 |
|
|
|
|
| Non-fiction |
|
|  | Albright, David PEDDLING PERIL
January 15, 2010 - So writes nuclear-proliferation expert Albright in the introduction to his rewarding, though occasionally dense book. The author spins a cautionary thesis about the inexorable proliferation of nuclear weapons, which began with A.Q. Khan's global
|
| | Bird, Kai CROSSING MANDELBAUM GATE
January 15, 2010 - Titled after the gate between East and West Jerusalem, the story moves from the arrival of the author's family in Jerusalem in 1956, where his father, Eugene Bird, was appointed, through his stints in Dhahran and Cairo, until the Americans were
|
|  | Bowden, Charles MURDER CITY
January 15, 2010 - In 2006, shortly after his controversial election, Mexican President Felipe Calderžn, whom half of the nation considers illegitimate, declared war on the region's drug cartels. He sent thousands of federal troops to Juárez's state of Chihuahua,
|
| | Brinkley, Alan THE PUBLISHER
January 15, 2010 - The son of a Presbyterian missionary, Henry R. Luce (1898–1967) grew up in China. Eager for distinction as a scholarship student at Hotchkiss and Yale, Luce, along with classmate Brit Hadden, founded Time in 1923. This invention of a weekly news
|
| | Brodie, Laura LOVE IN A TIME OF HOMESCHOOLING
January 15, 2010 - The author had no religious or philosophical objection to the public-school system, but she knew it was not serving her ten-year-old daughter well. Julia displayed "a deep inwardness, an engagement with her own imaginative universe," and her mother
|
| | Bunker, Nick MAKING HASTE FROM BABYLON
January 15, 2010 - Most stories about the settlers focus on the period after 1620, when the pilgrims first landed in the New World to found Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts. Bunker takes a distinctly wider view, with about half of the narrative
|
| | Collier, Paul THE PLUNDERED PLANET
January 15, 2010 - Building on the startling data he analyzed in The Bottom Billion (2007), the author delves into some of the trickiest issues facing mankind, including two paradoxical questions: "Who owns natural resources?" and "Who deserves the profits that are borne from natural resources?" The answers are integral to the developing societies making up the "bottom billion," whose potential to rise from poverty may depend on their ability to discover and manage their natural assets
|
| | Cruise, David WILD HORSE ANNIE AND THE LAST OF THE MUSTANGS
January 15, 2010 - Canadian writers Cruise and Griffiths (co-authors: Vancouver: A Novel, 2003, etc.) seem a touch surprised at the total package that was Velma Johnston, a secretary turned cage-rattler. She was stricken by polio at an early age, drank copiously,
|
| | Echols, Alice HOT STUFF
January 15, 2010 - Echols (American Studies and History/Rutgers Univ.; Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks, 2002, etc.) opens with the memory of one of the early zeniths of her music-programming career in the mid-1970s. She worked at the Rubaiyat discotheque
|
| | Eubanks, Steve TO WIN AND DIE IN DIXIE
January 15, 2010 - Edgar was found bleeding in an Atlanta street and died moments later. Eubanks (Golf Freek: One Man's Quest to Play As Many Rounds of Golf As Possible. For Free., 2007, etc.) tells how Howell and some co-workers came upon the dying golfer and how,
|
| | Frost, Randy O. STUFF
January 15, 2010 - Frost (Psychology/Smith Coll.) and Steketee (Social Work/Boston Univ.), co-authors, with David Tolin, of Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding (2007), were the first social scientists to conduct systematic studies
|
| | Gay, Timothy M. SATCH, DIZZY & RAPID ROBERT
January 15, 2010 - As a result of a few primary factors, interracial baseball came to the fore during the 1930s and '40s. These included the flourishing of the Negro Leagues; the emergence of Satchel Paige as, perhaps, baseball's best pitcher (see Larry Tye's Satchel,
|
| | Goldstein, Richard HELLUVA TOWN
January 15, 2010 - If there's one point that this series of vignettes drives home more than any other, it's how dramatically the perception of, and support for, war has changed on the home front since the 1940s. New York Times writer Goldstein (Desperate Hours: The
|
| | Hastings, Max WINSTON'S WAR
January 15, 2010 - When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, the Nazi war machine had swept aside the British in Norway and were headed for France. The time for talk of appeasement and defeatism had passed. "I felt as if I were walking with destiny," Churchill
|
| | Johnson, Ian A MOSQUE IN MUNICH
January 15, 2010 - Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter Johnson (Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China, 2004) was surprised to learn that the Islamic Center in Munich held such a prominent place in the Muslim world. He soon discovered that
|
| | Kiriakou, John THE RELUCTANT SPY
January 15, 2010 - While he was pursuing a masters' degree at George Washington University, a knowledgeable professor steered Kiriakou toward "the Company." He joined the CIA in 1990 as a "leadership analyst" in the Directorate of Intelligence. After a few years he
|
| | Kurlansky, Mark THE EASTERN STARS
January 15, 2010 - Prolific nonfiction author Kurlansky (The Food of a Younger Land, 2009, etc.) sails smoothly into the bay of baseball, despite a few anchor drops into superfluity (e.g., explanations of a sacrifice bunt and a switch-hitter). Nonetheless, the author
|
| | Lauren, Jillian SOME GIRLS
January 15, 2010 - Christened "Mariah" by her ballerina birth mother, the author was renamed "Jillian" by her Jewish adoptive parents who acquired her through an illegal "gray-market" transaction. A rocky childhood in suburban New Jersey was followed by a hardscrabble
|
| | Leve, Ariel IT COULD BE WORSE, YOU COULD BE ME
January 15, 2010 - Sunday Times Magazine contributor Leve apparently likes only two things: drinking coffee and talking on the phone. But even those things have their problems. She worries, for example, that the deli proprietor has customers to whom he pays more
|
| | Luz, Susan THE NIGHTINGALE OF MOSUL
January 15, 2010 - The author teams with Brotherton (We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories from the Band of Brothers, 2009, etc.) to create an engrossing account of her adventurous life. In 2006, her unit was called to active duty in a combat zone. Even though
|
| | McKibben, Bill EAARTH
January 15, 2010 - In accessible prose and a tone of wistfulness about the state of our planet, environmental activist McKibben (Fight Global Warming Now, 2007, etc.) demonstrates how global warming has already occurred and is irreversible. He describes a new
|
| | McPhee, John SILK PARACHUTE
January 15, 2010 - Here the author is at his most personal, far from the cool remove that has characterized so much of his superb, voluminous output. As usual, these journalistic pieces are not assignments. McPhee examines things he finds intriguing: canoeing,
|
| | Morris Jr., Roy LIGHTING OUT FOR THE TERRITORY
January 15, 2010 - The editor of Military Heritage magazine and author of books on the Civil War and other topics from that era (The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, 2008, etc.) might seem
|
| | Morrison, Stacy FALLING APART IN ONE PIECE
January 15, 2010 - The author had recently been fired from her magazine job, had an infant son and a house in Brooklyn when her husband sighed and pronounced, "I'm done with this." To his credit, he didn't bolt or have an affair, but stayed put until they ironed out
|
| | Painter, Nell Irvin THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
January 15, 2010 - The notion of race is illusory and elusive, yet it has been a topic on the minds of many people since…well, mostly not that long ago, though the author traces the encounters of African, Greek, Scythian and Celt far into the past, sometimes getting a
|
| | Place, Vanessa THE GUILT PROJECT
January 15, 2010 - By definition all of the author's sex-offender clients are legally guilty. Once apprised of the particulars of their felonies—to spare the queasy, especially lurid details are confined to appendices—many readers will decline to consider them
|
| | Potter, Andrew THE AUTHENTICITY HOAX
January 15, 2010 - A journalist with a doctorate in philosophy, the author writes with authority about the ways in which today's men and women seek authenticity, or meaning, in their lives—loft-living, ecotourism, yoga, the slow-food movement, etc. Dissatisfied with a
|
| | Rutkow, Ira SEEKING THE CURE
January 15, 2010 - Retired surgeon and public-health professional Rutkow (James A. Garfield, 2006, etc.) provides an anecdotal overview of the theory and practice of medicine in the United States from the colonial period to the present. "The evolution of American
|
| | Sachs, Harvey THE NINTH
January 15, 2010 - Former conductor Sachs (Music History/Curtis Institute of Music; The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, 2002, etc.) leaves no doubt of his intentions, declaring immediately that the Ninth is "one of the most precedent-shattering and influential
|
| | Shannon, Lisa A THOUSAND SISTERS
January 15, 2010 - Settling in Portland, Ore., in her late 20s, photographer Shannon thought her life was in place. Everything shifted, however, when she learned of the war and unthinkable tragedies taking place in the Congo, a conflict borne out of the Rwandan
|
| | Shields, David REALITY HUNGER
January 15, 2010 - In an era of hip-hop sampling, James Frey, artistic collage and the funhouse mirror of so-called "reality TV," Shields maintains that so many of the values underpinning cultural conventions are at best anachronisms and at worst lies. And he does so
|
| | wa Thiong'o, Ngugi DREAMS IN A TIME OF WAR
January 15, 2010 - Thanks to books by Ishmael Beah, Joseph Sebarenzi and others, readers outside Africa have a good sense of the face of modern wars on the continent. Firsthand accounts of colonial-era conflicts are fewer, which makes the author's memoir of the
|
|
|
|
|
| Online Exclusive
|
| Talk Like a Man: Robert B. Parker Tribute
January 15, 2010 - I still remember the first time I heard Spenser's voice ring out in the opening chapter of The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), as he razzes the college president who's trying to hire him. What's this guy's problem? I thought. Why does he have such an attitude? The attitude, I soon learned, had deep roots...Part of it was a temperamental similarity to Spenser's creator, Robert B. Parker, who died on Jan. 18th at age 77.
|
|
|
|
|
