Earl, Stephen Lyons has gained a reputation in the art of seduction, but when his wicked ways result in scandal, he joins the army to redeem himself.

On the battlefield, he proves courageous…until he is seriously wounded. Returning home to recover, he discovers he can’t remember the angelic beauty who arrives at his doorstep.

Look for Pleasures of a Wicked Earl available now

by Lorraine Heath 9780061922961, $7.99

Visit LibraryLoveFest.com for more great reading

21

columns

audio

WELL READ

by sukey howard

by robert Weibezahl

sound advice for gift lists Ron Chernow’s acclaimed new biography, Washington: A Life (Penguin Audio, $59.95, 42 hours unabridged, ISBN 9780142428337), is “magisterial” in length as well as content, coming in at just over 42 hours. But Scott Brick, reader extraordinaire, never falters, maintaining a narrative pace and immediacy that heightens Chernow’s evocation of this “most famously elusive figure in American history.”

Perhaps it was that very elusiveness that drove Chernow to write this revelatory cradle-to-grave chronicle of our first president. What emerges from Chernow’s forensic mining of resources is a Washington more vivid, more human than the elegant

soldier/statesman who looks out from Gilbert Stuart’s paintings. This Washington, though forever a man of unimpeachable character, unerring judgment, steadfast patriotism, dedication and dignity, is flesh and blood, with a normal quota of foibles. He struggled to control his emotions, dealt with a harsh, demanding mother, felt insecure about his lack of education (Chernow does dabble in psychological profiling) and craved money, fame and status. Yet Washington’s inner compass never failed him or his country, allowing him to scale the “highest peak of political greatness.” I cannot tell a lie, this is topnotch biography and audio.

Carter on Carter

22

Jimmy Carter has worn the mantle of hardworking elder statesman with grace and, at 85, remains one of the most influential former presidents ever. But when he left office in 1981, most of his current admirers had a very different take; his presidency hadn’t been a roaring success, to put it mildly. Now, with his White House Diary (Macmillan Audio, $59.99, 23.5 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781427210555), we have amazing access to the nitty-gritty, day-by-day account Carter kept during his four years in

office, with the added insight of his annotations and explanatory notes.

With the candor we’ve come to expect, Carter hasn’t edited out entries that might conceal his “errors, misjudgments of people or lack of foresight.” He’s chosen what’s included here (probably only a quarter of the original transcript), concentrating on themes that, unfortunately, remain intensely relevant today— Middle East peace negotiations, energy policy, healthcare, nuclear weaponry and U.S.-China relations among them.

Carter’s quick assessments can be acerbic and he never sidesteps his frustrations with Congress, nor the devastating problems—rising OPEC oil prices, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—he dealt with toward the end of his tenure.

Veteran narrator Boyd Gaines reads the diary entries, while Carter, in his familiar soft Southern cadences, reads his commentary.

Wit with wisdom In his latest, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (Hachette Audio, $24.98, 3 hours unabridged, ISBN 9781600244995, with a PDF of Ian Falconer’s illustrations), David Sedaris has gone from the memoirish to the noirish. I’m not sure if the beasts of his bestiary show us the animal side of human nature or vice versa.

Either way, these Aesopian fables for the 21st century, though told in trademark Sedaris style, can be a bit dark and disturbing. The dogs and cats, cattle and sheep here are not exactly warm and fuzzy creatures; if they were people, we’d probably think them way over the top, but in animal form they make you stop and think about how beastly Homo sapiens can be. Sedaris, always a superb renderer of his own writing, shares the podium this time with Elaine Stritch, Dylan Baker and Siân Phillips, who are all fabulous performers. Caveat: not for the squeamish or super-sedate.

story collection captures south africa’s painful past Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, Nadine Gordimer (along with such writers as Andre Brink, playwright Athol Fugard and fellow Nobel Laureate J.M. ­Coetzee) has been a dominant voice in chronicling—through fiction—the political and racial issues that have plagued South Africa for the last half century. Earlier this year, Gordimer published Telling Times, a volume of her personal and political nonfiction pieces since 1954. Now, with Life Times: Stories, 1952-2007, this 87-year-old master collects 38 representative short fiction pieces from the span of her writing life.

Not a comprehensive “collected stories” (which would run to well over 100), the book nonetheless has a career-defining weight, Gordimer can and it offers take a reader’s a valuable overview of breath away Gordimer’s with a wellindispensable narraobserved tive talents. detail or an Included here elegant turn is the novella “Something of phrase.

Out There,” as well as a number of very short pieces. A few of her late stories are highly experimental, including “The Second Coming,” one of two previously uncollected stories written after 2007, and “Tape Measure,” from her last collection—but these are not the stories for which Gordimer will be remembered.

The quintessential Gordimer story offers a deft analysis of human psychology, often played out against the backdrop of the rarely cut-and-dried racial strife that marked South African life during apartheid and, in different ways, still defines it today. In an early story, for instance, a white farmer is flummoxed by bureaucratic indifference when he tries to give a dead black worker a proper burial. An Afrikaner farmer must conceal his grief when he accidentally kills his favorite “boy.” The topsy-turvy postapartheid era finds a white professor searching for the possibility that he has black relatives because “now there are whites wanting to be

black.”

Politics is never far from the surface, and it transcends the races: A wellheeled young white woman returns from a sojourn in England and casts her fate with a band of civil disobedience protesters; a Muslim Indian immigrant, mother of nine, is carted off to prison for printing incendiary flyers in her dining room; a black man is astonished when a white woman tells him, “It’s hard to be punished for not being black.” Gordimer is an expert at conveying the relentless tension of living in a land where destiny is inextricably tied to the color of your skin or the language that you speak.

Her stories, read chronologically and with an eye for the quiet details that expose her characters’ self-deceptions, offer an intricate portrayal of her country’s often wrenching growing pains.

For all their political relevance and historical import, however, what ultimately makes Gordimer’s stories matter is her extraordinary ability to get beneath our skin, forcing us to acknowledge our own uncomfortable fellowship with her humanly flawed characters. As the title of the collection implies, these are not merely stories from her own lifetime, but of life with a capital “L”—lived by ordinary men and women like us, albeit in an imperfect, sometimes brutal society of their own making. And in the telling, Gordimer can take a reader’s breath away with a well-observed detail or an elegant turn of phrase.

For those new to Gordimer, Life Times is a marvelous introduction to her writing. For those who know her work, it is a worthy reminder of the enduring power of her art.

Life Times: Stories, 1952-2007

By Nadine Gordimer FSG $30, 560 pages ISBN 9780374270537

short stories

Whodunit

by Bruce Tierney

Riding in style with Andrew Vachss On my blog, Mysterious Orientations (which you can find at BookPage.com), I recently went on at some length about the primergray 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner driven by Andrew Vachss’ legendary character, Burke. Not long after, the author’s publicist, Lou Bank of the marketing firm Twelve Angry Pitbulls, emailed me to say, “Andrew Vachss loves your write-up of Burke’s car,” and asked to include it on Vachss’ website. He also sent me

a review copy of Vachss’ latest, The Weight (Pantheon, $25.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780307379191), and I am very glad he did. Protagonist Tim “Sugar” Caine is very unlike Burke in character, but shares the urban commando’s cavalier attitude about coloring within the lines, especially the lines of the law. Early on, Caine is accused of rape; he is not guilty, and he has a killer alibi—but sadly, it is not one he can use, since he was busy knocking over a jewelry store at the time. Refusing to rat out his partners, Caine does the time for the rape, five years’ worth, and reconnects with the heist mastermind shortly thereafter to collect his share of the swag. And that’s when things start to go, as the Brits say, all pear-shaped. The Weight has an entirely different tone from the Burke books, less gritty by half, and more reliant on the machinations of the supporting cast; that said, it is exceptionally well written and should appeal to longtime fans and new readers alike.

Trying something different This must be the month for authors to abandon their breadand-butter protagonists and strike out in new directions. For audience favorite Jeffery Deaver, it is a two-pronged approach: a new main character and, for the first time, a first-person narrative in his, um, edgy new thriller, Edge

(Simon & Schuster, $26.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9781439156353). The new character is named Corte; undoubtedly he has another name, but it is on a strictly need-to-know basis. Corte is a “shepherd” with the Strategic Protection Department, a clandestine government agency tasked with protecting high-profile targets. His criminal counterpart is Henry Loving, a “lifter” who extracts information by any means necessary, even torture or killing. By all rights, Loving should be dead; DNA evidence showed that he had died in a fire some years before, but evidence is only as reliable as the technicians who process it, and Loving has gotten to them one way or another. The interplay between the two opponents makes for high intrigue; both are consummate professionals, and neither is given to making mistakes. So, if you will allow me one last “edge” comment, make sure that the edge of your seat is comfy, because you will be spending a significant amount of time there.

celebrity chef slumming briefly in L.A., and that is all to the good. The laughs are frequent and belly-deep, and the personable tone is akin to a television mystery/comedy like “The Rockford Files” or “Columbo.”

Mystery of the Month Best-selling author Peter James is back with Dead Like You, the sixth installment of the wildly popular Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series. This time out, a series of rapes in the English coastal town of Brighton bears some disturbing similarities to another series of rapes that took place more than a dozen years before. That perpetrator was never caught; he was known only as “The Shoe Man,” for his obsession with (and bizarre utilization of) women’s footwear. The contemporary crimes differ in nuance, but Grace is convinced that there is some connection to the previous string of attacks. To be sure, there is no dearth of suspects, all of whom are paraded before the suspicious cops (and the equally canny readers), but each is able to provide a

watertight alibi for at least one of the crimes.

Can it be that there are multiple perps, or is somebody just that wee bit cleverer than his pursuers? Dead Like You is the hands-down winner of Mystery of the Month, and were BookPage to create an annual award, it would be a strong contender for Mystery of the Year as well.

dead like you

By Peter James Minotaur $25.99, 560 pages ISBN 9780312642822 Also available on audio

DETECTIVE FICTION

A surprise from Mr. Roker Oh dear, I thought, when I saw that The Midnight Show Murders (Delacorte, $26, 304 pages, ISBN 9780385343695) was written by folksy TV weatherman Al Roker (with veteran mystery writer and reviewer Dick Lochte). I have read a handful of celebrity-penned suspense novels over the years, and virtually without exception they are cringe-inducing (and not in a good way). Still, I thought I would give it 20 pages, and see how it went. By page 20 I was well and thoroughly hooked, as it turns out, and considering ways to obtain a complimentary copy of the prequel, The Morning Show Murders. There is precious little grit-factor in The Midnight Show Murders, but that is more than made up for by the humor and insider authenticity; the backstage tales are so outlandish that they just have to be based on true-life incidents. There is more than a little of Al Roker in protagonist Billy Blessing, a New York

AVAILABLE NOW WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 2010

AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2011

AVAILABLE MAY 2011

Greed. Jealousy. Murder.

A cozy English seaside town built on secrets and smugglers, Blackpool is a haven for tourists and home to generations of locals who like their privacy. American Molly Graham and her British husband, Michael, are considered outsiders, but feel irresistibly drawn to this town…and its darker curiosities. Blackpool harbors dangerous mysteries. And murder is just the beginning.…

blackpoolmysteries.com The HARLEQUIN Device and the HARLEQUIN trademark are registered trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.

Copyright © 2010 Harlequin Enterprises Limited.

23

columns

lifestyles by joanna brichetto

Women’s wisdom throughout the ages Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani’s first nonfiction title, Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers (Harper, $22.99, 224 pages, ISBN 9780061958946), is being touted

tory flows with the ample narrative energy of her fiction, and like her novels, Don’t Sing at the Table rises from the ground of private insight toward the sphere of common human understanding. In paying tribute to the formidable Lucia and Viola, Trigiani lays out for her readers a table of wisdom, which, yes, sings with love and memory.

Let it snow

as “the gift book of the Christmas season.” Trigiani credits her success to the formative influence of her family—especially to the example of her “two stellar grandmothers,” Lucia and Viola, who “showed me, in their own ways, how to get out of my own way and carve out a rich and fulfilling life, a peaceful life, a gracious life, and a secure life.”

Trigiani’s tour of her family’s his-

Do we really need a book to tell us how to play in the snow?

Yes, if the book is Snow Play (Artisan, $14.95, 112 pages, ISBN 9781579654054), by Birgitta Ralson, who takes readers far beyond snowballs and snowmen, and turns snow into the most magical and creative material in the world. Ephemeral and cold though it may be, snow can be shaped, cut, carved, packed, dug, sawn, stomped and otherwise manipulated into amazing projects.

The 27 offered here are presented with crystalline step-by-step instructions, specifying time frame,

difficulty, type of snow (there are seven) and materials required.

Quickies like Frozen Critters, Snowball Lantern and a Marble Run take only 15 minutes to make, while the stupendous Snow Cave demands a whole day and a whole lot of snow. Somewhere in between are ingenious variations on snowmen, a frosted snow cake, an ice slide and the Loch Ness monster: a range sure to elicit sharp anticipation for the next snowy day.

TOP PICK FOR LIFESTYLES Amy Sedaris, actor, comedienne and author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, follows up with a tongue-in-cheek tome that takes into account our economic downturn, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People. Earnest crafters, beware!

This is not your grandmother’s how-to book, unless Grandma is amused by drug references, raunchy humor and scathing send-up.

No, this is Amy Sedaris, who spoofs, as only she can, the phenomenon of crafting as a hobby. Simple Times assures readers that “putting

common elements together in order to achieve a lovely something that nobody needs” is “a delightful pastime.” Lovely somethings include a pinecone tote, a macaroni alien mask, a tampon ghost and a chapter called “Crafting for Jesus.” Sedaris crams 21 chapters with wickedly funny projects, sage counsel and painstakingly detailed photographic spreads.

simple times

By Amy Sedaris Grand Central $27.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780446557030

humor

T

his holiday season give the gift of excitement with the Stories from the Golden Age collection by L. Ron Hubbard. Originally penned in the 1930s and ’40s, these literary gems will captivate you with their gripping storylines, pulse-pounding action and riveting characters in tales that span the genres of mystery, western, adventure, science fiction and fantasy.

The companion audiobooks are also full-cast cinematic theatrical performances done in the style of old-time Hollywood radio shows.

• Trade paperback $9.95 • Unabridged audio CD $9.95

HOLIDAY DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE AT BOOKS-A-MILLION & BOOK WORLD STORES

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© 2010 Galaxy Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

cooking

by sybil PRATT

The gifts that keep on giving

A

cookbook is a perennial present, offering pleasures that last from season to season, bound to please novice, expert and everyone in between.

American appetites Amanda Hesser, the talented longtime food editor and writer at the New York Times, has spent the last six years cooking her way through the Times’ recipe archive, which begins in the 1850s, when the paper first started to cover food, and goes up to treasures from the more current Dining Out sections.

The fascinating, fabulous result is The Essential New York Times Cookbook (Norton, $40, 932 pages, ISBN 9780393061031), though it might well have been titled “All the Food that’s Fit to Eat.” First, Hesser crowd-sourced, asking readers to pick their favorite Times recipes; then she pored through the recipes from the hundred years that predate most of us, testing and sifting out winners that have stood the test of time, like a rustic, golden Bouillabaisse from 1904 and an 1895 version of Raspberry Granita. Not a “thoroughgoing history of American cooking,” this amazing collection of more than 1,000 recipes is, as Hesser describes it, an “eclectic panorama of both high-falutin’ masterpieces and lowbrow grub, a fever chart of culinary passions . . . by turns global and local, simple and baroque, ancient and prescient.” And she’s seasoned every header note with her signature charm and wit, added “Cooking Notes” with extra clarifications and serving suggestions using other recipes in the book. This is a keeper!

No discussion of our country’s culinary treasures is complete without James Beard. Though he may not have signed the Constitution, Beard is our founding food father—first TV chef, first champion of local, seasonal, regional cooking, first in the hearts of his culinary descendants. He wrote 22 cookbooks,

but James Beard’s American Cookery (Little, Brown, $35, 896 pages, ISBN 9780316098687), with over 1,500 recipes, remains his ultimate classic. Available in an elegant new addition, with a foreword by Tom Colicchio, this essential kitchen reference deserves a special place right next to Julia, Fannie and Irma.

Stirring the melting pot Distressed by reports that Americans had stopped cooking, awardwinning cookbook author and former food columnist for the New York Times Magazine Molly O’Neill set out to take the culinary pulse of America, to see if cooks were truly a dying breed. In a 10-year odyssey that took her to hundreds of towns and cities throughout the country, O’Neill found the intrepid who still think stoves are for cooking. In One Big Table (Simon & Schuster, $50, 880 pages, ISBN 9780743232708), which is one big, lavishly illustrated book, she introduces us to the “nation’s best home cooks, bakers, farmers, fisherman, pit-masters and chefs”—the folks who make their own dinners with their own hands—and serves up 600 of their recipes. O’Neill’s take on the American cooking scene includes the cuisines of recent immigrants, so “regional” here is closer to global. John Copes’ Corn Chowder vies with Mrs. Nguyen’s Pho, Olga Napolilii’s hot Borscht and Homa Moyafaghi’s Persian Noodle Soup, while Helen Giancakes’ Ouzo Meatballs are the equals of Max Menendez’s Mexican Meatballs and Michelle Comparetti Zeikerts’ Real Italian Meatballs. And so it goes through every category of edibles from Nibbles and Noshes to Cookies, Custards and Cakes. The sum total is a magnificent meltingpot mélange, entertaining, enlightening and consummately useful.

The eyes have it In the “good old days,” that mythical time of ease and plenty, we were supposed to learn cooking basics, and beyond, from our moms and grandmas. Nowadays, we have their surrogates, step-by-step cookbooks, and though these books can’t give you a hug, they do offer

the precise, detailed directions you need to make a meal or a particular dish and show you in photos what each step should look like, whether it’s “roughly” chopping nuts, dicing an onion, shaping gnocchi or poaching meringues for Floating Island. The Illustrated Step-by-Step Cook (DK, $35, 544 pages, ISBN 9780756667535), designed in classic DK style, is among the new bumper crop of stepping books. Over 1,000 photographs accompany more than 300 recipes, from Tapenade to Tuna and Bacon Kebabs, Cod and Mussel Chowder to Chocolate Ricotta Pie, Pork Quesadillas to Prune and Armagnac Ice Cream, each one with a shot of the finished product so

you’ll know exactly what you’re aiming for, plus cook time, prep time and variations.

And in What to Cook & How to Cook It (Phaidon, $39.95, 416 pages, ISBN 9780714859583), British food writer Jane Hornby, a fervent believer in the let-me-show-you school of cooking, illustrates 100 of her favorite “go-to” recipes with over 850 color photos. Every recipe begins with an image of each ingredient included, followed by sequential/ procedural photos that lead to an almost edible full-page picture of the completed dish. Step up to foolproof cooking!

Give yourself the gift of reading this holiday season. ®

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25

interviews

Patricia cornwell © DEBORAH GINGRICH 2008, CEI

I n t e r v i e w b y J ay M ac D o n a l d

CRIME FICTION’S FORENSIC PIONEER

T

he amazingly prolific, perennially best-selling Patricia Cornwell first kicked her way into publishing 20 years ago with Postmortem, a risky little mystery that introduced the world to Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner whose grim science had heretofore been relegated to footnote status.

26

Seven publishers turned it down before Scribner finally agreed to let the presses roll. Did it succeed?

And how! Not only did it become the first novel ever to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony and Macavity awards in a single year, but without Cornwell’s infectious introduction to the arcane world of forensics, the letters CSI might be just another meaningless acronym today.

“Part of the reason the publishers hesitated was, it was a world they hadn’t seen before and it was occupied by a woman, and the whole thing was a little bit scary and they weren’t sure it was a smart investment—all $6,000 they paid for it!”

Cornwell chuckles. “No one was really sure anybody had an appetite for this sort of thing. Who cares about toxicology labs? Yuck!”

Who cares indeed. Fast-forward a decade to “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” a Jerry Bruckheimerproduced television series set in Las Vegas that premiered on CBS in the fall of 2000. It would become television’s most successful mystery franchise of the new millennium, spawning two equally successful spin-offs and, not incidentally, a mini-boom in forensic-centric crime fiction as well.

The “CSI” craze has been both flattering and somewhat problematic for Cornwell.

“The biggest chalenge for me was

creating a genre that then took over like kudzu, and then realizing that there is so much of this because you sort of made it accessible to people and now everybody’s doing it and what are you going to do?” Cornwell says. “Because you can’t take the approach that I did the first 10 years of my career, which was, I’m going to write a book about forensic fire investigation, or about trace evidence, or one that has Interpol and a decomposing body in it. I would pick a certain area of expertise that you’ve never seen before and then show you something that’s really fun. Well, that same approach doesn’t exactly work anymore because there’s no point in spending 10 pages explaining a scanning electron microscope when people can watch one on TV.” With Port Mortuary, her new Scarpetta mystery and number 18 in the series, Cornwell takes her seasoned chief medical examiner out of her comfort zone in a plot that could be torn from tomorrow’s headlines. As chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture between the state and federal governments, MIT and Harvard, Scarpetta has spent months away on a fellowship at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, learning the military’s cutting-edge art of CT-assisted “virtual autopsy” at the request of the White House.

During her absence from her day job, a mysterious death near her Cambridge home threatens to shut down the new venture and destroy Scarpetta’s career.

Longtime readers will welcome Cornwell’s return to first-person narration as she tells this grim tale in Scarpetta’s voice. But they may be surprised at the new elements of political intrigue, including a long-hidden secret from Scarpetta’s own military past that reverberates through her new life at the coordinates where military and domestic forensics meet.

Cornwell, who takes pride in immersing herself in field work for inspiration, felt the chill of military secrecy and anti-terrorism forensic investigation, if only from a distance, and likes it as a new flavor for Scarpetta. In truth, she says, medical examiners are often caught up in powerful outside forces.

“Medical examiners put up with a huge amount of political stuff,” she says. “I haven’t really gotten into that a whole lot, but now that Scarpetta has this affiliation with government, it gives me more of a platform to talk about some of it. Having her more involved in government gives me the license to have the flavor of not only a thriller but a spy novel. You don’t always know who the good guys are. You think you know, but maybe you’re wrong.”

Curiosity has driven Cornwell since her days as a police reporter for the Charlotte Observer back in the early 1980s, a cool job that allowed her to stick her nose where it didn’t belong. She still remembers the moment her curiosity put her on the path to becoming a bestselling novelist.

“I decided I wanted to write books about crime and I managed to get an interview with a medical examiner in Richmond, and that was the day that changed my life,” she recalls. “It was the spring of 1984, and I still remember walking into this conference room and sitting down with Dr. Marcella Fierro, who was the first medical examiner I’d ever met, and we spent three hours just discussing forensic medicine. She gave me a tour of the morgue—it was empty at that hour—and she happened to mention that there was some new technology coming down the pike, something called DNA and something called lasers. And I thought,

wow, this is cool stuff! I knew at that moment that this was where I want to be; I want to be in this building and learn everything I can about the world these people work in.”

For six years leading up to the publication of Postmortem, Cornwell did just that, working as a technical writer and computer analyst at Dr. Fierro’s ME unit, soaking up the scientific know-how and love of cutting-edge forensics that still power her fiction.

“The truth is, if you walk into a lab, you don’t go, oh my God, this is cool; your first thought is, I have no idea what I’m looking at and I want to run in horror. There’s nothing sexy about any of it,” she says.

“You’ve got to let your imagination take hold of it and be able to explain extremely esoteric techniques and put them in terms that they understand and humanize them.

And add a dash of poetry while you’re at it.”

Cornwell refers to the plots of “CSI”-type television programs as “forensic fantasy.” As she sees it, “There’s no limit to the kind of stories you can come up with because you’re not limited by the procedures of technology. It’s like ‘Star Trek’—anything that you can imagine, you can do on television.”

That said, Cornwell has seen firsthand how quickly science fiction becomes science fact in the forensics world.

“If I had been writing Port Mortuary back in the days of Postmortem, it would have seemed like ‘Star Trek.’ What’s true about shows like ‘CSI’ is that probably some of the things that seem outrageous now may very well be used in 10 years, or even five years.”

port mortuary

By Patricia Cornwell, Putnam, $27.95, 512 pages, ISBN 9780399157219, also available on audio

Pat Conroy Interview by Alden Mudge

AN Author’s love letter to books

D

uring Pat Conroy’s sophomore year in high school, a charismatic English teacher told him that he should read 200 pages a day. “I thought he was serious!” Conroy says, laughing, during a call to his home in Beaufort, South Carolina. “So I did that, and I’ve tried to keep it up. Sometimes I don’t make it, but usually I do. Usually I go beyond that.”

As if that’s not enough, Conroy also usually tries to complete five pages of new work handwritten on a yellow legal pad each day. On a good day he’ll put those pages on the steps leading up to the office of his third wife, novelist Cassandra King. She’ll leave her pages on a pillow near where he reads after dinner, while she goes back upstairs to work.

“Sandra’s the first wife I’ve had who has not complained that I have too many books. We have books in almost every room,” Conroy says, turning away from the phone for a moment to confirm that with Cassandra, who says, “Everywhere!”

“These books mean a lot to me,” Conroy continues. “I love them. I like to handle them. I can look up from my desk and see walls and walls and walls of books. It’s an extraordinary beauty for me.”

Conroy’s love of books is the subject of his beautiful, passionate and often funny new memoir, My Reading Life. The new book’s title, however, is just a tad misleading.

Readers will quickly discover that for Conroy there is no real separation of his reading life from his writing life. Or of his reading/writing life from his lived life, for that matter.

In My Reading Life, Conroy forcefully advocates the pleasures of reading books as different as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel; he pays eloquent tribute to reading mentors like his longsuffering mother, Peg Conroy, high school teacher and friend, Gene Norris, and the writer and teacher James Dickey; and with remarkable—even courageous—openness, he reports his insecurities and charts the sometimes harrowing emotional and intellectual path that has made him the writer and person that he is.

“One of the things I can’t do is not

expose myself,” Conroy says. “Some people do not like that about my writing, but I can’t help it. I write with emotion and I write with passion. I’ve caused such pain in my life with these stupid books. . . . My father [a Marine fighter pilot] went nuts when The Great Santini came out. My teammates in My Losing Season were absolutely horrified when I was writing that book. And my college [The Citadel] went nuts when The Lords of Discipline came out. But I’ve gotten used to that, I think.”

In My Reading Life, Conroy sometimes shines a “I can look up bright, critifrom my desk cal light on and see walls himself, but he is usually and walls generous and wide-ranging and walls of in his enthusibooks. It’s an asms for other extraordinary writers. He may not like beauty for the company me.” of writers (“I stay away from other writers if I can. They eat their dead.”), but he sure likes their work. “I can pick up a book and I can enjoy anything. I enjoy mysteries. I blurbed a romance novel. I end up reading a lot of people’s books because I still blurb.

I like to always blurb first novelists because it’s hard to get blurbs then.

I couldn’t get any when I was a first novelist, and I remember that.”

Conroy is also an avid reader of nonfiction. “I have an abiding interest in nature, so I like nature books.

I’ll read a biography of anyone.

What I like about modern biography is that they do the childhood.

That’s the part I’m most interested in because usually you find some secret of what ignited them, what set them off.”

Conroy even offers appreciative words about books by writers who

have personally offended him. In a chapter about attending his first writers’ conference, Conroy tells of looking forward to meeting Alice Walker because he likes her novel Meridian. Walker, however, rudely snubs him—apparently, a friend explains, because “she has a thing about Southern white men.”

But being Southern and, more importantly, being a Southern writer, is essential to Conroy’s sense of himself. “There’s something phony about my whole life. The reason I embrace being Southern, the reason it fills my heart with joy every time I’m called a Southern writer, is because I grew up feeling like I was nothing, like I had no home, had no place I could call my own. We didn’t own a house; the government gave us housing. We moved almost every year. I went to 11 schools in 12 years. When Dad was dying, he gave me a thing that shocked me because it showed that I’d moved 23 times from when I was born until I was 15. So when they call me a Southern writer, I am delighted because they are identifying me with a place.”

Still, Conroy says, Southern writing has changed appreciably since he began writing. “When I started out as a Southern writer, we were all boys. There’s been a fabulous influx of the girls, the daughters of Flannery O’Connor, the daughters of Eudora Welty. They have come roaring in and that’s been a great thing for Southern writing.” After his wife, he says, his favorite Southern writer is Janis Owens, who “has written three wonderful books” (My Brother Michael, Myra Sims and The Schooling of Claybird Catts).

In fact, Conroy regrets that his new book does not include a defense of another Southern woman

writer, Harper Lee, who has recently taken flak in some quarters. “I wish I’d written about that,” Conroy says, “because in To Kill a Mockingbird she gave us —and by us, I mean white Southerners—models to live our lives by. I think that for people like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, me and other Southern liberals, that book had a huge influence on us.”

Yet for all his delightful championing of other writers, Conroy remains insecure about his own work. “I’m always surprised when somebody likes what I write,” he says at the end of our conversation. “Someone told me they were visiting a writer’s house and he took them back and showed them his office and said, ‘Here’s where the magic happens.’ I roared with laughter when I heard that. I thought, my God, it must be nice to have that. But that gift was not given to me.”

Maybe not that gift—but as My Reading Life amply shows, Conroy has many other gifts to share with readers.

my reading life

By Pat Conroy, Nan A. Talese, $25, 352 pages, ISBN 9780385533577, also available on audio

27

features

christmas fiction

by Dee Ann Grand

Novel picks for the naughty and nice

D

oes someone you know need a little Christmas spirit? Maybe it’s you? Well, these selections are guaranteed to keep readers in a happy holiday mood long after the tree’s been recycled and Aunt Milly and her dog Pookie are finally on the plane home.

An elf’s dirty work

28

For a jolly, yet slightly jaded view of how all those Christmas toys get made and delivered in that magical reindeer sleigh, Ken Harmon’s The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir (Dutton, $19.95, 288 pages, ISBN 9780525951957) introduces us to Gumdrop Coal. He’s a toughtalking, hard-as-nails elf who works for Santa, and has the unpleasant job of dealing with the Naughty List of boys and girls every Christmas.

A bit on the rogue side, Gumdrop goes beyond the call of simply delivering coal into the stockings of bad kids. He has the merry idea to forget trying to teach the spoiled brats a lesson, and goes after the ones who are really to blame—the rotten parents who can’t control them. After a few slightly overenthusiastic punches and kicks, he’s framed for murder and on the lam.

Harmon cleverly weaves every Christmas character you’ve ever known into this twisted, humorous tale, never letting up on the rapidfire Christmas pun fun. (The toy soldiers get their marching orders, Frosty gets plowed and Vixen’s nightlife makes the gossip column.)

And as with all good Christmas tales, there are sugarplum lessons for every little good (and not so good) girl and boy to chew on. After all, it’s a wonderful life.

another spirited tale. A Christmas Odyssey (Ballantine, $18, 208 pages, ISBN 9780345518583) takes us to a particularly grisly part of London during the Victorian era, where a motley trio of characters goes to find a lost young man.

Wealthy Londoner James Wentworth has one last hope of finding his wayward son, who has fallen into a salacious underworld of drug addiction and erotic desires. James is baffled that his own son could be lured into such a lecherous life, so, at wit’s end, he begs his longtime friend Henry Rathbone to help him search for the missing young man. Two other odd characters, Squeaky Robinson, who was once a brothel-keeper, and Hester Monk, a slum doctor who treats even the unworthy, join Rathbone to gather clues in London’s dangerous alleys and forbidden streets. Amid all the filth and corruption—and with the help of a few unsavory characters— the three men courageously band together to try to make one father’s Christmas wish come true.

Writing in her typical Dickensian style, Perry has an unblemished talent for convincing us that even the most flawed of characters have redeeming—and maybe even admirable—qualities. And what better time of year to celebrate the good in each and every one of us?

A father’s Christmas wish

Waiting for a miracle

Anne Perry, the best-selling mystery writer also known for her Christmas novels, has penned

Everyone looks for miracles during the Christmas holidays. In Sheila Roberts’ The Snow Globe

(St. Martin’s, $14.99, 176 pages, ISBN 9780312594480), we meet Kylie Gray, who is having a streak of bad luck. She’s lost her job, and worse, her boyfriend has dumped her for her own sister—which will make for the most uncomfortable holiday dinner in history. But all that is about to change. On a crazy impulse, Kylie buys an antique snow globe in an offbeat little shop that, according to the store’s owner, comes with a promise of a miracle.

As doubtful as Kylie is, she tries to believe, and what she eventually sees in the beautiful snowy scene completely changes her life. Her two best friends, each one doubting such silliness could possibly be real, learn that this beautiful glass globe has been handed down through the generations to just the right person needing a picture of hope. They also learn that miracles and hope do abound, even if they may not play out exactly like we would have imagined.

Just like the antique snow globe in this story, there is no better way to share the holiday spirit than to pass this book on to a girlfriend— or anyone in need of a Christmas miracle.

holiday romance With a special knack for braiding believable characters, fantastic settings and spiritual messages into heartwarming tales, Donita K. Paul’s Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball (WaterBrook, $14.99, 240 pages, ISBN 9780307458995) is a romance story that’s not just about true love.

First, we meet Cora Crowder, who’s definitely not in the holiday spirit as she forces herself to buy a book for her uncle’s Christmas present. After finally locating what turns out to be a bookstore like no other, she runs into her co-worker Simon Derrick.

What these two opposites don’t know is that their lonely hearts are now in the hands of the booksell-

ers themselves, who have interests beyond books—matchmaking of the most mysterious kind.

Until the very last page, it’s anybody’s guess if Cora and Simon have enough in common besides their faith to become a couple. But the fun in this story is how it all comes together at an old-fashioned, particularly remarkable Christmas Ball. There are lots of life lessons along the way, like having faith in God, loving yourself and others—all while learning to dance at the ball.

Santa’s life and times The Christmas Chronicles: The Legend of Santa Claus (Bantam, $16, 176 pages, ISBN 9780553808100) by Tim Slover delivers an action-packed tale of imagination and inspiration that will make even a grown-up believe in Santa again.

Slover’s enchanting novel ensnares his audience right away with the account of how he personally came eyeball to eyeball with the real Santa Claus. No, not in a predictable way, like in the wee hours by the tree on Christmas Eve. Slover’s encounter was a complete fluke, and even he questioned his own sanity. But then there was the evidence of the Green Book left for him, a complete biography of Santa’s entire life, including a heroic battle he fought and won against evil. This invaluable account of the life of Santa Claus—in its entirety— is cleverly incorporated into the heart of the novel and is meant to bring annual cheer each Christmas season. It’s recommended that this authorized chronicle of Santa Claus, which promises to correct the silly misconceptions about Santa, be read aloud with a mug of hot chocolate in hand.

The Christmas Chronicles even answers many of the hard questions kids ask at Christmas, like “How do all those toys get delivered all over the world in only one night?”

A second layer of fun in this tale is Slover’s valiant effort to convince his own family (and the reader) that his encounter with Santa really happened.

Reading Slover’s fresh take on Santa Claus could well become a timeless Christmas tradition for all ages, even we grown-ups who might have forgotten that it’s perfectly okay to believe Santa is alive and well.

meet DONNA VANLIERE © José Betancourt

© SHERI o’NEAL

the title of your Q: What’s

new book?

would you describe Q: How

book?

the 9781606350263 $32

was your goal in retelling the story of the Nativity?

Q: What

9781606350553 $45

Musical Mysteries

The Last Muster

Albert Borowitz

Maureen Taylor

A look at the long and complex history of music and crime—examining infamous crimes and crime legends involving musicians and crime in music.

Kent State University Press

A collection of rare, 19th-century photographic images of veterans of the Revolutionary War that assigns faces to an un-illustrated war and tells the stories of our founding fathers and mothers.

Kent State University Press

HC 9781574412970 $24.95 PB 9781574412987 $14.95

9780881462111 $25

your favorite holiday tradition?

Q: What’s

three children, and two cats, how do you slow down Q: With

and keep things peaceful at your house during the holidays?

Birthing a Better Way Kalena Cook and Margaret Christensen, M.D.

What one thing would your readers be most surprised to learn Q: about

you?

This book presents a fresh, proactive and positive approach to why you may want to consider the safest and most satisfying kind of birth—natural childbirth.

University of North Texas Press

Christmas Gift!

Ferrol Sams

Ferrol Sams interweaves his memories of boyhood Christmases in the dark days of the Depression and the details of presentday holidays with his grandchildren. Includes CD of author reading Christmas Gift!

Mercer University Press

change places with one person for a day, who Q: Iwould f you could it be and why?

Q: W hat’s at the top of your Christmas list?

THE CHRISTMAS JOURNEY Donna VanLiere is the author of several bestselling holiday novels, including The Christmas Shoes, The Christmas Blessing and The Christmas Hope, all of which were adapted into TV movies.

Her latest book, The Christmas Journey (St. Martin’s, $12.99, 96 pages, ISBN 9780312613723), is a retelling of the Nativity story. VanLiere and her family live in Franklin, Tennessee.

HC 9781570039669 $49.95 PB 9781570039676 $29.95

9781570039485 $29.95

Working South

Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

Mary Whyte

William W. Starr

As seen on CBS Sunday Morning, renowned watercolorist Mary Whyte has captured with sensitivity and reverence the essence of vanishing blue-collar professions from across ten southern states.

Accomplished storyteller William W. Starr shares a celebration of Scottish life and a spirited endorsement of the unexpected discoveries to be made through good travel and good literature.

University of South Carolina Press

s y a d i l o H H appy from University of South Carolina Press

University Presses 29

features

True holiday tales

By Amy Scribner

The real spirit of the season

T

he holidays mean different things to different people. Whether Christmas triggers your inner Grinch or inspires you to do something good for your fellow man, read on and find just the book for you.

Bah, humbug When I think holiday cheer, I think curmudgeonly comedian Lewis Black. Okay, maybe not. Still, his irreverent and poignant I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas (Riverhead, $19.95, 192 pages, ISBN 9781594487750) is well worth your time this season.

Black—a regular contributor to “The Daily Show” whose Me of Little Faith hit the bestseller list in 2008—makes it obvious (often in all caps) that he abhors “the claustrophobic and cloying warmth” of the holidays. He’s kind of an angry dude, but you can’t say you weren’t warned. He starts his book thus: “This book has nothing to do with those of you for whom this holiday is one of the cornerstones you rest your life on . . . This book is really for the rest of us.”

Indeed. Black spends much of the book hilariously skewering the excess of it all, the overeating and excessive spending. And yet, given his cynical view of organized religion and holiday cheer, this book finds Black in a surprisingly reflective mood. He’s at his best when he reflects on the good in humanity, such as when he describes his recent USO tour in Iraq, or muses on the disastrous earthquake in Haiti: “No one was worried about being a Republican or a Democrat,” Black writes. “There was no debating a budget. There were no arguments over which side had the cheapest Band-Aids. There were no words, just action.

“We are quick to help when someone’s ass is kicked or when

30

we think someone’s ass needs to be kicked. We are great at that. We just don’t know how to take care of ourselves. We are a country where many of our people are living on the edge of catastrophe if not in the middle of it. Maybe we could turn Christmas into a holiday where we help those who are buried here in our country.”

Happy holidays to you, Lewis Black.

Simple gifts And now for something completely different: a new book by Joel Osteen, pastor of America’s biggest megachurch, Lakewood Church in Houston. In The Christmas Spirit (Free Press, $15.99, 160 pages, ISBN 9781439198339), Osteen argues that instead of toys and jewelry, the best Christmas gift is the gift of our time.

Osteen posits that we spend too much time trying to create the perfect Christmas, and that sometimes it’s the imperfections that make a Christmas memorable. He tells of his brother, Paul, a young surgeon struggling to find the joy in the season. With three young children at home and a busy career, he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years. An elderly patient who had just lost her husband listened patiently to his woes before telling him, “Dr. Paul, I would give anything to be where you are now as a young parent. I’d give anything to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, to change a diaper, or to make formula for my babies again. I miss that so much.”

“The wise woman reset Paul’s clock that Christmas,” writes

Osteen. “She reminded him that he should slow down, live in the moment, enjoy and be grateful for every minute as a parent.”

Osteen’s memories may be seen by some as exactly the kind of holiday treacle Lewis Black so thoroughly excoriates (Osteen grew up in a town called Humble, Texas, for goodness’ sake). But he is so sincere, and his message so simple—spend time with the ones you love, and give to those less fortunate—that even Black might struggle to find fault with Osteen’s Christmas Spirit.

A legacy of compassion Former Washington Post investigative reporter Ted Gup knew his grandfather, Sam Stone, as a mischievous man who loved to tell jokes and could pull a quarter from young Ted’s ear. But Sam Stone was born Sam Finkelstein, a Jewish boy who immigrated from Romania to Pittsburgh, growing up in a loveless, impoverished home where the children spent hours in the attic rolling cigars to help the family make ends meet.

Sam Finkelstein eventually moved to Canton, Ohio, renaming himself Sam Stone. A successful businessman and father of three, Stone and his wife, Minna, dreamed up the idea of helping those left in dire straits by the Depression.

They placed a newspaper ad as “B. Virdot,” an anonymous benefactor who offered $10 each to dozens of families one Christmas season.

After Stone died, Gup’s mother gave him the suitcase of letters sent to B. Virdot in response to his ad. Gup reached out to interview descendents of the letter-writers, and in A Secret Gift (Penguin Press, $25.95, 368 pages, ISBN 9781594202704), he relays their remarkable stories of distress and recovery in Depression-era America. He opens the door on the quiet shame so many felt in asking for help: “For many today it is difficult to understand the stigma attached to going on the dole or accepting charity,” he writes.

“The shame of poverty was tolerable—so many were in distress that Christmas of 1933—but the loss of

face that came of publicly applying for relief, of claiming that one’s needs were equal to or superior to another’s, of enduring the gauntlet of probing questions, of surrendering one’s dignity and privacy, for many was too much to ask.”

As affecting as the letters are, the heart of A Secret Gift is Gup’s loving and painstakingly reported account of his grandfather—an ordinary man who gave an extraordinary gift when it was needed most.

Words of wisdom In the Dark Streets Shineth (Shadow Mountain, $19.99, 56 pages, ISBN 9781606418314), a quietly powerful book from Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough, combines photos and text to tell the story of how President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill came together in December 1941 to encourage their nations during one of the bleakest holidays in modern history.

Adapted from McCullough’s performance at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas concert in 2009, the book includes photos from the somber 1941 holiday season and the full text of the addresses that Churchill and Roosevelt delivered from a White House balcony at the lighting of the national Christmas tree.

“This is a strange Christmas Eve,” Churchill told a crowd of 20,000 gathered on the White House lawn.

“Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. . . .

“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.

Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us. . . .”

McCullough—best known for his biographies of presidents Harry Truman and John Adams—also meditates on how classic American Christmas carols figured during this dark time. Although the two subjects seem slightly disjointed, McCullough manages to weave them together, and there’s no denying he perfectly evokes the uncertainty and fear of the time in this beautifully designed book.

Something for Everyone us.dk.com

this Holiday Season

features

music

By Edward Morris

given to taking artistic short cuts, not quite demanding as much from himself as his talent could render.

Still, his bedrock of compassion and generosity generally shows through.

Sounes allots plenty of space to McCartney’s disastrous marriage to Heather Mills, a test of character if there ever was one.

A prophet of his times

gift BOOKS THAT HIT the right note

T

his is a rich season for readers whose imaginations (and libidos) were first unleashed back when vinyl was the dominant musical medium and Broadway was still a wellspring of popular songs. Five new books provide a kaleidoscopic view of that charmed era.

man with the golden throat

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James Kaplan’s Frank: The Voice (Doubleday, $35, 800 pages, ISBN 9780385518048) is a gossipy, immensely readable account of Frank Sinatra’s rise from sweet-singing mama’s boy to teen idol to Academy Award-winning actor. (The biography ends on the night of March 25, 1954, with Sinatra walking the streets of Beverly Hills and brandishing his best supporting Oscar for From Here To Eternity.)

Kaplan could have just as accurately subtitled his book The Groin, since he focuses as much on that busy region as he does on the entertainer’s golden throat.

Central to his chronicle is Sinatra’s love affair with and marriage to Ava Gardner, the one woman whose temper and sense of entitlement were as formidable as the singer’s own. “Like Frank,” says Kaplan, “she was infinitely restless and easily bored. . . . Both had titanic appetites, for food, drink, cigarettes, diversion, companionship, and sex.

Both loved jazz and the men and women, black and white, who made it. Both were politically liberal.” The author also assesses the influences of such other Sinatra intimates as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, Sinatra’s long-suffering publicist George Evans and his even longer-suffering first wife, Nancy. There are few new facts or insights here, but Kaplan

does a masterful job of stitching the reams of previously published material into a vivid, fast-paced narrative.

Beyond the Beatles Howard Sounes’ Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney (Da Capo, $29.95, 656 pages, ISBN 9780306817830) is impressively thorough and up-to-date. The author devotes a mere 22 pages of his mammoth text to McCartney’s youth—that is, the period before he joined his first real band, the Quarrymen—and he polishes off the Beatles era less than halfway into the book. That’s as it should be, given the substantial body of work and public presence McCartney has created on his own. While Sounes did not talk with McCartney or the other surviving Beatle, Ringo Starr, he did interview well over 200 other people who were closely or tangentially connected with the star. The picture that emerges is of a man well aware of his place in musical history but

No one else has anatomized Bob Dylan, his music and his personality as relentlessly or as minutely as Greil Marcus. Witness now the culmination of that obsession in Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010 (PublicAffairs, $29.95, 512 pages, ISBN 9781586488314).

Marcus first came face to face with Dylan in 1963 at a Joan Baez concert in New Jersey. That experience was so transformative that he has since viewed the iconic singer/songwriter as something of a cultural weathervane. These essays and speeches tend either to sigh with admiration or seethe with contempt as Dylan goes through his various stages from folkie to rocker to Christian convert to elder statesman to enigma-in-residence. No album or gesture goes unnoticed.

All the pieces aren’t strictly about Dylan, though; in some,

he’s just a footnote, a shadow passing by. Readers who are not into Dylan minutiae can still follow what Marcus is talking about, since most of these writings were for publications that catered to broad audiences. But this is more than a study of Dylan—it’s a jagged portrait of the age.

Backstage with rock gods Spurned by rock critics for being over-hyped, depraved and savage toward the press, Led Zeppelin

finally decided in 1975 that it might be a business advantage to invite a handful of top-tier reporters to accompany the band on what was certain to be a triumphant tour of America. One of the chosen few was Stephen Davis, a former writer for Rolling Stone who, on this trip, would be on assignment for The Atlantic. The upshot is LZ-’75 (Gotham, $22.50, 224 pages, ISBN 9781592405893). Zeppelin proved to be just as thorny and exhausting to cover as expected. As Davis chronicles it, the tour was a transcontinental bacchanal, in which each member of the band had his own peccadilloes and flash points; imagine Spinal Tap with higher IQs and better management. Davis, who would later write the muchdisputed Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods, misplaced his notes of the tour (The Atlantic declined his proposed article) and didn’t find them until 30 years later.

Thus the delay, and the sense that we’ve read all this before, though the material and the gossip still compel.

A life in the theater Readers are hereby warned not to start on Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat (Knopf, $39.95, 480 pages, ISBN 9780679439073) if they have vital appointments pending.

His prose is just too alluring to put aside. This is the first of two planned volumes in which the great lyricist recounts his experiences writing songs for musical theater; the book covers 13 plays from 1954 to 1981.

Besides providing and discussing the lyrics to all his songs in these plays, Sondheim also offers illuminating critiques of fellow Broadway songwriters. He is a hard man to please, finding literary fault with such master stylists as Oscar Hammerstein II (his mentor), Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, Ira Gershwin and Noel Coward. He is more admiring of Dorothy Fields, Irving Berlin and Frank Loesser, although not unreservedly so. It’s astounding the number of classics Sondheim can claim, among them “Maria” and “Tonight” from West Side Story, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy, “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music—the list goes on, and fortunately, so does Sondheim.

COFFEE TABLE BOOKS B y A l i c e Ca r y

Picture-perfect photography

M

y coffee table isn’t complete without a stack of beautiful photography books to savor. Here are some wonderful choices for your own stack, all bound to keep family and friends entertained for hours.

Just a warning: You may want to throw in an extra coffee table as well.

Presidential portraits I’m certain that Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House (Abrams, $35, 352 pages, ISBN 9780810995857) will be popular with my brothers, both of whom shook hands with JFK when they were boys. Although I wasn’t born in time to offer my hand, I never tire of the Kennedy saga.

Published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of JFK’s election, this poignant book contains the photos of Cecil Stoughton, the first official White House photographer (many have never been previously published). Here, for example, is Jackie reading aboard the presidential yacht, while young Caroline snoozes on a blanket at her feet.

There are political as well as intimate photos: Jackie and the children coloring Easter eggs at a kitchen table; Caroline cartwheeling through the Oval Office; the Kennedys welcoming the president of India to a White House state dinner; John Jr. and his father at Arlington Cemetery, only 11 days before the assassination. The photos are arranged chronologically, with short commentary and captions by historian Richard Reeves. As a result, it’s possible to flip through and get a real sense of the Camelot story as it marches toward its tragic end.

As a bonus, a DVD is included that contains Stoughton’s film footage, in both color and black and white.

If you’re looking for a gift bundle, a natural add-on is The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office (National

Geographic, $35, 256 pages, ISBN 9781426206764). This book, a companion to a PBS TV special, covers everything from early daguerreotypes of John Quincy Adams to modern views of the Obamas wearing 3-D glasses and Sasha sneaking up on her father in the Oval Office.

Here you’ll see a variety of amusing scenes over the years, including a barefoot Betty Ford dancing on an immense Cabinet Room table.

These photos are intimate, humanizing glimpses of our First Families.

Mixed with ordinary fun are the momentous moments, including the assassination attempt on Reagan and the horrific hours of 9/11.

Obama’s photographer Peter Souza explains what his job is like day-to-day, hour-to-hour. Author and filmmaker John Bredar also sheds light on memorable moments from previous White House photographers, including David Hume Kennerly, who grew particularly close to the Ford family and had open access—as shown by a shot of President Ford in his PJs during an early morning meeting.

Through the years Another wonderful historic time capsule is the weighty book Decade (Phaidon, $39.95, 512 pages, ISBN 9780714857688), a global photographic journey from 2000 to the present, covering everything from pop culture to politics. This book reminds me of the Life magazine photo collection books I adored as a teenager, sealing iconic photos as well as historical perspective into my brain. The scope of this book is particularly broad and intriguing,

with each compelling photo immediately grabbing one’s attention.

Decade is also particularly well designed. While heavy, its 10-inchsquare size makes it easy to hold, but leaves plenty of room for the photos to have full visual impact.

Each year begins with a one-page overview, and each photo has its own one-line caption, along with a short paragraph containing more information.

Here’s a quick sample of the myriad of subjects you’ll encounter: a judge peering through a magnifying glass at a Florida ballot from the controversial 2000 presidential election; a shot from the set of the HBO series The Wire; a disintegrating 500-billion-ton ice sheet in Antarctica; bloody bystanders at the bombing in Mumbai, India; Chinese astronauts being lauded back on Earth after making China’s first space walk. Decade is a grand photographic stroll around the globe and through the years.

All the world A stroll of a different sort awaits in The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World (Lonely Planet, $50, 448 pages, ISBN 9781741792119). With 817 images covering 229 countries, this is a big book, so be prepared to settle into your traveling armchair.

Each country has its own spread, complete with a paragraph introduction, and added information about the best time of the year to visit, top things to see, top things to do, trademarks (what the country is known for), and a final random fun fact. Who knew, for example, that yak tails from Tibet were once used to make Father Christmas beards?

Also helpful is a short reference section for each country called “Getting Under the Skin,” listing a related book, music, film, native dish and drink. Finally, there’s a phrase for greeting someone in the native language of each country.

You’ll definitely have fun planning your bucket list with this big, gor-

geous book.

On the move If you’d prefer to watch animals travel instead, sit down with Great Migrations (National Geographic, $35, 304 pages, ISBN 9781426206443), a companion book to a National Geographic Channel “global television event,” which premiered in November. Although migration is hardly a new subject, it remains endlessly fascinating, and this book is filled with the stunning photographs that National Geographic is known for. This volume also addresses how such issues as changing global conditions and habitat loss are affecting migration.

We see, for instance, rare pronghorns darting through traffic and trying to cross rangeland fences in northwestern Wyoming. Great Migrations tackles everything from ants to elephants, and even sea life—including Earth’s largest fish, the whale shark. The movement and images of all of these creatures is no less than breathtaking, and writer K.M. Kostyal brings all of the images into perspective with excellent accompanying text.

Natural landmarks Nature lovers will also relish Ansel Adams in the National Parks (Little, Brown, $40, 344 pages, ISBN 9780316078467), filled with images from this master photographer’s visits to more than 40 parks. The volume was edited by Andrea G. Stillman, who worked for Adams in the 1970s, and 50 of the 225 photos have never been published.

Insightful essays highlight interesting tidbits, including the fact that Adams’ 13-year-old son stepped into a hot pool during one photography session at Yellowstone and sustained first- and second-degree burns on his leg. Still, it is Adams’ striking photos of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and other national parks that are the real draw here— iconic photos of the wilderness he championed.

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features

design

by jillian quint

FOR DESIGNERS, PAST IS PRESENT

T

he holidays always bring a crop of sumptuous books about fashion and décor. And in a time when many are taking stock of what they have and where they’ve come from, designers too are looking back at history for grounding and inspiration.

HAMPTON GETAWAY The daughter of design legend Mark Hampton, Alexa Hampton comes naturally to her trade, and her interior designs speak to the history that’s clearly been instilled in her. The Language of Interior Design (Clarkson Potter, $50, 256 pages, ISBN 9780307460530) is the younger Hampton’s first book, and it succeeds as both a window into the stunning residences she revamps and a practical guide to the elements of good design.

Organized by four governing aesthetic principles—contrast, proportion, color and balance—this elegant tome takes readers through 18 impressive residences from Hampton’s portfolio, including a landmark New York pied-à-terre, a palatial Tudor home and a tuckedaway Queen Anne summer cottage.

Hampton explains that a client’s style and needs must be honored, but at the same time shows how she brings her own flair to all her projects—from her use of grouped furniture as a way to balance large spaces, to her untraditional combination of French, Moroccan and Swedish influences in one beachside living room.

The lessons learned are applicable to even modest homesteads, and the sheer beauty of Hampton’s work is impossible to ignore.

HEAD FIRST

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Anyone familiar with American film history is no doubt familiar—at least by sight—with the work of Edith Head. Known for her Dutch-boy haircut and trademark sunglasses, Head was one of Hollywood’s leading and most influential costume designers, as well as a pioneering woman in a man’s industry.

She worked on more than 400 films, including Double Indemnity and The Birds, and ultimately received more Academy Awards than any woman in history.

But her story is fascinating beyond the Grace Kelly ball gowns and Dorothy Lamour sarong, as Jay

Jorgensen shows in his biographycum-coffee table book, Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer (Running Press, $75, 400 pages, ISBN 9780762438051). Jorgensen’s scrupulously researched and handsomely assembled work follows Head from her humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nevada, through her unparalleled success and struggles with industry politics, and up to her final years and ensuing legacy.

Filled with pithy anecdotes and never-before-seen sketches, Edith Head is the book for the costume design enthusiast.

the way she is Barbra Streisand is undoubtedly an entertainment icon. But who knew she was a home designer as well?

Babs’ first foray into the world of writing, My Passion for Design (Viking, $60, 288 pages, ISBN 9780670022137), is a refreshing counterpoint to the celebrity tell-alls and workout regimens that litter bookstore discount bins.

Instead, Streisand treats readers to her philosophy on architecture and construction as it pertains to her most recent Malibu homes, along with 350 vibrant photographs of these modern-day refuges. Her taste is both refined and lively (glimpses of her ravishing gardens are enough to make even the most green-thumbed jealous) and her look takes its cues from American design of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Word has it that Streisand initially set out to write a more traditional memoir, but early in the process realized that her living spaces were the true portals to her life. My Passion for Design provides access to these portals, and lets fans see a new side of the woman behind the persona.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad world In the past year, there’s been a crop of books related to the Emmy-

winning TV series “Mad Men,” from entertaining guides to ad industry tell-alls. So it was only a matter of time before the show’s impeccable 1960s clothing got the publishing treatment.

The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men (Grand Central, $26.99, 192 pages, ISBN 9780446572712) by Janie Bryant, costume designer for the acclaimed program, takes fans and costume enthusiasts inside the show’s design process, while at the same time showing every woman how to channel her inner Joan, Betty or Peggy.

As one might expect, there are plenty of examples of how Bryant styles her now-iconic women (pastels and blues for icy Betty, small patterns for naïve and hopeful Trudy). But there’s also useful advice for readers looking to bring the sophistication and femininity of “Mad Men” to a more modern look.

For instance, Bryant recommends that all women get acquainted with their body type before hitting the stores. “You can conveniently forget your age, but you had better be clear on your bust size,” she warns.

Likewise, she explains how to use undergarments and shapewear to one’s advantage, creating the figure that will work best with your wardrobe.

There’s even a section on how to style your man, so you can make him Don Draper-dapper—if, hopefully, a little less of a cad.

Less is more Even runway aficionados often take Minimalist style for granted, reducing the easily recognizable looks of Balenciaga and Jil Sander to “classic” or “simple.”

But the truth is, this mainstream aesthetic

owes everything to the rich history of Minimalist design as it pertains to both high art and high fashion.

Parsons professor and fashion historian Elyssa Dimant’s weightybut-approachable new volume, Minimalism and Fashion: Reduction in the Postmodern Era (Collins Design, $75, 224 pages, ISBN 9780061925993), traces the evolving genre—from its roots in 1960s art and architecture up through contemporary concepts of neominimalism and the 21st-century machine.

Organized chronologically and featuring 150 breathtaking images, Minimalism and Fashion examines the work of many fashion greats— Coco Chanel, Issey Miyake, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada—as both products of their time and ambassadors for the style that has been at the design forefront for more than half a decade. And at every turn, Dimant compares trends in the world of clothing with those in the world of art—Sol LeWitt’s sculptural cube opposite Helmut Lang’s 2003 Spring/Summer collection, Calvin Klein’s streamlined, androgynous wardrobe in dialogue with 1980s and ’90s postminimalist feminist work.

“Minimalism is about moving forward without nostalgia,” boasts Francisco Costa’s appropriately restrained foreword. True though that may be, we’re glad that Dimant took the time to look back.

On Sale January 2011!

In Virgin River, faith in new beginnings and the power of love has doors opening everywhere….

Jackson Raines can’t resist trouble, and Sarah Allen has enemies who won’t take no for an answer.

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As lawyer Kate Lange races to stay a step ahead of the prosecution, a silent predator is lurking.

Kidnapped. Sequestered to a remote mountain cabin. Isolated by a blizzard.

A delicate balance between horror and hope.

Cure the winter blues with great fiction from MIRA® Books.

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Late-night radio-show psychologist Rain Sommers receives a chilling call…. Is she the next target of the sadistic serial killer known as the Vampire?

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features

religion

ANNUNCIATION, BEDNORZ-IMAGES

by alison hood

ENDURING GIFTS OF FAITH AND HOPE

I

n our conspicuously consumer-oriented culture, we can sometimes lose sight of the deeper roots of the holiday season. The minute October ticks over into November, a dizzying array of tantalizing items are dangled before us, reminding us of a December 25th deadline. Here, we offer an antidote: a calming tonic in the form of four new books that reflect segments of America’s rich diversity of spiritual traditions.

A YEAR OF PRAYER Germaine Copeland is passionate about prayer. The author of Prayers That Avail Much, this dedicated counselor and prayer advocate has crafted a day-by-day devotional, 365 Days to a Prayer-Filled Life (Multnomah, $15.99, 384 pages, ISBN 9781601423283), that aims to move the human perception of prayer as an act of asking-waitingreceiving into a more powerful vision: a deeper and more intimate relationship with God. Beginning with a herald to the New Year, Day 1 invites us to begin anew and let go of the past through a small conversational essay, followed by a thoughtful prayer—a direct conversation with God—along with related Scripture references and a suggested Bible reading. Each day of the year presents a different topic—on a Tuesday, it could be a snippet about marriage, and

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Friday might prompt you to think about what really constitutes an abundant life. Gentle and steadfast, Copeland’s kind presence and true devotion to a merciful Divine Father shine from each page of this guiding “prayer book.”

THE BASICS OF JUDAISM Tradition! Yes, that familiar refrain from Fiddler on the Roof kept running through my head as I hummed “If I Were a Rich Man” and chuckled (very hard to do simultaneously) while reading The Big Jewish Book for Jews: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Really Jewish Jew (Plume, $17, 256 pages, ISBN 9780452296442) by humorists Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman.

The authors of Yiddish with Dick and Jane are back with everything everyone—Jews and non-Jews alike—needs to know about how to be “really Jewish.” All of their wisecracking humor aside, Weiner and

Davilman have a clear concern: that Judaism is becoming endangered within today’s modern American culture. “There is not one facet of American life in which Jews have not made significant contributions. . . . But this very success threatens to bring about the undoing of American Jewishness itself.” Their solution is to reassert the sense of what “it really means to be Jewish” by “preserving practices and beliefs . . . lest they atrophy . . . or become entirely forgotten.” Fifty-three “lessons” (what, you wanted more?) instruct us on the essentials: how to make chopped liver, how to use the Bible to tell if your wife is cheating on you, how to make pickles, how to worry and how to give backhanded compliments. There’s a lot of information here (plus enlivening illustrations), maybe even a surfeit, but not enough to make you meshugeneh.

BLESSEd mother Writer Judith Dupré (author of Skyscrapers, Bridges, Churches and Monuments), who has a longstanding interest in the beauty of and deeper meanings inherent in architecture, has carefully built a luminous book: Full of Grace: Encountering Mary in Faith, Art, and Life (Random House, $40, 352 pages, ISBN 9781400065851). If compared to an edifice, this would be a simple, intimate yet soaring light-filled space—an apt dwelling for a woman whom many call the Queen of Heaven.

The wonder and mystery of Mary, the mother of Jesus, has long captivated our culture and collective imagination. To this day, hordes of pilgrims converge upon holy sites, places where Mary is said to have appeared, to receive her gentle but powerful wisdom, healing and grace. Dupré explores these locales and the overall fascination with the young girl from Nazareth in 59 exquisite essays (the number of beads on a rosary) that are by turns personal, historical and meditative while they focus on the epochs and experiences of Mary’s life, from her immaculate conception through to her death. Along with Dupré’s keen insight into her own faith and thorough

research, the text is enhanced with meticulously chosen artwork, both classical and contemporary, and “marginalia,” consisting of poems, prayers and historical notes.

Dupré takes us along on a journey of faith toward understanding Mary’s universal embodiment and allure, and how this tender, tragic and brave woman’s life still resonates powerfully with women and men the world over. Says Dupré of this power: “Mary’s experiences as a mother, her intense joy as well as her unfathomable grief, shed light on the unavoidable fate of all parents—to love but lack the ability to ever fully understand, or protect, their children.”

SPIRITUAL SELF-PORTRAIT Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and the spiritual leader of Tibet who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, often comments that he is “no one special.” He says this to emphasize our common humanity and the “vital need for affection” that exists within us all.

This simple statement, which gives a fathoms-deep glimpse into the heart and mind of the Dalai Lama, leads off a new memoir (collected by his translator and friend Sofia Stril-Rever), My Spiritual Journey (HarperOne, $25.99, 304 pages, ISBN 9780061960222).

Organized into three parts, the book follows the Dalai Lama’s life experiences “as a human being,” “as a Buddhist monk” and “as the Dalai Lama.” A compilation of his memories, personal reflections, dharma lectures and public presentations, the book is a series of short essays, which are accompanied by commentary from Stril-Rever. Here are peeks inside the Dalai Lama’s experiences as a child, exploring the vast spread of rooms and spaces in the Potala Palace, along with remembrances of persecution and his flight into exile. He gives a loving portrait of his mother (“a compassionate woman”) and declares his vow to, with his last breath, “practice compassion.” The book is a treasure trove for both those who are well-versed in the Dalai Lama’s teachings and those new to this “simple Buddhist monk.” His reminiscences and perceptions about humanity’s need to collectively care for one another and the Earth shine with humor, honesty and kindness—all the while exhorting us gently to “never lose hope!”

LITERARY gifts

by Julie hale

Treasures for a rapacious reader

W

hether you’re shopping for a serious scholar or an armchair academic, a mystery addict or a collector, we have a title for every bibliophile on your list. Stuff a stocking with one of the books below, and you’ll look smart this holiday season.

Insights of a famous wife Offering the inside scoop, so to speak, on what it’s like to live with a moody, complicated genius, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (HarperPerennial, $16.99, 640 pages, ISBN 9780061997419), translated by historian Cathy Porter, provides readers with the rest of the story regarding one of Russia’s greatest writers. Sofia Behrs married Count Leo Tolstoy in 1862, when she was 18. Documenting their 48-year union, her fascinating diaries span five decades and chronicle events both personal and political. The daughter of a doctor, Sofia was smart and spirited, and she turned to journaling for both expression and confession. Tolstoy also kept a journal, and the two often shared their writings, no matter how hurtful the content.

As Sofia’s diaries make clear, the couple had a tumultuous relationship. Although she bore Tolstoy 13 children and supported him in his work, copying out his manuscripts and overseeing their domestic affairs, he was often cold and neglectful, and Sofia’s journals are filled with angst-ridden entries that describe her struggles to negotiate their shared life. Written with precision and earnest emotion, the diaries reveal the daily dramas— family quarrels, illnesses and financial concerns—that enlivened the Tolstoy household, and they show that Sofia was an accomplished artist in her own right. Featuring an introduction by Doris Lessing, this volume will strike a chord with both history buffs and literature lovers.

under the influence The title says it all: Writers Gone Wild: The Feuds, Frolics, and Follies of Literature’s Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes (Perigee, $14.95, 272 pages, ISBN 9780399536182) catalogues notorious moments in the lives of famous authors. Compiled by journalist Bill Peschel, this tantalizing collection

of true anecdotes documents a different kind of literary history—one of scandal and abandon, packed with scenes worthy of a bestseller.

Peschel offers what amounts to mug shots of the literati, as he recounts incident after unbelievable incident: There’s Norman Mailer stabbing his wife, Adele, at the close of a night of carousing, and Theodore Dreiser slapping Sinclair Lewis during a formal dinner that becomes a bit of a brawl. Taking it to the streets are J.P. Donleavy and Brendan Behan, who duke it out on a London sidewalk.

Of course, the vino flows liberally throughout Peschel’s book, providing fuel, in most cases, for each writer’s act of passion. Peschel has organized the proceedings into chapters (“Public Embarrassments,” “Unfortunate Encounters,” “Fight Club”—you get the picture) and includes recommendations for further reading. An artful writer, he presents each priceless nugget of trivia with style and flair. Bibliophiles will love this enormously entertaining look at authors who succumbed to the very impulses they wrote about. When life imitates art, look out!

The best and the brightest The Updikes and Munros of tomorrow are featured in 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker (FSG, $16, 416 pages, ISBN 9780374532871), a terrific new collection compiled by Deborah Treisman, the magazine’s fiction editor.

Proving that the short story form is as vital as ever, the volume presents a talented new generation of writers, all under the age of 40, whose work was showcased in the magazine this past summer.

The narratives are wonderfully varied, and the roster of authors is diverse. David Bezmozgis and Dinaw Mengestu, both transplants to the West, contribute powerful tales of the immigrant experience.

Innovators Téa Obreht and Jonathan Safran Foer push the boundaries of the genre in stories that surprise, while ZZ Packer and Wells Tower use narrative voice as the foundation for their rich explorations of character. Bringing humor to the table, Joshua Ferris and Gary Shteyngart offer sharply realized satires.

The New Yorker has a reputation for fostering great fiction writers.

With 20 Under 40, the magazine continues its tradition of spotlighting authors with fresh styles and exciting visions. Readers concerned about the state of literature in this digital era can rest easy: As 20 Under 40 demonstrates, the future of fiction looks bright.

’Tis the season of suspense Get ready for poisoned sugarplums and Santas who sleuth.

Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop (Vanguard, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781593156176), edited

by Otto Penzler, offers readers a different kind of Yuletide yarn. Penzler, a connoisseur of suspense fiction, owns the esteemed Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Every year, come Christmas, he solicits a story from one of his partners in crime—i.e., some of the most popular mystery writers working today. For guidelines regarding plot and character, Penzler offers only the following: Each narrative should take place during the holidays, be centered around a mystery and use as its setting—for at least a few scenes—his shop.

Penzler started this spine-tingling tradition in 1993, publishing the tales as limited-edition pamphlets, which he gave to his customers as gifts. Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop brings the stories

together for the first time in one volume. The 17 contributions include diverting whodunits and sophisticated crime dramas, as well as narratives written with good old-fashioned fun. Featuring pieces

by Ed McBain (“I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus”), Donald Westlake (“Give Till It Hurts”) and S.J. Rozan (“The Grift of the Magi”), this roundup of holiday tales with a sinister twist is the perfect gift for the mystery lover on your list.

Crime fiction’s it girl

Movie fans and fiction lovers alike have Lisbeth on the brain— Lisbeth Salander, that is. The heroine of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, Lisbeth is equal parts guerrilla girl and math geek—a streetsmart genius with a knack for hacking who uses her computer skills to take on the baddies of Swedish society. Her adventures, chronicled in Larsson’s trio of bestsellers, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, have bewitched readers around the world.

Coinciding with the holidays is the arrival of the Millennium Trilogy Deluxe Boxed Set (Knopf, $99, 1,627 pages, ISBN 9780307595577), a handsome slip-cased collection that will provide fans with an extra Lisbeth fix. The set contains new hardcover editions of the three novels, which have been outfitted with a fresh design that includes maps, unique engravings and oneof-a-kind endpapers. Rounding out the collection is On Stieg Larsson, a volume of previously unpublished essays and correspondence with the author, who died in 2004. With more than five million copies in print, Larsson’s thrilling trilogy has turned Lisbeth into the queen of crime fiction, and her story gets the royal treatment here. This lavish set is a must-have for Millennium devotees and readers in search of suspense.

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features

gifts for guys

by Martin Brady

Let’s hear it for the boys

F

or the men on your list, this year’s selection has a sporty bent, with side trips into macho movies, manly pursuits and muscular journalism.

Eye of the Tiger Leading off the pack—and combining good reporting with a story ripped from the headlines—is Tom Callahan’s His Father’s Son: Earl and Tiger Woods (Gotham, $27, 304 pages, ISBN 9781592405978).

Callahan, author of the acclaimed bio Johnny U, brings a two-tiered approach to the story of the two Woods men, outlining father Earl’s life and maverick mindset and placing the great golfer Tiger’s own life and career into that broader context. Is the child father to the man? Perhaps so, though Callahan seems better able to profile Woods the father, with his varied markers as military man, Vietnam vet, college athlete and major influence on Tiger. We also gain some insight—if

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not outright understanding—into the Woodses’ way with women, and that should interest many readers, this being the first major volume to grapple with Tiger’s personality since his endlessly publicized fall from grace in late 2009. (That said, Tiger still comes off here as pretty elusive emotionally.) Callahan infuses his text with many accounts of Tiger’s achievements at major tournaments and also quotes notable golf figures such as Ernie Els, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer on Tiger—the athlete and the man.

All about b-ball Two seasons ago, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac took the sports publishing world by storm with its offbeat collaborative writing and unique graphics approach. The writers identified with FreeDarko.com are at it again, in The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History (Bloomsbury, $25, 224 pages, ISBN 9781608190836), which applies the same on-theedge journalism to analysis of the game’s past, from the development of the early leagues, to the rise of the NBA, to rundowns of the impact on the sport by figures such as Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain through to the more modern era of Bird, Magic, Jordan, Barkley, Shaq, Kobe, etc. The text, as quirkily readable as ever, further ranges over pop culture, books, movies and on- and off-court events that have become emblazoned in the public mind in the television age.

Bond, James Bond For the escapist, movie-fan guy, two new entries in the Bond Collection offer fun reading and browsing. With text by Alastair Dougall, Bond Girls (DK, $15, 144 pages, ISBN 9780756668747) and Bond Villains (DK, $15, 144 pages, ISBN 9780756668754) present nostalgic, evocative pictorial coverage of all the evil geniuses, henchmen and seductive and/or poisonous ladies encountered

by the seven cinema James Bonds, in films ranging from Dr. No (1962) to Quantum of Solace (2008). These are fabulously entertaining volumes, though curiously, the actors who played the many roles, men and women, are never identified by name in the text, nor are the Bonds (spanning Sean Connery through Daniel Craig). In that case, the book is particularly recommended for those who think of the Bond phenomenon—and its many personalities—as more fact than fiction.

Blowing smoke “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. In an age where tobacco is anathema to most—a sneaky killer and a social no-no— there are still folks who treasure the From Tiger singular culWoods to ture surroundJames Bond, ing the cigar (which still we’ve got the best gift books goes nicely with brandy, for the hardby the way). to-please guys. Churchill, for example, supposedly smoked 8 to 10 of them a day (and Sir Winston lived to be 90). Don’t forget George Burns, Bill Cosby, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain and Fidel Castro, to name but a few on the long and worthy list of tokers.

For those who embrace the occasional habit, Lawrence Dorfman’s The Cigar Lover’s Compendium: Everything You Need to Light Up and Leave Me Alone (Lyons Press, $14.95, 204 pages, ISBN 9781599219370) is pretty much a must-have volume. Like cigars themselves, Dorfman’s guidebook is, uh, thoroughly satisfying—from the history of cigar-making to connoisseur considerations to anecdotes and aphorisms. Plus, there’s a useful list of cigar bars and shops in the U.S. and Canada;

also a glossary of terms. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

THE Best of the best Finally, in praise of good writing—and an interesting gift for the guy who appreciates it—is The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese (Walker, $16, 320 pages, ISBN 9780802777539).

Talese is internationally known as a purveyor of the so-called New Journalism and author of literary nonfiction classics like The Kingdom and the Power andThy Neighbor’s Wife. Yet Talese was also a sportswriter, first plying that trade as a teenager for the Ocean City (N.J.) Sentinel-Ledger. Later, he wrote for the University of Alabama’s Crimson-White and eventually the New York Times, Esquire and other major publications. This anthology gathers his pieces from every era—the earliest dating from 1948­—and displays his interest in more than merely the final score, with notably atypical, sometimes surprising reportage on basketball, football, baseball, golf, horse racing and even speed-skating, with a 1980 profile of Olympians Eric and Beth Heiden. He weaves discussion of race, media and society into these stories, and, apropos to his age group (Talese is now 78), there’s a good deal of coverage on boxing, as befits its former standing as a major, print-ready sport. Though Talese famously sympathized with underdogs, the book’s title derives from his famous 1966 Esquire article on Joe DiMaggio—still, decades later, a sports icon.

The Most Amusing Gifts of the Season

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HUMOR

features

B y L i n d a M . C a s t e ll i t t o

Read ’em and weep (with laughter)

W

hen the going gets tough, the tough make jokes. We’re in a recession, getting older, and the Earth is melting, but there’s humor to be had. (No, really!) This quartet of books puts a humorous spin on what it’s like to be us. Go forth and laugh!

Fables with a twist Oh, animals. They can be so cute and sweet. Except when they’re behaving like jerks or committing acts of violence. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (Little, Brown, $21.99, 176 pages, ISBN 9780316038393), a collection of 16 twisted tales masterfully illustrated by Ian Falconer (of Olivia fame), will be literary catnip for readers who’ve speculated on what pets or wild creatures are really thinking. In David Sedaris’ world, our anthropomorphized furry and feathered friends can be thoughtful, kind, annoying or depraved; it depends on the individual. Fans of

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the author and radio commentator’s previous books likely will be split between those who love this wild escalation of Sedaris’ dark side and those who can’t abide stories with shocking, unhappy endings.

But it’s a jungle out there, and Squirrel spares neither personality foible nor distasteful aspect of human nature or the animal kingdom (a parasite that prefers hippopotamus anuses comes to mind). This collection is a darkhumor lover’s delight that raises the question: What will Sedaris do next?

Humans were here It’s been six years since Jon Stewart and his team published America (The Book), but they haven’t been idle—they’ve been working on an even more ambitious project. You see, when humans become extinct and the Earth is colonized by aliens, the new residents probably will have lots of questions about what came before. With that in mind, they created Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race (Grand Central, $27.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780446579223), an extremely detailed reference book about what we’ve left behind, how we lived and likely reasons we’re not around anymore (pandemic? nuclear holocaust? robot rebellion?). This hilarious-yet-rueful tome—all written in the past tense, of course—covers everything from government to fashion, natural disasters to advertising. Illustrations, charts, photos and collages add to

the satiric fun, though a faux nude photo of Larry King might seem un-fun to some. There’s a helpful suggestion-cum-plea for the aliens, too: that they reanimate us from DNA so we can together “give this planet the kind of caretakers it deserves.” It’s a poignant end to a funny, smart book.

New (preppy) generation

ready to achieve maximum preppiness. Whether you adore or eschew pastel and penny loafers, True Prep is a delight.

I feel bad about my brain Nora Ephron has met Cary Grant and Dorothy Parker, but remembers nothing about them.

She was at “The Ed Sullivan Show” the night the Beatles performed, and only recalls the obnoxious fans. As she muses in I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections (Knopf, $22.95, 160 pages, ISBN 9780307595607), “On some level, my life has been wasted on me.

After all, if I can’t remember it, who can?” But, as with 2006’s I Feel Bad About My Neck, what she does remember is fascinating, entertaining and a lovely contemplation of what it’s like to grow older, every single year. The accomplished screenwriter (Julie and Julia, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, among others) writes about her love for journalism and New York City, and her sadness upon learning her beloved Teflon emits poisonous gases. She holds forth on the vagaries of email, and shares what it’s like to have a favorite play flop.

Throughout the book, the touching sits alongside the funny; essays like “The O Word,” in which she muses on what it’s like to realize she is old, will hit home with anyone who’s wondered if they’ve made the most of life. And who hasn’t?

It’s generally true, to be sure, that a lot has changed in the last 30 years. In the land of prep, this is the most shocking change of all: “Preppies in the 21st century all wear the unnatural fibers we collectively refer to as ‘fleece.’ ” If Lisa Birnbach says it, we know it’s true; 30 years ago, she wrote The Official Preppy Handbook and revealed the secret code of the naturalfibers set.

Now she and designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd have issued True Prep: It’s a Whole New Old World (Knopf, $19.95, 256 pages, ISBN A page from Earth (The Book) by Jon Stewart 9780307593986), a explains our weather patterns to alien visitors. guidebook for prepsters not sure what Muffy would do in the face of reality TV, Facebook and the Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff scandals, to name just a few. This copiously illustrated manual offers reassurance and guidance aplenty, via advice for hiring staff (say “chef,” not “cook”), fashion rules (“Nose rings are never preppy”), a map of “Gay and Lesbian Prep America” and loads more. The creators’ cleverness is nicely tempered by their fondness for the tribe, and those who take the book seriously will be more than

reviews AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY

FICTION

Martin’s great American novel R e v i e w b y S t e p h e n i e H a rr i s o n

Some people have all the talent, and Steve Martin appears to be one of the lucky few. An actor, comedian, musician and author, Martin somehow manages the incredible feat of being a master of all trades. Martin’s conquest of the publishing world is not a new one, but with his latest novel, An Object of Beauty, he makes it abundantly clear that he is a writer with some serious literary chops.

In the tradition of the great American novel, An Object of Beauty chronicles the rise and fall of a determined dreamer whose aspirations are larger than life. Lacey Yeager is a young woman who enters the 1990s art world working in the bowels of Sotheby’s auction house. With dogged persistence, a healthy dose of charisma and some questionable dealings in a bid to get ahead, Lacey’s star soon begins to rise as she slowly navigates and ascends to the upper echelons of the New York art scene.

By Steve Martin, Grand Central, $26.99, 304 pages, Alas, Lacey is very much a creature of an all-too-brief moment in time— ISBN 9780446573641, also available on audio dazzling while at her pinnacle, but ultimately embodying an exhilarating moment in art history that cannot be sustained.

Despite its modern setting and concerns, An Object of Beauty is very much an old-fashioned novel at its core, one built on strong storytelling and alluring prose. Martin writes with the confidence and skill of other masters of American letters; the novel could easily hold center stage alongside writers such as Henry James or Edith Wharton, in terms of both content and tone. Lacey Yeager is Lily Bart, or even Jay Gatsby, born anew in modern America. Martin infuses his novel with the gusto and ken of a true art aficionado, yet the story is accessible and enjoyable regardless of the reader’s own artistic background. Even if you don’t know your Monet from your Manet, much of what Martin writes—like the evanescent American dream—is universal in its appeal.

Having already won awards for his television writing and banjo stylings, it seems only a matter of time before Martin starts earning book awards, too—thanks, in large part, to the remarkable An Object of Beauty.

luka and the fire of life

By Salman Rushdie Random House $25, 240 pages ISBN 9780679463368

FANTASY

42

Luka and the Fire of Life is ostensibly a children’s novel. Although it is a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, reading the first book is by no means a prerequisite. Salman Rushdie’s usual lyrical, narrative style is on full display here, flowing easily through puns, wordplay, rhyming and the dialectical playfulness that defines his oeuvre, though due to the conceit of the story, the content is more accessible than his adult works.

Luka’s father is dying. Imbued with a mystical power and an intimate knowledge of the worlds of his storytelling father, Luka inadvertently sets out on a journey to

save his life after encountering his father’s spirit-world doppelganger in the street. Accompanied by his pet dog, named “Bear,” and his pet bear, named “Dog,” our young protagonist starts a journey through the mystical worlds of lore created by his father with the goal of stealing the Fire of Life and saving his father from certain doom. As Luka’s previously mute hirsute friends begin to talk and tell him of their former lives, we realize, along with Luka, that we have gone down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and a magical journey that feels as much like a video game as cultural folklore appears on the horizon.

As noted, this is outwardly a book for children, probably best suited for those around the same age as Luka: 10 to 13. However, underneath the pithy writing and pop-culture-laced references lies a stranger, more adult undercurrent.

There is darkness, there is fear and there is a subtle admission that the world of our children is more nuanced and far more advanced than we sometimes care to admit. The author’s conflict here is the recon-

ciliation of the changing mores of our children with the traditions of our past. Rushdie goes in with both eyes open, brushing aside wishful thinking for a more honest look at how our children perceive the world and how the challenges of modern life can work with, rather than against, the traditions of our past.

—T o n y K u e h n

rescue

By Anita Shreve Little, Brown $26.99, 304 pages ISBN 9780316020725 Also available on audio

point two-four,” and Webster finds himself hopelessly in love with her.

Beautiful, defensive and addicted to alcohol, Sheila nevertheless tries to be what he needs. You want the book to stop on page 116, because you dare to hope that the relationship might work. But then reality sets in. Within a couple of years, Webster finds himself—full of regrets and unanswered questions—raising their young daughter, Rowan, alone. When, after 18 years, history begins to repeat itself, Webster has to consider facing the doubts and questions that will arise if he contacts Sheila again.

Anita Shreve has been called “the queen of domestic drama,” and she does not disappoint here. Like her previous 15 novels, Rescue deals with the common denominators of life—love, family, loss and desperation—and her equations balance out in the end, much to the reader’s satisfaction. Shreve has a knack for evoking that particular pleasure that comes from witnessing a well-presented and reasonable slice of life. Not so pleasurable is her description of “the death of attraction” between Webster and Sheila, but it is simple, effective and true to life.

A dividend here is Webster’s career as an emergency medical technician, which Shreve describes authoritatively, making it not just a career choice but an extension of his purpose in life. This is a thoughtful, television-proof book— leave the set on and Rescue will still drown it out.

—Maude McDaniel

I Still Dream about You

By Fannie Flagg Random House $26, 336 pages ISBN 9781400065936 Also available on audio

Women’s FICTION

WOMEN’s fiction

Webster first saw her “wrapped around a tree,” the victim of an automobile accident he was called to help with as a new recruit for the local emergency rescue service. At once, Sheila’s “glossy brown hair” cancels out her “blood-alcohol

The old adage, “Life’s better in the movies,” certainly applies to Margaret Fortenberry. Fortenberry, a Birmingham native who was crowned Miss Alabama in her youth, grew up in a Technicolor world that, by the novel’s opening, has long since faded away. As a girl, her father operated the Dreamland Theatre, and the family lived in the

FICTION same building that housed the old movies. Every night, Maggie (as she was called by friends) drifted off to silver-screen dreams.

At the opening of Fannie Flagg’s wonderful new novel I Still Dream About You, that little girl is now an aging real estate agent in a depressed housing market. Things are anything but rosy for Maggie. Her former boss and mentor Hazel, a petite powerhouse of a saleswoman, has passed away. Without her champion, Maggie feels like she’s flailing. Sinking into depression, she replays memories of missed

opportunities (she almost won that Miss America pageant) and regrets (she almost married her high school sweetheart), and thus the first chapter finds Maggie penning her suicide note.

Then the phone rings, and Maggie is given an opportunity to delay her carefully planned escape by a few days. “There was certainly no danger of her changing her mind,” Flagg writes, as Maggie pushes back her plans. Predictably—given the ensuing 300-plus pages of I Still Dream About You—certain events unfold that perfectionist Maggie, al-

ways clad in designer clothes, with perfectly coiffed hair and manicured nails, must attend to before neatly wrapping up her own life.

There’s the antagonistic Yankee-transplant of a realtor, Babs Bingington (complete with a faux Southern accent), whom Maggie must battle for a sale that means the world to her. There’s her colleague Brenda, a woman with political aspirations and a food addiction, who needs Maggie in an emergency. There’s a car accident, the resurgence of an old lover, the discovery of a body in an attic—and

dying suddenly plays second fiddle to such a long to-do list.

Despite the dark opening, I Still Dream About You is a surprisingly light read, thanks to a cast of folksy, eccentric characters full of gumption and good judgment. Flagg, who demonstrated her penchant for hilarity with the best-selling Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, draws plenty more belly laughs here. By the time the credits roll, I Still Dream About You offers hope aplenty and a happy ending all its own.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

paperback picks penguin.com

The Border Lord and the Lady

Churchill’s Secret Agent

Lover Mine

Low Country

Just before Lady Cicely Bowen is about to marry an elegant laird, she’s kidnapped by Ian Douglas, a rough and randy border lord. The royal court is in an uproar as Douglas makes every effort to win the heart of the woman he holds captive.

Based upon Max Hardonniere’s experience as a covert operative during World War II, this is the story of a young man whose acquaintance with Winston Churchill would lead to his recruitment and training as a spy.

The latest in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Darius, a fallen Brother, has returned to the fold with a new identity and a very different destiny. Now, John Matthew, plunged into the heart of war, must face off against evil incarnate—and rescue his one true love.

9780451231550 • $7.99

Tanner is hunting for the man who may have killed his friend. But he soon finds himself caught up in a running battle against a ring of brutal sex slavers for whom human life is a cheap commodity.

9780451230430 • $7.99

9780425229750 • $9.99

9780425238141 • $7.99

The Messiah Secret

Nauti Nights

The Other Side

A Season of Darkness

Museum conservator Angela Lewis discovers a sealed pottery jar, which holds a parchment that describes the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. But her discovery draws her into a centuries-old race for the truth that she may not win...or survive.

Kentucky marine James Mackay has concocted the perfect plan to finally snare Christa, the longtime love of his life. It’s lowdown. It’s hot. And Christa’s all for it.

Five New York Times bestselling authors cross over to a realm where suspense, desire, and love have no bounds.

When nine-year-old Marcia Trimble was murdered in Nashville in 1975, her parents believed justice would be served. But it would take more than 30 years before the case finally came to its shocking, unexpected, and long-awaited conclusion.

9780451412980 • $9.99

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9780425239155 • $7.99

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reviews

NONFICTION

epic life of a would-be savior

Hero

R e v i e w b y A n n e Bar t l e t t

T.E. Lawrence had conflicting feelings about his own fame.

In the 1930s, film producer Alexander Korda owned the movie rights to Lawrence’s popular book Revolt in the Desert, about the Arab fight for independence from Turkey during World War I. But “Lawrence of Arabia” persuaded Korda not to make the movie during his own lifetime; ultimately, Korda sold the rights to Sam Spiegel. Now best-selling author Michael Korda, Alexander’s nephew, has returned to the subject that his uncle put aside, and it’s still a great yarn, no matter how many times it’s been told. Hero is a portrait of Lawrence in all his complexity that is worth its 700-plus pages.

Korda regards Lawrence as a self-created hero. He rose like a rocket in the esteem of both British generals and Arab sheiks because he was just so incredibly talented; his guerrilla strategy against the Turks, his pioneering

By Michael Korda, Harper, $36, mechanized warfare and his post-war work on military rescue vessels have 784 pages, ISBN 9780061712616 had huge influence ever since. Korda rejects the debunkers who consider Lawrence a fraud, showing him instead as a man with a genius for friendship who presented different aspects of his complicated psychology to different people. The personas “all coexisted within him and fought for dominance,” Korda writes.

Even as Lawrence became world-famous as the Englishman in Arab garb who had led the Bedouin to Damascus, he was overwhelmed with internal guilt at his failure to obtain what his Arab friends really wanted: a unified Greater Syria, free of French and British control. Korda is particularly adept at explaining the British government’s propensity for contradictory promises to the Arabs, Jews and French, and how it undercut Lawrence’s best efforts. In one of the great might-have-beens of history, Lawrence brokered an agreement between Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and Prince Feisal of the Hashemite dynasty that called for, among other things, a Palestine under joint Arab-Jewish control. As Korda notes, it was ignored by British and French leaders, who carved up the region between themselves.

READING JACKIE

By William Kuhn Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday $27.95, 368 pages ISBN 9780385530996 Also available on audio

biography

44

The elusive and ever-private Jackie Kennedy Onassis, a woman who achieved iconic fame largely through her marriages to two powerful men, never wanted to write her memoirs. When pressed by a friend to do so, she unequivocally stated that she had already “paid her debt to history.” So though we are without an autobiography of Mrs. Onassis, historian and biographer William Kuhn has cleverly contrived a book that comes fairly close in Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books.

The conceit of this “autobiography,” which yields a surprisingly

insightful and intriguing look at the woman behind the glamorous façade, turns upon her lifelong love affair with books and words. A voracious reader from childhood, Jackie (as Kuhn affectionately calls her) also was an accomplished writer who, during her last year in college, won Vogue magazine’s Prix de Paris essay competition. She eventually made her own independent way in the world as a book editor, first in 1975 for Viking, then later for Doubleday, where she worked until her death in 1994. In the books she acquired and edited, and through the authors she championed, Jackie left stunningly clear impressions of the force of her intellect and acuity, her tastes and preferences, and her inner emotional landscape.

This is not a startling exposé, but a graceful, perceptive and respectful look (with a bit of behind-thescenes eavesdropping) at a most unlikely working girl. Kuhn teases out clues to the former First Lady’s inner workings through the often controversial book projects that she chose, such as books on Russian

culture, the power of myth, the life of Martha Graham and a book of erotic and alluring women (which included images, ironically, of Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas).

Through the book topics she chose and the literary relationships she cultivated, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, while never an open book, is strikingly revealed— at least in elegant cameo relief.

—Alison Hood

COLONEL ROOSEVELT

By Edmund Morris Random House $35, 784 pages ISBN 9780375504877 Also available on audio

BIOGRAPHY

Theodore Roosevelt said, with good reason, “I have enjoyed life as much as any nine men I know.”

When he died in 1919, he was only

60 years old and probably could have been elected again to the presidency. In the superb Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris guides readers through the last 10 years of TR’s life—a period that was packed with as many challenges and adventures as he had known earlier.

It was during this time that TR traveled on an African safari to pursue his interests as an amateur zoologist and headed an expedition to South America, where he wanted “to be the first to go down the unknown river,” a tributary of the Amazon. He almost died in the process. His gifts as a writer and his stature as perhaps the best-known man in the world enabled Roosevelt to become a popular magazine and newspaper essayist and best-selling author; he was much in demand as a public speaker, and he founded the Progressive Party, which garnered more votes for him than for the incumbent president in 1912.

Morris shows that TR struggled throughout his life to balance the need for power and the consequences of responsibility. Like others of his privileged class with a social conscience, TR believed that he empathized with the poor.

“He was democratic in a detached, affable way,” Morris says, but he had little prolonged contact with those who had not known the perks of money and social status.

The book includes much detailed and fascinating narrative about TR’s political exploits as ex-president and as an experienced world statesman. But much attention is also given to other aspects of his life, such as his relationship with his wife, Edith, and his six quite distinctive children. His literary life is explored in detail, including the writing of his autobiography, which is shown to have serious omissions.

Morris also includes a vivid account of the assassination attempt on his life, when, despite bleeding and a bullet in his chest, TR spoke to a public gathering for over an hour before going for medical attention.

Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt received the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, and his Theodore Rex, published in 2001, was widely praised; however, it is certainly not necessary to have read those first two volumes in order to enjoy Colonel Roosevelt. One of TR’s favorite adjectives was “masterful”—a word that well describes this book.

—Roger Bishop

children’s books

Holiday stories b y A l i c e Ca r y

christmas is coming!

D

on’t forget to deck your halls with picture books for the little ones. Here are some jolly new selections to add to your holiday favorites.

David’s at it again When it comes to kids, “no” is a much-used word by adults during the crazy days and weeks leading up to Christmas. So a Christmas story is a natural for the hero of the awardwinning “No, David!” books. Author David Shannon presents plenty of hilarious shenanigans in It’s Christmas, David! (Blue Sky, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780545143110). His title character is the personification of a nonstop, super-curious, fearless kid, ready to get away with anything.

David’s latest quests go from bad to worse. First he peeks around corners and reaches for cookies, but then his exuberance takes him streaking down a snow-covered sidewalk wearing only a hat, boots and mittens. Later, he writes his name in the snow with a highly suspicious-looking yellow liquid.

The brilliant accompanying text says simply, “Naughty list, naughty list, naughty list . . .”

You’re likely to read this delightfully fun book over and over again to your eager little elves—and you’ll all enjoy every minute of it!

Christmas in the forest Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas (Greenwillow, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780061990335) is a lovely holiday book, sparkling in both language and illustrations.

This is the third book about Fletcher the fox and his forest friends, and

it contains gentle drama that’s all about friendship, helping others and holiday anticipation.

Fletcher’s friends, the rabbits, have moved, leaving Fletcher to worry that Santa may not be able to find their new burrow. So he and his pals use sticks to show Santa the way. However, a nighttime snowfall covers their trail of twigs. How will Santa find them?

Writer Julia Rawlinson uses precise prose that enlivens every page, while artist Tiphanie Beeke’s pastels are full of layered, lavish color.

Fletcher and Squirrel are so fuzzy you can practically touch them, while the forest is a rainbow of soft color. Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas is a wonderfully cozy bedtime read.

New faces at the North Pole For some snappy Christmas fun, try a ride on Santa’s sleigh with Jeannette Claus Saves Christmas (McElderry, $16.99, 40 pages, ISBN 9781416926863). Jeannette is Santa’s daughter, and she’s got plenty of gumption, thanks to the writing of Douglas Rees. Santa’s in a pickle, because he’s too sick to man his sleigh. Jeannette quickly steps to the plate, listening to her dad’s advice about how to handle the tricky reindeer. (“Dasher’s the worst. If he had his way, no one would get any presents.”) This is an adventure with plenty of fun ’tude.

On Christmas Eve, an equipment malfunction allows Dasher and his gang to soar off into the starry night, leaving Jeannette—and Santa’s presents—stranded on a city roof. This crafty kid quickly rounds up a gaggle of cats and dogs to deliver the gifts.

And imagine the reindeers’ surprise back at the North Pole when Jeannette introduces her new team: “Buster and Blackjack, Wheezer and Grover, Tiger and

Squeaky, Caesar and Rover.”

Olivier Latyk’s illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to this funky, spunky tale, adding a crisp, retro-modern look.

A colossal problem More trouble is brewing at the North Pole in The Christmas Giant (Candlewick, $15.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780763646929), a tale of ingenuity and friendship between a giant named Humphrey and his elf friend, Leetree. The pair is in charge of designing Santa’s wrapping paper, but in the off season they are asked to grow Santa’s Christmas tree.

Their beautiful tree floats away on an iceberg, however, and they must quickly find a solution.

The pair triumphs, and author/ illustrator Steve Light’s soft, carefully drawn pen, ink and pastel illustrations give this story a soothing glow.

This is a lively, yet quiet tale, far removed from the usual holiday hubbub.

African lords-a-leaping In need of a vigorous holiday diversion? Grab Rachel Isadora’s The 12 Days of Christmas (Putnam, $16.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9780399250736). I’ve seen plenty of renderings of the “12 Days” over the years, but this one stands out, bursting with color and energy, recounting the well-known song with African images, patterns and palette.

Isadora, inspired by her own visits to the continent, has created pages filled with color that remind me of Ashley Bryan’s wonderful books.

A map and note at the end explain some of the artist’s influences. The ladies dancing, for instance, come from Swaziland, while the drummers’ drums are from Ghana and Nigeria.

An added bonus for young readers is Isadora’s use of a rebus to stand for each of the 12 days. As the verse progresses, rebuses for all the previous days fill the pages, giving children a colorful, creative “code” to crack.

A new nativity Preschoolers will enjoy a fresh new look at the nativity story with Christmas Is Here (Simon & Schuster, $12.99, 32 pages, ISBN 9781442408227). In this highly accessible, warm book, a young family walks through falling snow in a small town, where a sign announces, “Live Nativity Tonight!” The first few pages are wordless, as the family rounds a corner and sees the actors and another sign saying, “Come celebrate Jesus’ birth!”

A young child peers at the sleeping manger baby, imagining the Christmas story. On the next page, readers are taken back to the time of Jesus’ birth, and the simple words of the King James Bible tell the age-old story. The ink and watercolors of artist Lauren Castillo cast soft grayblue tones on the nighttime story, drawn in simple lines and keeping the action front and center. In the final pages, we come full circle, returning to the watchful family of today. Christmas Is Here is simply and artfully told and illustrated.

toddler-friendly Another excellent choice for young children is the toddler version of The Child in the Manger (Clavis, $15.95, 32 pages, ISBN 9781605370842). Belgian-born author/illustrator Liesbet Slegers illustrates with bright primary colors and dark, thick lines, making the artwork appear childlike. The nativity story is full of solemnity, but Slegers conveys this sacred story in a warm way that never overwhelms.

The Child in the Manger is the perfect introduction to the Christmas story for the very young. It’s excellent, also, for both religious and nonreligious families, thanks to the carefully worded conclusion: Now everybody knows who Jesus is. / He was born on the day we call Christmas. / And when you get a Christmas present, / it also celebrates the birthday of Jesus.

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children’s books

Holiday gifts

by Joanna Brichetto

CREATIVE CHOICES FOR YOUNG MINDS

G

ift books for children seem to get better and better with each new holiday season. When authors, artists and publishers show this much care for budding young readers and their nurturing parents, the hopeful promises of the season seem all the more realizable.

Sweet dreams The Goodnight Book for Moms and Little Ones (Welcome, $17.95, 224 pages, ISBN 9781599620848), edited by Alice Wong and Lena Tabori, offers a surprising amount of material perfect for easing the often-difficult transition from day to night. The chubby little treasure is stuffed with “stories to read, poetry to inspire, activities to delight, songs to sing, recipes to soothe and [multicultural] prayers to calm.”

Brief excerpts pluck favorite sleepy moments from classics like Mary Poppins, Peter Pan and Charlotte’s Web, and are interspersed with short tales from Greek mythology, the Brothers Grimm, Native American traditions and other sources.

Poets represented include Robert Louis Stevenson, Shel Silverstein, Christina Rossetti and e.e. cummings, and the lullabies are culled from the canon, now extending generously to John Lennon and Paul Simon.

As the title promises, Mom also gets a bit of attention, with relaxation techniques, parenting tips and neat projects (like scented sachets and dream-journaling). The crisply organized table of contents is a necessity with so much on offer, but the book lends itself to soporifically random—call it “sandman”—sampling, thanks to all the classic illustrations on these sleepy, color-soaked pages.

Animals on parade British pop-up master Robert Crowther launched his career more

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than 30 years ago with The Most Amazing Hide-and-Seek Alphabet Book, (Candlewick, $12.99, 12 pages, ISBN 9780763650308) and this creative wonder is now available in a new edition. Crowther makes kids work a bit to find the animal whose name begins with each letter, but the payoff is worth it. Big, black lowercase letters march across white pages looking quite severe until little hands figure out how to slide, flip, pull or push the tab to release a colorful critter. An ape swings beneath the “a,” a frog leaps the curve of an “f,” a koala slides down the leg of a “k,” and an owl blinks inside the “o.” The names of the animals are revealed as well, so that even the youngest operator can see the spelling. Both upper- and lower-cases of the letters appear at the top of each page for reference and comparison, each pair designed with the colors and patterns of its assigned animal.

Crowther’s now-classic pop-up is even more fun when paired with its companion volume, The Most Amazing Hide-and-Seek Numbers Book (Candlewick, $12.99, 12 pages, ISBN 9780763650292).

Like his abecediary, the counting book is irresistible. Stark numerals (with the name spelled above) hide adorable animals in just the right number: one spider, two swans, three caterpillars, four snails and so on, but all squeezed behind or inside the actual numeral, ready to pop, uncoil, scoot or slide. And he doesn’t stop at 20; Crowther crams in enough critters to make it by tens

all the way to 100. All animals are named, whether ordinary or exotic, teaching animal identification and spelling along with number literacy.

When life gives US lemons ...

“A torn piece of paper is just the beginning,” Barney Saltzberg assures young readers in Beautiful Oops! (Workman, $11.95, 28 pages, ISBN 9780761157281), a happy little book that celebrates the potential power of mistakes. Turn the page, and the other side of that torn paper is now the goofy grin of an alligator. Same with a stain, a bent corner, a scrap, a spill: All are playfully transformed into something imaginative and unexpected—a wide-mouthed frog, a penguin’s head, a collage, a pig in a car. Using ingenious pops-ups, flaps, overlays, holes and splashy illustrations, Beautiful Oops! shows us that anyone can turn blunder into wonder.

This art lesson, if taken to heart, can be a valuable life lesson, too. In fact it may be the perfect chance to nip perfectionism in the bud and cultivate a lifelong tendency to be creative and react to screw-ups with flexibility. Maybe kids really can learn to learn from mistakes. Beautiful Oops! is for ages three and up, which means everyone old enough to read books instead of eat them (which would be a real mistake, by the way) has the chance to get in on the magic.

Something’s cooking I’m a Scientist: Kitchen (DK, $12.99, 24 pages, ISBN 9780756663070), by Lisa Burke, looks like the best kind of children’s cookbook: It has clear, simple graphics, big color photographs, easy instructions and an illustrated materials list so that even nonreaders can

collect supplies, but its real goal is to help young children (ages four to eight) cook up a healthy love of science. Each two-page spread contains one kitchen-based experiment that calls for stuff already on hand, like pantry items, toys or household bits and pieces. For example, kids explore density by layering oil, syrup and water into a jar and adding small objects to see if they sink or float. Simple questions act as prompts to encourage observation and curiosity. At the right of every spread is a big flap covering scientific conclusions and followup ideas for kids curious enough to want more. Other experiments look at static electricity, magnets, ice and more, but always in the easiest and most fun ways. A colloid, for example, is a big new word, but when put into action as Gobbledy Goo (cornstarch suspended in colored water), the concept is fabulously weird and memorable.

Brick by brick David Macaulay, award-winning author and artist of The Way Things Work and many more must-have books, offers a new title that combines three of his most famous and beloved works in Built to Last (HMH, $24.99, 272 pages, ISBN 9780547342405). The impetus behind the original editions of Castle, Cathedral and Mosque was “not only to show why and how some of the world’s best-known buildings were designed and constructed, but to connect the bricks and mortar with the vision and courage of the builders,” Macaulay writes. He did this with exquisitely detailed renderings of every phase of building and every job required, from mixing mortar to assembling stained-glass windows, plus maps, plans, illustrations, background information and stories—historical fiction, really— that made history feel immediate and real. And he does it even better in Built to Last.

Holiday gifts

meet JAMES RANSOME

of: Q: Illustrator

would you describe Q: How

the book?

ho has been the biggest influence on your work?

Q: W All the material—illustrations and information—has been completely revised by the author and is now in full color, a process that took him far longer than anticipated. Although aimed at children ages nine to 12, Macaulay’s new collection will appeal to anyone interested in architecture, history or just the way things work.

Telling the tale What could be better than hearing a child read a story except, perhaps, hearing a child tell a story?

But storytelling is an art, isn’t it, best left to those with the training and the talent? Not according to Storyworld: Create-a-Story Kit (Templar, $12.99, ISBN 9780763645458), by John and Caitlin Matthews, which sets out to prove that any reader can be a storyteller. Storyworld is a book-like box containing 40 story cards and a short guide. Each elaborately illustrated card “features people, creatures, places and special objects” based on age-old folktale traditions that are ready to mix and match in any way the teller wishes. Readers are instructed to “pick a handful of cards, and use their pictures and words as inspiration to tell a new story every time the box is opened.” There is no right or wrong way to craft a story with this kit. The storytelling book offers ideas for creating stories, games to play with the cards, suggestions for further inspiration and ways to use Storyworld alone, with a friend or even with parents. This “ingenious toolkit for the mind” is designed for ages nine to 12.

Ship-shape A new toolkit of another sort awaits Star Wars fans. Star Wars Millennium Falcon: A 3-D Owner’s Guide (Scholastic, $21.99, 24 pages, ISBN 9780545210386), by Ryder Windham, illustrated by Chris Trevas and Chris Reiff, is a spectacular oversized board book with a “pilot’s

view” of the most famous ship from that galaxy far, far away. Every page highlights a particular system or area (propulsion, life support, crew quarters, armaments, etc.) in a cool cut-away format, which exposes only that particular area. As the pages are turned, the resulting overlay gradually builds to form the entire ship. Meanwhile, abundant specs and factoids will please the most mechanically obsessed devotee, and quotes from Han Solo and Lando Calrissian add a little dash of humor and film trivia. The whole thing is presented as if it were an actual owner’s manual, and pilots are advised to read thoroughly before taking the Falcon out for a spin.

Shhhhh Do Not Open: An Encyclopedia of the World’s Best-Kept Secrets (DK, $19.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780756662936), by John Farndon, dares readers ages 10 and up to risk exposure to a world of “weird history, strange science, mysterious places, random happenings, freaky facts of nature” and other oddities.

The range and amount of information is staggering (as is the nature of some of it), and each subject is presented on a double-page spread with loads of visual variety and catchy graphics. A sample of topics culled from the index includes the Fibonacci sequence, iris recognition, haunted places, bar codes, spontaneous combustion, the curse of Tutankhamun, dark matter, UFOs and Elvis. Some of this stuff can pass as cultural literacy, some is just for fun, but all is supposedly true. Not to open Do Not Open is not, realistically, an option, but where to open is—your enthralled child could start right at the beginning, or she might choose to follow the enticing leads in the crossreferences at the bottom of nearly every spread. “From DNA to the CIA, hackers to hoaxes, time travel to telepathy: it’s all in here.”

was your favorite subject in school? Why? Q: What

was your childhood hero?

Q: Who

Q: W hat books did you enjoy as a child?

one thing would you like to learn to do?

Q: What

Q: W hat message would you like to send to children?

A JOYFUL CHRISTMAS James Ransome has illustrated more than 20 children’s books, including The Creation, for which he won the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration.

His latest book is A Joyful Christmas (Holt, $19.99, 80 pages, ISBN 9780805066210), a collection of holiday songs, poems and stories, including several new pieces written especially for this volume. Ransome lives with his family in upstate New York.

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WORDNOOK

By the editors of Merriam-Webster

Meek and mild Dear Editor, I came across the word milquetoast recently, and it struck me as such an odd word. What can you tell me about it?

M. D. Kentwood, Michigan A milquetoast is a timid, meek or unassertive person. The term comes from the name Caspar Milquetoast, the main character in H.T. Webster’s newspaper cartoon “The Timid Soul,” created in 1924.

The character’s name is most likely descended from much older insults like milktoast and milksop, both of which referred originally to a dish of bread soaked in milk, but later came to be used to describe a spiritless, weak person.

Bread soaked in milk does not have much crunch to it, and some synonyms of milquetoast have a similar consistency. Invertebrate and jellyfish both describe boneless things as well as people who lack strength or a figurative backbone.

Another synonym is sop, one sense

of which refers to a foolish, spineless person. Like milktoast and milksop, the term originally referred to a piece of food, especially bread, that is dipped or sopped in a liquid before being eaten. This sense still persists in some dialects.

Pet problem Dear Editor, Can you tell me where the phrase sick as a dog comes from? Why isn’t it sick as a cat? I’ve seen my cat get sick more often than my dog.

A. U. Bellows Falls, Vermont The earliest known usage of sick as a dog dates back to 1705. It has been suggested that the phrase originated from the fact that dogs, being domesticated, are the most common animal we’ve seen vomiting besides ourselves. Our intimate relationships with dogs have also allowed for many other dog-related phrases like every dog has his day and the straightforward you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. British English has sometimes employed

similar phrases involving other animals—sick as a horse and, yes, sick as a cat—but sick as a dog is the only choice in American English.

Head to toe Dear Editor, I recently heard someone described as a roundheel. Can you tell me what this means? And why do we say that a person who has a lot of money is well-heeled?

L. C. Janesville, Wisconsin Broadly, roundheel is equivalent to pushover, referring to someone who is easy to defeat or who is incapable of effective resistance. Imagine someone wobbling on rounded heels, trying to stay upright. Obviously, such a person could easily lose his or her balance and fall—or be pushed—backwards. That’s exactly the image behind both words.

Roundheel has been in use, chiefly in the United States, since at least 1944.

There is some dispute over the origin of well-heeled, which means

EVERYTHING LITERARY

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Reprinted from The Everything Literary Crosswords Book by Charles Timmerman, published by Adams Media, an F+W Media, Inc. Co. Copyright ©2007, F+W Media, Inc.

crossword solution

23. Pacific nation since 1968 24. Remain alive 28. Sailor’s yes 29. Fundraiser suffix 33. Situation comedy 34. Palestinian leader 36. Billions of years 37. B ridget Jones’s Diary author 41. Broad bean 42. Yellowish-pink 43. Ancient city in S. Egypt 46. Mao successor 47. Set 50. Capital of Venezuela 52. __ Polo 54. Underground 58. Boxer’s reach, e.g.

61. Beau 62. Mr. Uncool 63. Mislay 64. Chair man?

65. Inner: prefix 66. Length of time recorded in Bridget Jones’s Diary, one ___

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13. Pink Floyd’s Barrett 21. Weird 22. Geisha’s sash 25. Religious image 26. Carol 27. Logos, e.g.: abbr.

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“wealthy.” We know it originated in the United States in the late 1800s, but its derivation is unclear. One popular explanation is that wealthy people have plenty of money to ensure that their shoes are always stylish and in good repair, not worn down at the heels; hence they are literally “well-heeled.”

The other explanation for wellheeled is somewhat more complicated. In the late 1800s, well-heeled was also used to mean “adequately armed with weapons.” As the story goes, this use of the term derived from the practice of equipping fighting gamecocks with steel spurs.

Eventually, according to this theory, the sense of well-heeled meaning “wealthy” evolved out of this “wellarmed” sense. The theory seems plausible, but it’s also possible that the two meanings developed fairly simultaneously, independent of each other.

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44. Euro forerunner 45. Buffalo team

47. The Power and the Glory novelist 48. Game similar to euchre 49. Bridget Jones’s city 51. Mink kin 53. Queen __ lace 55. Madame Bovary’s first name 56. Barn dance 57. Kennedy matriarch 58. Clever 59. Kicker?

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