bookpagedev

History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Viking, $34.95, 0670814628), a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became (Random House, $23.95, 0679449833). Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.

S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America (Scholastic, $18.95, 0590371290). Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.

S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.

Closing the gaps in women's history Talk to young women about the women's movement, and their eyes glaze over. That's ancient history. Women's equality is a given, taken for granted by today's college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth…

History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Viking, $34.95, 0670814628), a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became. Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.

S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 0679431063) which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America (Scholastic, $18.95, 0590371290). Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.

S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.

Closing the gaps in women's history Talk to young women about the women's movement, and their eyes glaze over. That's ancient history. Women's equality is a given, taken for granted by today's college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth…

Fiction

An actor assesses his legacy

Review by bookpagedev

The Irish novelist John Banville has published more than a dozen books and won a number of prizes. Reviewers have begun to promote him as an inevitable member of the Irish pantheon that includes Joyce and Beckett. There is no question of Banville’s literary worth. His use of language is as lyrical and beautiful as that of any novelist writing in English today, and his plumbing of the moral confusions of humanity relentless and unblinking. But he is also simply fun to read.

Eclipse is the story of Alexander Cleave, a well-known actor who has begun to lose control of his work and his life. He does not understand what is happening to him. Despite the resistance of his wife, Cleave returns to his childhood home to rest in peace and quiet. Naturally, he finds neither. What awaits him in the family house are disturbing human beings and even more disturbing visions which may or may not be literal ghosts. Like most of Banville’s novels, Eclipse is told in first person, which permits not only a deeply personal, confessional tone, but also narrative options unavailable to the assumed truthfulness of sober third person. A narrator may misinterpret impressions or events, misremember the past, even fictionalize out of confusion or a deliberate attempt to mislead.

As he struggles to figure out what has happened to his life, Alexander Cleave reveals his momentary misperceptions, his history of emotional disconnection, even his erotic dreams. In his intimate way long on thought and short on dialogue Banville paints a picture of the interior life of a man who has always been acting, always presenting one version of himself to the world without even realizing the extent to which the true Alexander Cleave was locked somewhere within.

Cleave’s narration veers toward and away from his theme. "See how I parry and duck, like an outclassed boxer?" he asks the reader. "I begin to speak of my ancestral home and within a sentence or two I have moved next door. That is me all over." Like all of Banville’s narrators, Cleave learns about himself through thinking aloud. Fortunately he is a John Banville creation, and every word is worth listening to.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt) and Adam’s Navel (Viking).

The Irish novelist John Banville has published more than a dozen books and won a number of prizes. Reviewers have begun to promote him as an inevitable member of the Irish pantheon that includes Joyce and Beckett. There is no question of Banville's literary worth.…

History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Closing the gaps in women’s history Talk to young women about the women’s movement, and their eyes glaze over. That’s ancient history. Women’s equality is a given, taken for granted by today’s college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen discovered how little the younger generation knew about the topic when she stood before a classroom of college students and asked how the women’s movement had affected their lives. They couldn’t answer. The students stared in amazement as Rosen listed on the blackboard the myriad of indignities and roadblocks women had encountered before women’s liberation swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s.

After her epiphany in the classroom, Rosen, professor of history at the University of California-Davis, decided to write a book that would document the origins and impact of the contemporary women’s movement.

The result is The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, a comprehensive account of the personalities and issues that dominated the drive for women’s equality. This modern movement marks the third major era of women’s rights the first two being the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 and the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s and the one having the most profound impact on the lives of women. Rosen dates the beginning of the movement from the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Friedan was among the first to notice that the Donna Reed persona of the 1950s housewife had left many women with deep feelings of frustration and boredom. Rosen shows how the frustrations of these women led to an eventual revolt by their daughters, the young women of the 1960s who were determined not to live under the same constraints. As an activist herself, Rosen is particularly adept at capturing the passion that motivated many participants in the movement. From consciousness-raising sessions to protest marches, the new feminist culture served to energize converts and shake the establishment to its core.

Although Rosen is a noted feminist academic, with two of her previous books on the standard Women’s Studies reading list, in The World Split Open, she creates an accessible narrative account that should appeal to non-academic readers as well.

One battle cry of the feminist movement was, The personal is political. By this, women meant that politics and power structures affected the everyday occurrences of private life, from the home to the workplace. A first-rate description of how the women’s movement affected the personal lives of women can be found in Elizabeth Fishel’s Reunion: The Girls We Used to Be, the Women We Became (Random House, $23.95, 0679449833). Spurred by her 25th high school reunion, Fishel decided to trace the paths of ten classmates after their graduation in 1968 from the Brearley School, a girls’ school favored by New York City’s wealthiest families.

Fishel gives a fascinating account of how these young women were caught in the crossfire between the old world of wealth and privilege and the new world of social upheaval and changing roles for women. Women just a half generation older were secure in their lives as housewives and mothers, while women a few years younger aimed for careers as doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. The girls of the class of ’68 were left floundering, unsure which direction to take, as a social revolt erupted around them. Fishel follows them through suicide, divorce, drugs, alcohol, career changes, and spiritual seeking. Along the way, she points out broader generational patterns and statistical tidbits, such as this one: Women born in the 1950s have had fewer children than any other generation in U.S. history. The women of the Brearley class conformed to this trend, with many remaining childless or choosing motherhood later in life.

Fishel’s book ends on an upbeat note when the class gathers in 1998 for its 30th reunion. Despite the anguish and confusion they have endured, many of these women reach a more peaceful plane as they approach their 50th birthdays. Although few have the lived the lives they dreamed of, most have come to terms with the choices they made.

Another good reading selection for Women’s History Month is Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, 0679431063) which gives detailed and incisive portraits of 12 women writers who lived and wrote in the transitional era before the women’s movement leveled the playing field. Pierpont could have titled her book Hard-Headed Women, for if there is one quality these fiesty women writers have in common, it’s stubbornness. From Gertrude Stein to Eudora Welty, each woman stuck to the course she set, which was often outside the norm established for women of the day.

The 12 women profiled here are all what Pierpont considers literary women of influence (very different from women of literary influence). In other words, their writing changed the way people thought about race, about politics, and about sex.

Pierpont’s subjects include both the lesser known (19th century South African novelist Olive Schriner) and the wildly popular (Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell). One surprising inclusion is Mae West, who made her name as the Madonna of her era, more than willing to deny conventions of appropriate sexual behavior. It’s not nearly as well known that West was also a writer. As Pierpont notes, Mae West had to become a writer before she could be a movie star. In 1926, West wrote a three-act play titled simply, Sex, which delighted its sold-out audiences, but appalled the critics. West went on to the movies, where she often punched up her own part in the script to add sizzle.

Pierpont gives sympathetic portrayals of these often outlandish and avant-garde women, with the curious exception of Eudora Welty. This Mississippi writer earns Pierpont’s criticism for failing to condemn the racial bigotry that existed in her home state. Only once, in a short story about the assassination of Medgar Evers, did Welty express anguish over racial discrimination. For Pierpont, this studied avoidance of social reality casts a pall over Welty’s work.

And finally, for the younger woman in your life, Penny Colman has written an excellent overview of a neglected topic, Girls: A History of Growing up Female in America (Scholastic, $18.95, 0590371290). Working from letters, diaries and other original sources, Colman pieces together a culturally diverse account of girls’ experiences throughout U.S. history. Girls coming of age in the new millennium will find role models, encouragement, humor, and despair in the life stories presented here. From pioneer girls to future astronauts, each has a unique story to tell.

Closing the gaps in women's history Talk to young women about the women's movement, and their eyes glaze over. That's ancient history. Women's equality is a given, taken for granted by today's college-aged women, who were born in the 1980s.

Historian Ruth Rosen…
FictionHistorical Fiction

A wartime classic

Review by bookpagedev

ER’s handsome star, George Clooney is part of an all-star cast, including Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, and John Travolta (who seems to be in everything), that will be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox adaptation of James Jones’ The Thin Red Line. About the men of C-for-Charlie company, during and after the brutal, bloody battle of Guadalcanal, this book has long been hailed as a masterwork along with Jones’ From Here to Eternity. As movie lovers know, the latter led to the 1953 film which won eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Forever immortalized by its wave-swept love scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, it is also famous for its casting of Frank Sinatra as the scrappy soldier, Maggio. Sinatra whose career was then shaky wound up winning an Academy Award, and enjoying a career comeback. Proof that war is swell when it’s Hollywoodized.

ER's handsome star, George Clooney is part of an all-star cast, including Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, and John Travolta (who seems to be in everything), that will be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox adaptation of James Jones' The Thin Red Line. About…

Fiction

A new twist on family ties

Review by bookpagedev

Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, and that we were stuck with the same 10 or so storylines for the rest of eternity, a book like Kinship Theory comes along. Exploiting 21st century advancements in medical technology, novelist Hester Kaplan has invented a new plot twist that would have surprised even Ecclesiastes. In Kaplan’s novel, protagonist Maggie Crown, 48, bears a child for her infertile daughter. Kinship Theory is no Steel Magnolias, however, no story of unfaltering love and devotion between mother and daughter. Maggie is a reluctant heroine with few traditional womanly virtues. She resents her daughter’s emotional dependency. She sleeps with men she doesn’t really like. She neglects to make vital repairs on her house. On some subconscious level, she demands payment for the gift she gives her daughter. The karmic debt she exacts threatens to ruin almost everyone close to her.

Yet Maggie is well aware of her flaws, especially as a mother, and that self awareness is what makes the novel interesting.

Maggie’s dysfunctional family isn’t the only one under the microscope in Kaplan’s novel. Her daughter, Dale, must decide whether to forgive her husband’s infidelity, committed while Maggie was bearing their child. Maggie’s boss and former lover, Ben, is wed to a nagging wife with whom he shares an embittered son, dying of AIDS. Kaplan successfully explores the underbelly of relationships that, to outside observers, may seem charmed. In this way, she carries on the Cheever tradition of exposing suburbia’s hidden desperation.

Some readers may relate to Maggie’s essential aloneness at the middle of life. Divorced from her husband, she provides emotional support to her daughter on demand, but receives little support in return. Her mother, Virginia, has cut all but the most formal ties to Maggie, in favor of an idyllic life in Florida with her second husband. Her solitude is problematic, but it is also clearly her choice. Many readers, disappointed with other literary depictions of middle-aged women on their own, will like Maggie. While she is no Pollyanna, nor even a Dr. Quinn, she is not needy or desperate or unfulfilled by her career. Like many 21st century women, she is blessed with excellent health and enough energy to do whatever she wants when she finally decides what that is.

The character of Maggie Crown represents both an impressive accomplish for Hester Kaplan and a challenge for future writers hoping to capture the psychology of the single woman at midlife.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, and that we were stuck with the same 10 or so storylines for the rest of eternity, a book like Kinship Theory comes along. Exploiting 21st century advancements in medical technology, novelist Hester…

Nature

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The title of William Souder’s book is meant to shock and attract attention; A Plague of Frogs is not so much about a particular area stricken by a plague of frogs, as it is the frogs themselves being plagued. This curious phenomenon involves the discovery of several species of frogs afflicted at birth with the most grotesque deformities: multiple limbs, stunted or absent limbs, eyeballs growing inside frogs’ mouths the list of abnormalities is endless. Although recent studies have found that this plague has affected frogs throughout history in varying regions of the world, it was in central Minnesota that the frogs’ predicament recently attracted the attention of scientists. In 1995, a group of school children and their teacher found an alarming number of deformed frogs at a farmer’s pond during a field trip, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) was among the first of many groups and individuals to get involved. William Souder first reported on the case of deformed frogs in Minnesota for the Washington Post. He then became embroiled in the quest for knowledge alongside representatives of many governmental agencies. As in all good investigative journalism, Souder presents readers first and foremost with a story. The journey toward knowledge is, in fact, the story here. The cast of characters includes a group of middle school students from Le Sueur, Minnesota; the farmers and landowners on whose land the frogs were found; many branches of governmental agencies; university scientists; and Bruce Babbitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior.

Although many hypotheses have been proposed for the causes of the frogs’ deformities including UV radiation, parasites, and pesticides nothing conclusive has been found, other than evidence that the maladies originate in the water inhabited by the frogs. This theory poses a threat for all animal species, including our own. With many frog species throughout the world becoming extinct, the ever-present question is, what is behind this plague? Souder’s timely book presents readers with a well-informed set of researchers who are working hard to find this very answer.

Krista Finstad Hanson is a writer and teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The title of William Souder's book is meant to shock and attract attention; A Plague of Frogs is not so much about a particular area stricken by a plague of frogs, as it is the frogs themselves being plagued. This curious phenomenon involves the discovery…

Fiction

Steve Martin: wild and crazy guy takes surprising look at love

Review by bookpagedev

When Steve Martin hosts the 72nd Academy Awards on March 25, millions of viewers will see the brilliant comic they know and adore. What many fans may not know is that the zany actor also has surprising talents as an author.

Movie-goers have come to expect a vast emotional range from Martin due to his many film roles. Add to this his two hilarious books, Pure Drivel and Cruel Shoes; several screenplays; the off-Broadway hit Picasso at the Lapin Agile; regular contributions to The New Yorker and The New York Times, and his range looks all the more impressive. Martin has an astonishingly different kind of treat in store for his fans with Shopgirl, his recent novella. Readers expecting zany riffs and hilariously skewed observations will be shocked to find his first work of fiction a serious, intimate, rather dark comedy of manners. Mirabelle, the shopgirl who works in the glove department at Neiman Marcus, is a ripening plum of a woman trying to thrive where there is no market for her kind (a mirabelle is a superb French plum). Depression and a natural shyness make socializing difficult, and her intelligence, warmth and beauty are gifts others do not give the time or effort to discover. Her desperate loneliness drives her into the uncertain arms of Jeremy, an inexperienced young boy she meets in a laundromat and plans to seduce solely for the chance of an "afterglow" cuddle. Then appears millionaire Ray Porter, a suitor at the opposite end of the socio-economic and age spectrums, and Mirabelle embarks on her first bona fide adult love affair.

No longer married, Ray begins his dalliance with the intoxicating Mirabelle without the distraction of commitment or obligation. Mirabelle, Ray and even poor Jeremy eventually discover, in their own time and way, that we cannot truly love others when we don’t know ourselves. Laugh-out-loud humorous Shopgirl is not, although there are comic touches, especially those involving Mirabelle’s rival, a co-worker whose single desire is to be desired by all men. A sweet, courageous exploration of a young woman’s search for selfhood and love, Shopgirl promises to leave readers eager for the next literary surprise from Steve Martin.

When Steve Martin hosts the 72nd Academy Awards on March 25, millions of viewers will see the brilliant comic they know and adore. What many fans may not know is that the zany actor also has surprising talents as an author.

…

Nature

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Standing in front of the reptilium at the London zoo, author Jeremy Seal recalled one of his earliest fears: Years before, as a child, I had stood in this same doorway. I remember how I had imagined within a bottomless pit overflowing with snakes, plaits of snakes spilling on to the shiny floor to entangle themselves and slither numberless down long corridors, and the images had stopped me in my tracks. My palms had prickled with sweat and tears had welled up in my eyes, and thirty years later little had changed. His paranoia was such that he had become convinced that he would, sooner or later, die of snakebite.

To the average Joe, taking up residence in Ireland or some equally snake-free place would seem the prudent course, but then Jeremy Seal is not the average Joe. Having trekked all over Turkey a few years back in search of an elusive fez (A Fez of the Heart), Seal now takes us on a herpetological tour of such exotic locales as India, Kenya, Australia, and Alabama. Alabama, exotic? You bet, for in the northeast corner of the state, and in contiguous Tennessee and Georgia, are Pentecostal churches whose members routinely handle poisonous snakes in the name of faith. Seal chronicles the murder trial of a misguided minister who attempts to murder his wife by means of snakebite and then pass it off as suicide; in another vignette, he visits a country church to watch the handling of serpents firsthand. He chases the deadly taipan in Far North Australia, the hooded cobra in southern India, and in Kenya, the lethal black mamba. With equal doses of humor and, um, venom, Snakebite Survivors’ Club offers the reader as close a look at our slithery friends as he or she will likely ever want.

In an equally perilous part of the world specifically, the Brazilian rainforest nature writer and NPR commentator Sy Montgomery (Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans) pursues an altogether friendlier species, the pink freshwater dolphin (known locally as boto ) of the Amazon basin. Comparatively little is known about this rare species; the aquatic mammal is far better known in folklore than in fact. According to Amazonian legend, the dolphin can assume human shape and walk unrecognized on shore; it can even take a human lover. The danger in this is that the human half of the equation may be lured back to the dolphin’s homeland, Encantada (Portuguese for enchanted ), never to return to land.

Little research has been done on pink dolphins; their habitat is murky and piranha-infested, the creatures themselves are somewhat elusive and shy, and the rapid changes to the rainforest region have profoundly disturbed their normal patterns of life. Still, Montgomery is determined to view the dolphins, to add to the base of knowledge on their habits, and to forge a tentative cross-species bond with them: Within three minutes of our arrival, the dolphins appeared. I swam out to them, perhaps a quarter mile. All seven botos appeared, blowing, pulling their heads from the water to look One of the medium grays rolled on his back, waving his flippers, and then turned, flipping his tail. Moments later Montgomery discovered that the nearby fisherman’s net yielded two four-inch piranhas.

Seal’s easy humor and laid-back approach contrasts with Montgomery’s conservationist zeal and fascination with the occult, but each offers a rare look at far-off lands and the unusual creatures who call them home.

Bruce Tierney writes from Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Standing in front of the reptilium at the London zoo, author Jeremy Seal recalled one of his earliest fears: Years before, as a child, I had stood in this same doorway. I remember how I had imagined within a bottomless pit overflowing with snakes, plaits…

PhotographyArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

On the couch with the bookish babes of Bibliotherapy You need therapy, sister Bibliotherapy to be exact. Subtitled The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives, this is one glorious and hilarious guide to a life’s worth of literature. From “When You’re Feeling Unnoticed and Unloved: Bad Hair Babe Books” to “When You Desperately Need to Believe That There’s a Purpose to It All: Embracing-Your-Inner-Light Books,” there are chapters for every occasion and stage of a woman’s life. Think about it the books we read really do show us where we’ve been and where we’re headed. We loved Eloise during those frisky days of childhood and Judy Bloom’s books during our angst-ridden adolescence. Then, in college, along came Gloria Steinem who taught us to wake up and smell the patriarchy. And here we are, years later, reaching desperately for a copy of Raising Your Spirited Child. Times have changed.

But how to begin the daunting task of compiling a guide that spans a lifetime? Authors Beverly West and Nancy Peske first cousins, dear friends, editors and authors of the sleeper hit Cinematherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Movies for Every Mood say it involved many hours of girl talk. Beverly says, “We sat down and said, OK, let’s think of every book we ever read.” Not a task for the faint of memory. “Nancy and I, both being readers, have turned to books in big moments in our lives, and even in smaller ones . . . [we] thought about what the landmark phases were in a woman’s life and thought about the books that have either had a big impact on the way women experience those stages as a population like menopause or puberty and also the stuff we turn to that helps us cope with loss, or divorce, or when we’ve suddenly gone deaf to our inner voice and need to reinvent ourselves.” Women may indeed use books differently than guys do, turning to them in times of need, but that doesn’t mean Bibliotherapy excludes books by that other gender. On the contrary, says Nancy, “we have books that are classic ‘guy’ literature but that speak to women.” Beverly points out, “we’ve not only looked at women’s literature but at all books that have influenced us as people, not just as women.” In other words, there’s some Bukowski in the mix, too.

Both West and Peske gained new insight by revisiting the books that influenced their lives. Beverly rediscovered Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while Nancy read Rebecca with new eyes. “I had read Rebecca probably a half dozen times in my 20s, and when I went back to write about it, I started . . . discovering in the process of writing what that book was about, how I read it [at that time] . . . Those themes were very resonant for me in my 20s.” What do the authors have on their bedside tables at present? Nancy is leisurely leafing through the first Harry Potter adventure and is also “going through a big spirituality phase,” reading The Jesus Mysteries and books about the goddess tradition. She’s also working on a book by a wiccan high priestess who wrote Book of Shadows. Beverly just finished writing a book for Falcon Press on the remarkable women of New Mexico goddesses in their own right so she’s been immersed in reading a lot of biography. “I just finished an autobiography of Mable Dodge Louhan. She was like the madame de style of the Southwest . . . I’m hung up on unmanageable women at present, being one myself.” She may be unmanageable, but these two certainly manage to work well as a team, complementing each other at every turn. Beverly kids Nancy, “We can’t get out of this collaboration. She’s going to be staring at me over turkey at Thanksgiving.” Features of the book include Notes from Nancy’s and Bev’s Reading Journals; choice passages from each book followed by a digestible, witty discussion of it; “Points to Ponder” about each entry; “Can I get that printed on a coffee mug?” quotes from authors and nonauthors alike; and a laugh-out-loud “Books to Be Thrown with Great Force” section. So what’s next for Peske and West? Audiotherapy, perhaps? They’ve considered it they say, but next on their plate is the March 2002 release of Advanced Cinematherapy, the follow-up course for those who passed Cinematherapy 101. For now, however, we strongly recommend taking some time to get in touch with your inner bibliophile.

Katherine H. Wyrick lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

On the couch with the bookish babes of Bibliotherapy You need therapy, sister Bibliotherapy to be exact. Subtitled The Girl's Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives, this is one glorious and hilarious guide to a life's worth of literature. From "When You're…

Nature

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Standing in front of the reptilium at the London zoo, author Jeremy Seal recalled one of his earliest fears: Years before, as a child, I had stood in this same doorway. I remember how I had imagined within a bottomless pit overflowing with snakes, plaits of snakes spilling on to the shiny floor to entangle themselves and slither numberless down long corridors, and the images had stopped me in my tracks. My palms had prickled with sweat and tears had welled up in my eyes, and thirty years later little had changed. His paranoia was such that he had become convinced that he would, sooner or later, die of snakebite.

To the average Joe, taking up residence in Ireland or some equally snake-free place would seem the prudent course, but then Jeremy Seal is not the average Joe. Having trekked all over Turkey a few years back in search of an elusive fez (A Fez of the Heart), Seal now takes us on a herpetological tour of such exotic locales as India, Kenya, Australia, and Alabama. Alabama, exotic? You bet, for in the northeast corner of the state, and in contiguous Tennessee and Georgia, are Pentecostal churches whose members routinely handle poisonous snakes in the name of faith. Seal chronicles the murder trial of a misguided minister who attempts to murder his wife by means of snakebite and then pass it off as suicide; in another vignette, he visits a country church to watch the handling of serpents firsthand. He chases the deadly taipan in Far North Australia, the hooded cobra in southern India, and in Kenya, the lethal black mamba. With equal doses of humor and, um, venom, Snakebite Survivors’ Club offers the reader as close a look at our slithery friends as he or she will likely ever want.

In an equally perilous part of the world specifically, the Brazilian rainforest nature writer and NPR commentator Sy Montgomery (Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans) pursues an altogether friendlier species, the pink freshwater dolphin (known locally as boto ) of the Amazon basin. Comparatively little is known about this rare species; the aquatic mammal is far better known in folklore than in fact. According to Amazonian legend, the dolphin can assume human shape and walk unrecognized on shore; it can even take a human lover. The danger in this is that the human half of the equation may be lured back to the dolphin’s homeland, Encantada (Portuguese for enchanted ), never to return to land.

Little research has been done on pink dolphins; their habitat is murky and piranha-infested, the creatures themselves are somewhat elusive and shy, and the rapid changes to the rainforest region have profoundly disturbed their normal patterns of life. Still, Montgomery is determined to view the dolphins, to add to the base of knowledge on their habits, and to forge a tentative cross-species bond with them: Within three minutes of our arrival, the dolphins appeared. I swam out to them, perhaps a quarter mile. All seven botos appeared, blowing, pulling their heads from the water to look One of the medium grays rolled on his back, waving his flippers, and then turned, flipping his tail. Moments later Montgomery discovered that the nearby fisherman’s net yielded two four-inch piranhas.

Seal’s easy humor and laid-back approach contrasts with Montgomery’s conservationist zeal and fascination with the occult, but each offers a rare look at far-off lands and the unusual creatures who call them home.

Bruce Tierney writes from Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Standing in front of the reptilium at the London zoo, author Jeremy Seal recalled one of his earliest fears: Years before, as a child, I had stood in this same doorway. I remember how I had imagined within a bottomless pit overflowing with snakes, plaits…
Religion & Spirituality

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The conflict between fundamentalism and mainstream society is familiar across cultures and centuries. We’ve seen it emerge within religious faith, between faiths, and even wearing the mask of politics and human rights. Will the people that violate my beliefs ever give up? I can’t stand it anymore! It can make a person mad enough to be an extremist! Or an anti-extremist! In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong gives satisfying attention to this ever-frustrating, ever-enduring issue. She shows the tense relationship between mainstream society and fundamentalists to be the result of resistance to an aggressive move towards modernization. As a former Catholic nun turned Oxford scholar, Armstrong’s credibility is reinforced by her current position as professor of comparative religion at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism. She practices what she teaches: compassion and understanding between disagreeing traditions.

Western civilization has changed the world. Nothing including religion can ever be the same again. All over the world, people have been struggling with these new conditions and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions, which were designed for an entirely different type of society. Armstrong develops an enlightening historical comparison between fundamentalist movements in the major monotheistic faiths: Sunni and Shii Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. By isolating the development of each in a clearly written historical context, she shows how vastly different religious traditions, often at odds with one another, actually share a crucial characteristic. Armstrong takes the reader back to 15th century Spain to make her point, which is that each embattled movement has sprung from a total dread of modernity. By showing how modernism and fundamentalism are fed and strengthened by each other in a symbiotic relationship, Armstrong encourages understanding between opposing sides instead of continually intensifying resistance. In fact, while Armstrong recognizes fundamentalism as truly modern, she notes that extremism can distort and thereby defeat the original beliefs it hopes to preserve, and that mainstream society’s suppression of fundamentalism avoids a core issue of cultural preservation. Amy Ryce is a writer living in Nashville, Tennessee.

The conflict between fundamentalism and mainstream society is familiar across cultures and centuries. We've seen it emerge within religious faith, between faiths, and even wearing the mask of politics and human rights. Will the people that violate my beliefs ever give up? I can't stand…

NonfictionPolitics

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Drawing on public records and their own on-the-scene observations, Ivins and Dubose contend that George W. Bush’s most remarkable achievement as governor of Texas has been his own political advancement. The two political reporters Ivins for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dubose for the Texas Observer pay scant attention to Bush’s alleged drug use and other youthful excesses. Instead, their focus is on his business dealings and political machinations.

A point they make early in the book is that the Texas constitution so limits the powers of the governor that Bush could not possibly have worked all the wonders he boasts of in his speeches. By their reckoning, the governor is only the fifth most powerful pol in the state’s hierarchy. To the extent that Bush might have used the prominence of his office to sponsor or befriend legislation for the benefit of most Texans, they charge he has failed to do so.

As a young businessman, Bush had greater success finding investors among his father’s rich and powerful friends, the authors assert, than he did in making his various enterprises profitable for them. They add, however, that he usually did extremely well for himself in these ventures, whether it was exploring an oil field or exploiting the Texas Rangers.

But it is their appraisal of Bush’s performance as governor that is most devastating. Ivins and Dubose ridicule Bush’s mantra of compassionate conservatism. His conservatism is evident, they concede, but they see no signs of compassion. He has, they point out, been a pitiless champion of the death penalty, a relentless foe of judicial fairness, an enemy of environmental reform, and generally a scourge of the poor and helpless. They do give Bush fairly high marks for trying to improve education, although they say his efforts in this area have been more impulsive than deliberate.

One of the best features of the book is also its worst and that is Ivins’s wicked humor and incessant folksiness. (We’ll let Dubose off the hook here.) It is hard to absorb and appreciate the full evil of bad politics when you’re encouraged to laugh at the politicians. In depicting these people as buffoons (which they surely are at the lowest level), Ivins permits us to view them as mere eccentrics. And that tends to defuse our rightful anger.

Edward Morris is a Nashville-based entertainment and political writer.

Drawing on public records and their own on-the-scene observations, Ivins and Dubose contend that George W. Bush's most remarkable achievement as governor of Texas has been his own political advancement. The two political reporters Ivins for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dubose for the Texas Observer…

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