|
Recent and Upcoming Titles
Nancy Woodruff
Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin, April 2010
A smart, sexy novel about a woman's search for her former self on the London stage.
Georgie and Peter, very much in love, move to London with their three children. Once there, Georgie's dormant acting career takes off and she wins the role of Dora Jordan in a one-woman show. Dora Jordan was the most famous comic actress of the eighteenth century (she had thirteen illegitimate children, including ten by the future king of England).
As Georgie rehearses for her part, she becomes increasingly drawn to Dora Jordan, who she sees as a working mother with struggles exactly like her own. And when Georgie can no longer fight her attraction to the playwright, she begins an affair with tragic results.
Narrated by Peter, a failed-writer-turned-businessman, My Wife's Affair is about infidelity, passion, duty, and about finally getting what you want and then wanting still more.
"Woodruff leaves not a dry eye in the house in this gripping ode to theater and the love it can command—and crush.... It's brutal and lovely."
Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
"I was at once heartbroken and mesmerized by the raw beauty of My Wife's Affair. Nancy Woodruff looks at love in its various incarnations – the carnal, the romantic, and perhaps most poignantly, the maternal. The story unfolds as it must, while nothing escapes the author’s honest gaze."
Jean Reynolds Page, author of The Last Summer of Her Other Life
"Wise, moving, eloquent and written with an economy that is deceptively simple, this is a novel illuminated by an eye as bright and penetrating as a theatre spotlight. Dazzling."
Beatrice Colin, author of The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite and The Glimmer Palace
"My Wife's Affair has that rare appeal of a classic novel: The luminous, specific beauty of the writing and the story itself, which is powerful and heartbreaking. Nancy Woodruff is a wise and wildhearted chronicler of family life."
Mary O’Connell, author of Living With Saints
Deborah Schupack
Plume, May 2010
Deborah Schupack tells a provocative and suspenseful tale about what happens when cold, hard cash moves in next door. With page-turning storytelling, graceful prose and deep, true emotion, Sylvan Street explores the ultimate power—and limitations—of money. What these friendly residents of a Hudson Valley cul-de-sac do with their newfound money, and what the money does with them, builds toward a revelatory conclusion: how the tensions between benevolence and greed, duty and desire, inform our every action and interaction. Readers of thrillers and character-driven dramas alike will find a sweet payoff in these pages.
"Sylvan Street is a work of pure magic, as funny as it is wrenching, as mysterious as it is revealing, and ultimately an astonishing feat of social observation. Deborah Schupack has created a brilliant cast of complex, compelling characters in a riveting literary novel that raises timeless questions about money, class, and the daily deceptions among friends and neighbors, husbands and wives."
Kate Walbert, author of A Short History of Women
Katie Crouch
Little, Brown, April 2010
From the author of the New York Times bestseller GIRLS IN TRUCKS, a hilarious and moving novel about loyalty, family, and a prodigal daughter's return home.
When Hannah Legare was 11, her father went on a fishing trip in Charleston harbor and never came back. And while most of the town and her family accepted Buzz's disappearance, Hannah remained steadfastly convinced of his imminent return.
Twenty years, later Hannah's new life in San Francisco is unraveling. Her marriage is on the rocks, her business is bankrupt. After a disastrous attempt to win back her husband, she ends up back at her mother's home to "rest," where she is once again sucked into the mystery of her missing father. Suspecting that those closest are keeping secrets -- including Palmer, her emotionally closed, well-mannered brother and Warren, the beautiful boyfriend she left behind -- Hannah sets out on an uproarious, dangerous quest that will test the whole family's concept of loyalty and faith.
"Snappy... darkly funny... and there's just enough mystery to keep the pages turning."
Publishers Weekly
"Katie Crouch’s great gifts—a wry, unflinching intelligence and the ability to create flawed, complicated characters—drive this story of a woman who must reckon with her past in order to move into her future. Hannah is exasperating, difficult, magnetic, and breathtakingly real."
Marisa de los Santos, author of Loved Walked In
"Katie Crouch brings honesty and stealthy plotting to this compelling tale of a free-spirited Southern girl’s early mid-life crisis. MEN AND DOGS will keep you hooked."
Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of I'm So Happy For You
"Katie Crouch is an American original. MEN AND DOGS is an opus of the struggle between a daughter and her father and the wounds and jubilation carried from that relationship into marriage and adulthood. It is, in turns, poignant, revealing, hilarious and sad. This is a great pick for book clubs everywhere! Katie's novel will not only inspire a lively discussion, it will ignite one!"
Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap, Lucia, and Very Valentine
Lydia Millet
Soft Skull Press, October 2009
A Los Angeles Times 2009 Fiction Favorite
A Salon.com Best Fiction pick of 2009
Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants--all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture. While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millet's ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millet's spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness, yet curiously vulnerable--as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales.
"No writer but Millet... could have written these ten funny, weird, and ultimately sad and shaming stories... a writer to whom we deliver ourselves without hesitation."
Kathryn Harrison, Bookforum
"Millet... is a shrewd storyteller, and the stories in this collection are penetrating narratives. [She] is unconcerned with easy homilies, instead crafting subtle studies of the existential crises humankind faces. That the stories are often very funny only adds to their effectiveness... Love in Infant Monkeys is, like Millet’s best work, an expert mix of elegant satire and understated humanity."
Quill & Quire (starred review)
"...a superb book... Millet's triumph is to dig deeper, to find the nuance in the brute."
David L. Ulin, The Los Angeles Times
"The finest of these stories are enigmatic and evoke a loss that is nearly imperceptible to the characters, leaving the reader with a sense of not quite knowing what just happened... [Millet] touches nerves that others don’t approach and uniquely perceives a civilization potentially as endangered as some of the species she writes about."
Budd Parr, The Second Pass
"These stories ripple with emotion and insight. Lydia Millet is a writer of remarkable intelligence and ability, one whose work, like the celebrities and animals that populate Love in Infant Monkeys, holds a mirror up to the life itself."
Pasha Malla, The Globe and Mail
"You could read this collection as a critique — of our celebrity culture, of the uses we make of unresponding creatures — and Millet is sufficiently thorough to layer these resonances in a satisfying way. But that would be to miss the pleasures of the best of these stories: their quickness, their minor graces."
Willing Davidson, The New York Times Book Review
"Millet is one of the loosest writers I know, by which I mean that her work takes rare risks with subject matter and form, and does so with a sense of jazzy improvisation. Many stories have unusual narrative structures and mechanisms—they unfold like short jokes, pop up like jacks-in-boxes, or chain scenes together like Slinkies. That these last two comparisons are to toys is no coincidence—all these stories are animated by a playful, unconfined energy that makes them intensely pleasurable to read."
Alex Ohlin, The Rumpus
"In reviewing this collection of short stories, I’m tempted to type the 10 words, ‘Lydia Millet is the greatest American author of her generation’ 50 times to fill up this space and just be done with it. In reality, however, I am paid to justify things beyond giddy fandom and, I’ll admit it, professional jealousy… She breaks rules by turning author polemic into poetry while at the same time allowing the kind of characters most writers wouldn’t touch to own the stories outright.”
Eyeweekly.com
"[Millet] treats animals as rock star characters, paralleling them with real-life celebrities to create stories both eccentric and, in unexpected ways, honest. It is the animals, and not so much the human characters, that instill the stories with emotion and perspective… [she] certainly recognizes our culture’s fascination with the rich and famous, but indulges the reader in an unexpected way: by working with characters we recognize, but still have to sit and think about their roles in our lives, the ideas we have of them.”
Bomb Magazine
"...brilliant and audacious Millet archly plucks famous people out of history books and the tabloids and places them at the nucleus of acerbic yet elegiac tales... Millet turns from droll and caustic to haunting and tragic in concise yet psychologically and morally intricate stories... What [she] is up to in each wrenching parable is contrasting human narcissism and hubris with motherhood and the profound work of caring for the vulnerable, which emerges as a universal expression of the life force..."
Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"Millet's stories evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits..."
Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"With any justice, this collection finally gets Millet recognized as one of the great short-story writers of our time."
Courier-Journal (Kentucky)
"These incredibly crafted stories, with their rare intelligence, humor, and empathy, describe the furious collision of nature and science, man and animal, everyday citizen and celebrity, fact and fiction. Lydia Millet's writing sparkles with urgent brilliance."
Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned
"Absolutely beautiful stories. Perfect, in their own way, just like the animals they describe. The title piece -- "Love in Infant Monkeys," about the infamous experimental psychologist Harry Harlow -- moved me to tears. Others are deeply mysterious. I love the way Millet writes -- magnificent."
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Face on Your Plate
Maaza Mengiste
W.W. Norton, January 2010
An epic tale of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia's revolution.
This memorable heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement--a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction before. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic and indelibly tragic, Beneath the Lion's Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut.
"Mengiste’s social intelligence and historical research allow her to write compassionately about emotions denatured by a brutal regime or calcified by conviction. But the real marvel of this tender novel is its coiled plotting, in which coincidence manages to evoke the colossal emotional toll of the revolution."
The New Yorker
"[A] deeply affecting first novel."
The Boston Globe
"[An] incandescent debut."
Vogue
"A bold literary debut….Mengiste gracefully builds the story to a heart-pumping conclusion."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Beneath the Lion’s Gaze melds personal detail and postcolonial history in the manner of The Last King of Scotland and The Kite Runner, but it's Mengiste's lush yet economical writing that really sets it apart."
New York Magazine
"Mengiste writes tenderly and beautifully... there is a lightness of touch and a confidence that belies its first novel status."
Bookmunch
"In Mengiste’s hands what was a confusing time... becomes accessible and clear. An important novel, rich in compassion for its anguished characters."
Lorraine Adams, The New York Times Book Review
"This book is stunning... graphic descriptions and masterly prose."
Library Journal
"Told from searing personal viewpoints that humanize the politics from many sides and without slick messages. The author... tells the story in unforgettable detail."
Hazel Rochman, Booklist
"all but un-put-downable... an extraordinary novel, which assembles a dauntingly broad cast of characters and, through them, tells stories that nobody can want to hear, in such a way that we cannot stop listening."
Claire Messud, Bookforum
"An arresting, powerful novel that works on both personal and political levels."
Kirkus Reviews
"Mengiste is as adept at crafting emotionally delicate moments as she is deft at portraying the tense and grim historical material, while her judicious sprinkling of lyricism imbues this novel with a vivid atmosphere that is distinct without becoming overpowering. That the novel subjects the reader to the same feelings of hopelessness and despair that its characters grapple with is a grand testament to Mengiste's talent."
Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
"Literature from the margins is often too poorly lit for us to see, but Mengiste takes us through this dark political hunt with the night vision of a lion. A novel both tender and brutal, fearless, it is accomplished beyond a first book."
Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and The Flowers
"What a beautiful book! After a few chapters I felt I was a member of this family, a citizen of Ethiopia. Maaza Mengiste is talented and bold and fresh. Already, I'm looking forward to her next book."
Uwem Akpan, author of Say You're One of Them
"With words that make 'a faint, tender bruise,' on the page, and a compassionate imagination that transforms everything it touches on, Maaza Mengiste delivers an important story from a part of Africa too long silent in the World Republic of Letters."
Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
Jon Loomis
St. Martin's Press, 2009
Jon Loomis's sharp and witty debut, High Season, starring Detective Frank Coffin, a onetime Baltimore homicide detective who came back to his hometown after one too many grisly crime scenes started to take their toll, was one of The Washington Post's best mysteries of the year and an editor's choice title for The New York Times Book Review. Coffin had hoped that the move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, would put an end to his panic attacks, but so far, the quirky Cape Cod tourist town has been every bit as brutal as the big city. Now in Loomis's winning follow-up, Coffin has to get a grip in order to investigate the murder of one of the town's most "popular" women.
Beautiful and the heir to a tremendous fortune, Kenji Sole had an active love life---a very active love life. When she's found stabbed to death on the floor of her bedroom dressed only in a negligee, it's clear someone very close to her is probably responsible. Since she didn't care about her many lovers' marital status, Frank and his partner Officer Lola Winters have their work cut out for them interviewing all of her lovers---not to mention their jealous wives---to find out who killed the much-sought-after Ms. Sole.
With Mating Season, another wry and wickedly suspenseful mystery, Loomis continues to be one of crime fiction's most promising stars.
"Coffin's second outing (after the acclaimed High Season, 2007) hardly could be better: Loomis' prose is crisp and smart, and his characterizations ring true, with none more appealing than Coffin himself, a cop with a phobia of corpses. Reminiscent of Robert B. Parker at his best."
Booklist (starred review)
"[Loomis] is definitely a writer to watch given his knack for illuminating human nature."
Publisher's Weekly
Lucinda Rosenfeld
A Novel About Best Friends
Back Bay Books, 2009
What if your best friend, whom you've always counted on to flounder in life and love (making your own modest accomplishments look not so bad), suddenly starts to surpass you in every way?
Wendy's best friend, Daphne, has always been dependably prone to catastrophe. And Wendy has always been there to help. If Daphne veers from suicidal to madly in love, Wendy offers encouragement. But when Daphne is suddenly engaged, pregnant, and decorating a fabulous town house in no time at all, Wendy is...not so happy for her. Caught between wanting to be the best friend she prides herself on being and crippling jealousy of flighty Daphne, Wendy takes things to the extreme, waging a full-scale attack on her best friend-all the while wearing her best, I'm-so-happy-for-you smile-and ends up in way over her head.
Rosenfeld has a knack for exposing the not-always-pretty side of being best friends--in writing that is glittering and diamond-sharp. I'm So Happy For You is a smart, darkly humorous, and uncannily dead-on novel about female friendship.
"Lucinda Rosenfeld stays focused in her new novel... and it pays off handsomely... Rosenfeld goes beyond the obvious issues of envy and the perils of vicariousness... [she] builds a sturdy plot complete with a red herring and a climax that... is not resolved in an easy or sentimental way... a thoroughly enjoyable and somewhat rare specimen of chick lit that says focused on the chicks."
Laurie Winer, The New York Times Book Review
"Like her acclaimed first novel, What She Saw in Roger Mancusco, Lucinda Rosenfeld mines feminine self-sabotage and neuroses for laughs. She also turns a satiric eye toward such fertile territory as motherhood, childbirth and status-seeking among urban elites."
Salon.com
"...a funny tale of girlfriends gone wrong... Rosenfeld has written a satire about the dark side, about the envy, the backbiting, the bitchiness. It's nasty, it's funny, and it has a certain undeniable authenticity... darkly humorous, with excellent dialogue and sharp observations about contemporary culture."
Diane White, The Boston Globe
"The book's confectionery veneer belies a heart of poison, as Rosenfeld tartly dispels the cherished chick-lit notion that female friendship conquers all. Equally ruthless is her sendup of overachieving New York women in feral pursuit of have-it-all motherhood without having first ascertained if they even like children."
The New Yorker
"It's a rare page-turner: No one is murdered and no time bombs tick -- just a friendship going to seed in the moneyed coliseum of New York City yuppiedom... The feat of Rosenfeld's quick-footed, juicy book is her fine shadings of two complicated but sympathetic figures, alone and in comparison. Neither woman falls into the stereotype of slit-eyed hellcat... this novel's charms lie in its resolute kindness. The denouement isn't fierce but funny and wistful. Rosenfeld seems to want only the best for Daphne and Wendy: a witty, passionate life, examined just enough to decide on the next object of desire."
The LA Times Book Review
"In I'm So Happy for You, Lucinda Rosenfeld turns her attention from the romantic dilemmas of her past work to the dark side of female friendships. The book retains the humorous and often satirical tone of Rosenfeld's novels, What She Saw... and Why She Went Home, while building on the female friendship articles she's penned for the New York Times Magazine. I'm So Happy for You is an amusing and chilling look at the less frequently explored one-upmanship of some female friendships... Rosenfeld will only draw fans closer with this masterful cautionary tale."
BookPage
"If you've ever gritted your teeth and offered a phony smile to that one friend who always seems to get everything she wants, Rosenfeld's frenemies tale will ring true... a witty, scathing novel that's a breeze to read."
Entertainment Weekly
"While the actions of nearly every character in the book are morally questionable, their emotions are real and often funny. Rosenfeld... addresses the ugliness of envy with both humor and honesty."
Booklist
"Rosenfeld (What She Saw) delves into the thornier side of female friendship in this hip take on modern womanhood... [she] takes a dark, hilarious and painfully accurate view of the less-than-pure reasons why women stay friends."
Publisher's Weekly
"Lucinda Rosenfeld has written a finely observed and witty account of the jealousies that lurk within even the kindest female hearts."
Zoë Heller, author of Notes on a Scandal and The Believers
"Lucinda Rosenfeld has it--the Trollope thing, the Jacqueline Susann thing. This is the novel as drunken, near-rapturous dinner party. Did you hear what happened? I'm So Happy For You is garrulous, scandalous, convivial, and immensely satisfying."
Virginia Heffernan, co-author of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life
"Lucinda Rosenfeld has a written a funny, subversive, and altogether outstanding novel that will very likely seduce critics and many, many thousands of readers. I'm so happy for her."
Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland
Joe Meno
A Novel
Norton, 2009
Winner of the 2009 Great Lakes Book Award
A breakout new novel from the critically acclaimed novelist and playwright Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned. The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards: for Jonathan, a paleontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric giant squid; for his wife, Madeline, an animal behaviorist with a failing experiment; for their daughter, Amelia, a disappointed teenage revolutionary; for her younger sister, Thisbe, on a frustrated search for God; and for grandfather Henry, who wants to disappear, limiting himself to eleven words a day, then ten, then nine... Each fears uncertainty and the possibilities that accompany it. When Jonathan and Madeline suddenly decide to separate, this nuclear family is split, each member forced to confront his or her own cowardice, finally coming to appreciate the cloudiness of the modern age. With wit and humor, The Great Perhaps presents a revealing look at anxiety, ambiguity, and the need for complicated answers to complex questions.
"The Great Perhaps is a fat, ambitious novel... a touching, 400-page tale of Big Themes."
Taylor Antrim, The Daily Beast
"Meno's plain style is set off nicely by his taste for modernist formal daring ...as evidenced by several of his earlier books, [Meno] has a highly developed ear not simply for teenage dialogue but for the teenager's inner life, the mercurial convictions and grotesque vulnerability and disdain for emotional half-measures that can make even the simplest attempt to engage with the world into an all-or-nothing affair."
Jonathan Dee, The New York Times Book Review
"Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping, Meno's novel encompasses a subtle yet devastating critique of war; sensitively traces the ripple effect of a dark legacy of nebulousness, guilt, and fear; and evokes both heartache and wonder."
Booklist (starred review)
"In his previous four novels and two story collections (e.g., Hairstyles of the Damned), Meno has demonstrated a rare ability to do so not just once but continually over the course of a story, and he manages to do it again."
Library Journal (starred review)
"Meno's handle on the written word is fresh and inviting, conjuring a story that delves deeply into the human heart."
Publisher's Weekly
"I think THE GREAT PERHAPS is the wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since The Corrections... A marvelous book."
Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and Crime
"THE GREAT PERHAPS is a darkly funny, lyrical, and shrewdly observant chronicle of a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Joe Meno has the rare ability to evoke mid-life melancholy and teenage angst with equal authority."
Tom Perrotta, author of The Abstinence Teacher
"A terrible fear of clouds, an obscure search for giant squid and a bomb-building teenage girl: Joe Meno has imagination, humor and the rare ability to make characters seem as near as your own family -- sometimes almost too close for comfort. An intriguing and heartfelt book."
Lydia Millet, author of How the Dead Dream
"Joe Meno's fiction has it all -- humor and heart, moral gravitas, and a formal playfulness that catches you pleasantly by surprise."
Ed Park, author of Personal Days
Douglas A. Martin
A Novel
Seven Stories Press, 2009
This semi-autobiographical novel is about growing up in a strained working-class household transplanted to the South. In his inimitably elliptical and evocative style, Martin carefully brings out the curiosity of children on the verge of becoming sexual, and their confusion in the midst of family violence.
Rakesh Satyal
A Novel
Kensington Books, 2009
Meet Kiran Sharma: lover of music, dance, and all things sensual; son of immigrants, social outcast, spiritual seeker. A boy who doesn't quite understand his lot--until he realizes he's a god...
As an only son, Kiran has obligations--to excel in his studies, to honor the deities, to find a nice Indian girl, and, above all, to make his mother and father proud--standard stuff for a boy of his background. If only Kiran had anything in common with the other Indian kids besides the color of his skin. They reject him at every turn, and his cretinous public schoolmates are no better. Cincinnati in the early 1990s isn't exactly a hotbed of cultural diversity, and Kiran's not-so-well-kept secrets don't endear him to any group. Playing with dolls, choosing ballet over basketball, taking the annual talent show way too seriously... the very things that make Kiran who he is also make him the star of his own personal freak show...
Surrounded by examples of upstanding Indian Americans--in his own home, in his temple, at the weekly parties given by his parents' friends--Kiran nevertheless finds it impossible to get the knack of "normalcy." And then one fateful day, a revelation: perhaps his desires aren't too earthly, but too divine. Perhaps the solution to the mystery of his existence has been before him since birth. For Kiran Sharma, a long, strange trip is about to begin--a journey so sublime, so ridiculous, so painfully beautiful, that it can only lead to the truth...
"Satyal writes with a graceful ease, finding new humor in common awkward pre-teen moments and giving readers a delightful and lively young protagonist."
Publisher's Weekly
"The best fiction reminds us that humanity is much, much larger than our personal world, our own little reality. Blue Boy shows us a world too funny and sad and sweet to be based on anything but the truth."
Chuck Palahniuk, New York Times Bestselling Author
"Compassionate, moving, funny, and wise, BLUE BOY is one of the best debut novels I have read in years. Rakesh Satyal exuberantly captures the splendors and dramas of being twelve, giving us an unforgettable hero who will linger in the reader's heart. Sharp, graceful, and generous in spirit, BLUE BOY reveals a young writer intelligently probing questions of family, love, and faith, while also sharing his wonderfully expansive vision of what it means to be an American."
David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl
Amanda Boyden
A Novel
Pantheon, 2008
A Saint Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of 2008
From the acclaimed author of Pretty Little Dirty ("a first novel of complex truth and beauty"--San Francisco Chronicle), comes a glittering, gritty, and unflinching story of five families--black, white, and Indian--living along one block of Uptown, New Orleans.
It is the summer of 2004, and Orchid Street is changing. Newcomers Ariel May and her husband, Ed, relocated from Minnesota, are trying to make sense of the Southern city. From her front porch, Philomenia Beauregard de Bruges watches her new neighbors, the Guptas, as they move into one of the biggest homes. Across the way, Daniel Harris, aka Fearius, has just been released from juvenile detention. And Cerise Brown, a longtime resident now in her late seventies, hopes only to pass the rest of her days in peace.
But with one random accident, a scene of horror on Cerise's front lawn, the whole neighborhood converges on the sidewalk to help, to cast blame, and to offer hope. And as Hurricane Ivan churns his way toward the city, bringing a different series of challenges, these new relationships tighten, intertwining the families' paths for better and for worse.
Told in five achingly real voices, Babylon Rolling is the story of one year on Orchid Street, a place where lives clash and collide, and where the humid air is charged with constant wanting. Offering a bold understanding of human nature and the hidden prejudices we harbor, Babylon Rolling is a powerful portrait of racism in America and a city on the edge of transformation.
"Crossing race, age and socioeconomic status, Boyden re-creates an authentic NOLA neighborhood... Though her characters navigate the clichés of the human condition, Boyden distinguishes them with the complexities that make people--and New Orleans--so fascinating."
Time Out Chicago
"Boyden establishes her understanding of her adopted city and displays some impressive writing chops at the same time... Her characters are more than believable. They're real."
The Advocate
"An engaging and keenly observant book, a kind of literary block party in which the residents of Orchid Street come to life."
Booklist
"[Pretty Little Dirty] hinted at the author's literary promise. With Babylon Rolling, that promise is fulfilled."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"[An] unvarnished novel of pre-Katrina New Orleans, warts and eccentric beauty and all."
National Geographic
"Set in the chaotic months surrounding a treacherous hurricane, Boyden's second novel is an adroit, compulsively readable study of a city and the shared humanity that unites its diverse inhabitants."
People, four out of four stars
"Once in a great while, a novel comes along that makes you sit up and look around at your world and see it anew, in all its richness and complexity, as if you had just arrived there from a great distance. Amanda Boyden's second novel, Babylon Rolling, does that for New Orleans... . She surprises at every turn, seizing upon the way violence -- and joy -- can erupt in a moment. Babylon Rolling is many books in one -- a brilliant, nuanced portrait of pre-Katrina New Orleans; a passionate defense of the city; a clear-eyed critique of the problems that remain. Gracefully weaving together strands of race relations, food, music and Mardi Gras ('Babylon rolls at 5:45, the paper said, Chaos at 6'), Boyden shoots right to the heart of a fabulous, flawed city. Her aim is true. In Babylon Rolling, as in life, New Orleanians stand and fall together, rescue one another and, in doing so, themselves."
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
"Complex and compelling.... Boyden has so fully and generously imagined Orchid Street and its inhabitants. Her writing acknowledges the depth of race and class divisions... but she's also aware of the ways people break out of their assigned roles.... From the stutter steps her characters take toward and away from one another, Boyden creates an engrossing dance.... The five story lines build into a terrifically vivid portrait of a city and its people."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Few contemporary novels are, at their root, as compelling about the relationship between a city and the people who live there. Boyden's Babylon Rolling is a love letter, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes beautiful, between New Orleans and five people who live on one of its streets."
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"It is possible that New Orleans is the perfect setting for the post-9/11 American novel... . Like the characters in the gorgeous and tactile Babylon Rolling, our survival hinges on our ability to cope with the lack of a universal culture and common body politic, the truth that natural disasters and random violence are a fact of life."
Mother Jones
"Boyden's novel conveys the patchwork of New Orleans' Uptown neighborhoods- very much evident in Riverbend, where working-class whites and blacks live alongside old-line socialites and immigrant professionals... . Episodic but not predictable, it is a book that beckons to be read for just a few more pages."
Mobile Press-Register
"Threats of natural disaster bracket this novel of New Orleans, which opens just prior to Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 and ends with the ominous approach of Katrina the following summer. In the intervening year, certain residents of the Uptown district weather personal tragedies rivaling the impact of killer storms. Orchid Street, diverse by any standard, includes two African American families, upstanding senior citizens Roy and Cerise Brown and the more struggling Harrises, as well as a young family of well-meaning but clueless whites recently arrived from Minnesota, a half-mad gentlewoman of the old school, and the exotic, intellectual Gupta clan. Neighborhood bar Tokyo Rose serves all as both haven from and catalyst of neighborhood disturbances. As lives and cultures overlap, the author of Pretty Little Dirty melds an enticing sense of place and a kaleidoscope of distinctive voices into a cautionary tale of ambition, desire, and conflict."
Library Journal
"Boyden has a chameleon-like ability to inhabit any persona, of any race or age, so fully and seamlessly it's hard to remember that these people are invented rather than real. Pre-Katrina New Orleans leaps to life on every page, a beautiful, seamy, fragile city on the brink of chaos and ruin. Babylon Rolling is a heart-breaking and riveting novel."
Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man, winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award
"Boyden invoked an array of New Orleans voices on Uptown's Orchid Street... an American Babylon that batters and woos with delights and disasters... The book's nuanced story of people who 'choose to live... inside the big lasso of river' reveals a side of the Crescent City not often seen in fiction."
Publishers Weekly
Anne Landsman
A Novel
Soho Press, 2007
Winner of the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in South Africa
Winner of the M-Net Book Prize in South Africa
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in South Africa
Shortlisted for the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature
Shortlisted for the 2008 Harold U. Ribalow Prize
Pregnant with her first child, Betsy Klein is summoned from her home in the United States to her father's hospital bed in South Africa. Harold Klein is sensual, irascible, a passionately committed doctor, and a complex husband and father. As Betsy sits and waits for him to stir from his coma, she is compelled to imagine his life.
Poor, fatherless and physically unimpressive, young Harold had to struggle to become a doctor and, later, to win the respect of his Boer patients. We first meet him as a young man on a formative, sexually charged excursion with his friends to Ebb 'n Flow, the upper portion of the Touw River, to which he often returns. That is where he later teaches his little daughter, Betsy, to row, and finally, where he makes his last metaphoric passage.
The Rowing Lesson is an utterly convincing and vivid portrait of a consciousness and a life, shot through with a daughter's fierce empathy and exasperation. By the heartbreaking end of the novel, it seems inconceivable that we will not meet Harold Klein directly, that he will never wake up, so powerfully has he been brought to life.
"An elegy for a lost father and a beloved world on the point of disappearing. Rarely in South African writing will we encounter language of such fire and passion."
J. M. Coetzee
"Anne Landsman's glittering, shimmering new novel is a tour de force... Elation and pain, anxiety and exuberance, and the uneven beat of living are all caught in language as silky and fluid as music. "
Roxana Robinson
"The Rowing Lesson is a beautiful study of the jagged bond between father and daughter, rendered in prose that is by turns wild and terse; angular and lavish--and unfailingly original. Landsman is one of the few writers of our generation to have wrested from the English language a voice uniquely and searingly her own."
Jennifer Egan
"Like Joyce or William Gass or John Edgar Wideman, Anne Landsman fashions a sensual web of memory and desire, rescuing a world at the brink of extinction through the power of her lyricism."
Stewart O'Nan
"A fierce elegy, a daughter's imaginary inhabitation of the memory of her dying father. There is nothing simple about it; its emotional beauty is hard-won. But it is also, unforgettably, an adventure in language. Its sentences are like the drips and swirls on a canvas by Pollock, and the book has the same wild and lyrical coherence. It makes art of a life."
Louis Menand
Don Lee
A Novel
W.W. Norton, April 2008
Finalist for the 2009 Thurber Prize for Humor
Art & commerce, success & failure, nature & development, spirit & flesh, USC & UCLA in football--these are a few of the eternal polarities cleaving the small California town of Rosarita Bay. In particular, they are wreaking havoc on the bucolic life of Lyndon Song, a renowned sculptor who fled New York City to grow Brussels sprouts. Lyndon has a brother, Woody, an indicted financier turned filmmaker, and Woody has a plan, involving a golf course on Lyndon's land and an aging kung-fu diva from Hong Kong with a mean kick and a meaner drinking problem. How, under the circumstances, to observe any Noble Truths? And can Lyndon ever commit to his great love, the impulsive woman who is mayor of Rosarita Bay? Don Lee returns to the emotional and geographic territory of his award-winning first collection of stories, Yellow, to reap a brilliantly comic and multilayered novel about California real estate and contemporary "multicultural" America.
"Don Lee is a gift and his latest novel, Wrack and Ruin, is magnificent: bold, beautiful, heartfelt, witty, broad of scope and yet as intimate as love given, or love received."
Junot Diaz, author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Allison Stanger
The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy
Yale University Press, October 2009
International relations scholar Allison Stanger shows how contractors became an integral part of American foreign policy, often in scandalous ways—but also maintains that contractors aren’t the problem; the absence of good government is. Outsourcing done right is, in fact, indispensable to America’s interests in the information age.
Stanger makes three arguments.
- The outsourcing of U.S. government activities is far greater than most people realize, has been very poorly managed, and has inadvertently militarized American foreign policy;
- Despite this mismanagement, public-private partnerships are here to say, so we had better learn to do them right;
- With improved transparency and accountability, these partnerships can significantly extend the reach and effectiveness of U.S. efforts abroad.
The growing use of private contractors predates the Bush Administration, and while his era saw the practice rise to unprecedented levels, Stanger argues that it is both impossible and undesirable to turn back the clock and simply re-absorb all outsourced functions back into government. Through explorations of the evolution of military outsourcing, the privatization of diplomacy, our dysfunctional homeland security apparatus, and the slow death of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Stanger shows that the requisite public-sector expertise to implement foreign policy no longer exists. The successful activities of charities and NGOs, coupled with the growing participation of multinational corporations in development efforts, make a new approach essential. Provocative and far-reaching, One Nation Under Contract presents a bold vision of what that new approach must be.
"In many ways, the real strength of this superb book is not what it reveals, as stunning as that may be, but how well she assimilates the changed circumstances of modern-day governance and simply addresses what now must be done... Stanger deserves a gold medal for this book because much of what she has uncovered, and had to think about, was pretty well buried; behind each unveiling is a lot of hard digging. But we’re the better off for it because she has given us a lot to think about."
Mickey Edwards, The Boston Globe
"The book aims admirably for both breadth and depth, examining the specifics of private activity in defense, diplomacy, development and security under an intellectual rubric that cuts across all four spheres. This is a fascinating treatment of an important subject."
Debora Spar, President, Barnard College
"A superb work on government outsourcing and contracting for those who want to get past the myths and truly understand this hot topic. One Nation Under Contract should be required reading for all those leaders involved in fixing this process in order to get a clear sense and scope of this critical issue."
General Anthony C. Zinni U.S. Marine Corps
"Allison Stanger argues that the outsourcing of foreign policy functions as currently practiced is scandalous, but we cannot turn the clock back to top-down government. Smart power requires smart government, and this well reasoned book suggests how better to harness all the networks at our disposal in the information age."
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Harvard University, author of The Powers to Lead
"One Nation Under Contract breaks new ground in describing how the emergence of joint ventures between the government and private actors is transforming government accountability and diplomacy."
Charles MacCormack, CEO, Save the Children
"As governments around the world contract out important tasks to private corporations, Allison Stanger has asked the key question: how do citizens reestablish effective oversight over private-public partnerships? One Nation Under Contract is a clarion call to bring the business of government under more effective public control."
Michael Ignatieff, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
Lauren Weber
The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
Little Brown & Co, September 2009
One of SmartMoney's 10 Best Financial Books of 2009
A Washington Post Best Book of 2009
A Fast Company Best Business Book of 2009
What does it mean to be cheap? Why are cheap people the butt of jokes and derision? Where's the line between thrift and miserliness? And how should we interpret today's recession-driven enthusiasm for thrifty living, after years of indulgence and over-spending? To answer these questions, former Newsday and Reuters reporter Weber explores Americans' hot-and-cold relationship with the virtues of cheapness and thrift, and offers a colorful ride through the history of frugality in the United States. Readers will learn the stories behind Ben Franklin and his famous maxims, Hetty Green (named "the world's greatest miser" by the Guinness Book of Records) and the branding of Jews and Chinese people as cheap in order to neutralize the economic competition they represented. From Dumpster-diving and the psychology of hoarding to Americans' thrifty responses to wars and recessions, In Cheap We Trust teases out the meanings of the word and examines the wisdom and pleasures of not spending every last penny. All the while, the book sparkles with smart, engaging writing that's well worth another precious asset -- time!
"In the economically dispiriting spirit of the year that also honors the need to prop up the publishing industry, I suggest a one-book-fits-all approach to holiday giving, entitled, IN CHEAP WE TRUST: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue, by Lauren Weber... Gather round the yule log (but don’t light it), put on a sweater... and discover that what made us cringe as children is, at least while the progressive recessionary flame flickers, a perfectly virtuous all-American gift for the ages."
Vicky Raab, The New Yorker.com
"A splendid, timely history... Weber manages, with panache, to combine a socioeconomic historical exploration that is readable and fun for the lay reader and a thoughtful defense of frugality that doesn't succumb to preachiness."
Library Journal
"Two lessons steam up from this terrific book about the history of thrift (and spending) in our country: First, Americans possess a phenomenal capacity to endure scoldings about our fical behavior... Second, from the beginning, Americans have nursed a seething contempt for the poor... Weber doesn't scold us, thank God. She just invites us to take a closer look at how we live our financial lives."
Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World
"Has the history of frugality in the U.S. been a straight line towards laziness and debt, or is it cyclical? Starting with Banjamin Franklin's writings on the subject, Weber takes us through the Puritans and Quakers, the Depression, the post-World War II sea-change toward denying ourselves nothing, and finally to eco-cheap. She works hard not to moralize (humor always being the best antidote to preachiness) and introduces some fantastic characters along the way..."
Los Angeles Times
"If you have only... 15 minutes: put the recession into historical perspective. Dip into a chapter of In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue (Little, Brown), Lauren Weber's entertaining, wide-ranging -- and very timely -- exploration of thrift."
O, The Oprah Magazine
"...a far-ranging examination of social programs, alternative movements and mainstream institutions ...the author provides a rich canvas from which to consider American ambivalence about saving."
Publisher's Weekly
"Weber writes with style and humor about a topic dear to us: getting more out of life with less impact on the planet."
Going Green.com
"Never preachy or sanctimonious, In Cheap We Trust is one of the most fascinating and life-altering books I've read this year. Its insights are profound. If you want to lighten your footprint while deepening the quality of your life, you'll love this book."
John Robbins, author The Food Revolution and The New Good Life
"[An] entertaining history of scrimping and saving in America... welcome reading for a newly frugal world."
Kirkus Reviews
"What's the fine line between thrift and stinginess, self-control and compulsion, purpose and obsession? Lauren Weber's fresh take on the quirky side of saving and spending couldn't be timelier."
Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
"Consumers have been researched to death. It's about time the tightwads among us got the same kind of loving attention. In Cheap We Trust is immensely readable and highly illuminating -- the perfect guide to the oncoming era of like-it-or-not thrift."
Jim Lardner, co-author of Up to Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies Are Drowning Americans in Debt
"This book has a far better chance of making cheapness socially acceptable than Ben Franklin, Jack Benny, and my father combined."
Joel Stein, Time columnist
 Will Bunch
The Right Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy
Free Press, 2009
In this provocative new book, award-winning political journalist Will Bunch unravels the story of how a right-wing cabal hijacked the mixed legacy of Ronald Reagan, a personally popular but hugely divisive 1980s president, and turned him into a bronze icon to revive their fading ideology. They succeeded to the point where all the GOP candidates for president in 2008 scurried to claim his mantle, no matter how preposterous the fit.
With clear eyes and an ever-present wit, Bunch reveals the truth about the Ronald Reagan legacy, including the following:
Despite the idolatry of the last fifteen years, Reagan's average popularity as president was only, well, average, lower than that of a half-dozen modern presidents. More important, while he was in office, a majority of Americans opposed most of his policies and by 1988 felt strongly that the nation was on the wrong track. Reagan's 1981 tax cut, weighted heavily toward the rich, did not cause the economic recovery of the 1980s. It was fueled instead by dropping oil prices, the normal business cycle, and the tight fiscal policies of the chairman of the Federal Reserve appointed by Jimmy Carter. Reagan's tax cut did, however, help usher in the deregulated modern era of CEO and Wall Street greed. Most historians agree that Reagan's waste-ridden military buildup didn't actually "win the Cold War." And Reagan mythmakers ignore his real contributions -- his willingness to talk to his Soviet adversaries, his genuine desire to eliminate nuclear weapons, and the surprising role of a "liberal" Hollywood-produced TV movie. George H. W. Bush's and Bill Clinton's rolling back of Reaganomics during the 1990s spurred a decade of peace and prosperity as well as the reactionary campaign to pump up the myth of Ronald Reagan and restore right-wing hegemony over Washington. This effort has led to war, bankrupt energy policies, and coming generations of debt.
With masterful insight, Bunch exposes this dangerous effort to reshape America's future by rewriting its past. As the Obama administration charts its course, he argues, it should do so unencumbered by the dead weight of misplaced and unearned reverence.
"The Ronald Reagan who won the cold war, cut taxes, shrank the government, saved the economy, and was the most beloved president since FDR is a myth, Bunch says....The truculent jingoist of the myth was concocted after Alzheimer's silenced the man and the would-be juggernaut launched by the GOP's 1994 election triumph crashed and burned before a Democratic president who shrank government and the deficit, balanced the budget, and even racked up surpluses. Bunch names the leading, venal mythmakers and shames the myth exploiters, too. Anyone interested in America's immediate future should read this book."
Booklist
"With help from a loving Beltway press corps, Republicans sold Reagan as the iconic American leader. From promotions like the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project and Operation Serenade, the GOP marketing machine worked to perfection. Will Bunch's long overdue book, Tear Down This Myth, pulls back the curtain and looks at Reagan, minus the branding. It's a sobering sight."
Eric Boehlert, author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush
"Will Bunch's subtle account of Reagan's legacy carefully dismantles the image of conservative purism that has been painted over the real Ronald Reagan. But in tearing down the myth, Bunch also gives us a fascinating portrait of Reagan the pragmatist, able to compromise, to change his ground and to govern from the center as political winds shifted. This is a buried Reagan, hidden even at the time but still perceptible, in some ways, to those of us who fought him at the time. Tear Down This Myth is historical revisionism for which both Reagan's supporters and his opponents should be grateful."
James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
"Tear Down This Myth is as feisty as it is fearless. In it, Will Bunch begins the process, long overdue, of deflating Ronald Reagan's overinflated reputation."
Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
"Will Bunch's iconoclasm is deeply necessary. It is also splendidly entertaining. The myth that Ronald Reagan was loved by everybody all the time is one of the greatest PR swindles of the age. This is a must-read for all who cherish truth in history."
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
"Will Bunch's book couldn't come at a better time. Following an election that saw America reject Reaganism, Tear Down This Myth explores how that conservative ideology came to power and what was so destructive about it."
David Sirota, author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington
Peter Marber
Understanding Globalization from Trunk to Tale 
Wiley, February 2009
Thanks to globalization, more countries depend on each other for trade, capital, and ideas than ever before. Yet politically, these countries are drifting further apart. In Seeing the Elephant, author and emerging markets expert Peter Marber describes how increasing economic integration and the rise of new actors is drastically altering the geopolitical landscape, and offers insights on how the US can maintain a leading role in the 21st century and beyond.
While America remains the single most important economy today, rising economic powerhouses -- China, Russia, India, Brazil and others -- bring a diverse set of interests to the table that the US cannot afford to ignore, Marber explains. Moreover, globalization has created thousands of non-state actors -- corporations, banks, hedge funds, activists and even terrorists -- who bring their own concerns to bear on the world system.
In the era of globalization, America's success hinges on the success of its neighbors, too. Yet from its invasion of Iraq to its disregard of major treaties -- some recent US choices have shown little regard for these new players. As the lines between economic, defense, environmental, immigration, and energy policy become increasingly blurred, having a holistic and coherent approach to cross-border challenges is essential. Yet the forums and institutions that once coordinated these relationships -- the UN, World Bank and the G7 -- are losing relevance and no longer adequately represent the world's expanded power roster. To remain vital, Marber believes all our multilateral institutions will require fresh ideas and revamping.
Seeing the Elephant demystifies globalization, and analyzes the megatrends and interconnections of the 21st century. With bold suggestions on how America reassert its historic leadership in the new global arena, Seeing the Elephant should be required reading for policy makers, businessmen and informed citizens alike.
John C. Hulsman & A. Wess Mitchell
A Foreign Policy Parable
Princeton University Press, 2009
The Godfather Doctrine draws clear and essential lessons from perhaps the greatest Hollywood movie ever made to illustrate America's changing geopolitical place in the world and how our country can best meet the momentous strategic challenges it faces.
In the movie The Godfather, Don Corleone, head of New York's most powerful organized-crime family, is shockingly gunned down in broad daylight, leaving his sons Sonny and Michael, along with his adopted son, consigliere Tom Hagen, to chart a new course for the family. In The Godfather Doctrine, John Hulsman and Wess Mitchell show how the aging and wounded don is emblematic of cold-war American power on the decline in a new world where our enemies play by unfamiliar rules, and how the don's heirs uncannily exemplify today's three leading American foreign-policy schools of thought. Tom, the left-of-center liberal institutionalist, thinks the old rules still apply and that negotiation is the answer. Sonny is the Bush-era neocon who shoots first and asks questions later, proving an easy target for his enemies. Only Michael, the realist, has a sure feel for the changing scene, recognizing the need for flexible combinations of soft and hard power to keep the family strong and maintain its influence and security in a dangerous and rapidly-changing world.
Based on Hulsman and Mitchell's groundbreaking and widely debated article, "Pax Corleone," The Godfather Doctrine explains for everyone why Francis Ford Coppola's epic masterpiece about a Mafia dynasty holds key insights for ensuring America's survival in the twenty-first century.
Marina Belozerskaya
A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology
W.W. Norton, 2009
How Cyriacus of Ancona -- merchant, spy, and amateur classicist -- traveled the world, fighting to save ancient monuments for posterity. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, a young Italian bookkeeper fell under the spell of the classical past. Despite his limited education, the Greeks and Romans seemed to speak directly to him -- not from books but from the physical ruins and inscriptions that lay neglected around the shores of the Mediterranean.
As an international merchant, Cyriacus of Ancona was accustomed to the perils of travel in foreign lands -- unlike his more scholarly peers with their handsome libraries and wealthy patrons, who benefited greatly from the discoveries communicated in his widely distributed letters and drawings. Having seen firsthand the destruction of the world's cultural heritage, Cyriacus resolved to preserve it for future generations. To do so he would spy on the Ottomans, court popes and emperors, and even organize a crusade.
"Imagine traveling the Mediterranean just before the Crusade of 1444 and encountering great and mysterious stone ruins centuries before archaeology shed light on antiquity... Marina Belozerskaya, a skilled storyteller and art historian, doesn't just portray a man, but guides us on a journey to his times."
Santa Fe New Mexican
"[A] charming and intriguing book... Art historian Belozerskaya (The Medici Giraffe) writes with verve and aplomb, transporting us to 15th-century Rome, Constantinople, Florence, Greece and its islands... a well-researched history of an important yet relatively unknown figure that deftly integrates Renaissance social, cultural and political history."
Publisher's Weekly
"A lively look at the life and work of Cyriacus of Ancona, the early classicist and preservationist of antiquities... An important link in the understanding between ancient and modern."
Kirkus Reviews
Jane S. Smith
Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
Penguin Press, 2009
A century ago, Luther Burbank was the most famous gardener on the planet. His name was inseparable from a cornucopia of new and improved plants--fruits, nuts, vegetables, and flowers--for both home gardens and commercial farms and orchards. At a time when the science of genetics was in its infancy and agriculture was often a perilous combination of guess work and luck, many people wanted a piece of the man they called the Wizard of Santa Rosa.
As the United States moved from a nation of farms to a nation of city dwellers, the people behind the new products that transformed daily life were admired with a fervor that is not accorded to their present-day counterparts. Everyone knew and marveled at Samuel Morse's telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, and Thomas Edison's electric light. And like these other great American inventors, Burbank was revered as an example of the best tradition of American originality, ingenuity, and perseverance. Burbank had learned the secret of teaching nature to perform for man, breeding and crossbreeding ordinary plants from farm and garden until they were tastier, hardier, and more productive than ever before.
The Garden of Invention is neither an encyclopedia nor a biography. Rather, Jane S. Smith, a noted cultural historian, highlights significant moments in Burbank's life (itself a fascinating story) and uses them to explore larger trends that he embodied and, in some cases, shaped. The Garden of Invention revisits the early years of bioengineering, when plant inventors were popular heroes and the public clamored for new varieties that would extend seasons, increase yields, look beautiful, or simply be wonderfully different from anything seen before.
The road from the nineteenth-century farm to twenty-first-century agribusiness is full of twists and turns, of course, but a good part of it passed straight through Luther Burbank's garden. The Garden of Invention is a colorful and engrossing examination of the intersection of gardening, science, and business in the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
"...a lush but hardly sentimental biography... Smith has yielded a first-class portrait -- witty, seamless and unflaggingly informed. I couldn't find a single useless tangent to critique, didn't stumble across the arcane, didn't wish for the light, for there was always light in this book that brings Burbank to pulsing life."
Beth Kephart, The Chicago Tribune
"There is a particular type of potato at the heart of Jane S. Smith's book about Luther Burbank, a man who described himself as an 'evoluter of new plants.' Ms. Smith nicknames that potato 'the lucky spud.' That turn of phrase is one of the many reasons to appreciate The Garden of Invention, her colorful, far-reaching book about the genetic, agricultural, economic and legal issues raised by Burbank's life and legend. 'The road from the 19th century to the 21st global market twists and turns, of course,' she writes, 'but a good part of it still passes through Luther Burbank's garden.' Ms. Smith offers a thoughtful and often quirkily entertaining expansion on that idea."
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Smith rightly focuses on placing Burbank into a snapshot of the time when 'finding new and economically useful plants' was still a national concern"
San Francisco Chronicle
"...(Luther Burbank) had the good fortune to flourish amid California's late-1800s self advertisement as the nation's cornucopia, and the products of his graftings and cross-pollinations -- details of which Jane Smith smoothly connects to the overarching cultural theme -- became so rooted around the country that visitors thronged to the horticultural wizard of Santa Rosa. Writing wryly about the unsystematic Burbank's methods and the shy man's relationship with celebrity, Smith fertilely mixes biography, botany, and business into an intriguing account of the world...in which Burbank thrived."
Booklist
"An in-depth look at a pioneering horticulturalist and the impact of his work... Smith doesn't shy away from the implications of Burbank's commerce-friendly plant manipulation and the popularization of the idea that nature can be mastered and altered for a profit... An accessible introduction to an agricultural innovator that gives equal weight to his life of experimentation and what it has meant for society."
Kirkus Reviews
"The Garden of Invention is a long overdue volume in food literature--a great story, well told."
Mark Kurlansky, the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt
"Gardening, whether in a backyard plot or a hundred-acre orchard, is an audacious attempt to improve on nature, and Jane Smith's fascinating hybrid of biography, history, and botany brings to life the most audacious of them all. In an age when we might be forgiven for thinking it takes millions of corporate dollars and genetic engineers to produce a new plant, The Garden of Invention reminds us how one man's singular determination, patience, and brilliance can change the world. So put down that French fry (from a Burbank potato) and sample some of the delightful blooms in Smith's Garden."
William Alexander, author of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
"In this lively and well-researched biography, Jane S. Smith has accorded a giant of American inventiveness the recognition he deserves. Thanks to this pioneering study of a horticultural genius, Luther Burbank of Santa Rosa, California can now take his place alongside Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and the other entrepreneur-inventors of his era."
Kevin Starr, University of Southern California, author of
Americans and the Californian Dream
"Jane Smith couldn't be more timely. She resuscitates that ambiguous American original, Luther Burbank, the endlessly inventive seedsman who put genetics to work and started the never-ending race to breed larger, better, more commercial plants--today, a mixed blessing, the promise of bounty compromised by fear of scientific experiment. The Garden of Invention is an engrossing read on a very important subject."
Gina Mallet, author of Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World
"Those who've hoed the archives hoping for a glimpse of the ever-mutating Luther Burbank will luxuriate in this magnificently researched - and juicy - account. From black-eyed marital assaults to systems of delayed orgasms, Smith reveals a shirt-ripping 'Cosmist' whose devotion to the mysteries of nature yielded countless marvels."
Adam Leith Gollner, author of The Fruit Hunters
"Jane Smith has written a marvelous biography of Luther Burbank, an American folk hero, a botanical wizard and impresario of the garden, who spent his life wrestling nature into compliance with human will and desire. "The Garden of Invention" is a very human story of the boundless imagination and ambition that underlie the woes and wonders of agriculture today. Like Michael Pollan's "Botany of Desire" or "Omnivore's Dilemma," "The Garden of Invention" will fascinate anyone who eats."
Ruth Ozeki, author of All Over Creation and My Year of Meats
Paul Lockhart
The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army
Collins, Fall 2008
The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.
In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lockhart, an expert in European military history, finally explains the significance of Steuben's military experience in Europe. Steeped in the traditions of the Prussian army of Frederick the Great -- the most ruthlessly effective in Europe -- he taught the soldiers of the Continental Army how to fight like Europeans. His guiding hand shaped the army that triumphed over the British at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Yorktown. And his influence did not end with the Revolution. Steuben was instrumental in creating West Point, and in writing the "Blue Book" -- the first official regulations of the American army. His principles have guided the American armed forces to this day.
Steuben's life is also a classic immigrant story. A failure in midlife, he uprooted himself from his native Europe to seek one last chance at glory and fame in the New World. In America he managed to reinvent himself -- making his background quite a bit more glamorous than was the reality -- but redeeming himself by his exceptional service and becoming, in a sense, the man he claimed to be.
"Lockhart, professor of history at Wright State University, has written the first modern scholarly biography of one of the American Revolution's iconic figures. Friedrich von Steuben is regularly described as the man whose drilling and discipline made an army out of the demoralized men camped at Valley Forge in the winter of 1776. Lockhart makes solid use of primary and secondary sources to present a more complete picture of the Continental Army's inspector-general. Steuben exaggerated his rank and status in order to secure employment, but was fully justified in asserting mastery of the techniques of war as practiced in Europe. Steuben learned his craft during 17 years of service in the army of Frederick the Great. There was no better school. Lockhart demonstrates the importance of European-style tactics to a war that could not be won by ambush and skirmishing alone. He shows how clearly Steuben understood the differences between American citizen-soldiers and the outcasts and conscripts that filled Europe's ranks. And he describes Steuben's contributions after Valley Forge to creating an army that won battles from Monmouth to Yorktown."
Publisher's Weekly
"[An] informative biography... . Even readers who care little about the details of Revolutionary War battles may well find Steuben's maneuvers captivating... . Unusually well-written... with incisive character sketches of Washington, Jefferson and other patriots complementing Lockhart's full-blooded portrait of Steuben."
Kirkus Reviews
"Paul Lockhart not only tells us the forgotten story of how this German volunteer transformed the American army. He has also made him an appealing human being. This is an important book for anyone interested in the American Revolution."
Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival After Yorktown
"At last, a good look at a great man. Paul Lockhart clears up all the puzzles of Steuben's early life. He also tells an archetypal American story: an immigrant, ambitious, blustering, insecure, who gives his talents and his passion to his new-found home."
Richard Brookhiser, author of George Washington on Leadership
"Baron de Steuben has finally found the biographer he so richly deserves -- and what a terrific biography this is -- splendidly written with narrative sweep, deeply researched with colorful details that bring the Baron to vivid life.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
"Lockhart writes a lively, incisive biography that exposes the inner workings of the Baron's mind and highlights the critical role that he played in winning the Revolutionary War."
Edward Lengel, author of This Glorious Struggle
Jonathan Lyons
How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
Bloomsbury, 2009
Amidst the pillage of the First Crusades, the realm of Arab science and philosophy that had existed for centuries out of sight and out of mind of the Western world came unexpectedly into focus. Few knew of the learning practiced so ably and widely by the Arabs, with their new ways to measure space, draw maps, treat the sick, look at the stars, and explore humanity's place in the universe. Europe was frozen in its Dark Ages, barely able to tell the time of day. For the Crusaders, sorcery and magic and Holy Writ led the way forward in 1095. One man, however, was unsatisfied with the extent of Western learning. Adelard of Bath, a heretofore obscure English scholar, shrugged off the tenor of his times -- that Islam was an evil faith and a sacred enemy -- to scour the Arab East for knowledge undreamed of in Europe's finest schools. In Alchemy of the Mind, author and journalist Jonathan Lyons takes the reader on a thrill-ride through the 12th Century, charting Adelard's odyssey of intellectual and scientific discovery from West to East, from Tours to Antioch to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Adelard returned to England a wiser man to be sure, but the West profited from his journey as well. Five centuries later, his intellectual heir -- and there were many, as Lyons illustrates -- Galileo took on the religious orthodoxy of his day and sparked the very beginning of the Western scientific revolution. As the author asserts, without control over clock and calendar, the rational organization of society was unthinkable. So was the development of science, technology, and industry. Muslim science and philosophy rescued the Christian world from ignorance; without it, the very idea of the West would have been impossible.
"Lively and well researched, [The House of Wisdom] clarifies how Arabic books, ideas, and knowledge were found and brought back to Europe to help shape Western ideas. With a list of significant events and leading figures; highly recommended for general readers."
Library Journal
"Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons' lively new book of medieval history... Lyons tells his multilayered story deftly, forsaking the tyranny of chronology to flesh out ideas and personalities."
Los Angeles Times
"Sophisticated and thoughtful... In The House of Wisdom, [Lyons] shapes his narrative around the travels of the little-known but extraordinary Adelard of Bath, an English monk who traveled to the East in the early 12th century.... Mr. Lyons's narrative is vivid and elegant."
Wall Street Journal
"With a storyteller's eye for the revealing detail and an artist's feel for the sweep of history, Jonathan Lyons has uncovered the debt that the Christian world--and Western civilization--owes to Muslim philosophy and science. House of Wisdom is a fascinating and picturesque page-turner."
Ian Bremmer, author of The J Curve
"Lyons capably delineates the fascinating journey of this knowledge to the West, highlighting a few key figures, including Adelard of Bath, whose years spent in Antioch paid off grandly in bringing forth his translations of Euclid and al-Khwarizmi; and Michael Scot, science adviser and court astrologer to Frederick II, who translated Avicenna and Averroes."
Kirkus
"Jonathan Lyons tells the story of the House of Wisdom, the caliphs who supported it and the people who worked there, at a riveting, breakneck pace."
Times (UK)
"The House of Wisdom is a 320-page treasure trove of information for the uninitiated that packs a powerful punch of science, history, geography, politics and general knowledge at a time when so much disinformation about the Arab world is swirling around in various media... Lyons delved into the subject with the meticulous care and dexterity of a physician performing nano surgery."
Magda Abu-Fadil, The Huffington Post
Charles Laurence 
A True Intrigue of Sex, Spies, and Heartbreak Behind the Iron Curtain
Ivan R. Dee, 2010
In 1957, at the height of the Cold War, a British diplomat posted behind the Iron Curtain moves to Prague with his family. It is an experience that his young son Charles Laurence, then 7 years old, can never forget. He sees for himself the drab repression of Communism, and glimpses the Stalinist world of spies and terror. But he also knows that something happens in Prague which triggers a family tragedy, and that it has to do with a love affair between his mother and a glamorous Czech who may, or may not, be a spy. In this memoir, he describes the harrowing decline and eventual death of his sister, his closest childhood companion, who had arrived in Prague as an unusually attractive young girl but left the victim of anorexia nervosa, "slimmers' disease". Fifty years later as his father reaches the end of his life, Laurence, by now a seasoned foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph of London, returns to Prague to search for the truth. He burrows through secret police files, tracks down veterans of the espionage war between communism and the West, and finds himself drawn into a time and place where cruelty is routine, cunning triumphs over decency, and love becomes meaningless. This is the world of The Social Agent. Laurence strips the cover from a story of betrayal, sexual exploitation and heartbreak, and only then can he discover the healing powers of truth.
"A mesmerizing story. The narrative thread alone compels one to follow the author into the dark labyrinths of Kafka's spooky city of Prague during the cold war. There's immediate page-turning excitement…one of the charms of the book is the manner in the way we see the lives through fragments of family remembrance. And when the story ends, the exceptional quality of the writing lingers in one's mind like sight of the city's medieval towers through a Prague fog."
Harold Evans, author of My Paper Chase
"Laurence’s short, concise style is refreshing... The Social Agent succeeds the most as an account of one man’s journey to reconcile a child’s limited point of view with a harsh adult reality. The sense of never truly knowing one’s parents is something that every reader can relate to an it’s what makes The Social Agent stand out as more than a mere espionage narrative."
PopMyth
J. Malcolm Garcia
Beacon Press, Fall 2009
In nearly seven years of travel after 9/11 between Kansas City, where he lives, and a post-Taliban Afghanistan, J. Malcolm Garcia found an emotional and professional center--one that, in spite of other assignments and war reporting, drew him back to the region over and over again. Unlike fly-by reporters traveling through the country armed with a sat phone and a ticket on the next flight to Islamabad, Garcia settles into Afghanistan--learning its history, meeting its resilient people, and forging life-long connections. In the midst of ongoing chaos, he rescues a dog from being killed, naming him Maggot, and shepherding him safely out of the country; he befriends his driver and translator, Khalid (aka 'Bro'), a relationship which broadens his understanding of the complex situation for Afghani people. And, he gets to know six war orphans and, almost to his surprise, commits to improving their lives. At a time when Afghanistan is on the brink, Garcia offers a gritty, raw, and unsentimental memoir about friendship, humility, and transformation in the midst of a war torn country.
"Friendship, with its promises and limits, is the core of this story... The Khaarijee is heartbreakingly vivid. Kabul no longer seems far away or so easy to ignore."
The Kansas City Star
"By the end [of The Khaarijee] readers may feel the same affinity for the country that the author does, hoping that one day Afghanistan will fully recover from its violent past. Timely and compelling, Garcia provides a glimpse beyond the easy headlines."
Kirkus Reviews
"The eponymous 'khaarijee' (outsider), Garcia is at his best when capitalizing on his status to launch important--and engaging--investigations of what it means to be a privileged Westerner in one of the most destitute places in the world."
Publisher's Weekly
Joe Queenan
A Memoir
Viking, 2009
A New York Times Notable Book of 2009
A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2009
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2009
A London Times Best Book of 2009
Joe Queenan's acerbic riffs on movies, sports, books, politics, and anything else that happens to swim into his crosshairs have made him one of the best-loved columnists and authors of our time. Now Queenan turns his sights on the ultimate topic: his life growing up poor and Irish in 1960s working-class Philadelphia. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Queenan tells of his upbringing in a family dominated by his erratic father, a prototypically Irish patriarch with a taste for the grape and a limitless supply of self-pity and bravado. Through a bleakly funny series of appalling misadventures, narrated with Queenan's signature dyspeptic wit, the young Joe finds himself itching to break out of his straitened circumstances and into the wider world beyond the dismal streets of his neighborhood. A bildungsroman and autobiography in the classic American tradition, a funky and funny paean to the places left behind, Queenan's tale of youth lost and found is certain to appeal to fans of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr and to take its place among the annals of comic self-invention.
"What is strongest about Closing Time is Queenan's voice, his astounding lack of sentimentality, his ability to find humor in nearly any bleak situation... Easily one of the most refreshingly honest, even brave, memoirs to appear in recent years."
Tom Deignan, America Magazine
"Closing Time is unmistakably a tale of triumph, vindication and revenge... [an] enlightening account of the ways in which we are all, to some extent, casualties of our own childhoods."
Sarah Churchwell, The Guardian (UK)
"...his masterstroke of a memoir... Closing Time is far and away the most ambitious thing Queenan has ever written."
The American Spectator
"Books helped Queenan survive his hard-luck Philadelphia childhood; his moving new memoir now enriches the canon."
People
"Whether you think of Joe Queenan as refreshingly blunt or too mean for his own good, his 10th book is likely to intensify your opinion. In Closing Time, he writes with his usual caustic finesse, this time about growing up Irish and poor in Philadelphia in the '50s and '60s... There's no denying that Queenan's prose can be scabrously entertaining..."
James McManus, The New York Times Book Review
"Unsentimental and ultimately very sad... Mr. Queenan gradually finds a more nuanced voice, capable of expressing not just fury and condescension but also humor, irony and melancholy. His tortured relationship with his father slowly gains in depth and chiaroscuro, and his portraits of friends, relatives and teachers evolve into Dickensian character studies even as they immerse us in the gritty Philadelphia neighborhoods he knew as a boy."
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Now in his late 50s, Queenan has lived long enough and done enough interesting things to have earned the right to write his memoirs, which he has done with skill, subtlety and an honest self-awareness. Closing Time tells us that Queenan comes by his cynicism honestly... not because the beatings anaesthetized his sensitivity to others but because he had, in his father, an exemplar of the freelance critic, the raconteur, the barber-shop wit. Queenan understands this now, if he didn't then, so his farewell to his father, if couched principally as a great sigh of relief, is also a tribute of sorts... Queenan is known primarily as a satirist and humorist, though there is a dark undertone to much of his writing that is more readily appreciated after reading Closing Time. It is a fine piece of work in every respect: self-exploratory but never self-absorbed, painful and funny, affectingly open in the gratitude it expresses to father figures without whom, 'I would have been sucked into the void.' By contrast with the post-adolescent drivel that is the daily brad of The Age of Memoir, Closing Time is by a grownup, for grownups."
Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
"The neon parallels in Closing Time between Philadelphia's time-honored proclivity of expectant defeat and Queenan's life under the paternal gospel that he would 'never amount to a pimple on an elephant's ass' are the main tracks of his narrative, and the author drives them expertly.... Ultimately, Closing Time is another poignant demonstration that successful people and even successful parents need not come from success, always a worthy tale, and in this instance, beautifully if painfully told."
Gene Collier, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Humorist and pop culture writer Queenan turns the mirror on himself in this somber and funny memoir about life with father in the projects of Philadelphia... Unsentimental and brutally honest, Queenan's memoir captures the pathos of growing up in a difficult family and somehow getting beyond it."
Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"After eviscerating everyone from filmmakers to sports fans, cultural critic and humorist Queenan takes the hatchet to himself in this memoir of growing up poor in Philadelphia...while providing humor few others could bring to such dark material....Will have readers crying tears of both sorrow and hilarity."
Booklist
"Close to home and heart, this portrait of the artist shows Queenan at the top of his form--his best yet."
Kirkus (starred review)
Robin Romm
A Memoir
Scribner, 2009
A New York Times Notable Book of 2009
#5 in Entertainment Weekly’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2009
From the critically acclaimed author of The Mother Garden, a stirring and intimate memoir about the three weeks before her mother's death. With her signature wit and rare honesty, Romm opens the doors to her family's home and invites us to witness the collapse of her known world -- the death of her mother. With relish, Romm disposes of clichés about grief and healing as she reveals the particular nature of loss in her family. Untrained dogs, mischievous cats, a slow-witted hospice nurse, and a yelping grandfather clamor for attention as Romm, with her father and closest family friends, navigate problems ranging from medications to the search for God. Crystalline in its detail and piercing in its focus, The Mercy Papers reveals the sharp and tender truths that lurk around every corner in the midst of heartbreak. Bending time in fantastic ways, Romm expands these three weeks into their own universe. Family stories wind through the strangeness, providing us with an intimate window into a bond between a child and her mother. In the eye of the storm, there's room to remember sex talks and birthdays, meals, outfits, trips and quarrels. The Mercy Papers captures, with great passion, the awe and fear of a daughter losing her mother. Romm has created a moving tribute to family and an indelible portrait that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost.
"Romm's willingness to expose herself is brave and may bring solace to others too savaged by grief to let a loved one 'go gentle into that good night.'"
Baltimore Sun
"Romm's memoir is excruciating as often as it is gorgeous... The humor in The Mercy Papers rides on the back of desperation, but is always spot on."
Padma Viswanathan, author of The Toss of a Lemon
"It's a blisteringly angry memoir... Romm's fury is refreshing. Readers struggling with grief may appreciate her fierce rejection of the usual platitudes about 'closure.'"
Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
"[A] powerful book.... [Romm's] quirky, bold writer's voice grows strong and confident at the bedside and transforms a life cut short into something enduring."
The San Francisco Chronicle
"A heartbreaking memoir of staggering genius about a young writer angrily watching her mother die of cancer. Along the lines of the Joan Didion best-seller, call it 'Three Weeks of Magical Genius.'"
The Courier Journal
"Romm's piercing and personal look at loss will speak to anyone who has coped or is coping with the death of a loved one."
Booklist
"Poignant... A piercing, heartbreaking reminder that 'loss doesn't end.'"
Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"I love this passionate and beautifully written memoir, The Mercy Papers. Every sentence rings with furious love and loss."
Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life
"There is comfort in the unflinching honesty of Robin Romm's astonishing memoir. I sought such truth after my daughter died, and grew angry at the platitudes, the cowardice, the lack of acknowledgment of what life and death hold. But Robin faces it head-on, and I am grateful to her for being brave enough to share her story."
Ann Hood, the author of Comfort and The Knitting Circle
"Robin Romm takes on the hardest subject (the death of a person you can't live without) the hardest way (no easy answers, no gratuitous nod toward redemption, and not a whisper of sentimentality). Only a very fine writer could create this slam dance of sorrow, rage, helplessness, and laugh-out-loud humor; a book that is unapologetically raw and undeniably artful at once."
Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Sight Hound
"Powerful narrative... elegant prose... Anyone touched by cancer, or who has seen a loved one in hospice care, will find this painful, absorbing and likely therapeutic."
Publisher's Weekly
"...a furious blaze of a book. In Romm's hands, anger becomes an instrument for pursuing truth, an extremely effective crowbar with which to pry back nicety and expose 'something unfettered, something darker.' Often, it's from this unfettered darkness that the author delivers her best lines, the words strung together with a kind of plain-mouthed beauty."
Leigh Hager Cohen, The New York Review of Books
"There are countless memoirs about death and overcoming grief, but Romm's sheer firepower sets hers apart, capturing all the raw messiness behind her agony."
Entertainment Weekly
"...this painful and powerful account manages to offer empathy to anyone whose life has been shaped by grief (and whose isn't?) without condescending to easy consolation. And she captures her own sadness too: This aching book becomes a way of transforming a loved one's absence into art."
Time Out
"[Romm] strikes at grief with defiant humor...writing is her transcendence."
People Magazine (3 of 4 stars)
Sonja Livingston
Unviersity of Georgia Press, Fall 2009
"When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through."
Ghostbread makes real for us the shifting homes and unending hunger that shape the life of a girl growing up in poverty during the 1970s.
One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. From an old farming town to an Indian reservation to a dead-end urban neighborhood, Livingston and her siblings follow their nonconformist mother from one ramshackle house to another on the perpetual search for something better.
Along the way, the young Sonja observes the harsh realities her family encounters, as well as small moments of transcendent beauty that somehow keep them going. And struggling to make sense of her world, she perceives the stresses and patterns that keep children -- girls in particular -- trapped in the cycle of poverty.
Larger cultural experiences such as her love for Wonder Woman and Nancy Drew and her experiences with the Girl Scouts and Roman Catholicism inform this lyrical memoir. And Livingston firmly eschews sentimentality, offering instead a meditation on what it means to hunger, and showing that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down.
"Exquisite in its details and insights, Ghostbread shows us the invisible undersides of poverty. Sonja Livingston renders this so solidly that we come to understand the roots of despair, and the beauty that can be found in the midst of squalor. In an age when memoir exploits the seamier sides of life, thrusting their authors into the limelight, this book holds back, quietly resisting shock value in favor of understanding."
Judith Kitchen, author of House on Eccles Road
"Ghostbread weaves together a child's experience of not belonging, the perilous ease of slipping into failure, and the deep love that can flow from even a highly troubled parent. This is rich, sensual storytelling. An amazing debut from a wonderful new writer."
Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire (American Lives)
"'I know where I came from.' With this declaration, the author of Ghostbread takes us on a journey through a childhood scarred by poverty and graced by love. Like an American version of Angela's Ashes, the book allows us to encounter -- and see, taste, and smell it -- through the eyes of a beleaguered and intelligent child. We are grateful to be reminded of the human reality at the heart of a world that is all too often hidden in governmental 'poverty indicators,' and also glad that the author has survived to tell the tale."
Kathleen Norris, author of Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Kevin Young
:
Poems of Grief and Healing 
Bloomsbury, March 2010
An incomparable resource for those touched by grief—a groundbreaking volume of elegies by the most important names in modern poetry.
We all share life’s passages, from love to grief, and during them often turn to poetry to express the inexpressible. But while anthologies of love poetry abound, The Art of Losing is the very first anthology of its kind, delivering 150 devastatingly beautiful contemporary elegies that embrace the pain, heartbreak, and healing stages of mourning.
Selected and introduced by National Book Award finalist Kevin Young, the poems are artfully arranged to correspond with the grieving process: starting with Reckoning, moving through Remembrance and Rituals, then ending with Recovery and, finally, Redemption. And with contributions from men, women, and a full range of races and faiths, the breadth of human experience is captured. Whether read aloud at a funeral service or privately for comfort, these poems prove a worthy companion to the necessary, and often messy, process of grieving.
A singularly thoughtful gift for those coping with grief, as well as a vital resource for the loved ones, clergy, and hospice workers who guide us through the process of letting go, The Art of Losing will be an essential source of comfort and beauty.
With poems by Elizabeth Alexander, Simon Armitage, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, John Berryman, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Ted Hughes, Jane Kenyon, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Les Murray, Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, Natasha Trethewey, Derek Walcott, James Wright, and others.
"'Grief,' wrote Denise Levertov, 'is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.' Here, Kevin Young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets."
Billy Collins, Former U.S. Poet Laureate and author of Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems
"A book for easing the heart in pain. A chorus of poets (the first of its kind) brought together expressly to guide us through dark times when ‘the eye begins to see.’ Kevin Young was the right guy at the right time to do this.... Brilliant."
Mark Matousek, author of When You're Falling, Dive and Ethical Wisdom
Kim Addonizio
:
Poems 
W.W. Norton, September 2009
A lyrically intense fifth collection from "one of the nation's most provocative and edgy poets" (San Diego Union-Tribune). With both passion and precision, Lucifer at the Starlite explores life's dual nature: good and evil, light and dark, suffering and moments of unexpected joy. Whether looking outward to events on the world stage--the war in Iraq, the 2004 Asian tsunami--or inward at struggles with the self, these poems aim at the heart and against the feeling that Lucifer may have already won the day.
"Addonizio's gifts -- clarity, wicked wit and directness about sex -- remain on view in this, her fifth, collection... [She] extracts humor from headlines, takes comfort in the everyday and manages both to celebrate and to decry her complicated sexual self."
Publisher's Weekly
"Kim Addonizio's imagination is like a runaway train under perfect control. Nuanced, shaded and unshaded, her poems are bold, brave, respectful of the darkness, perfectly pitched, and virtually every one reverberates with a kind of wild tenderness. Lucifer at the Starlite is one of the best reasons to read poetry today."
Thomas Lux, author of The Cradle Place and The Street of Clocks
Kim Addonizio
:
A Guide for the Poet Within 
W. W. Norton, 2009
Inspired by the gratifying success of The Poet's Companion, Kim Addonizio presents exciting new insights into the creative process, craft, and the lessons of her own creative journey. Poetry's time-honored subjects--love, loss, identity, community--are here, along with a heady variety of writing exercises (and innovative ways to use the Internet). Chapters on gender, race, and class challenge readers to explore their creative vision more deeply, Addonizio, hailed for her passionate, award-winning poetry, shares her breakthroughs and frustrations frankly, including samples of rejection slips. She offers not only encouragement but also a wealth of knowledge about form and structure, metaphor and rhythm, revision, and that elusive goal: publishing.
"Poetry is not a means to an end," Addonizio maintains, "but a continuing engagement with being alive." Her generous guide is for beginners and experienced poets, for groups and in the classroom--indeed for anyone eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.
Marina Belozerskaya
From the Etruscans to Ferragamo
Abrams, 2008
Tuscany is everyone's dream--a land of picturesque landscapes, fabulous food, and above all, extraordinary masterpieces of art of every kind.
Focusing on a series of Tuscan centers, from the Etruscan capitals of Cerveteri and Tarquinia to the great medieval and Renaissance city-states of Lucca, Pisa, Siena, and Florence down to the present day, Marina Belozerskaya leads the reader on a journey through the arts of this astonishing part of Italy. Unlike other books on Tuscany, this one spans time, geography, and a wide variety of art forms--from Etruscan bronzes to Ferragamo shoes--and shows how the arts of this fertile region have sprung from their native soil over the centuries, each era providing the foundation for the next.
Lavishly illustrated, and rich with the fascinating stories of Tuscan arts and their creators, The Arts of Tuscany offers an enchanting new look into the opulent culture of a beloved part of the world.
Peter A. Ubel
Why Human Nature is at Odds with Economics--and Why it Matters
Harvard Business School Press, 2009
Humans just aren't entirely rational creatures.
We decide to roll over and hit the snooze button instead of going to the gym. We take out home loans we can't possibly afford. And did you know that people named Paul are more likely to move to St. Paul than other cities? All too often, our subconscious causes us to act against our own self-interest.
But our free-market economy is based on the assumption that we always do act in our own self-interest. In this provocative book, physician Peter Ubel uses his understanding of psychology and behavior to show that in some cases government must regulate markets for our own health and well-being. And by understanding and controlling the factors that go into our decisions, big and small, we can all begin to stop the damage we do to our bodies, our finances, and our economy as a whole.
Ubel's vivid stories bring his message home for anyone interested in improving the way our society works.
"Many traditional economic theories are based on the assumption that people make rational decisions. But Dr. Ubel, a physician who directs the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan, surveys the psychological and economic literature and finds countless examples of otherwise rational people acting irrationally, especially about numbers and finances... Something to ponder before making an important investment decision."
Paul Brown, The New York Times
"Ubel presents a nuanced treatment of issues often reduced to sound bites."
Publishers Weekly, 2008
T.J. Wray
The Enduring Lessons of Twelve Women of the Old Testament
Rowman & Littlefield, December 2008
The few popular Bible stories about women are often presented in clack and white-the women were good or bad, Ruth or Jezebel. But most of us fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Good Girls, Bad Girls invites readers to take a more nuanced look at twelve women in the Old Testament, to explore their lives more deeply in the historical context, and to grasp what these stories can mean to women today.
"Was Jezebel really as naughty as she seems in the Old Testament? Was Ruth the perfect daughter-in-law, wife and widow we learned about in Sunday school? In Good Girls, Bad Girls: The Enduring Lessons of Twelve Women of the Old Testament, T.J. Wray urges readers to take another look at their stories and lives....Wray also includes 10 other "sheroes" of the Hebrew Bible, from Miriam to Delilah. This biblical scholar offers an in-depth and lively look at the fascinating lives these women lead."
Houston Chronicle
"Good Girls, Bad Girls is a lively, informative, and thoughtful presentation of twelve of the most fascinating female figures in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). T.J. Wray looks at these women with fresh eyes and describes them in clear and engaging language. She succeeds admirably not only in explaining the ancient context of the biblical narratives about these women but also in providing sensitive insights into the contemporary relevance of their stories."
Carol Meyers, Duke University
Romi Lassally
Berkley, 2009
Mothers' hilarious, outrageous, heartfelt admissions
"Sometimes I lock myself in the bathroom."
"I put an educational DVD on so I could have sex. It wasn't with my husband."
Romi Lassally provides a judgment-free zone where women can reveal their mommy misdemeanors. From not feeling like cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, to barking something completely inappropriate to the children, to wanting to be pawed by hands that aren't covered in jelly, the confessions pour in daily.
Heartfelt and hilarious, naughty and nasty, frank and outrageous, the confessions culled together for this book represent the best--or the worst?--of those humbling hidden secrets of motherhood in all its glorious messiness as improvisation and triage. They dare to suggest that it's okay for moms to make mistakes, to have unkind thoughts, to publicly or privately embarrass themselves--and above all to be human.
|
