Amy Scribner

NonfictionHistoryBiography

The Correspondents

Review by Amy Scribner

When we think of women’s contributions to World War II, what often comes to mind are bandanna-headed Rosie the Riveter types taking over factory work while the men were away. However, women journalists also reported on the war, facing challenges that male journalists did not, and their contributions are frequently overlooked.

Biographer Judith Mackrell’s wonderful new book, The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II, examines the war through the eyes of six reporters from this time. Mackrell posits that, though these women had a harder time accessing the front lines or the important political and military figures of the day, creative workarounds led to more nuanced and interesting coverage. “Over and over again,” Mackrell writes, “it was the restrictions imposed on women which, ironically, led to their finding more interestingly alternative views of the war.”

The six women Mackrell focuses on are Virginia Cowles, an American correspondent who started her career as a New York City society reporter; Sigrid Schultz, a brilliant and brave Berlin-based reporter whom readers may remember from Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts; Clare Hollingworth, an ambitious and idealistic young Brit; Helen Kirkpatrick, whose college internship in Geneva led to a lifelong love of covering international relations; Virginia Cowles, an upper-class Bostonian who covered the war while remaining “disconcertingly glamorous in lipstick and high heels”; and Martha Gellhorn, a dazzling writer whom history primarily, and unfairly, remembers as Ernest Hemingway’s third wife.

Mackrell effortlessly weaves together the personal and professional stories of these six journalists, producing a hearty biography that feels almost like a novel with its rich details. She brings each woman to life, tracing her childhood and entry into journalism, as well as her work and romantic life, against the backdrop of a simmering conflict that boiled over into a disastrous war. Although these women covered hard news, delivering scoops about impending military moves, they also wrote human stories that almost certainly would have been underreported had the war been left entirely to male correspondents.

For example, Martha Gellhorn, one of the first reporters to bear witness to the Dachau concentration camp, wrote about one Polish inmate in the camp infirmary who was so wasted that his jawbone “seemed to be cutting into his skin.” After that experience, she wrote, “I know I have never again felt that lovely easy lively hope in life which I knew before, not in life, not in our species, not in our future on earth.”

Judith Mackrell’s biography of six female journalists during World War II feels almost like a novel with its rich details.
NonfictionAmerican History

The real spirit of the season

Feature by Amy Scribner

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

BAH, HUMBUG
When I think holiday cheer, I think curmudgeonly comedian Lewis Black. Okay, maybe not. Still, his irreverent and poignant I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas is well worth your time this season.

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

Indeed. Black spends much of the book hilariously skewering the excess of it all, the overeating and excessive spending. And yet, given his cynical view of organized religion and holiday cheer, this book finds Black in a surprisingly reflective mood. He’s at his best when he reflects on the good in humanity, such as when he describes his recent USO tour in Iraq, or muses on the disastrous earthquake in Haiti:

“No one was worried about being a Republican or a Democrat,” Black writes. “There was no debating a budget. There were no arguments over which side had the cheapest Band-Aids. There were no words, just action.

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

Happy holidays to you, Lewis Black.

SIMPLE GIFTS
And now for something completely different: a new book by Joel Osteen, pastor of America’s biggest megachurch, Lakewood Church in Houston. In The Christmas Spirit, Osteen argues that instead of toys and jewelry, the best Christmas gift is the gift of our time.

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

“The wise woman reset Paul’s clock that Christmas,” writes Osteen. “She reminded him that he should slow down, live in the moment, enjoy and be grateful for every minute as a parent.”

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

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

Sam Finkelstein eventually moved to Canton, Ohio, renaming himself Sam Stone. A successful businessman and father of three, Stone and his wife, Minna, dreamed up the idea of helping those left in dire straits by the Depression. They placed a newspaper ad as “B. Virdot,” an anonymous benefactor who offered $10 each to dozens of families one Christmas season.

After Stone died, Gup’s mother gave him the suitcase of letters sent to B. Virdot in response to his ad. Gup reached out to interview descendents of the letter-writers, and in A Secret Gift, he relays their remarkable stories of distress and recovery in Depression-era America. He opens the door on the quiet shame so many felt in asking for help:

“For many today it is difficult to understand the stigma attached to going on the dole or accepting charity,” he writes. “The shame of poverty was tolerable—so many were in distress that Christmas of 1933—but the loss of face that came of publicly applying for relief, of claiming that one’s needs were equal to or superior to another’s, of enduring the gauntlet of probing questions, of surrendering one’s dignity and privacy, for many was too much to ask.”

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

WORDS OF WISDOM
In the Dark Streets Shineth, a quietly powerful book from Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough, combines photos and text to tell the story of how President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill came together in December 1941 to encourage their nations during one of the bleakest holidays in modern history.

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

“This is a strange Christmas Eve,” Churchill told a crowd of 20,000 gathered on the White House lawn. “Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. . . .

“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us. . . .”

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

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

NonfictionMemoir

True tales of love and marriage

Feature by Amy Scribner

If a heart-shaped box of chocolates just won’t cut it this Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these unique takes on finding—and keeping—love. They’re entertaining, thought-provoking and way lower on calories than a chocolate cherry cordial.

MEET ME IN MANHATTAN
What is it about New York City romances? We love those stories about couples who happen upon each other at the top of the Statue of Liberty or wandering through Times Square. Author Ariel Sabar has a theory about why Manhattan is so conducive to coupling: It’s all by design. “If you want strangers to talk, give them something to talk about: an unusual sculpture, a mime, a juggler, a musician, a street character. . . . It takes two strangers with ostensibly nothing in common and, through a shared, immediate experience, links them, even if just for a moment.”

Sabar’s thoroughly engaging Heart of the City profiles nine couples who met at famous New York City public spaces, much like his own parents, a Kurdish Iraqi father and upper-crust American mother who met by chance in Washington Square Park. The stories span generations, from the sailor who met a lost teenage girl in Central Park in 1941, to Claire and Tom, who met in 1969 at the top of the Empire State Building (“with its setbacks, clean lines, and needle-tip mast, the building looked like some precision scientific instrument, a scalpel under operating room lights”). Sabar has teased out each of these couples’ magnificent, ordinary stories and compiled them into a sparkling love letter to the city.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Want a more practical take on love? Settle in with Spousonomics, a wry and convincing treatise from two financial journalists on why economics is the key to building a marriage that endures through good times and bad. Paula Szuchman, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and Jenny Anderson of the New York Times clearly explain why common marital problems can be solved by applying simple economic principles. Fights over housework are really just an issue of division of labor. Are never-ending arguments the bane of your marriage? You might be loss-averse. And sex, say Szuchman and Anderson, is a simple “function of supply and demand.”

The thing is, Spousonomics actually makes a lot of sense, and you don’t feel like you’re reading a hellish undergrad textbook. When they explain the principle of incentives (a tool to get what you want), you understand that in economics, incentives work because they entice you to buy a pair of shoes just to get a second pair half off. In a marriage, incentives work because they get your husband to finish his honey-do list. Spousonomics “doesn’t demand that you look each other in the eye until you weep tears of remorse. It doesn’t require you to keep an anger log, a courage journal, or a feelings calendar.” It is simply a common-sense, laugh-out-loud guide to a happier marriage.

HEART, SOUL . . . AND KIDNEY
Angela Balcita has already undergone one kidney transplant and needs another when her new college boyfriend Charlie O’Doyle offers his kidney—an unorthodox way to kick off a romance, to be sure. Moonface is about what happens after she says yes to this most unusual proposal.

Balcita writes with humor and dignity about her second transplant at age 28, outlining the incredibly complex, fascinating process of removing and replacing an essential part of the body. But at its core, Moonface is a not-so-simple love story. “I wanted to take all of him, not just his kidney,” Balcita writes. “I wanted us to be like one person, one brain and one body, moving through the world. It was already starting to feel this way.”

Most gratifyingly, unlike so many memoirs of illness and recovery, this one keeps going after Balcita gets better. It won’t spoil the reader’s enjoyment to reveal that she and Charlie stay together and even have a baby. With her sharp ear for dialogue and unflinching honesty, Balcita offers a sweet story of love and healing.

If a heart-shaped box of chocolates just won’t cut it this Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these unique takes on finding—and keeping—love. They’re entertaining, thought-provoking and way lower on calories than a chocolate cherry cordial.

MEET ME IN MANHATTAN
What is it about New…

Memoir

On the front lines of motherhood

Feature by Amy Scribner

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is both a blessing and a challenge—and that you deserve to celebrate Mother’s Day each year.

A FRESH NEW VOICE
In this wry, warts-and-all memoir, Good Housekeeping contributing writer Kyran Pittman offers up snapshots from her life, and she is nothing if not very, very human. We’re barely into the first chapter of Planting Dandelions when she reveals that she cheated on her first husband. Later in the book, she writes about very nearly cheating on her second husband, and she is equally candid on plenty of other topics, including nearly losing their house to foreclosure.

Yet this confessional tone is balanced with her clear affection for family life in all its messiness. Now a mommy of three, Pittman is just as passionate when writing about life in suburbia as when musing on postpartum sex.

“The slope of my nutritive backslide can be plotted by each of my kids’ first birthday cakes,” she writes. “When the oldest turned one, I made him a whole wheat carrot cake with pineapple-sweetened cream cheese on top. Two years later, it was a homemade chocolate layer cake, frosted with buttercream, for my middle child. Three years after that, I ran by the warehouse club and picked up a slab of corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, spray-painted blue, for the baby.”

Being a mom isn’t always (or even usually) glamorous, but Pittman recognizes the beauty of family life in this interesting, funny and fresh entry in the mommy memoir genre.

ADVICE YOU CAN TRUST
I’ll be honest: This book reminded me why I will never, ever have another baby. I was exhausted just reading the section called “A baby’s life: sleeping, eating, peeing and pooping,” with its accompanying chart on 24 hours in the life of a newborn. On the plus side, I was glad to learn my stomach wouldn’t be in any better shape had I used cocoa butter during pregnancy.

The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is full of such useful tidbits, penned by three Los Angeles OB/GYNs whose TV show “Deliver Me” airs on Oprah’s new network. With common-sense information and advice on everything from breastfeeding to baby blues, these are the doctors every new mommy wants at her side.

The comparisons to the seminal What to Expect When You’re Expecting are inevitable, but the Mommy Docs write in a more conversational, matter-of-fact tone. With anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book, authors Yvonne Bohn, Allison Hill and Alane Park share their own experiences as mothers and doctors. They do occasionally lapse into medical jargon, but mostly this is a thorough and useful guide from conception to pregnancy and delivery.

THE GIFT OF LOVE
This book touts itself as “dispatches from the ridiculous front lines of parenthood,” but it’s actually more like “dispatches from two incredibly selfless and loving humans.” Astonishing and deeply humbling, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene’s account of raising four biological children and five more adopted from Bulgaria and Ethiopia.

After their eldest biological child left for college, Greene and husband Don worried they’d be empty nesters before they knew it. Some might solve this by planning a home remodel or a retirement vacation. Instead, the couple brought home five more children over the next decade.

“Donny and I feel most alive, most thickly in the cumbersome richness of life, with children underfoot. The things we like to do, we would just as soon do with children,” Greene writes. “Is travel really worth undertaking if it involves fewer than two taxis to the airport, three airport luggage carts with children riding and waving on top of them, a rental van, and a hall’s length of motel rooms?”

But Greene is no Mother Theresa (thank goodness). In one of the most affecting chapters, she writes candidly about her struggles after bringing home their new son, Jesse. He doesn’t speak English and is developmentally delayed from years in a Bulgarian orphanage. Greene anguishes over her decision, at one point thinking, “If I leave right now, drive all night, and check into a motel in southern Indiana, no one could find me.”
Needless to say, Jesse eventually fits into the family as one of many puzzle pieces. In the end, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a lovely patchwork of moments from a house filled with love, life and acceptance.

LIFE GOES ON
“Four months ago I saw my husband lying in a coffin. Tomorrow I get to hold my baby boy in my arms for the first time.”

In Signs of Life, a clear-eyed account of the months following her husband’s accidental death at age 27, author Natalie Taylor recounts what it was like to be a five-months-pregnant widow, navigating a strange new world with humor and honesty.

A high school English teacher, Taylor turns to classic literature to help tell her tale. It’s a neat trick that works surprisingly well. She compares her sense of powerlessness to that of migrant farm worker George from Of Mice and Men, and her grief and frustration to the scene from The Catcher in the Rye when Holden Caulfield breaks his parents’ windows after the death of his brother. Pop culture also figures in Taylor’s imagination, as when she fantasizes about a version of the popular TV series “The Bachelor,” which she would call “The Widowette”: “I’d insist that the entire show be filmed here in Michigan, in the middle of February when the days are gray and bleak and snowy and no one has a tan,” she writes. “The first guy to wake up early and scrape the ice off of my car and shovel the driveway gets a rose.”

Taylor’s story really kicks into high gear after she gives birth to son Kai. Through sleepless nights and maternity leave, she struggles to find her new normal. This is a story remarkably free of self-pity, instead focusing on the power of relying on others and drawing on the strength you didn’t know you had.

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is…

ParentingMemoir

Experiences only a mother could love

Feature by Amy Scribner

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as a present for Mom or as a gift for yourself.

A GRAND ADVENTURE

Anyone who read Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott’s seminal book on the trials and tribulations of motherhood, will be flabbergasted to learn that her infant son, Sam, is now a 19-year-old father. Although the pregnancy was a surprise, Lamott welcomes her new grandson, Jax, with her hallmark humor and faith (and a healthy dash of neurosis) in Some Assembly Required.

She writes candidly of her mixed feelings about the baby’s mother, a lovely but headstrong young woman who keeps Lamott firmly at arm’s length when it comes to raising Jax. Still, the two women forge a deep, if sometimes fragile, bond as they set about the messy business of building an extended family. Insightful, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Some Assembly Required is Lamott at her very best.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

The subtitle of Making Babies, Anne Enright’s marvelously irreverent look at having children later in life, is “Stumbling into Motherhood,” and that is just what the Irish writer did when she and her husband had their first child after 18 years of marriage.

Is there anything better than a book that doesn’t romanticize pregnancy? When Enright recalls her pregnancy as a time in which she “sat and surfed the Net like some terrible turnip, gagging and leaning back in my chair,” I laughed in agreement. I kept laughing throughout the whole book, including the section called “How to Get Trolleyed While Breastfeeding.” (“Trolleyed” being a very Irish way of saying “drunk.”)

That’s not to say some of that laughter wasn’t through a few tears. Never has the bittersweet impact of motherhood been summed up more poignantly than by Enright. “This is what motherhood has done to me,” she writes. “I cannot watch violent films (I used to quite like violent films), I can’t even watch ones where the violence is ironical (I used to love irony). I cry at all funerals. I look with yearning at the airport road. I am complacent to the point of neglect about my body. I shop where the fat girls shop (it is a different place). For months I do not shop at all.”

Making Babies is a must-read for anyone who’s ever experienced the joys of motherhood—and ’fessed up to its agonies.

TO THE TOP

I was bracing to be slightly annoyed by the ambitious mother and her overachieving mountain-climbing daughter in Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peakbagging Adventure. But Patricia Ellis Herr is no tiger mom, pushing her daughter Alex to the brink. She is simply a mom who recognized her daughter’s boundless energy and helped her harness it.

The duo climbs nearly 50 New England peaks during their year-and-a-half adventure, an amazing accomplishment given that Alex was only five years old when they started. The quest is not without its harrowing moments, such as when Herr forgets to put windproof gloves on Alex and they have to turn back 200 yards from summiting for fear of frostbite. Add to this the fact that Herr’s husband—Alex’s father—lost both his legs to frostbite in a mountain-climbing accident at age 17.

But Up is marked more by the sweet, small moments the mother-and-daughter team experience while climbing, as when Alex asks her mother why a boy told her she can’t be good at math because she’s a girl. Herr’s account is really half hiking reference manual and half meditation on how to instill independence and confidence at a young age—an odd and oddly compelling combination.

TREASURING THE UNEXPECTED

As soon as the doctor laid the baby in her arms, Kelle Hampton knew her daughter had Down syndrome. “I will never forget my daughter in my arms, opening her eyes over and over . . . she locked eyes with mine and stared . . . bore holes into my soul. Love me. Love me. I’m not what you expected, but oh please love me.”

Hampton is best known for her acclaimed blog, Enjoying the Small Things. In Bloom, a searing and brave portrait of her baby’s first year, Hampton opens up about her fears and jubilation, and what she calls “the throbbing pain of losing what I had expected.” She recounts the late nights doing Internet research on what to expect as Nella grew up, and the triumph of their first walk for Down syndrome awareness.

Filled with personal photos from the delivery room through Nella’s first birthday, Bloom gives a whole new meaning to the term “open book.”

SONG OF MYSELF

My Story, My Song is the slim but lyrical memoir of Lucimarian Roberts, the mother of “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts. The elder Roberts, who has become known to GMA viewers through her daughter’s occasional references and a couple of appearances on the program, reveals a delightfully upbeat voice at the age of 87. In the book, co-written with Missy Buchanan, she recalls her racially charged childhood in 1920s Akron, Ohio, her years at historically black Howard University and her experiences as the wife of a career Air Force officer and the mother of four. Primarily, though, My Story, My Song focuses on Roberts’ Christian faith and the gospel music that has been a constant companion throughout her life.

“I sing because the music of the church speaks my soul language,” she writes. “I sing because these songs are tightly woven into the texture of who I am. Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts. Child of God.” Brief reflections from daughter Robin are sprinkled throughout, small but beautiful gems in a truly sparkling book.

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as…

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

The secrets of successful suitors

Feature by Amy Scribner

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating, Love in the Time of Algorithms, Dan Slater traces the concept as far back as the 1960s, when a geeky Harvard undergrad gave up on mixers and devised a $3 matchmaking questionnaire that was then transferred to a punch card and fed through an IBM computer the size of a bookcase. In fact, Slater’s own parents met through one such service, which spat out a printed list of matched college students and mailing addresses—a far cry from today’s sophisticated services, like Match.com and OkCupid, which use complicated algorithms to match up potential suitors. But doesn’t some valuable information get lost when we go online to find love? What about scent, a hair toss, a flirtatious look? Turns out, that doesn’t matter as much as we once thought. “People will use whatever communication tools they have at their disposal to connect,” Slater concludes. “A mood becomes an emoticon. A fast email response communicates warmth. . . . Of course, you can’t smell the person you’re looking at—until later—but meanwhile, the computer is crunching more information than you could ever gather in a glance across the bar.”

CASANOVA’S CHARM

Betsy Prioleau may be an academic, but she writes like a dream. A study of the history and science of seducers, Swoon is sharp, sexy and completely engrossing. Prioleau examines both why some men are great seducers and how they do it. And Paul Newman-like looks don’t factor into the equation as much as one might think. Take Luke, a 31-year-old Brit living in Baltimore: “Luke is a too tall six feet seven inches, with chipmunk cheeks, a receding hairline, and rectangular geek glasses,” writes Prioleau, who heard about Luke from no fewer than four women. “Yet he’s an erotic mage with a flair for the pleasures of the flesh.” (See the book for more on that—probably not suitable for inclusion in this family publication.) Whether Prioleau is writing about Casanova, Bill Clinton or the great French actor Gérard Depardieu (“I turn around, and it’s as though I’ve touched a live socket”), she brings to life those elusive qualities of the world’s great seducers.

LIFE AFTER ‘I DO’

In these times of disposable marriages, the story of Barbara “Cutie” Cooper and husband Harry inspires: They met in 1937 and spent the next 73 years together. “He thought I was special, and I agreed with him,” Cooper writes. “So as long as he thought I was the kingpin, what was there to discuss?” Their granddaughters Kim and Chinta started a blog in 2008 called The OGs (Original Grandparents), where they shared videos chronicling their grandparents’ love story. The blog translates nicely to their book Fall in Love for Life, a delightfully sweet mix of memoir and self-help. Cutie offers smart and surprisingly modern advice on love: “Make time in your busy life for romantic getaways,” she advises. “Turn off the cell phones and leave the computer at home. You’d be amazed what just a night or two away from it all can do for your love life.” Now in her 90s, and a widow since 2010, Cutie has clearly kept her perspective and her humor. “Harry was always five years my senior, which means that he had five years to sow his wildest oats before I came along,” she writes. “Maybe this means that the next five years are all for me to enjoy, so that we come out equal in the end.”

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating,…

Parenting

Advice for getting through to your kids

Feature by Amy Scribner

As anyone who’s ever raised a child will tell you, they don’t come with instructions. Well, that may be true, but this fresh new crop of parenting guides offers stellar advice to help you raise healthy, happy, creative and productive kids.

CREATIVITY FOR LIFE

Julia Cameron has sold millions of copies of The Artist’s Way, her seminal book on how to find and embrace your creativity. In The Artist’s Way for Parents, Cameron helps parents unleash their children’s creativity and sense of wonder.

The beauty of Cameron’s advice is that she offers very specific, undaunting exercises for the, shall we say, less artistically inclined among us. For example, she suggests spending an entire evening with no screens: no iPads, no TV, no movies. That’s it. Don’t force watercolors and canvases on your child. Just spend time together and see what happens. “This may cause a great deal of resistance and anxiety, but if you can power through, the connection you will ultimately make with yourself and your family members will be deeper for it,” she says.

There is definitely a spiritual bent to Cameron’s work—readers of her memoirs know she is a Christian. But hers is a gentle, ecumenical approach, and she is never off-putting. Rather, her interest is in supporting calm, loving environments where children are free to explore and express themselves.

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

I’ve been dreading certain questions since my first child was born nine years ago, so I was happy to find some guidance for navigating those tricky conversations. Mom, I’m Not a Kid Anymore by Sue Sanders offers funny and useful advice on how to answer everything from “Do you believe in God?” to “You and Dad do that?”

Sanders has a teenage daughter, which I’d say is pretty much the only expertise required of someone writing this kind of book. She takes on bullying, materialism and slang (which she calls “the lingua franca of adolescence”) with a firm, positive and loving approach. She unflinchingly examines her own foibles in the service of making a larger point (like the time her daughter, then 4 years old, skipped down the city street shouting, “Mommy loves wine!”).

Sanders, who is based in Portland, Oregon, clearly loves parenting and has her eye on the end goal: raising a daughter who will become a productive and independent adult. But not too quickly: “She will soon be pulling away, literally, down the driveway and seeing us and her childhood in the rearview mirror. I know that one day in the not too distant future, I’ll give her the keys and let go. Or maybe not. Our city does have a fine public transportation system, after all.”

REAP THE REWARDS

It’s hard to beat advice from the director of the Yale Parenting Center.

In The Everyday Parenting Toolkit, Alan E. Kazdin starts with the premise that “you have to know what behaviors you would like, and when you want them. . . . That also gets you out of the habit of just noticing what you don’t want, and unwittingly reinforcing it with your exasperated attention.”

Kazdin’s method begins with the use of “antecedents,” a fancy word for anything that prompts a specific behavior. It could be verbal instructions, a note on the refrigerator door or the demonstration of a certain skill, such as using a fork. When the antecedent brings about the behavior you want, give your child positive reinforcement. Eventually, when the desired behavior appears regularly, you can fade out your use of the antecedent.

Lest you get the impression that Kazdin equates parenting with training a puppy, rest assured that he does not suggest using biscuits as rewards. He clearly relishes his work and is intrigued and excited by child and family dynamics, using real examples from his work with families at Yale to demonstrate his advice. This toolkit is jam-packed with solid advice any parent can use.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Effective parenting knows no nationality, according to Christine Gross-Loh, who, in Parenting Without Borders, shares what we can learn from families worldwide. Gross-Loh knows whereof she writes—she and her husband moved to Japan when their sons were 5 and 3, and they subsequently had two daughters while living there. They quickly found that what they had assumed were universal traits of good parents were, in fact, cultural. Japanese moms were more lax about sweets, television and behavior, and yet, Gross-Loh found, their children were just as mature and well-adjusted as hers.

Christine Gross-Loh explores what good parenting looks like in cultures all over the world.

Intrigued, Gross-Loh dove into researching parenting practices around the world, and culled the most interesting and surprising examples of how parents are succeeding. For instance, despite the stereotype of rigid and robotic Japanese schools, recess is actually as much a part of their curriculum as math and reading. Kids go outside as frequently as every hour. She visits one of some 700 “forest kindergartens” in Germany, where preschool children spend hours outdoors singing, building, playing and—horror of horrors for American parents—whittling with knives, which they have been taught to use safely.

She also examines schools in other parts of the world that promote healthy eating, in contrast to our tater tot and pizza-heavy cafeteria fare. “In Korea, a child at school would be served spicy chicken, noodles, soup, seasoned vegetables, and persimmon,” she writes. Gross-Loh finds schools in America that have begun emulating the fresher and veggie-heavy meals of foreign countries, concluding, “We can help our kids be ‘good at eating’ just as we’d teach them any other life skill, so that they can share in a world of food as love, as nurturance, and health.”

Gross-Loh offers an inspiring argument that we can all learn a lot from each other when it comes to the toughest job there is.

As anyone who’s ever raised a child will tell you, they don’t come with instructions. Well, that may be true, but this fresh new crop of parenting guides offers stellar advice to help you raise healthy, happy, creative and productive kids.

CREATIVITY FOR LIFE

Julia Cameron has…

NonfictionParenting

Finding your own parenting style

Feature by Amy Scribner

There’s no one way to successfully parent (if only there were—this whole parenting thing would be so much easier!). While the best advice is probably to follow your instincts and cut yourself a break when you make a mistake, these new books offer fresh, sometimes funny insight into the world’s hardest job.

I’m not going to lie—I fully expected to dislike The Brainy Bunch. Kip and Mona Lisa Harding have gotten a lot of media attention for homeschooling their children and getting six of their 10 kids into college by the age of 12. What’s the rush? I wondered indignantly. Why can’t you let your kids be kids?

But the Hardings’ story is very much one of putting love and family first. They are not pushing their children to overachieve—they are helping them find their own unique potential. The book is filled with useful tips, sample schedules and fun projects—and even sections written by some of the children themselves. (Chapters also start with Bible verses, so if that’s not your thing, this may not be the book for you.)

“Our children were not joining fraternities and sororities or going to the weekend parties,” they write. “Instead, they were actually spending more time with our family than if they had been attending a public high school. Our kids actually get to experience more of their childhood because they have more freedom in their education and lives.”

HILARITY ENSUES
In How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane, TV writer Johanna Stein offers a deliciously funny reminder that parenting doesn’t have to be so serious. To wit: When her child was born, Stein took the placenta home from the hospital in order to play a joke on her best friend. That story alone is worth the price of the book.

Chapter 17, written in all caps, enumerates the many ways her preschooler has insulted her. Favorites include, “Mommy, your tummy looks like a bagel” and “Clara and I were playing in your underpants. They fit both of us at the same time, ha ha!”

Stein is definitely not trying to replicate What to Expect When You’re Expecting. If anything, she is the anti-parenting guide, subtly using funny anecdotes to demonstrate that we can have fun with childrearing. She might not bestow nursing tips or ideas for planning the perfect playdate, but she will make you laugh—a lot—about the sweetness, messiness and absurdity of parenting.

SLEEP TIGHT
La Leche League International’s newest book on how to breastfeed and still get some shut-eye is chock-full of advice and information. Maybe too chock-full? At more than 500 pages, one could argue that Sweet Sleep might be a little overwhelming for a sleep-deprived new parent. But the editors smartly break the information into digestible bits organized by topics and age ranges. And for any parent desperate for an uninterrupted few hours of sleep, the advice is worth the read.

Sweet Sleep includes extensive information on creating a safe sleep space, helping children learn to sleep on their own and defusing criticism of your family’s choices. La Leche League sometimes is (undeservedly) portrayed as an extremist group, but this book is nothing but supportive of whatever your choices are about nursing and sleeping.

NURTURING YOUNG READERS
Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, by former Mediabistro editor Jason Boog, is a book that couldn’t have been written even five years ago. Used to be, you grabbed a copy of Pat the Bunny and maybe a Dr. Seuss, and you were good to go for several years.

But new research and technology have made the seemingly simple topic of reading with your child much more complicated. Who hasn’t watched a toddler master an iPad faster than her parents? How can a print book ever compete with the newest Disney app?

But we now know just how important reading from birth is—it can help build vocabulary and strengthen adult-child bonds. Boog offers straightforward advice—based on his research and conversations with experts, and on his own parenting experience—about how to make the most of time spent reading with your child. Sing, ask questions, use the book to springboard to conversations about bigger issues. Boog shows you how in this fascinating and user-friendly guide to helping develop a lifelong reader.

TAKING CHARGE
Keep Calm and Parent On, by child development specialist Emma Jenner, is a no-nonsense guidebook for even the most unsure parents among us. Her message, delivered in a brisk, British, stiff-upper-lip manner, is that saying no to your kids doesn’t mean you don’t love them. In fact, it might be just what they need to hear.

“You do not have to cater to your children and be an on-demand cook,” Jenner writes in a chapter called—of course—A Tale of Porridge and Pudding. “Your family kitchen is not a restaurant, so don’t let your children treat it like one!”

Jenner has appeared on TLC’s “Take Home Nanny,” and her years of experience are apparent on every page of this wonderfully practical tome. Like a British nanny, Keep Calm and Parent On is gentle but firm, a reminder to this generation of parents that we really are in charge of our children, not the other way around. With Jenner’s advice in your pocket, you will feel equipped to parent on, indeed.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There’s no one way to successfully parent (if only there were—this whole parenting thing would be so much easier!). While the best advice is probably to follow your instincts and cut yourself a break when you make a mistake, these new books offer fresh, sometimes funny insight into the world’s hardest job.
NonfictionParenting

Advice for parents: back off

Feature by Amy Scribner

The era of helicopter parenting is officially over, if this new crop of parenting books is any indication. Gone are the days of tracking your child’s every move and fighting her every battle.The focus now is on preparing children for the real world by letting them venture out and even—gasp!—make mistakes. 

In How to Raise an Adult, former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims argues that we are so focused on our children that “what they eat, how they dress, what activities they pursue [and] what they achieve have be- come a reflection of us. Of how we see ourselves. Like their life is our accomplishment. Like their failures are our fault.”

In her years as Dean of Fresh- men at Stanford, Lythcott-Haims watched as parents encroached on their children’s collegiate pursuits, showing up for social events and contacting professors. She once saw a woman in her mid-20s walking around campus, looking for the engineering building. How did Lythcott-Haims know? Because the mother of this Ph.D. candidate was doing all the talking. It’s a wonder parents haven’t moved into the dorms.

How to Raise an Adult is a bit of a manifesto, and I mean that in the best way. Lay off the Adderall, stop fretting that the Ivy League is the only route to success and let your children have unstructured time to dream, play and do nothing. Raising an adult, Lythcott-Haims posits, means letting go.

UN-ENTITLERS
With chapters titled “They’re Not Helpless” and “Overcontrol,” parenting expert Amy McCready makes clear starting with the table of contents that she finds overparenting to be underwhelm- ing. In The Me, Me, Me Epidemic, McCready, who founded Positive Parenting Solu- tions, dishes out advice in a crisply no-nonsense tone on everything from peer-pressure-proofing your kids to navigating social media.

“If we dish out empty praise and lavish rewards for the type of behavior that should be expected (such as not pitching a fit because we won’t buy them a new action figure or not making rude noises in a restaurant) we’re writing a recipe for an entitled child, one who thinks he takes ‘special to a whole new level,’ ” McCready writes. McCready offers tools she calls “Un-Entitlers,” which are like vitamins to instill capability in children. My favorite is Mind, Body and Soul Time, in which parents give an uninterrupted 10 or 20 minutes to their children and let the kids choose what they do together. It’s simple and surprisingly effective.

LIVE AND LEARN
I have a son entering middle school this fall, so The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey was a gift to me. With common-sense advice on how to stand back and let your children learn through their mistakes—including an entire chapter on navigating the hormone-drenched middle school years—this book is one of my new favorite parenting manuals.

Lahey is a warm, engaging writer who spent years in the trenches as a middle school Latin and English teacher. She advocates a lovingly hands-off approach that instills confidence from an early age.

“As adults we all have our own bullies to deal with: mean bosses, vicious enemies, and jealous peers,” she writes. “How your kid learns to deal with those people in their childhood, when failure means a day or two of hurt feelings or social exclusion, can mean the difference between a thin skin and a strong sense of self.”

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS
Forget gimmicky baby toys—all your child really needs is you. Vanderbilt University child development researcher Stephen Camarata offers an antidote to all the products marketed to guilt-rid- den parents in The Intuitive Parent. “What does a baby really need to know?” he writes. “That his parents love him, will take care of him, and will encourage him and empower him to learn. This does not require special videos, special toys, special DVDs or computer programs.”

Camarata starts with a fascinating section on the science behind child development. (How many au- thors can make something called brain plasticity interesting? Very few.) Then it gets even better, as Camarata lays out his case for why parents need not obsess over every developmental milestone, instead focusing on what he calls intuitive parenting, simply enjoying your child and reacting to his activities. The father of seven children, Camarata blends research and experience to create a parenting book that lets parents off the hook.

SUCCESSFUL STARTERS
The co-authors of Raising Can-Do Kids are perhaps an unlikely duo—Jen Prosek is a public relations executive and Richard Rende is a developmental psychologist. But the partnership works. Raising Can-Do Kids is both interesting and actionable, written from the points of view of someone who under- stands development and someone else who understands what skills it takes to make a great entrepreneur. Together, they identify seven traits that entrepreneurs need (curiosity and risk-taking are among them) and show parents how to cultivate these qualities in their children.

Perhaps most intriguing is their exploration of snowplow parents, who are apparently helicopter parents on steroids. As they write, snowplow parents “don’t just try to control a child’s environment and experiences but overtly eliminate perceived obstacles in a child’s path. Requesting that a specific child not be in your child’s class is one thing; demanding to review the class roster is quite another.” Makes that Stanford mom seem almost reasonable, doesn’t it? 

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How To Raise an Adult.

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The era of helicopter parenting is officially over, if this new crop of parenting books is any indication. Gone are the days of tracking your child’s every move and fighting her every battle.The focus now is on preparing children for the real world by letting them venture out and even—gasp!—make mistakes.
FictionDebut Fiction

Two delectable debuts

Feature by Amy Scribner

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point. 

Both feature a protagonist chasing a food dream, one in the Big Apple and the other all over Europe. And both have enough mouthwatering descriptions of meals to send you rummaging for something to munch on.

The fun, frothy Food Whore has traces of The Devil Wears Prada, except instead of a cruel magazine editor, the villain is the entire Manhattan restaurant scene. Tia Monroe dreams of writing cookbooks and enrolls in the prestigious New York University culinary masters program. But when her bid for an internship with a famous cookbook author is botched, Tia begins ghostwriting columns for weaselly New York Times restaurant critic Michael Saltz, who has lost his ability to taste food. 

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Saltz gets to keep his coveted job at the Times, and Tia gets the thrill of seeing her words in print, albeit under someone else’s byline. She also gets access to Saltz’s private account at Bergdorf Goodman. In no time, down-to-earth Tia becomes a fashionista who breaks up with her steadfast boyfriend and starts dating one of New York’s hottest chefs. But Tia quickly learns how brutal it is in the culinary world, where restaurants will do anything to get a good review. 

Food Whore is the first novel from Jessica Tom, a Brooklyn writer who graduated from Yale University and, much like Tia, wrote restaurant reviews for the school paper. Tom nails the dog-eat-dog restaurant world, whipping up a remarkably entertaining debut.

In Vintage, Bruno Tannenbaum is on the other side of his career from young Tia. After years as a food columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Bruno is sliding into obsolescence. He once wrote a little-known novel he was proud of and a gimmicky best-selling cookbook he was less proud of. But now, he’s sleeping on his mother’s couch (wife kicked him out for cheating), unemployed (newspaper let him go) and drinking too much (see previous). When a Russian restaurateur enlists Bruno’s help in solving the mystery of a lost vintage of French wine, Bruno senses a story that could revive his career and prove to his family that he still has what it takes to provide for them.

Vintage is a whirlwind of a book, with the charmingly rough Bruno spinning through France, Moldova and Russia as he chases down the wine, which he believes was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. He finds romance with a French winemaker, intrigue in a Russian prison and answers where he never expected them. 

Author David Baker is the director of the documentary American Wine Story, and he delivers a walloping good time in Vintage. While the book is clever and funny, it’s also a tender meditation on the power of food and wine to heal even the sorest of hearts. Bruno is a character for the ages, a passionate foodie who finds his own winding road to redemption.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point.
Fiction

Till disaster do us part

Feature by Amy Scribner

Marriage is a challenge under the best of circumstances—devoting your life to one person for all of eternity, through better or worse, richer or poorer, driving through Midwestern storms and facing your husband’s mistress in a foreign country.

OK, those last two examples aren’t found in most wedding vows. But they are found in two new books that examine the darker corners of marriage. Call it the domestic suspense genre.

In Siracusa, the incomparable Delia Ephron introduces us to couples Michael and Lizzie and Finn and Taylor. The foursome is traveling to Italy together, along with Finn and Taylor’s precocious daughter, Snow. These people, it must be said, have absolutely no business traveling together. 

Michael, a semi-famous playwright who has struggled to recapture the magic of his early professional success, has been cheating on Lizzie with a waitress. Finn and Taylor barely speak other than to argue about Snow, an impressionable preteen who idolizes Michael. Finn and Lizzie, who used to date, still have an undeniable spark. Meanwhile, Michael tries to hide the fact that the woman he’s sleeping with has unexpectedly turned up at their hotel in the rundown Sicilian town of Siracusa.

Add a whole lot of Italian wine to the inevitable illicit sex and bitter secrets, and a recipe for the perfect vacation this is not. When Snow goes missing, the families reach their boiling point, and harsh, irreversible truths emerge. This is a thrilling, perfectly paced and deeply satisfying read by a masterful writer.

Listen to Me is a much quieter—but no less impactful—book by the acclaimed author of Reunion and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Hannah Pittard. Laced with dreadful anticipation, Listen to Me is a spot-on depiction of the creep factor of road trips, with their desolate rest stops and weird encounters with strangers. 

Mark and Maggie are driving from their Chicago home to his parents’ Virginia farm. Maggie was recently attacked on the street near their home, the butt of a gun to the back of her head leaving her unconscious and with lingering psychological trauma. She finds herself withdrawn from her life as a wife and veterinarian, reading the news online, compulsively seeking the worst in her fellow humans. Mark struggles to be patient with Maggie’s recovery, and to resist the furtive email come-ons from his lovely teaching assistant who seems so, well, normal in comparison to his damaged wife. 

The road trip is meant to help them reconnect. They don’t realize when they hit the road that they’re driving straight into a powerful storm slicing its way through the Midwest. When the couple hits a total blackout in West Virginia, they hunker down for the night in a remote hotel. Mark takes their dog out for a pre-dawn walk, and a parking lot confrontation turns ugly, forcing Maggie to reckon with her own deep-seated fears.

As Pittard writes, evil—sometimes anonymous, sometimes known—not only exists, it thrives. Both books are gorgeously written sketches of marriages gone sour, and reminders that sometimes the scariest bogeymen are the ones in our own minds.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Marriage is a challenge under the best of circumstances—devoting your life to one person for all of eternity, through better or worse, richer or poorer, driving through Midwestern storms and facing your husband’s mistress in a foreign country.
NonfictionParenting

How to grow a happy family

Feature by Amy Scribner

Let’s be honest: Parents barely have time to think or use the restroom solo. So a parenting book needs to be pretty compelling to justify using those precious few minutes when you’re not semi-comatose on the couch. These common-sense guides to building a healthy family are worth your time.

REEL IN YOUR REACTIONS
I loved The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary, in large part because it made me feel better about occasionally losing my cool with my own tween son. I mean, Tsabary holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and she sometimes yells at her daughter.

Tsabary explains that parents are reactive—whether that manifests itself in yelling, overindulging or hovering—because our parenting instincts are based on fear. “Whether you have inflated, grandiose ideas of your children and what they will accomplish in life, or whether you are frightened for them or disappointed in them, all of this ultimately is rooted in fear,” she writes.

She explains why we need to trust in our children’s potential and argues that the best parenting lies in being quiet and open.

“The reason our children turn away from us is that they sense our desire to talk is all about us—our need to manage our anxiety and exert control,” she writes. “By the age of ten, your children are very familiar with how you talk and what you say. They don’t need your words of advice or admonishment. What they need instead is for you to listen and attune yourself to them.”

PARENTING WITH YOUR EX
In Two Homes, One Childhood, Dr. Robert E. Emery provides solid, reassuring advice for families coping with divorce. Director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at the University of Virginia, Emery is divorced and remarried himself, and has a successfully blended family. His advice is straightforward and empathetic, and emphasizes parenting as a partnership, even if the marriage is over.

“[G]ood parenting involves at least some degree of cooperation,” he writes. “After all, your seven-year-old will suffer if her bedtime is eight p.m. in one home and eleven p.m. in another. Your teenager will suffer if you ground him for three weeks for a horrible report card, but your ex tells him, ‘No problem. Have fun with your friends. You aren’t grounded at my house!’ ”

Emery’s focus is on keeping the kids out of your emotional “stuff” with your ex—perhaps easier said than done, but this smart, achievable playbook will help.

ROOM TO GROW
Psychologist Alison Gopnik is something of a superstar in the field of child development. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, she lays out her theory that caring for children is like tending a garden, with parent as gardener, encouraging a child’s natural curiosity. As Gopnik sees it, parenting most definitely isn’t like carpentry. “It isn’t a goal-directed enterprise aimed at shaping a child into a particular kind of adult,” she writes.

Gopnik dives deep into the relationship between child and parent, and lays to rest the notion that there is only one path to good parenting. Throughout the book, she traces the child-parent relationship through human evolution to help us understand how we got to this point—for example, overlaying a scene of cavemen hunting and gathering with one of her and her young grandson at the farmer’s market. She also provides simple examples of how we can be less carpenter, more gardener: contribute to the richness of a child’s world by providing a variety of playthings, from rocks to iPads, and a safe place in which to play. Then, unless the child wants you to join in, get out of their way.

WORKING TOGETHER
In Raising Human Beings, noted psychologist Ross W. Greene describes parenting as a partnership with your child. “You may not be aware of it, but you started collaborating with your kid the instant he came into this world,” he writes. “When he cried, you tried to figure out what was the matter. Then you tried to do something about it.”

Using several families as case studies, Greene helps shift the way we think about parenting. His belief is that kids do well if they are able to, and good parenting means being responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt. 

“If your kid isn’t doing well—if he’s not meeting a given expectation—it’s your job to figure out why and to put poor motivation at the bottom of the list,” he writes. “Better yet, take poor motivation off the list completely.”

Greene lays out a practical approach to non-punitive parenting—one that seems sure to promote peace in your household.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Let’s be honest: Parents barely have time to think or use the restroom solo. So a parenting book needs to be pretty compelling to justify using those precious few minutes when you’re not semi-comatose on the couch. These common-sense guides to building a healthy family are worth your time.
NonfictionBusiness & Finance

Make your money work for you

Feature by Amy Scribner

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.

DITCH THE DEBT
Rachel Cruze hates debt. Really hates it. In Love Your Life, Not Theirs, the financial adviser and daughter of money guru Dave Ramsey advises readers to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and—most importantly—to live debt-free. No credit cards. No car loans.

“[W]hatever you have to give up to live without debt is worth the peace of mind you’ll have and the money you get to keep instead of sending it to the bank,” she argues. 

The message is hardcore for a country in love with credit, but Cruze makes a compelling argument for using cash for most purposes, building an emergency fund, saving for the future and donating a healthy portion of your earnings. 

“People who love their money and stuff more than they love other people will live small, lonely and ultimately ineffective lives,” she writes. 

YOU & YOUR MONEY
Self-described holistic wealth expert Leanne Jacobs views money as something we earn when we open ourselves to it. In Beautiful Money, she details a path to wealth that includes changing our thought patterns about money, building multiple income streams, practicing yoga and (sorry, Rachel Cruze!) building a credit history with a credit card or car loan. 

An MBA and former executive, Jacobs clearly knows her stuff. Her unorthodox approach is not for everyone, but it’s full-hearted and sincere. She advises readers to adopt a wealth mantra, such as: Beauty, abundance and grace flow my way every day. Every cell of my body reminds me that I deserve the very best. In the end, she writes, there is one essential truth about money: “How we treat, respect, discuss, use or abuse money is a real-life measure of our own self-worth.”

SAVINGS SHORTCUTS
In Pogue’s Basics: Money former New York Times tech columnist and life hack enthusiast David Pogue shares nifty tricks for holding onto more of your hard-earned cash. By focusing on what he calls “quirks in the system,” Pogue offers some pretty ingenious ways to save, from keeping your tires inflated to reduce gasoline costs, to earning extra cash by signing up for online focus groups. The advice is packaged in a nicely designed, graphics-heavy book that highlights ballpark savings in red.

Pogue’s tips cover virtually every aspect of life, from tech and TV to food and drink. In The Last Legal Tax Dodges, he lists dozens of deductions and tax credits, downright gleeful as he explains 529 plans, charitable giving and home sales profits. “If you made a profit from selling your home after living there at least two years, the first $250,000 of profit is yours, tax free,” he writes. “If you’re married and filing jointly, make that $500,000. Ka-ching!”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.

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