Book Blurbs

The Golden Compass: Movie Storybook by Ms. Kay Woodward

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:39:28 -0400

When Lyra sets out to rescue her friend Roger, she has no idea her adventure will lead all the way to the frozen North, where an epic struggle between good and evil will determine the fate of the world—and perhaps other worlds as well. The Golden Compass: Movie Storybook is a full-color, easy-to-read adaptation of key scenes from the movie.

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:44:33 -0400

Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights. Candid and self-deprecating, Byrne offers a work that is as engaging as it is cerebral and informative. (Sept.) All rights reserved.</br>A renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-thehandlebars view of the world’s citiesSince the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Part travelogue, part journal, part photo album, Bicycle Diaries is an eye-opening celebration of seeing the world from the seat of a bike.</br>. An account of what he sees and whom he meets as he pedals through metropoles from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne’s thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, architecture, cultural dislocation, and much more, all conveyed with a highly personal mixture of humor, curiosity, and humility. Byrne’s choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. While stupid planning decisions have destroyed much that is good about cities, he is confident there is hope, in terms of mixed-use, diverse neighborhoods; riding a bike can aid in the survival of cities by easing congestion. Byrne is fascinated by cities, especially as visited on a trusty fold-up bicycle, and in these random musings over many years while cycling through such places as Sydney, Australia; Manila, Philippines; San Francisco; or his home of New York, the former Talking Head, artist and author goffers his frank views on urban planning, art and postmodern civilization in general. In low-key prose, he describes his meetings with other artists and musicians where he played and set up installations, such as an ironic PowerPoint presentation to an IT audience in Berkeley, Calif. He notes that the condition of the roads reveals much about a city, like the impossibly civilized, pleasant pathways designed just for bikes in Berlin versus the fractured car-mad system of highways in some American cities, giving way to an eerie post apocalyptic landscape For each city, he focuses on its germane issues, such as the still troublingly clear-cut class system in London, notions of justice and human migration that spring to mind while visiting the Stasi Museum in Berlin, religious iconography in Istanbul, gentrification in Buenos Aires and Imelda Marcos’s legacy in Manila.

One Second After by William R. Forstchen Review

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:08:11 -0400

History professor John Matherson, who lives with his two daughters in a small North Carolina town, soon figures out what has happened. Airplanes, most cars, cellphones, refrigeratorsall are fried as the country plunges into literal and metaphoric darkness. When phones die and cars inexplicably stall, Grandmas pre-computerized Edsel takes readers to a stunning scene on the car-littered interstate, on which 500 stranded strangers, some with guns, awaken Johns New Jersey street-smart instincts to get the family home and load the shotgun. Food becomes scarce, and societal breakdown proceeds with inevitable violence; towns burn, and ex-servicemen recall Korea in 51 as military action by unlikely people becomes the norm in Forstchens sad, riveting cautionary tale, the premise of which Newt Gingrichs foreword says is completely possible. —Whitney Scott
. Johns list includes insulin for his type-one diabetic 12-year-old, candy bars, and sacks of ice. Deaths start with heart attacks and eventually escalate alarmingly.
In a Norman Rockwell town in North Carolina, where residents rarely lock homes, retired army colonel John Matherson teaches college, raises two daughters, and grieves the loss of his wife to cancer. Next morning, some townspeople realize that an electromagnetic pulse weapon has destroyed Americas power grid, and they proceed to set survival priorities. While the material sometimes threatens to veer into jingoism, and heartstrings are tugged a little too vigorously, fans of such classics as Alas, Babylon and On the Beachwill have a good time as Forstchen tackles the obvious and some not-so-obvious questions the apocalypse tends to raise.

The Leap by Rick Smith

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:47:00 -0400

Have you ever asked yourself, “Is this all there is?” Maybe you’re trapped in a dead-end job that you’re afraid to leave. Or maybe you already have a good job-one that gives you room to grow and exercise your talents-but you don’t really feel like you’re doing your best work. Your life is plain vanilla, yet you know in your heart that you can be a triple scoop banana split. You just don’t know how to make that leap.
So what do you do?
Rick Smith knows firsthand what it’s like to feel stuck in a career rut. He worked in a midlevel job where he had modest success. Then his life took an unexpected turn and he found himself creating a business that became successful beyond his wildest dreams. He unlocked a level of performance he did not know he had in him. After all, Smith was just a regular guy who didn’t like to take chances or even step outside his comfort zone. But as he found out, those qualities don’t have to be stumbling blocks. In fact, they’re two of the keys to making the leap from good to great.

And after talking to others who had also transformed their careers from mundane to magnificent, he realized that the secret doesn’t lie with some mysterious talent, trait, or affinity for risk. And it certainly doesn’t require you to quit your job and start from scratch. Rather, it lies with your ability to harness your true strengths and passions-what Smith calls your Primary Color.

Book Review: Hiding in the Spotlight by Greg Dawson

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:21:00 -0400

In this remarkable recreation of the WWII years, Greg Dawson writes about his mother, pianist Zhanna Arkashyna in an account reminiscent of Wladyslaw Szpilman’s The Pianist. As a child in the Ukraine, Zhanna was offered a scholarship to the Moscow State Conservatory. Her life changed in 1941 when Nazis grouped her Jewish family with thousands to be executed; Zhanna and her sister, Frina, escaped to roam the countryside as fugitives, hiding and surviving. With a new name and a non-Jewish identity, Zhanna performed for unsuspecting Nazis. Arriving in New York in 1946, the sisters enrolled at Juilliard on scholarships. Zhanna married violist David Dawson, and the couple moved in 1948 to Bloomington, Ind., joining the music faculty at Indiana University. To research his mother’s homeland, Dawson traveled to Ukraine, including Dorbitsky Yar, where 15,000 Jews were murdered, among them Zhanna and Frina’s parents. On a memorial listing the dead, Dawson was shocked to find his mother’s name: I had come that close to nonexistence. With italicized selections from his mother’s own writing, Dawson skillfully weaves the story of her life and music into a vibrant tapestry, tattered and torn, yet victorious.

PROSPECT PARK WEST by Amy Sohn

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:47:00 -0400

Former New York magazine Mating columnist Amy Sohn zeroes in on the more-fertile-than-thou crowd in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood in her vinegary latest (after My Old Man). Like a Grand Hotel for the yuppie set, the lives of moody, angry, dissatisfied moms intersect on the playgrounds and co-ops of their overpriced hood. Among them, Lizzie, whose lesbian proclivities mask her loneliness; Rebecca, whose libido-less spouse prefers his role as dad over husband; Karen, a social-climbing conniver; and Melora, a former Manhattanite whose psychiatric maladies are as pathetic as they are numerous. The gals in this comedy of bad manners are burned out, bitchy and beyond salvation as they maneuver to be noticed and loved. Meanwhile, there’s more name-dropping than in an edition of Page Six, and while Sohn is obviously intent on skewering the annoying urban mommy stereotype, 400 pages is a stretch for material that’s been blogged to death.

THE VISION OF THE ANIOTED by Thomas Sowell Review

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:17:00 -0400

In this broadside against the received wisdom of America’s elite liberal intelligentsia, noted conservative Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, offers some strenuous arguments as well as fuzzy generalizations. Thus, his attacks on the war on poverty, sex education and criminal justice policies forged in the 1960s counter some slippery rhetoric by their defenders, yet his suggestion that these policies exacerbated things is questionable. Sowell deconstructs how statistics can be distorted to prove assumptions (that lack of prenatal care is the cause of black infant mortality) and gleefully skewers “Teflon prophets” such as John Kenneth Galbraith (who said that big companies are immune from the market) and Paul Ehrlich. While “the anointed” favor explanations that exempt individuals from personal responsibility and seek painless solutions, those with the “tragic vision” see policies as trade-offs. Sowell scores his targets for disdaining their opponents, but this book also invokes caricature-these days, many of “the anointed” are less unreconstructed than he assumes.

PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION by Karen Huffman Review

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:23:00 -0400

Covering all the major concepts and theories while still presenting the exciting and practical applications of psychology is a challenge. In order to meet this challenge, Huffman presents a fully integrated package that sets the stage for a perfectly choreographed learning experience. It includes a pedagogical system that makes psychology easier to learn. Readers will also find a robust suite of multimedia learning resources, including animations, interactive exercises, simulations and virtual experiments, and brief video clips. Psychologists can use the ninth edition as a reference for the theories and concepts.

ARIEL by Steven R. Boyett Review

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:31:00 -0400

I Just re-read this after 15 years and it’s still one of the best urban fantasy novels out there. Steven R. Boyett’s Ariel is a magical yet down-to-earth fantasy with human and non-human characters you can believe in, even love. It’s written with an intelligence and maturity that set it apart from your average book with a unicorn on the cover. The e-book version contains at least one chapter that did not appear in the print version, and a nice afterword by Boyett. For years I’d buy every copy of Ariel I found in used book stores to give to friends. Now they’re an endangered species. I recommend finding a copy of this book in whatever form and adding it to the list of books you’ll re-read every decade or so.

OUT OF CAPTIVITY by Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes, Keith Stansell, Gary Brozek Review

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:27:00 -0400

On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American civilian contractors—Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes—crash-landed in the mountainous jungle of Colombia. Dazed and shaken, they emerged from the plane bloodied and injured as gunfire rained down around them. As of that moment they were prisoners of the FARC, a Colombian terrorist and Marxist rebel organization. In an instant they had become American captives in Colombia’s volatile and ongoing conflict, which has lasted for almost fifty years.

In Out of Captivity, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first time their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tracing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC. Their story takes you inside one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations, going behind enemy lines with vivid and haunting imagery. Their words conjure a reality that few people have ever encountered—from sleeping on beds literally carved out of the jungle to escaping Colombian military air strikes under the cover of darkness to being bound with steel chains by their captors. Describing backbreaking starvation marches and forced isolation, the authors chronicle their confrontations and interactions with the FARC guerrilla soldiers—a motley crew of brainwashed, idealistic teenagers and seasoned vet-erans who’ve been around long enough to realize that the only way out of the FARC is in a body bag.

Though the physical punishments their bodies endured were unrelenting, the psychological battles they waged were the ultimate test of their resolve. With candid detail, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes relate the perilous mental struggles they each experienced, as they grappled with feelings of guilt, fear, and anxiety for the families and lives they’d left behind. Exposing the transformative power of captivity, they show how they turned these fears into strengths, using their memories and their families, their pasts and their futures, to motivate them in their quest for survival.

A harrowing account of one of the longest civilian hostage crises in United States history, Out of Captivity is a remarkable and compelling exploration of how far three Americans were willing to go as they fought to stay alive for themselves, their families, and one another.

THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS by Robert D. Novak Review

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:25:00 -0400

Novak cuts to the chase, beginning this memoir with his first in-person encounter with Joseph Wilson, in the green room of NBC’s Meet the Press in 2003. Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, would eventually form the center of a major career-jeopardizing controversy for Novak, who is blunt in his immediate low opinion of the man. And that characteristic bluntness reigns throughout as he recalls 50 years of political reporting. He was working for the Associated Press when he met his mentor, Willard Edwards, a “diehard right-wing Republican who was part of the Red-hunting establishment.” Edwards is only one of the fascinating characters—both reporters and politicos—appearing throughout the book, including John and Bobby Kennedy, George W. Bush, Ted Turner, and Novak’s former partner, Rowland Evans. He is frank and unapologetic about his work, his viewpoints, and his personal shortcomings. Ambitious and, for a while, very much a part of the liquor-soaked Washington power scene, Novak neglected his family.

I DRINK FOR A REASON by David Cross Review

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:35:00 -0400

After a decade spent in isolation in the Ugandan jungles thinking about stuff, David Cross has written his first book. Known for roles on the small screen such as “never-nude” Tobias Funke on Arrested Development and the role of “David” in Mr. Show With Bob And David, as well as a hugely successful stand-up routine full of sharp-tongued rants and rages, Cross has carved out his place in American comedy. Whether deflating the pomposity of religious figures, calling out the pathetic symbiosis of pseudo-celebrity and its leaching fandom, or merely pushing the buttons of the way-too-easily offended P.C. left or the caustic, double-standard of the callous (but funnier) right, Cross has something to say about everyone, including his own ridiculous self. Now, for the first time, Cross is weaving his media mockery, celebrity denunciation, religious commentary and sheer madness into book form, revealing the true story behind his almost existential distaste of Jim Belushi, disclosing the up-to-now unpublished minutes to a meeting of Fox television network executives, and offering up a brutally grotesque run-in with Bill O’Reilly. And as if this wasn’t enough for your laughing pleasure in these troubled times, some of the pieces splinter off with additional material being created online in exclusive video and animated web content created solely for the book-a historical first.

THE THIRD CHAPTER by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Review

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:55:00 -0400

New opportunities for creativity and self-fulfillment await men and women between the ages of 50 and 75. Sociologist Lawrence-Lightfoot (Balm in Gilead) coins the term Third Chapter to describe the rich possibilities as illustrated in her extended interviews with 40 well-educated, affluent Americans. Founding her thesis on classic formulations of life-stage development, particularly that of Erik Erikson, the author offers a wide range of models for people who feel burned out, restless or dissatisfied with their lives, describing how each of her subjects became a different person. A newspaper executive retires and devotes himself to fiction writing and playing jazz piano; a law firm partner leaves work behind and develops small urban gardens; in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, an artist organizes interfaith quilting groups; a neuro-biologist moves from the laboratory to the public arena, to work with HIV/AIDS patients in East Africa.

LORDS OF THE SEA by John R. Hale Review

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:10:00 -0400

Historian and archeologist Hale brings both skill sets to bear in this account of an Athens whose golden age and democratic institutions depended on its navy. Between 489 and 322 B.C., Athens built, ruled and lost an empire extending from the Aegean to the Black Sea. The sea permeated every sphere of Athenian life, and most well-known Athenians were identified with sea power: Thucydides and Sophocles commanded fleets. The fleets were based on triremes, reflecting a doctrine favoring the craft and cunning of the steersman and rowers over brute force. Those skills were a product of the commitment and cooperation of free men who played an increasing role in Athenian politics at the expense of those better off and higher born. In times of crisis, all free adult males were expected to board the triremes. Athens’s rule of the sea came to an end when a cabal of aristocrats betrayed the fleet to the Macedonians. And that was possible only because the mysterious spiritual essence sustaining Athenian effort and sacrifice had been lost as well.

WIFE OF THE GODS by Kwei Quartey

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:03:28 -0400

Quartey’s approach to detective work is less charming and more sociological than McCall Smith’s, his setting more rural and susceptible to the ways of magicians. There’s plenty of room for them both, and the newcomer is most welcome.

- Kirkus Reviews

THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:57:28 -0400

Just as he did in The Shadow of the Wind, Zafón leads the reader, in this hybrid of romance and tragedy, to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, through a labyrinth of love and passion, of deception and intrigue. And once more the language, as grandiloquent as it is beautiful, creates a magic spell that’s almost impossible to break.

-Literarische Welt

THE WALKING PEOPLE by Mary Beth Keane

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:48:08 -0400

Mary Beth Keane has produced a compelling drama of transatlantic Irish life, told with a truthfulness that is felt not only in the sweep and charm of the story but in its very sentences. The Walking People is an irresistible blend of narrative and syntactic authenticity.

-Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureate

CENSORING AN IRANIAN LOVE STORY by Shahriar Mandanipour

Sun, 24 May 2009 12:34:49 -0400

With the many books about Iran flooding the shelves, it is a joy to come across Censoring an Iranian Love Story, which offers a perspective that is neither sentimental nor nostalgic, romanticized nor demonized. Looking at his country and its inhabitants through a fiction writer’s authentic spectacles, Shahriar Mandanipour has written a novel that is witty, smart, funny, and honest. It is an important book for our times.

-Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati

THE LASSA WARD by Dr. Ross Donaldson

Sat, 16 May 2009 16:05:44 -0400

Required reading for all medical students and anyone looking for a little armchair medical adventure.

-Library Journal

HELLO GOODBYE by Emily Chenoweth

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:11:23 -0400

First novelist Chenoweth … writes gracefully and eloquently of loss and love, portraying both generations at their most self-absorbed and most vulnerable.

-Library Journal