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E.

L. Doctorow’s City of God is a novel about almost everything imaginable: New York, the Holocaust, the 20th century, apocalypse, love, religion, and the universe.

The namesake for this novel is St. Augustine’s book of the same title, which responded to those who blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome. Augustine saw human history as a struggle between an Earthly City and the City of God with the holy city winning in a final apocalyptic battle.

In Doctorow’s novel, the city is New York, the time 1999, and the apocalypse at once personal, psychological, social, and theological.

The novel revolves around an odd occurrence: A cross disappears from behind the altar at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, eventually reappearing on the roof of the synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism on the Upper West Side. Everett, a novelist, decides to investigate the mystery and in doing so befriends the priest at the church and the couple who are rabbis at the synagogue.

Always in the background of this novel’s tale lies the Holocaust, both its historical reality and its effect on the present. Thus, as he investigates the mystery of the moving cross, Everett also finds himself investigating the Holocaust.

To tell the tale, Doctorow peppers his novel with a multitude of voices speaking directly from the pages of Everett’s notebook including an ex-reporter for the New York Times, a Holocaust survivor, a World War II veteran, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Albert Einstein.

In its postmodern use of many voices strung together in a stream-of-consciousness style, City of God resembles the convoluted work of James Joyce, and like Joyce’s novels, Doctorow’s requires close attention from the reader. What the reader gives to this novel, however, the novel returns tenfold. It is a tale of depth and passion, humor and pain. It is a novel about apocalypse, yes, but it is also about finding hope, love, and some measure of faith amidst the ashes of the 20th century.

Vivian Wagner is a freelance writer in New Concord, Ohio.

E.

L. Doctorow's City of God is a novel about almost everything imaginable: New York, the Holocaust, the 20th century, apocalypse, love, religion, and the universe.

The namesake for this novel is St. Augustine's book of the same title,…

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Television’s much-awarded broadcast reporter Cokie Roberts might intimidate us ordinary souls if she weren’t so personal, warm, and insightful. Her book, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters part memoir, part social history demonstrates these qualities. Roberts’s title makes her chief point: no matter how political and social changes revise women’s lives, women’s nature remains the same.

“Women,” she says, “have always been multiple-minded.” Rather than regarding multiple-mindedness as a handicap, Roberts sees it as a strength. Women by necessity, she claims, will always focus on many things at once, jobs and family, professional life and personal life. Roberts, herself a highly successful professional woman, notes that “women are connected throughout time and regardless of place.” Our Mothers’ Daughters develops this theme in 13 chapters organized around women’s various roles. The anecdote-filled chapters illustrate women’s toughness, tenderness, and flexibility at home as well as in more public arenas. Chapters on “Sister,” “Aunt,” “Wife,” and “Mother/Daughter” draw on Roberts’s personal life. Daughter of Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman lost in a plane crash in Alaska, and Lindy Boggs, herself a member of Congress and now Ambassador to the Vatican, Cokie says “Politics is the family business.” “Sister,” a moving prose elegy, deals with Roberts’s sister Barbara’s death from cancer. “Mother/Daughter” praises her mother’s strength, wisdom, good sense, and sense of humor. When Roberts’s children were young, Grandma Lindy lived on Bourbon Street. “I used to jokingly chant [to my kids], ÔOver the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go,’ as we tripped our way past the denizens of that naughty neighborhood.” “Aunt” registers appreciation of the network of southern women Roberts grew up in, while “Friend” expresses appreciation for the network of professional women that fostered Roberts’s career. For women’s more public roles, Roberts draws on experiences gleaned from her years as a reporter. “Politician” points out the importance of women being active in politics despite the difficult, sometimes tawdry, world politicians inhabit. “Consumer Advocate” profiles Esther Peterson, the woman responsible for truth-in-advertising package labeling. “First-Class Mechanic” chronicles the inspiring story of Eva Oliver of Baton Rouge, a mother who got off welfare and now counsels other women. “Civil Rights Activist” traces the career of 85-year-old Dorothy Height, President of the National Council of Negro Women. Roberts has unearthed fascinating tales of women in business, women in the service, women in reporting. She weaves them together in clear, informal prose well-spiked with her own warm personality.

Reviewed by Joanne Lewis Sears.

Television's much-awarded broadcast reporter Cokie Roberts might intimidate us ordinary souls if she weren't so personal, warm, and insightful. Her book, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters part memoir, part social history demonstrates these qualities. Roberts's title makes her chief point: no matter how political and…
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This book’s a carrier.

No, not the Typhoid Mary kind, but the kind you carry around with you from place to place, the kitchen to the bedroom, the car to the dentist’s office, just in case you might have an empty minute somewhere to check out the next event in the lives of the complex and troubled Blau clan.

Thirteen-year-old Stefan Blau triggers the multigenerational saga in 1894 when he runs away from Burgdorf, Germany, and emigrates to the United States, eventually settling in Winnepesaukee, New Hampshire. From a rented rowboat, he sees on shore the image of the Wasserburg, a magnificent apartment house he will build, six stories of pillars, marble fireplaces, beveled mirrors, and wrought-iron sconces. Dancing around the fountains and courtyards, a small girl whirls in his vision. Later he will recognize her as his own granddaughter, sharing his passion for this water fortress which, for better or worse, will dominate the lives of the next century of Blaus.

Ursula Hegi, author of six other books, and herself an immigrant from Germany at age 18, has covered this territory before, most notably in Stones from the River, a contender for the PEN/Faulkner Award and an Oprah book club selection. Picking up characters from the fringes of that novel, she follows them through four generations of relationships with each other and the beautiful, sometimes obsessive, building.

Hegi writes with a German accent. Her work is strong and teleological, driving to an end that is telegraphed from the beginning ( many years later when Robert would . . . ). Because so much ground must be covered, her characters here are sometimes seen from a distance, their actions and thoughts described more than lived on the page. For all that, The Vision of Emma Blau grabs that soap-opera hook in every reader’s brain and hangs on for dear life, serving up a prime collection of mildly and majorly dysfunctional souls.

Metaphorically, it has always been the sin of the fathers that is visited upon the children. Hegi takes the idea into another dimension. In this book, it’s the dream of the father that is visited upon the children. Maude McDaniel reviews for the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other newspapers.

This book's a carrier.

No, not the Typhoid Mary kind, but the kind you carry around with you from place to place, the kitchen to the bedroom, the car to the dentist's office, just in case you might have an empty minute…

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Life is one long journey, and men and women take different approaches to the adventure. Best-selling author Gail Sheehy takes us along for part of the trip from a man’s point of view, with her new book, Understanding Men’s Passages. Sheehy demonstrates how the trek of life has changed for men in the past few years with the development of new social conditions and medical advances.

“Most men as they approach 40 or later ages will run into passages for which they were never prepared,” writes Sheehy. As traditional roles of men and women become more or less a thing of the past, men find themselves more confused than ever as they approach middle age. Sheehy reveals that the stereotypes of men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are just not accurate anymore. In hundreds of extensive interviews with men from all over the country, men talk about their concerns about the effects of aging: loss of physical stamina, sex drive, prestige. As baby boomers approach “middle age,” Sheehy finds that aside from changes here and there most still consider themselves the same person they were when they were 25 or 30. Interestingly, for those in their 50s, 60s, and beyond, there are ways in which this seems to be true. “Retirement is an obsolete concept for boomers,” reports Sheehy, who talked to a number of men in the midst of post-retirement careers. “Male menopause” is a subject few have dared talk about, but Sheehy forges ahead, prompting discussions on hormone treatments, impotency, virility, family matters, staying active, and examining the comments of men who have experienced this “change of life.” Every reader will gain something from Understanding Men’s Passages; men can see themselves and women can see their husbands, fathers, significant others, and friends. Sheehy’s detailed research and straightforward style helps to unveil this silent topic, and aims to enable men to prepare and endure the passages of life and, hopefully, learn something about themselves in the process.

Reviewed by Paul Ladd.

Life is one long journey, and men and women take different approaches to the adventure. Best-selling author Gail Sheehy takes us along for part of the trip from a man's point of view, with her new book, Understanding Men's Passages. Sheehy demonstrates how the trek…
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It all began with the idea of writing a story about a school assignment. It blossomed into the remarkable novel Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde, an extraordinary tale that, like its young protagonist, just might change the world. When social studies teacher Reuben St. Clair writes on the blackboard, Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney takes the assignment seriously and comes up with the concept of Paying Forward. His plan is fairly simple: He’ll do something really good for three people who, instead of paying him back, will be asked to pay it forward by aiding three more. Hard as he tries, Trevor’s initial attempts seem to fail. Time after time, the recipients of his good deeds let him down. But just when Trevor thinks his entire project has been for naught, things take a turn for the better and his efforts slowly snowball into a national phenomenon. Pay It Forward is Hyde’s second novel and, 20 years in the making, it is truly a labor of love. Telling the story of Trevor’s remarkable project from the alternating perspectives of Trevor’s diary and the people who are touched by the young boy’s vision, Hyde grabs the reader’s attention and never lets go until the novel’s passionate surprise ending.

Big things are expected of this book (there was already a movie deal in the works before its release), and with good reason. Pay It Forward is a delightfully uplifting, moving, and inspiring modern fable that has the power to change the world as we know it which would be a wonderful phenomenon indeed.

Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.

It all began with the idea of writing a story about a school assignment. It blossomed into the remarkable novel Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde, an extraordinary tale that, like its young protagonist, just might change the world. When social studies teacher Reuben…

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Computer software magnate Bill Gates may be refining the art of monopoly as we enter the next millennium, but it was John D. Rockefeller who perfected the practice more than a century ago. Indeed, much can be learned about the current state of capitalism and competition by studying Rockefeller, who dominated the oil market as America moved into the 20th century. Ron Chernow’s latest book, Titan, provides a primer on the life of Rockefeller, creator of the Standard Oil Company monopoly.

Chernow masterfully examines the complexities of a man who rose out of an impoverished childhood to become the richest American of his time. The author uses detailed, descriptive writing to show how some people saw Rockefeller as the personification of the evils of capitalism, while others viewed him as a patron saint for his philanthropic work.

Chernow is already established as a respected biographer and social historian, having won praise for his earlier works, The House of Morgan and The Warburgs. He decided to profile Rockefeller after discovering a 1,700-page transcript of private interviews with the oil baron for an authorized biography that was never written. But as Chernow delves into the transcript and hundreds of other written records, the portrait of Rockefeller becomes more perplexing. "In truth, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had left behind a contradictory legacy — an amalgam of godliness and greed, compassion and fiendish cunning," Chernow writes.

Born in 1839, Rockefeller was the son of a medicine peddler and a deeply religious mother. Chernow argues that these contradictory influences became the foundation for his actions. "I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can, fairly and honestly; to keep all you can and to give away all you can," Rockefeller once said.

As Chernow reveals, Rockefeller slowly squeezed out competitors by cutting deals with railroads to provide cheaper shipments to customers. By the time his Standard Oil Trust flexed its full muscle in 1882, it controlled 90 percent of the nation’s oil refining and distribution. Rockefeller became a billionaire. Later, when President Theodore Roosevelt led a trust-busting campaign, it resulted in Standard Oil being dissolved in 1911 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the twilight of his life, Rockefeller donated millions to charity and created such institutions as the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller University, the University of Chicago, and the General Education Board. "The fiercest robber baron had turned out to be the foremost philanthropist," Chernow writes.

Judgment of Rockefeller will be left to the ages. The difficulty of that task is best summarized when Chernow relates a meeting between Henry Ford and a frail Rockefeller shortly before his death at age 97. "Good bye, I’ll see you in heaven," Rockefeller says, to which Ford replies, "You will, if you get in."

John T. Slania is a writer in Chicago.

Computer software magnate Bill Gates may be refining the art of monopoly as we enter the next millennium, but it was John D. Rockefeller who perfected the practice more than a century ago. Indeed, much can be learned about the current state of capitalism and…

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When L.

E. Modesitt’s The Magic of Recluce hit the bookstores in 1991, Gordon R. Dickson praised it as “Fascinating! A big, exciting novel of the battle between good and evil, and the path between.” Now, seven years and seven novels later, I’m tempted to say that Dickson woefully understated the case. Modesitt’s Recluce series set in a parallel earth-like world where magic and technology conspire and conflict in a constant struggle between chaos and order is more than a story about the battle between good and evil. The saga of Recluce is as rich and complex a creation as Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. If you are just tuning in on Modesitt’s work, The White Order (eighth volume in the series, with at least one more, Colors of Chaos, upcoming) may pose a bit of a puzzle to you. Its major storyline seems painfully simple: Young Cerryl, orphaned when white mages from Fairhaven killed his amateur-magician father, discovers that he has inherited his father’s talent. But the powerful White Order of magicians keeps a close watch on those who experiment with the white magic of chaos, and when Cerryl attempts to find out more about his powers, he is apprehended and brought before Sterol, High Wizard of the Guild. Sterol decides that Cerryl deserves training rather than death although as Cerryl learns during the course of his studies, training in white magic may result in death, if the student mage is not careful. Underneath this story of initiation, however, the novel resonates with echoes of an elusive past and foreshadowings of an uncertain future. Cerryl’s education both in magic and in the art of survival offers the first-time visitor a tantalizing, but incomplete, glimpse into a world where much more is happening than appears on the surface.

However, if you are already familiar with Modesitt’s Recluce saga, then The White Order is one more fascinating piece to the jigsaw-time puzzle which Modesitt is painstakingly assembling. Indeed, as those who have read at least as far as The Magic Engineer (volume three) have already encountered, in that flashforward episode in the series, an older, more adept Cerryl is one of the council of White Magicians seeking to destroy Recluce. Up to now, both in flashbacks and flashforwards, the conflict in this parallel world has seemed to be between “good” order and “evil” chaos.

With the present novel’s focus on Cerryl’s training in White Magic, Modesitt changes this emphasis. In doing so, a brilliant new facet appears, best expressed in this passage: “All life composes itself of chaos and order. Yet too many forget that without chaos there is no life. . . . The very light of the sun is white chaos. . . . Within the very sunlight are all the colors of white, the pure chaos from which springs all life. . . . To claim that order is the staff of life. . . is not only false but folly, for the sole perfect order in life is death.” I suspect that the saga of Recluce has many more puzzles to solve not least of which is whether, in Modesitt’s parallel world, chaos and order will survive in a delicate balance or annihilate each other in one final, agonizing confrontation. Reviewed by Robert C. Jones.

When L.

E. Modesitt's The Magic of Recluce hit the bookstores in 1991, Gordon R. Dickson praised it as "Fascinating! A big, exciting novel of the battle between good and evil, and the path between." Now, seven years and seven novels later,…

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Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.S., its population having boomed from 400,000 in 1980 to more than a million now. As four new books attest, Vegas is also a magnet for the imagination. Inevitably the authors focus on the four-mile stretch of casinos called the Strip, but along the way they address many other aspects of the Industry as Las Vegas residents refer to gambling including entertainment, prostitution, organized crime, and law enforcement.

Let’s move from the narrowest focus to the broadest. Pete Earley, the investigative reporter who wrote The Hot House about Leavenworth, and also published exposes about the Aldrich Ames and John Walker spy cases, has a new book, Super Casino: Inside the New Las Vegas (Bantam, $26.95, 0553095021). He explores everything from legendary Las Vegas promoters such as Bugsy Siegel and Howard Hughes to the astonishing success of recent family-oriented entertainment facilities.

Several of Earley’s stories demonstrate the hypnotic pull the city exerts on residents who try to escape. One security guard tells the story of his experiences during the tragic fire that raged through the MGM Grand Hotel in 1980. Afterward, traumatized, he and his wife moved to Florida to flee the memories, but finally they returned because they missed the twenty-four-hour excitement. Andres Martinez covers some of the same territory from a completely different point of view in 24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas. Martinez gave himself a month to lose the $50,000 his publisher had given him to chronicle a gambling spree. Along the way he wrote a vivid, you-are-there account of his adventures, one day per chapter. Like Paul Theroux, Martinez seems part fascinated anthropologist and part happy-go-lucky adventurer. It’s an appealing combination, and makes for a personal take on an impersonal town. Unlike the other Vegas books described here, 24/7 is also extremely amusing.

Inevitably, the most varied of these volumes is an anthology, The Real Las Vegas: Life Beyond the Strip (Oxford, $30, 0195130707), edited by journalism professor David Littlejohn. Fourteen vivid chapters by as many writers explore such topics as gambling, organized crime, the real estate boom, and locals who decry their home town’s reputation. For example, the chapter Law and Disorder details the countless scam artists who trail the nouveau riche foolish enough to flaunt their wealth. Skin City follows a limo driver who caters to whorehouse clients and acts as surrogate uncle to the prostitutes themselves; then it explores the strip joints of the city.

Broader still in scope is David Thomson’s new book, In Nevada, which bears the ambitious subtitle The Land, the People, God, and Chance (Alfred A. Knopf, $27.50, 0679454861). You’ll recognize Thomson’s name from his several previous books, including Rosebud, his biography of Orson Welles, and Beneath Mulholland, a lively tour of Hollywood history. From early nuclear testing to recent theological battles, he prowls his self-assigned turf with scrupulous attention. He refutes those who consider Vegas hell on Earth: Hell is rebuke, torture, and eternal punishment for those who have sinned. Las Vegas may be founded on a paradox, or a trick, but the idea that you will play and strive and then lose is not hellish. For many of us, it’s a profound and absorbing metaphor for life. Thomson mentions that, because he normally writes about film, people couldn’t understand why he was writing about Nevada. If I sometimes seem to concentrate on film, why, really, it’s just a way into life, and words, and wondering what you can believe. For Thomson, as for the authors of these four books, that is precisely what Las Vegas is a way into many other things that seem to converge in the near-mythical city that rises from the desert like a neon mirage.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.S., its population having boomed from 400,000 in 1980 to more than a million now. As four new books attest,…

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If you haven’t read the nonfiction works of Peter Matthiessen, or you merely yearn for a one-volume greatest hits album, a new book offers the ideal sampler buffet. The Peter Matthiessen Reader: A Selection of Nonfiction, the latest in Vintage’s ongoing series of handsome trade paperback series of Readers, features excerpts from every nonfiction book by Matthiessen in the period covered. From Wildlife in America to Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution, from The Tree Where Man Was Born to In the Spirit of Crazy Horse the breadth is astonishing. With an artistry denied to most naturalists and an expertise few literary writers ever attain, Matthiessen easily earns his place in the pantheon of great nature writers. In a thoughtful introduction, the editor, McKay Jenkins, places Matthiessen’s work in the context of his life. The subsequent selections prove that Matthiessen is eagerly sometimes urgently trying to articulate the lives of the less articulate, whether animal or human. This broad sampling of his work reminds us that Matthiessen’s nature writing is motivated by the same curiosity, compassion, and love of life as his fiction. Like Thoreau, he is eager to report the glory of the universe.

If you haven't read the nonfiction works of Peter Matthiessen, or you merely yearn for a one-volume greatest hits album, a new book offers the ideal sampler buffet. The Peter Matthiessen Reader: A Selection of Nonfiction, the latest in Vintage's ongoing series of handsome trade…

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Since his acclaimed first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published exactly 50 years ago, Norman Mailer has been at or near the center of our literary stage. His novels, essays, short stories, criticism, and political and social reportage have earned him much recognition and admiration, including the National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes. At the same time, his work has often been controversial, due to his choice of (and approach to) subject matter. One perceptive critic, Louis Menand, wrote in 1985 that “Mailer’s life and times are [his] great subject and if we were to string together his omnibus collections . . . one would have a history hard to beat for completeness and impossible to beat for moral nuance.” Others have called him outrageous, combative, eogcentric, even distasteful. Mailer, age 75, now allows us the chance to finally decide for ourselves with the publication of The Time of Our Time, a collection which represents the entire range of the author’s work.

This generous anthology holds Mailer’s selections of his best writing. In over 1,200 pages, the excerpts and pieces appear in the order of the year they refer to, rather than the year they were written. In this, his 31st book, Mailer places fiction, narrative nonfiction, interviews, and other writings side by side. With a body of work arranged in this manner, comparisons and observations are easily made. Striking is the sheer range of Mailer’s intellectual curiosity and his willingness to pursue difficult topics. Among them, the 1967 march on the Pentagon to protest the war in Vietnam, the 1968 and 1972 political conventions, the CIA, Watergate, the lives of Maria and Lee Harvey Oswald, Marilyn Monroe, boxing, modern art, sex, feminism, ancient Egypt, and the life of Jesus. Mailer’s keen powers of observation and insight enable him to bring a unique sense of immediacy to whatever he’s doing; there is a realistic, human understanding of all of his subjects. Also remarkable is his willingness to try different genres. As he writes, “if there is one fell rule in art, it is that repetition kills the soul.” This has not been a problem for Mailer, as is evidenced in this volume. I can confidently assert that there is much in The Time of Our Time to admire. Likewise, there is much sure to offend and disturb. Commenting on his goal as a writer, Mailer said in an 1958 interview “that the final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary to exacerbate the moral consciousness of people.” At this goal, Mailer has succeeded with a body of work that is truly a testament to a prolific career.

Reviewed by Roger Bishop.

Since his acclaimed first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published exactly 50 years ago, Norman Mailer has been at or near the center of our literary stage. His novels, essays, short stories, criticism, and political and social reportage have earned him much recognition…

Review by

Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.

S., its population having boomed from 400,000 in 1980 to more than a million now. As four new books attest, Vegas is also a magnet for the imagination. Inevitably the authors focus on the four-mile stretch of casinos called the Strip, but along the way they address many other aspects of the Industry as Las Vegas residents refer to gambling including entertainment, prostitution, organized crime, and law enforcement.

Let’s move from the narrowest focus to the broadest. Pete Earley, the investigative reporter who wrote The Hot House about Leavenworth, and also published exposes about the Aldrich Ames and John Walker spy cases, has a new book, Super Casino: Inside the New Las Vegas. He explores everything from legendary Las Vegas promoters such as Bugsy Siegel and Howard Hughes to the astonishing success of recent family-oriented entertainment facilities.

Several of Earley’s stories demonstrate the hypnotic pull the city exerts on residents who try to escape. One security guard tells the story of his experiences during the tragic fire that raged through the MGM Grand Hotel in 1980. Afterward, traumatized, he and his wife moved to Florida to flee the memories, but finally they returned because they missed the twenty-four-hour excitement. Andres Martinez covers some of the same territory from a completely different point of view in 24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas (Villard, $25, 0375501819). Martinez gave himself a month to lose the $50,000 his publisher had given him to chronicle a gambling spree. Along the way he wrote a vivid, you-are-there account of his adventures, one day per chapter. Like Paul Theroux, Martinez seems part fascinated anthropologist and part happy-go-lucky adventurer. It’s an appealing combination, and makes for a personal take on an impersonal town. Unlike the other Vegas books described here, 24/7 is also extremely amusing.

Inevitably, the most varied of these volumes is an anthology, The Real Las Vegas: Life Beyond the Strip (Oxford, $30, 0195130707), edited by journalism professor David Littlejohn. Fourteen vivid chapters by as many writers explore such topics as gambling, organized crime, the real estate boom, and locals who decry their home town’s reputation. For example, the chapter Law and Disorder details the countless scam artists who trail the nouveau riche foolish enough to flaunt their wealth. Skin City follows a limo driver who caters to whorehouse clients and acts as surrogate uncle to the prostitutes themselves; then it explores the strip joints of the city.

Broader still in scope is David Thomson’s new book, In Nevada, which bears the ambitious subtitle The Land, the People, God, and Chance (Alfred A. Knopf, $27.50, 0679454861). You’ll recognize Thomson’s name from his several previous books, including Rosebud, his biography of Orson Welles, and Beneath Mulholland, a lively tour of Hollywood history. From early nuclear testing to recent theological battles, he prowls his self-assigned turf with scrupulous attention. He refutes those who consider Vegas hell on Earth: Hell is rebuke, torture, and eternal punishment for those who have sinned. Las Vegas may be founded on a paradox, or a trick, but the idea that you will play and strive and then lose is not hellish. For many of us, it’s a profound and absorbing metaphor for life. Thomson mentions that, because he normally writes about film, people couldn’t understand why he was writing about Nevada. If I sometimes seem to concentrate on film, why, really, it’s just a way into life, and words, and wondering what you can believe. For Thomson, as for the authors of these four books, that is precisely what Las Vegas is a way into many other things that seem to converge in the near-mythical city that rises from the desert like a neon mirage.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

Viva Las Vegas! Las Vegas. The name inspires a hybrid image, half Disneyland and half Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the fastest-growing city in the U.

S., its population having boomed from 400,000 in 1980 to more than a million now. As…

Review by

John Jakes, author of The Kent Family Chronicles and The North and South Trilogy, began a new cycle of historical novels with the best-selling Homeland, “to tell what happened” in America, and the world, during the last one hundred years. Now, for all those readers who followed the stories of Pauli Kroner, Herschel Wolinski, Joe and Ilsa Crown and their children Fritzi, Carl, and Joe Junior and who have since bombarded the novelist with requests to tell what happened next Jakes has completed the long-awaited second novel of the Crown family dynasty. American Dreams is aptly named. Against a panoramic view of American life and culture in transition between 1905-1917, it continues, in vivid detail, the stories of three dreamers previously introduced in Homeland: Fritzi, her younger brother, Carl, and their cousin, Paul. For each one of these protagonists, the American dream is tinged with the same Apollo-like promise a bittersweet blend of happiness and loss. Fritzi achieves the public acclaim she has longed for, but only at the cost of abandoning her dream of a stage career and becoming engulfed in the burgeoning motion picture industry.

Carl, fascinated with machines, pursues a turbulent, out-of-control course that brings him into conflict with Henry Ford in Detroit. He plunges into the maelstrom of the racing circuit with speed king Barney Oldfield and is eventually sent skyward, first as a pilot for a flying circus, then as a mercenary for the Mexican Federalists, and, finally, as a fighter pilot in war-torn Europe.

Paul, the acclaimed author of I Witness History, a book about his experiences as a newsreel filmmaker, loses his job when he defies British law by making public his footage of atrocities committed by the German army. Toward the end of the novel, back in Europe to obtain more war footage, Paul, in a moment of supreme despair, senses that the deaths he is recording are a harbinger of the end of an era that the nightmare of war has “enveloped Europe’s golden summers of peace and confidence, turning them to winters of despair and ruin.” But in the midst of this darkness, the novel like America, and like the giddy century which the world is still experiencing rises above despair. The real American dream, perhaps, is emblemized in the rhapsody of hope spoken by music maestro Harry Poland (once known as the immigrant Herschel Wolinski) about Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty: “She says so much, that great lady. She says, ÔWelcome, whoever you are. You needn’t be rich, or renowned, there is a place for you anyway.’ To me especially, she says, ÔThis is the land where you can realize your wildest dream if you work hard. So go forward, for that’s where the future lies . . . ahead of you. You will never find it by going back.'” Reviewed by Robert C. Jones.

John Jakes, author of The Kent Family Chronicles and The North and South Trilogy, began a new cycle of historical novels with the best-selling Homeland, "to tell what happened" in America, and the world, during the last one hundred years. Now, for all those readers…

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Patricia Cornwell is back with familiar friends and at her absolute best as a novelist. Though Cornwell has tried other literary pursuits, nothing succeeds like Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the cast of characters around her who make mystery reading pure pleasure.

Dr. Scarpetta is growing older as is everyone and her sometime lover, Benton Wesley, is grayer. Her niece Lucy has changed jobs after leaving the FBI and now works for the ATF. Her familiar sidekick, Peter Marino, is beefier, smokes heavily and sometimes ruffles Scarpetta’s feathers. Generally, they mirror the human condition.

For the uninitiated, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner for the commonwealth of Virginia. She is also a consultant to the FBI, often called in on cases that are extraordinarily baffling. This time she has a real puzzler. A fire burns down the house and horse barn of a prominent and wealthy man while he is away, destroying some very fine horses. There is also a dead blonde in the bathroom of the main house. With an onslaught of mysterious fires and deaths, Dr. Scarpetta is increasingly bewildered but keeps her cool, even in the midst of a very personal tragedy. Evidently, an audacious and cunning killer is on the loose, but finding and unmasking him sets this mystery apart from the ordinary. Cornwell’s mastery of suspense is notable, and Point of Origin is certainly no exception.

This is a superb choice for anyone’s summer reading but the odds are that some will find it difficult to put down while the day turns to night, and night to early morning. This is, as the saying goes, a page-turner that will keep the reader utterly enthralled, wondering what will happen next.

Reviewed by Lloyd Armour.

Patricia Cornwell is back with familiar friends and at her absolute best as a novelist. Though Cornwell has tried other literary pursuits, nothing succeeds like Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the cast of characters around her who make mystery reading pure pleasure.

Dr.…

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