bookpagedev

Travel

Off with the wizard of quoz

Review by bookpagedev

As the author of four previous works of travel – writing – most notably Blue Highways and River – Horse – William Least Heat – Moon believes that when it comes to trip – taking, "to go out not quite knowing why is the very reason for going out at all." The wonder of discovery runs throughout his latest book, Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey.

As Heat – Moon explains, quoz is "a noun, both singular and plural, referring to anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious. It rhymes with Oz." With his wife, Q, Heat – Moon travels the U.S. in search of it. They trace the bends of the Ouachita River – all 600 miles of it – from its source in Arkansas to its windings in Mississippi and its eventual end in Louisiana; venture to the Gulf Coast and Steinhatchee, Florida; visit Joplin, Missouri, and Quapaw, Oklahoma; take to the road in Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Idaho, North Carolina and many more places.

They uncover stories – lots of them. There’s elderly Mrs. Weatherford and her tale of Northern Light rapture, Indigo Rocket and a 50 – foot femme fatale, the mysterious Goat Woman of Smackover Creek. Jack Kerouac and his 120 – foot scroll of a manuscript make an appearance, as do the Gullah people of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. There’s even a recipe for pickle pie. "These wanderings," Heat – Moon writes, "took three years and four seasons to accomplish their sixteen thousand miles of journeys to places a goodly portion of the American populace would call ‘nowhere.’

 

As the author of four previous works of travel - writing - most notably Blue Highways and River - Horse - William Least Heat - Moon believes that when it comes to trip - taking, "to go out not quite knowing why is the very…

Nonfiction

Is cohabitation all it’s cracked up to be?

Review by bookpagedev

<B>Is cohabitation all it’s cracked up to be?</B> To shack up, or not to shack up: that is the question for today’s single girl.

Whether ’tis nobler to wait for marriage or join the majority of women and plunge into cohabitation is a tricky question, indeed.

According to author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, the benefits of cohabitation for women are, at best, “equivocal.” For men, of course, it’s an entirely different story.

In her intriguing new book, <B>Why There Are No Good Men Left</B>, Whitehead explains that young women are on uncertain ground when it comes to such urgent matters as love, courtship and marriage. An upheaval has occurred in the established mating system, and many young women are clueless about how to proceed. Despite the flippant title of her book, Whitehead doesn’t aim to offer advice for the lovelorn, but instead tries to analyze the evolving social mores that have left large numbers of highly educated women unmarried into their 30s and beyond.

In 1960, Whitehead reports, only 1.6 percent of all women ages 25-34 were college-educated singles. (“In the entire country at the time, there were only 185,000 such women.”) Today, 28 percent of all women in that age group are college-educated singles; the subset now numbers a whopping 2.3 million women.

College campuses have almost totally shed their role as places to find a mate. Dating on campus is virtually dead, abandoned in favor of outings in “unpartnered packs,” and “romantic love . . . has largely been leached out of college relationships,” Whitehead reports. After college, women devote most of their youthful energies to careers, postponing the search for a husband and cycling through numerous “low-commitment relationships.” By the time marriage becomes a priority, the good men are few and far between.

All this brings us back to that thorny question: Should a marriage-minded woman live with a boyfriend before tying the knot? Probably not, according to Whitehead. While women tend to see living together as a step on the road to marriage, men view it as “just one way of being single.” Cohabitation brings women no closer to wedded bliss, Whitehead argues, and gives men many of the benefits of marriage without making a commitment.

But, hey, what’s wrong with staying single? And if you’re way past the dating game yourself, why should you care about the growing throngs of the never-married? The answer is twofold. As Whitehead puts it, “society has an interest in the formation of lasting marital unions,” especially those that involve children. And, on a more personal level, the vast majority of young women say they want to get married. For many of them, the search for a spouse becomes a frustrating and confusing experience.

The tremendous changes in the mating system during the past 30 years have gone largely unnoticed by social scientists, Whitehead says. Her highly readable account of the single woman’s plight corrects this oversight and offers an interesting new perspective on women’s lives just in time for Women’s History Month. Packed with fascinating statistics and compelling personal stories, Whitehead’s book is recommended reading not only for young women, but also for their families, friends and possibly even their future spouses.

Other books of interest on women’s issues and women’s history include: I <I>Glory, Passion and Principle: The Story of Eight Remarkable Women at the Core of the American Revolution</I> (Atria, $24, 320 pages, ISBN 0743453301) by Melissa Lukeman Bohrer examines the lives of some unforgettable females and their contributions to America. Profiles of Abigail Adams, Phyllis Wheatley and Mercy Otis Warren, among others, are featured in this thoroughly researched, fascinating volume.

l <I>Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Women and Men</I> (Scribner, $25, 240 pages, ISBN 0684862522) by Andrew Hacker, asserts that it’s getting harder for women and men to get together. Hacker proves his point by citing cultural and socioeconomic factors ranging from education (women have more of it) to sexuality (homosexuality becoming a more viable alternative).

l <I>Couldn’t Keep it to Myself</I>(Regan, $24.95, 351 pages, ISBN 006053429X) collects the heartwarming and heartwrenching stories written by female inmates in York Correctional Institution during a workshop led by Wally Lamb, best-selling author of <I>I Know This Much Is True</I>.

<B>Is cohabitation all it's cracked up to be?</B> To shack up, or not to shack up: that is the question for today's single girl.

Whether 'tis nobler to wait for marriage or join the majority of women and plunge into cohabitation is a…
History

The Mona Lisa is smiling

Review by bookpagedev

Mid – April 1961: the Bay of Pigs Invasion. May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space. Late May 1961: President and Mrs. Kennedy travel to Paris. Of the three events, the last might seem the least significant, but that visit – of which JFK famously quipped “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it” – led to a spectacular feat. The first lady charmed Parisians with her style, grace and fluent French and scored an even bigger coup when the French Minister of Culture promised to loan her the “Mona Lisa,” the most valuable work in the Louvre. Margaret Leslie Davis perfectly captures the magic of the Kennedy White House, behind – the – scenes maneuvering and the stories of the major players on both sides of the Atlantic in Mona Lisa in Camelot.

In the beginning, only Mrs. Kennedy and Andr

Mid - April 1961: the Bay of Pigs Invasion. May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space. Late May 1961: President and Mrs. Kennedy travel to Paris. Of the three events, the last might seem the least significant, but that visit -…
FictionHistorical Fiction

Art through the ages

Review by bookpagedev

Wherever you stand in the argument about purloining art in order to preserve it, this evenhanded novel probably won’t help define your position. Still, you will have had a particularly good adventure spanning two notable eras in the world’s cultural history: one, circa 400 BCE, when the standards for the next 2,300 years of art were being set in marble, and the other, the early 19th century, a time when those works faced either obliteration or forcible relocation to a foreign land.

Stealing Athena, by Karen Essex, best-selling author of Leonardo’s Swans, represents a grade of fiction several waves above your typical beach book. There’s sex, to be sure, but far more interesting are the lives of the two women whose stories alternate in this novel. Mary Nesbit was the wife of Lord Elgin, whose name will always be associated with the magnificent friezes, statues and other artifacts he begged, borrowed and bought, at the expense of his own reputation and his wife’s happiness. Aspasia, mistress of Pericles of Athens, knew the sculptor Phidias, Socrates and other standouts, while, like Mary, facing the complicated, sometimes dangerous, problems of self-definition in times that were monumentally hard on women.

As always, the Greek marbles that Lord Elgin removed from the Acropolis (and other places) tend to steal the show. Time has not calmed the argument over their final resting place, which indeed has intensified as a new museum prepares to open in Athens next year. Still, this fictional treatment, both exotic and down to earth, supplies an entertaining research engine into the whole issue and its background. Stealing Athena is one beach read that the sands of time will only enhance.

Wherever you stand in the argument about purloining art in order to preserve it, this evenhanded novel probably won't help define your position. Still, you will have had a particularly good adventure spanning two notable eras in the world's cultural history: one, circa 400 BCE,…
Business & Finance

Thinking single: a new financial mindset

Review by bookpagedev

No one seems to have all their financial ducks in a row, not even personal finance expert Janet Bodnar. She writes a weekly column on kids and money for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and The New York Times (she’s known as Dr. Tightwad) but in preparing a finance book geared to women, she realized she hadn’t updated her own will or put her kids on her insurance policy. “I would have sworn I had done that!” she says. Writing her new book, Think $ingle, which addresses specific money issues facing women, opened the eyes of this wife, mother and household manager. “I was the audience for the book as well as the author of the book, so every step along the way I was comparing what I was writing with what I was doing myself. Sometimes I could say, OK, I’m up to speed, and sometimes I wasn’t.” BookPage recently talked to Bodnar about the advantages of “thinking single.” What does “thinking single” mean for women? You always have to be financially independent in your own mind, no matter what your marital status is, no matter what your stage of life is. Even if you have a loving husband who handles the finances, you need to know his bookkeeping system, have enough life insurance to cover you and the kids if something were to happen to him, and have your own retirement plan, even if you don’t have a job. That’s what thinking single means: You always have to ask, what would I do if I were on my own tomorrow? Would I be up to speed on everything? You say that 90% of women will manage their money on their own at some point in life, either because they’re divorced, widowed or never married. Did that surprise you? All women start out on their own when they’re in their 20s, but what really shocked me was when you add in the number of divorces [just under 50%] and [realize] that the average age of widowhood is 58. Some women never marry, but the majority will, and yet of those women, the majority will end up on their own at some point in the future. I found that to be shocking. I think it’s in the back of every woman’s mind, but you think it’s always far in the future, so when you see that statistic, it brings you up short.

Women investors tend to earn better returns than men. What are they doing differently? Men tend to be overconfident with their money. Even when they don’t know diddly about money, they act like they do and bluff their way through. But confidence isn’t the same thing as competence. Women tend to be underconfident and underestimate what they know about money, so they tend to be less aggressive and take fewer risks. Because women go out and do the research, they feel pretty good about what they’re doing when they plunk down their money. Then they leave their money alone and don’t trade all the time.

Are women too averse to risk? I think they are because of the underconfidence thing. They worry about the future, and in the back of their mind is the bag lady fear “I’m not going to have any money” so they tend to be conservative with their money, probably too conservative, at least when they’re younger. Women need to be a little more aggressive, especially if they’re looking at long-term goals.

After reading the book, what’s a good first step for women who want to start tackling their finances? I would take stock of where I am. Don’t try to do everything at once because you can get overwhelmed with all this financial stuff. I would sit down and say, what is my number one worry? That can be a lot of different things for different people, and hopefully, they’ll find material in the book to speak to any of those issues, whether it’s dealing with your spouse, budgeting or saving for retirement. Once you get a handle on that, you can move on down your list. You need a feeling of accomplishment.

No one seems to have all their financial ducks in a row, not even personal finance expert Janet Bodnar. She writes a weekly column on kids and money for Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine and The New York Times (she's known as Dr. Tightwad) but in…
Business & Finance

Building on your strengths

Review by bookpagedev

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it

Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom (Portfolio, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 1591840023), tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice ("If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails" and "Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.") to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that?

It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality ∧ Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work (New American Library, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 1577312287) would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a "friend."

Baring all

Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales

Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world's greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super…

Business & Finance

Building on your strengths

Review by bookpagedev

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it

Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom (Portfolio, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 1591840023), tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice ("If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails" and "Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.") to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that?

It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality ∧ Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a "friend." Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales

Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

 

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world's greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super…

FictionWomen's Fiction

Crafting a friendship

Review by bookpagedev

Summer has never struck me as a good time for knitting: all that wool around a sticky body in the heat and humidity doesn’t sound comfortable. But I have no trouble reading about knitting in any weather, which means Beth Pattillo’s The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society is perfect summer reading material. Here, Pattillo cleverly marries two subgenres of women’s fiction – the book club novel and the knitting novel – and does it very well.

Pattillo introduces appealing, small-town characters: the librarian Eugenie, a woman with a secret, whose reign over her library may be about to end; sisters Esther and Ruthie, who are involved in an unusual love triangle; Merry, a harried wife and mother harboring her own secret; and Camille, who’s given up her chance at college and an independent life to take care of her dying mother. Their monthly Knit Lit Society meetings, held in the Sweetgum Christian Church, offer each a respite from their lives. Between meetings, everyone reads the same book while working on a knitting project inspired by that book. (A pattern for one such project is included at the end of the novel.) Their carefully structured group is thrown into some chaos by the arrival of prickly teenager Hannah, who desperately doesn’t want to admit that she desperately needs help. The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society cries for a sequel – readers will long to know what will happen next for these people, all of whom have experienced serious changes by book’s end.

Summer has never struck me as a good time for knitting: all that wool around a sticky body in the heat and humidity doesn't sound comfortable. But I have no trouble reading about knitting in any weather, which means Beth Pattillo's The Sweetgum Knit…
Business & Finance

Building on your strengths

Review by bookpagedev

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom, tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice (“If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails” and “Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.”) to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that? It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality &and Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work (New American Library, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 1577312287) would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a “friend.” Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world's greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs…
Nonfiction

A story of hard luck and hope

Review by bookpagedev

In the 1980s, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc embarked on an ambitious personal assignment to candidly explore and characterize a culture that’s often overlooked. She immersed herself in the chaotic world of the Bronx to get the story, sleeping on slum floors, visiting jail inmates and hanging out on the steps of projects. The 11-year journey culminated in her book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, the fascinating true story of two inner-city Puerto Rican girls growing up fast during the heyday of Wall Street and crack cocaine. The tale begins with Jessica a voluptuous, hazel-eyed beauty who gets swept up in a volatile romance with Boy George, a young heroin dealer who showers her with fur coats, jewelry and exotic trips abroad. Coco, a sweet-natured 14-year-old, falls hard for Jessica’s younger brother, Cesar, an aspiring criminal who fathers two of her children. The early days are full of joy rides, nightclubs and passionate couplings, but the good times don’t last. Boy George and Jessica are investigated by the FBI and DEA, and Cesar goes on the lam following a botched robbery. Coco is left to survive as best she can through a fluid network of kinship relationships. The two women are products of an environment rampant with casual sex, drugs and violence, and they fall into a seemingly inevitable cycle of poverty and abuse. By the time she’s 20, Coco has four children by three different men. She tries to provide for her kids while maintaining a long-distance and dysfunctional relationship with Cesar. Jessica and Coco are taught “to be sexy, to respect family, that all men were dogs but that without them women were nothing,” LeBlanc writes, and the contradictory messages reinforce a sense of despair. But the women are resilient and scrappy, forging family ties where they can find them. Too soon, they are the young, single parents of teenagers heading down the same rocky paths with little chance of escape. Steering clear of judgment and sentimentality, LeBlanc matter-of-factly presents the complex cycle of intergenerational urban poverty. What could be an unlovely portrait of a broken-down world becomes, in her hands, a bittersweet tale that sheds some much-needed light on the plight of poor, inner-city families. Written with candor, sensitivity and respect, Random Family is ultimately more than a hard-luck saga; it’s a universal story of survival and hope. Journalist Rebecca Denton writes from Nashville.

In the 1980s, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc embarked on an ambitious personal assignment to candidly explore and characterize a culture that's often overlooked. She immersed herself in the chaotic world of the Bronx to get the story, sleeping on slum floors, visiting jail inmates and…
History

Brothers in arms: Walt Whitman and his family in wartime

Review by bookpagedev

During the 19th century, as the United States developed economically, many people broke family ties, some forever, and headed west or to sea where they could reinvent themselves. A notable exception was the Whitman family of Brooklyn. Walter Sr. was a master carpenter and engaged in building houses. There were nine children in all; at a time of high infant mortality, only one died in infancy. The best known today is the second oldest, Walt, who became perhaps the most original American poet of the century. But his youngest brothers—George, who distinguished himself as an officer in the Union army during the Civil War, and Jeff, who became one of the century’s great engineers—were well-known and admired during their lifetimes. The entire family, and especially these three brothers, remained close throughout their lives.

Robert Roper, award-winning author of works of fiction and nonfiction, explores the brothers’ relationship and, by extension, the many wounded Civil War soldiers Walt visited in hospitals in the superb Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War. Walt made more than 600 visits and claimed to have tended to 80,000 to 100,000 men in his role as a nurse, or, as he preferred, "visitor and consolatory." His close friend and biographer, John Burroughs, described him as a "great tender mother-man" at a time when most nurses were men. Walt wrote that it was a womanly, indeed a motherly, approach that was most helpful in the hospitals.

Roper shows in detail how crucial his relationship to his family was in this endeavor and in his development as a writer and poet. He also describes how the three Whitman brothers were skillful in dealing with other people, especially other men, good at personal politicking and winning their trust, while advancing their own self-interests. He shows how each brother was always alert to the needs of the others.

A key role in the family was played by their mother, Louisa, who remained Walt’s most intimate correspondent until her death in 1873. After her husband’s death in 1855, her sons, primarily Walt, were responsible for the family income. George, who led soldiers in 21 major battles and was in a Confederate prison camp toward the end of the war, also wrote letters to her that dealt with virtually every aspect of his experience. Roper strongly disagrees with those Whitman biographers who have portrayed her as ignorant and incurious; instead, he demonstrates her ability to understand and appreciate a wide range of experience.

This fine book has several focuses. First, it is a biography of a family, especially during the war years, told in great part with a judicious use of letters. Secondly, Roper details Walt’s work in the hospitals and shows how he was able to write about it at a time when other gifted writers such as Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean Howells did not write about the war at all. Roper is aware of Walt’s limitations in this regard—he was a knowledgeable noncombatant but never saw a battle in progress and in writing of soldiers’ experiences, he did not get into their complex feelings. And finally, Roper probes Whitman’s thoughts about death, suffering and killing, among other subjects.

Roper’s evocative narrative impressively conveys the life and times of one of America’s greatest writers in a time of the nation’s greatest crisis.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

 

During the 19th century, as the United States developed economically, many people broke family ties, some forever, and headed west or to sea where they could reinvent themselves. A notable exception was the Whitman family of Brooklyn. Walter Sr. was a master carpenter and engaged…

Medicine

A real-life hospital drama

Review by bookpagedev

In journalist Julie Salamon’s Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids, you won’t find interns and residents incessantly worrying over their love lives while treating patients suffering from horrific accidents and outrageously unbelievable situations. Instead, you’ll find real-life, day-to-day drama, big and small, with a huge staff (6,210) of doctors, nurses, administrators and others playing their parts.

The hospital in question is Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, Brooklyn, a major hospital that for many years served a neighborhood of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. More recently, however, the area has become increasingly multicultural, with no less than 67 languages spoken by the hospital’s staff and patients. This proved irresistible to Salamon (The Devil’s Candy, The Christmas Tree), who spent a year at Maimonides, talking to everyone, seemingly, who passed through. Her thorough and thoughtful research pays off in the broad, yet detailed strokes she paints of the complex relationships, financial constraints, and medical mysteries and miracles inside.

Salamon guides us through a broad cast of characters in an organized way, beginning with a helpful list of them all. She paints well-rounded portraits of everyone, including, for example, Mr. Zen, an illegal immigrant with cancer who doesn’t want to leave the hospital because he has nowhere else to go. We meet a first-year, surf-loving resident named David, a Nebraskan full of wonder, and, of course, exhaustion. And there is hospital president and CEO Pam Brier, who just before taking over the reins was in a car accident that almost killed her and her husband. Her recovery and drive alone would be enough material for a book.

Hospital starts with the top executives and extends out into Borough Park, showing how the Maimonides staff strives to reach out to the community. Salamon knows how to weave a story well, and here she weaves many stories with drama and grace.

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

In journalist Julie Salamon's Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids, you won't find interns and residents incessantly worrying over their love lives while treating patients suffering from horrific accidents and outrageously unbelievable situations. Instead,…
History

The life, death and famous last words of a patriot

Review by bookpagedev

Nathan Hale is best known for what are reported to have been his last words, often misquoted or paraphrased, before he was hanged by the British as an American spy during the Revolutionary War. The most authoritative source we have puts Hale’s famous last line this way: “I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.” As M. William Phelps demonstrates in his extensively researched and compellingly written new biography, Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy, the young man responsible for these last words was a serious scholar and fun – loving patriot, a man of courage and accomplishment. Phelps takes issue with those who see Hale as no more than one of many junior officers who, had he not died as he did, would not have been long remembered.

Phelps goes to great lengths to separate fact from legend or myth; the footnotes alone make for fascinating reading. Drawing on letters to and from Hale and many other sources, Phelps is able to plausibly reconstruct his subject’s life: his youth on a Connecticut farm, his student years at Yale, his time as a teacher, his service as an officer in George Washington’s army and his capture and execution in New York. Phelps also keeps us advised of developments in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and troop movements in Boston and other places throughout Hale’s life. We get a strong sense of Hale’s growing commitment to the new republic and, from his upbringing in a religious home, his understanding that it was God’s will for him to fight against England.

Based on Hale’s journal during the period when he served in Boston, Phelps shows that he was held to a much higher standard than other captains because he was intelligent, well – educated and well – read. Many others of his rank were illiterate. Also, it is very likely that one of the reasons Hale was chosen for the ill – fated spy mission was his scientific knowledge.

Phelps quotes from the diary of a British officer who heard about the spy’s death from witnesses at the scene. They spoke of Hale’s composure and resolution and reported that Hale said it was the duty of every good officer to obey orders given by his commander – in – chief and “desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.” This extraordinarily well – documented biography brings Hale and his times vividly to life. Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Nathan Hale is best known for what are reported to have been his last words, often misquoted or paraphrased, before he was hanged by the British as an American spy during the Revolutionary War. The most authoritative source we have puts Hale's famous last line…

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