bookpagedev

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

For classroom use or summer afternoon arts and crafts time, Kathy Ross’s Crafts from Your Favorite Fairy Tales, illustrated by Vicky Enright is a clever, creative companion title. While the actual tales are not included in the book, this selection of craft projects inspired by 20 of the most widely read fairy tales is designed to encourage both exploration and expression in young readers. Using everyday household or craft store items, the projects can be done by kindergartners with some help, or can be elaborated upon or adapted by older children.

Puzzles, a story theater, and an especially charming sleepy Seven Dwarfs egg carton bed are all outlined in easy-to-follow instructions. Even the traditional puppet is here given a face-lift, whether it be Rapunzel peeking out from her a paper tube tower, or Cinderella, transformed from rags to riches with a simple turn of the hand. The design of this collection provides hands-on experience for children and a place to give creative voice to the themes and feelings conjured up by the timelessness of fairy tales.

Reviewed by Denise Yagel Oliveri.

For classroom use or summer afternoon arts and crafts time, Kathy Ross's Crafts from Your Favorite Fairy Tales, illustrated by Vicky Enright is a clever, creative companion title. While the actual tales are not included in the book, this selection of craft projects inspired by…
Children's & YAPicture Book

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Fairy tales seem to be part of the collective literary consciousness no matter when or where one came of age. But the terror of the Big Bad Wolf and the tenacity of the Three Little Pigs are only a glimmer of the wealth afforded by this most classic of literary forms. With firm roots in oral tradition and tendrils that reach deep into the human psyche, the fairy tale is the consummate example of a good story well told. DK Publishing adds a comprehensive and noteworthy volume to this genre with The Illustrated Book of Fairy Tales, retold by Neil Philip, illustrated by Nilesh Mistry. Categorized according to culturally universal themes “Under a Spell,” “Riches and Rags,” “Heroes and Heroines,” and “True Love Conquers All,” this 52-story collection is clearly worthy of its subtitle, “Spellbinding Stories from around the World.” Incorporating lore from such richly diverse regions as Costa Rica, Trinidad, Finland, and Zaire alongside the more well-known tales of England, Japan, Greece, and the Native American, Philip has culled a collection as easily used by parents for reading to children at home as by teachers and librarians for group story time. Mistry’s muted yet evocative illustrations are an essential element in the title’s success, highlighting and complementing the most crucial and telling moments of the tales. They are paired with reproductions of drawings, photographs, and illustrations from earlier tellings that bring together both a creative and a historical perspective for enjoying the stories. In DK signature fashion each page brims with ancillary factual information, a device which never fails either to entice a reluctant reader or to enrich a willing one. Reviewed by Denise Yagel Oliveri.

Fairy tales seem to be part of the collective literary consciousness no matter when or where one came of age. But the terror of the Big Bad Wolf and the tenacity of the Three Little Pigs are only a glimmer of the wealth afforded by…
FictionWomen's Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Barnaby Gaitlin is no prince. A quasi-reformed juvenile delinquent, Anne Tyler’s anti-hero in her new novel, A Patchwork Planet, has just celebrated his 30th birthday alone, swilling beer in his dank basement apartment. Still, Barnaby is a disheveled handyman with a heart, and Tyler’s 14th novel will not disappoint die-hard fans who cherish the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s knack for plainspoken storytelling.

Like most of Tyler’s novels, A Patchwork Planet is set in a Baltimore suburb, capturing a year in the life of an eclectic array of characters, primarily, the Gaitlin family. Barnaby, the proverbial black sheep of the bunch, has never managed to overcome his tarnished teenage years, when he soiled the Gaitlin name after he was arrested for burglary. His affluent family orchestrates a charitable foundation, but Barnaby is not impressed. His ill-fated marriage to the wholesome girl-next-door ended in a divorce after the birth of their daughter, Opal. Now, his ex-wife has married a wealthy Philadelphia lawyer, and Barnaby has grown estranged from his only child.

A Patchwork Planet could have easily fallen into a predictable pattern, portraying the travails of a divorced dad who longs to be closer to his daughter. Tyler will have none of that with Barnaby, who is less than enthusiastic about his sporadic drives to Philly in his grandfather’s old Corvette. Indeed, Barnaby is passionate about two things: searching for his angel a mythical Gaitlin tradition and helping his elderly clients at Rent-A-Back, where he tackles odd-jobs alongside his co-worker, a scrappy, anemic-looking waif named Martine. Of course, Barnaby is searching for love, which arrives in the form of a plump, sweet-faced banker named Sophia. At last, Barnaby seems to have settled down, as Sophia’s hearty crock-pot meals and stolid serenity lull the former felon into a homespun nirvana. Even the Gaitlins approve of Sophia, and the romance blossoms with the blessing of Barnaby’s persnickety mother, Margot. But A Patchwork Planet is not a love story, and Tyler is too talented to serve up a neat and tidy conclusion. A common thread running through all of Tyler’s novels is the minutia of everyday the trips to the grocery store, the lace doilies and dusty furniture, and, above all, a deep respect for an average life. While many of Tyler’s prior novels have revolved around the struggles facing couples with teenage children (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Ladder of Years), at 57, the novelist seems to be taking a long, hard look at the so-called Golden Years.

It is a reflection that is alternately comedic and tragic, and Tyler does not shy away from the raw truth. As Barnaby’s aging clients whisper their fears and share their fading memories, he begins to believe that perhaps his search for a soul mate is pure folly. “At Rent-A-Back, I knew couples who’d been married almost forever. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person.” With A Patchwork Planet, Tyler has once again served up literary comfort food for the soul. While those who crave action and demand resolution may be frustrated by Tyler’s character-driven plots, even the most cynical reader will be charmed by Barnaby, and above all, an assortment of silver-haired saints.

Reviewed by Karen A. Cullotta.

Barnaby Gaitlin is no prince. A quasi-reformed juvenile delinquent, Anne Tyler's anti-hero in her new novel, A Patchwork Planet, has just celebrated his 30th birthday alone, swilling beer in his dank basement apartment. Still, Barnaby is a disheveled handyman with a heart, and Tyler's 14th…
Audio

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In the early 1970s, super secret agent Evan Tanner disappeared, not an uncommon fate of international spies in the waning days of the Cold War. Captured by a Swedish militant group (now there’s an oxymoron), Tanner was put in ice; that is to say, cryogenically frozen and buried under a suburban New Jersey house. Tanner’s creator, Lawrence Block, left him there for a quarter of a century, give or take, and in the interim found fame and fortune chronicling the exploits of hard-boiled detective Matthew Scudder and bon vivant burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr.

Now it is 1998, the Cold War is but a distant memory, and by a happy accident Evan Tanner is resurrected. Chronological age: early sixties; apparent age: thirty-something. A lot has changed since the seventies: the advent of the computer age, AIDS, designer drugs, the partitioning of the former Soviet Union. Tanner goes by his old apartment and finds, to his astonishment, that his key still fits. More amazing, all his old furniture is present and intact, a living museum to the “late” Evan Tanner. The biggest surprise still awaits him, however, as the little refugee girl he had adopted some 25 years ago still lives in the apartment . . . only she ain’t so little anymore.

It takes Tanner several months to catch up, to figure out how the events of the recent past have come together to shape the present. Voraciously reading back-issue newspapers and weekly news magazines, he draws upon his photographic memory to sort myriad random facts into some cohesive whole.

Though the strife has ended between the Soviet Union and America, there are still trouble spots left in the world where an intelligence man may ply his trade, and soon the reconstituted Tanner finds himself in Burma, on a mission to kill real-life Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi. It seems Tanner’s employer feels that the murder of Burma’s most famous daughter will foment insurrection in the Southeast Asian country, thereby creating any number of money-making opportunities for the adventurers savvy enough to capitalize on it.

Tanner quickly finds himself wrapped up in the proverbial web of intrigue, framed by the Burmese secret police, escaping to the frontier disguised as a Buddhist monk. (In the company of a beautiful bald woman who may be the heir to the Romanoff throne of Russia, yet.) More lighthearted than the Matt Scudder series, yet more topical and political than the Bernie Rhodenbarr books, Tanner on Ice is reminiscent of the tongue-in-cheek novels of Donald Hamilton (the Matt Helm series) or even Ian Fleming’s classic James Bond stories. Anyone who enjoyed those will have a difficult time putting this one down.

Reviewed by Bruce Tierney.

In the early 1970s, super secret agent Evan Tanner disappeared, not an uncommon fate of international spies in the waning days of the Cold War. Captured by a Swedish militant group (now there's an oxymoron), Tanner was put in ice; that is to say, cryogenically…

NonfictionTrue Crime

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Timothy Dumas, former managing editor of Greentown News, is obsessed with the most infamous murder mystery to occur in America’s wealthiest community, Greenwich, Connecticut. For years, Dumas has written about the headline-grabbing slaying of 15-year-old Martha Moxley, found beaten to death on the lawn of her home on Halloween, 1975. Now, with Greentown, Dumas offers one final examination of the case.

The brutal murder of the young all-American beauty, as chronicled by Dumas, begins with a no-holds-barred overview of Ground Zero, the remote Belle Haven community of Greenwich, nicknamed “Greentown,” a place where nothing is as it seems. Something evil and decadent lurks in the rows of gabled mansions along the tree-lined streets in the monied enclave, home of the nation’s tony jet set, Hollywood royalty, and political power brokers. Dumas shatters the myth of this suburban Shangri-La with his probing, uncompromising look at the girl’s last hours and the crime’s aftermath. However, it is the author’s crisp, lean writing style that lends the work its power. Dumas’s relentless search does not prevent him from finding the underlying humanity of the principals in this sordid event. The author ventures bravely into the minds of each of the key players, using their individual voices to weave a colorful tapestry of grief, deception, and hypocrisy. The writer is at his best when he allows them to speak their deepest fears and secrets. Some elements of the case surfaced immediately police disclosed that the murder weapon was a woman’s golf club and that the last person to see the dead girl was Thomas Skekel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy. Others, however, remain a mystery. With the complete revelation of the grisly murder, the Belle Haven community, long protective of its reputation and distrustful of outsiders, closed ranks, stymying the police investigation. Every lead rushed to a frustrating dead end, witnesses suddenly became strangely mute, suspects were captured and quickly released.

To his credit, Dumas veers away from the type of doting fascination with the rich and famous that writer Dominick Dunne exhibited in his popular A Season in Purgatory, which is also based on the Moxley case. Instead, Dumas focuses his attention on the seemingly ill-fitting puzzle pieces of the unsolved murder. Why would a killer choose the carefree, fun-loving Moxley teen for such a gruesome death? Why was the clumsy six-iron used as a murder weapon? How did a stranger get past the defenses of the heavily guarded Belle Haven community? Was it an inside job? In short, Dumas’s Greentown is the perfect example of what a treasure trove of research can become in the hands of a capable writer.

Reviewed by Robert Fleming.

Timothy Dumas, former managing editor of Greentown News, is obsessed with the most infamous murder mystery to occur in America's wealthiest community, Greenwich, Connecticut. For years, Dumas has written about the headline-grabbing slaying of 15-year-old Martha Moxley, found beaten to death on the lawn of…
Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ÊI am, let it be said, an Eve Babitz devotee. Hooked ever since reading Slow Days, Fast Company many moons ago, I have read every article, book, and snippet I could find in the intervening years. Since the death of L.

A. Times columnist and author Jack Smith, Babitz has become the preeminent voice of Los Angeles, the person to whom transplanted Angelenos look for news of home.

In Two by Two, Babitz chronicles the dance crazes sweeping Los Angeles, and its practitioners and devotees. (Did you know, for instance, that Sandra Bullock is a salsa queen, or that Robert Duvall is a tango champion?) Each chapter is devoted to a small slice of the dance scene. In one chapter, Paul McClure, a soft-spoken cowboy who teaches the two-step to urbanites who grew up with disco, advises If you don’t know the step, just ignore those who do; you’re more creative anyway . . . Of the infighting among the L.

A. tango fanatics, Babitz observes, If someone starts any event in tango on a Tuesday, someone else will open a competing event just on that day, as though there were nine million tango maniacs in L.

A. rather than just forty-seven. And in yet another chapter, Babitz writes about the easy-going Cajun dances, . . . Being half Cajun myself, I am partial to these wild bands and the night and this particularly crazy music. It’s all just hot sauce to me, and I was raised on Tabasco and gumbo by my mother at a time in America when onions and garlic were considered a shock. Two by Two delineates the differences between East Coast Swing and West Coast Swing, rejoices in the freedom of the salsa and the Cajun dances, and marvels at the beauty of ballroom dancing from the perspective of a lifelong devotee, at home on the dance floor but clearly not in the first echelon of skill level.

Although Two by Two is more focused than Babitz’s typical L.

A. ramblings, it remains a loving, amusing look at the world of dancing, with the heavy overlay of L.

A.-ness that will keep the Angeleno expat longing for home. Bruce Tierney is a reviewer in Nashville, Tennessee.

ÊI am, let it be said, an Eve Babitz devotee. Hooked ever since reading Slow Days, Fast Company many moons ago, I have read every article, book, and snippet I could find in the intervening years. Since the death of L.

A.…

Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

For over four decades, Stephen Sondheim has been the most innovative composer-lyricist in the American musical theater. He first gained renown as the lyricist for West Side Story in 1956. Since then, he has not only written words and music for such Broadway hits as Company, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, but he has led the way in redefining the musical show. In those shows and others, including Pacific Overtures, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, and Passion, he has experimented with themes and approaches thought to be without popular appeal too intellectual, depressing, or cynical with irony and wit that might go unappreciated. While it is true that only one of his songs, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music has become a major popular hit, audiences throughout the world have hailed him as the premier musical dramatist of his time.

How did it happen? In her insightful and readable Stephen Sondheim: A Life, noted biographer Meryle Secrest explores the man and his achievements. Drawing on extensive interviews with Sondheim, his friends, and colleagues, she has brought vividly to life a person who says he is difficult to describe because “I just don’t have an awful lot of colors.” Although he received little attention or affection from his parents when he was younger, their divorce when he was ten-years-old shattered his world. He had a long and difficult relationship with his mother which ended only with her death many years later. His intense interest in music, games, and conundrum dates from that moment of their divorce when, as Sondheim said “nothing made sense anymore.” Secrest writes, “If the puzzle was the metaphor, art was the solution, because of its equally crucial emphasis upon structure and form. Music became charged with meaning only when it could make order out of chaos, and this goal became the leitmotif of his life.” From early on, Sondheim was determined to be, as one of his college professors noted, “the best on Broadway.” He was fortunate to develop relationships with Oscar Hammerstein, Arthur Laurents, and, most importantly, producer-director Hal Prince, who helped him achieve his goal.

Sondheim is remarkably honest and forthright, a trait regarded as one of his most admirable by friends. He discusses his “very late blooming” homosexuality, as well as his 25 years of psychoanalysis with a doctor whose particular interest was the relationship between creativity and neurosis.

Secrest takes us behind the scenes to understand better the creative process of the solitary composer and the collaborative process involved in musicals. Sondheim has described himself as a playwright-actor, “And when I write songs I become the actor, and that’s why actors like my stuff.” Both processes are often difficult and tense and, even with a successful show, fleeting. His agent says that whenever she called with good news about attendance or sales, invariably Sondheim’s response would be “Yes, but for how long?” The biographer traces the musical influences on Sondheim’s work and also shows how his life influenced his art. It seemed, Secrest writes, “his ability to create a world of his own imaginings had saved him when life was at its bleakest. If his themes were somber the essential loneliness of the human condition and the death of illusion in the end it was his ability to metamorphose his private anguish into something outside of himself that had saved him.” This excellent, absorbing biography of an extraordinarily talented, true American original should be of interest to a very large audience.

Reviewed by Roger Bishop.

For over four decades, Stephen Sondheim has been the most innovative composer-lyricist in the American musical theater. He first gained renown as the lyricist for West Side Story in 1956. Since then, he has not only written words and music for such Broadway hits as…

Pop CultureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

You may have thought the species extinct since their habitat has vanished, but author Kathryn Leigh Scott is here to tell you otherwise. The Bunny Years: The Surprising Inside Story of the Playboy Clubs: The Women Who Worked as Bunnies, and Where They Are Now is a veritable Vindication of the Rights of Bunnies, and a tribute to the women who lived the tail. Scott, a former Bunny herself, remembers fondly her years in the Playboy Clubs and offers profiles of over 200 women who worked there during its 25-year history. The list will surprise you. Former bunnies include a Congressional candidate, a midwife, a multi-millionaire businesswoman, a renowned doctor, and celebrities not to mention women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem. The author could well have subtitled the book "Gloria Steinem Was Wrong." Scott, exceedingly proud of her role as Bunny, takes Steinem, evidently the Paul Revere of Bunnydom, to task for Steinem’s scathing 1963 expose A Bunny’s Tale. Despite the author’s oh-so-earnest prose, this book is just plain lots of fun a romp through an era that, thankfully, has gone by. And the photographs of Bunnies draped over a very groovy-looking Hef, of Bunnies on snow mobiles, in the swingin’ Playboy jet, poolside are priceless.

The words "club hopping" now have a whole new meaning. Reviewed by Katherine H. Wyrick.

You may have thought the species extinct since their habitat has vanished, but author Kathryn Leigh Scott is here to tell you otherwise. The Bunny Years: The Surprising Inside Story of the Playboy Clubs: The Women Who Worked as Bunnies, and Where They Are Now…

LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Give ’til it hurts You’ve made big travel plans for the summer, and then you receive the call: Aunt Agnes, Cousin Curtis, and the rest of the family have rented a big house near the beach, and everyone is expected to be there for the month of July. Sigh . . . Guess where you’ll be spending your summer vacation? You need a little pick-me-up gift for yourself, under the circumstances. What gift doesn’t require a security deposit, seven-day advance purchase, or a Saturday night stay? Why, books, of course! Photographer Jeffrey Kraft’s exquisite photographs of Parisian cubbyholes and artifacts are not intended to entice one to visit the city; rather, his Literary Paris (Watson-Guptill, $18.95, 0823028305) is meant for those who have already been. The images are meant to inspire a memory from a time that has passed; this is not a fancy collection of tourists’ snapshots. Kraft has arranged his remembrances alongside excerpts from literary works by authors who stayed in Paris for extended periods of time. Kraft has captured the glimpse, the detail, the moment, rather than structures and sites. He offers an idea of what remains in the mind and heart, even years after the visit itself has ended. A wonderful gift for the Francophile in your life.

Ben Jonson said, He was not of an age, but for all time. He was, of course, speaking of his friend William Shakespeare. Children’s book author Aliki has written and illustrated William Shakespeare and the Globe (HarperCollins, $15.95, 006027820X), which describes not only Shakespeare’s life, work, and times, but even acknowledges visionary Sam Wannamaker, who spent years resurrecting the Globe. The book is designed much like a script, with acts and scenes and characters. An interesting add-on is the list of words and expressions, complete with illustrations, credited to Shakespeare; for example, sweets to the sweet and hush were apparently invented by the Bard himself. Seems we’ve been quoting Shakespeare without realizing it! Cities like Paris and London must make use of every tidbit of soil that can be found; as acreage diminishes in our growing world, green thumbs everywhere are striving to be more and more creative with their craft. Artisan has published Window Boxes: Indoors and Out with this in mind. Authors James Cramer and Dean Johnson offer fragrant, beautiful, and useful options for the, uh, land-challenged. Cramer and Johnson offer optional locations (who says a window-box is limited to being wooden, square, and outside?) and year-round planting options (a thriving garden in January?) With this book, the decision is no longer how to create a miniature garden, but rather how many miniature gardens you can create. Soil sold separately! Of course, if we’re talking land for land’s sake, Antarctica has land to spare. It’s been 85 years since Ernest Shackleton and the 27-member crew of the Endurance set out to cross the Antarctic on foot. Less than 100 miles from its destination, the Endurance was caught in an ice pack and was badly damaged. For over 20 months, the crew (along with 69 sled dogs) was marooned, but no lives were lost. Two books commemorate this remarkable true story of adventure and perseverance. First, there’s Knopf’s The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition ($29.95, 0375404031), a sophisticated account of the expedition. There’s also Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition (Clarion, $18, 0395915244), which may be better-suited to younger explorers. Both books feature expedition photographer Frank Hurley’s photographs and offer a chronological summary of this death-defying journey. Hurley started the expedition with professional equipment, but his final shots were taken with a pocket camera. Endurance author Caroline Alexander, in association with the American Museum of Natural History, carefully researched this volume, complete with some of Hurley’s photographs that had not been published previously. Ice Story author Elizabeth Cody Kimmel presents the journey in storybook format, but the information is accurate and anecdotal. Both books would make great gifts for anyone who has a taste for adventure and hopeful endings.

Agnes and Curtis decide that the grown-ups need to take the children to the waterpark which happens to be 50 miles away for the day. Fifty miles can seem like 500 without Fun on the Run: Travel Games and Songs (Morrow Junior Books, $17, 0688146600). Brimming with silly stories, limericks, brain teasers, and songs, this book helps to fill travel time without batteries or messy cleanup. Familiar songs and games such as The Ants Go Marching and Hangman are included, but Fun on the Run contains nearly 125 pages of other games and songs that can be a part of any trip. If you still confuse Darth Vader with Darth Maul, fear not; Dorling Kindersley has published two books that will help you keep the prequel and the original trilogy straight: Star Wars Episode I: the Visual Dictionary ($19.95, 0789447010) and Star Wars Episode I: Incredible Cross Sections ($19.95, 078943962X). Like their predecessors (or would it be their descendants?), these books are designed to keep facts, characters, and plots straight. Archaeologist David West Reynolds, an obvious choice for the author, approaches this much like he did his previous Star Wars works. One feels as if he is on an archaeological dig or scientific study of another world. May the source be with you!

Give 'til it hurts You've made big travel plans for the summer, and then you receive the call: Aunt Agnes, Cousin Curtis, and the rest of the family have rented a big house near the beach, and everyone is expected to be there for the…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Add a sweater (and perhaps an umbrella) to your suitcase and pick up a copy of Kidding Around Portland: What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Portland. The kids can color their way to the City of Roses, to Portland’s “Roll-on Deodorant Building.” Author Deborah Cuyle will show young explorers where Portland gets its four nicknames and what pioneer children used instead of Frisbees! Cruises on stern-wheelers and visits to Mount Hood will make this city memorable for any child. And if Portland doesn’t fit your summer plans, you can find a Kidding Around book for almost any major city in America. Reviewed by Anna Claire Straughan.

Add a sweater (and perhaps an umbrella) to your suitcase and pick up a copy of Kidding Around Portland: What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Portland. The kids can color their way to the City of Roses, to Portland's…

Graphic Novels & ComicsComics

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Animation acclamation This second edition of The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, by Jeff Lenburg, contains over 40 percent new material among its more than 2,200 entries. Sections include silent and sound theatrical cartoons, full-length animated features, and animated television series and specials. Entries recount animators, studios, characters, and shows. Inclusions range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Nominees for sublimity include The Simpsons, easily the best cartoon ever on network TV; the magnificently noir and beautifully drawn New Adventures of Batman and Robin; and Toy Story, which turned out to offer not mere technical wizardry but both story and humor. On the ridiculous side (hey, I admit these are subjective), I could mention such errors in judgment as Mr. T, in which the tonsorially challenged intellectual giant battles evil and takes fashion risks with a group of adolescent gymnasts. But does that really surpass a masterpiece of goofiness such as Josie and the Pussycats or the hideous All Dogs Go to Heaven? The historical tidbits are wonderful. Browsers will learn that actor Clarence Nash, the legendary voice of Donald Duck, had to learn to quack in Japanese, Portuguese, and French to dub the foreign releases of the cartoons. Words were written out for him phonetically. Why don’t they teach important stuff like this in school? My favorite part of this book is that it proves what I have always maintained and no one has ever believed. When I was ten years old, in 1968, there was indeed a Saturday morning cartoon entitled Super President. So there.

Animation acclamation This second edition of The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, by Jeff Lenburg, contains over 40 percent new material among its more than 2,200 entries. Sections include silent and sound theatrical cartoons, full-length animated features, and animated television series and specials. Entries recount animators,…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Hand your troops a copy of Kidding Around Nashville: What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Nashville, and let them plan the itinerary. This is just one of the 18 John Muir guide books to American cities geared for the hands and minds of most six to ten-year-olds. They blend facts and fun to make cities interesting, accessible, and safe for the youngest citizens. The print is large and unintimidating, the tone friendly. Children will be drawn into chapters with names like: “Animals, Animals,” and “Let’s Eat!” If you are traveling in any of the cities, you’ll find that clear maps, fun facts, and puzzles will add to the new city adventure.

Author Tracy Barrett and her children help young readers discover the real reason Nashville is “Music City U.

S.

A.” They can lead you to the best kid-approved Nashville cuisine and the Parthenon all in a day. Walk the Tennessee maps at the Bicentennial Mall and visit the farmer’s market next door. While you’re in the neighborhood, turn around, spot the state’s capitol, and read about its history. Flip to the back for Barrett’s calendar of events or jump-start your journey with coupons for the Nashville Toy Museum or the ante-bellum Belmont Mansion. Reviewed by Anna Claire Straughan.

Hand your troops a copy of Kidding Around Nashville: What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Nashville, and let them plan the itinerary. This is just one of the 18 John Muir guide books to American cities geared for the…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Management and Murphy’s Law Anyone who has ever read Paradise Lost knows that things gone wrong make for catchier story lines than things going right. That’s why Milton’s Satan is a more memorable character than any of the good guys in his epic. Four of this month’s notable business books offer entertaining and edifying stories of failure and, in the process, they triumph over Milton’s malady and offer roadmaps to success.

In When Giants Stumble (Prentice Hall, $26, 0735200599), business historian Robert Sobel reviews the past century in American business to bring us the sad stories of companies long forgotten (discount retailer E.J. Korvette, auto maker Kaiser-Frazer and others), and of institutions that have been wounded but are still with us (the New York Stock Exchange, Schlitz and Pabst beers).

Sobel categorizes the giant blunders of these titans into a list of 15 deadly sins of corporate leadership. They range from the Blunders of Hubris, Ignorance, Nepotism, and Nonstrategic Expansion to the Blunders of Cutting Corners, Standing Pat, Isolation, and Dependency.

The author has a gift for teasing out lessons from disasters that might otherwise seem like ancient history. From pioneering Osborne Computer Corp., we learn that a company can get it all right predicting accurately that IBM-compatibility and laptop portability would become desirable features in PCs and still get it all wrong. Osborne built bug-ridden products, alienated strategic partners such as distributors, and died unmourned in 1982, before the PC revolution had taken off. The Blunder of Ineptitude, Sobel calls it.

And from Packard Motor Car Co., we learn that squandering the intangible value of a brand name can kill even a long-established company. In 1928 there was nothing on the road more stylish and status-laden than a Packard. By 1948, after misguided efforts to sell more cars to the masses, Packard was just another mid-range make, and by 1958 the company was history. Sobel labels this error the Blunder of Downward Brand Extension.

It’s impossible not to feel for these stumbling giants. Visionary entrepreneurs like James Ling of LTV Corp. and industrial dynasties like the Schwinn family of bicycle makers may have nobody to blame but themselves for what happened to their enterprises, but there is still a tragic dimension to the amount of heart and soul invested in ultimate failure.

Sobel writes with empathy for the blunderers. He could have turned out an interesting but facile book by merely narrating what went wrong at these companies. Instead he has produced a truly valuable study by analyzing why each lousy decision seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

A question you’ll keep asking yourself as you read Sobel’s book serves as the title for a volume from product development expert Robert M. McMath What Were They Thinking? Money-Saving, Time-Saving, Face-Saving Lessons You Can Learn from Products That Flopped, just released in paperback. McMath distills his four decades of new-product observations into a textbook on bad ideas. The Milton principle holds true once more: McMath’s vivid prose brings marketing failures to life as though they were characters in a novel.

If you had the misfortune of oily hair, would you advertise that fact in the supermarket by purchasing Gillette’s For Oily Hair Only shampoo? Have you felt the need lately to buy a 48-ounce jug of Maxwell House Brewed Coffee, so you can just pour a cup and microwave it? These what-were-they-thinking hall-of-famers have taken their places in the gallery of dead products that McMath has been collecting for nearly 30 years. He has 80,000 now, and the collection keeps growing as more than 25,000 new consumable items hit the shelves in the U.S. every year most doomed to quick extinction.

Like Sobel, though, McMath is not content merely to chronicle failure. His book is full of nuggets of wisdom. He shows us, for instance, that an errant concept is not always a dead end. What was Kimberly-Clark thinking when it saw Kleenex’s main purpose as removing cold cream? No telling, but give the company credit for shifting its marketing plans when consumers decided to use Kleenex as disposable hankies. With instructive examples like these and opinionated but astute analysis, McMath has produced a marketing bible likely to enjoy a long shelf life.

What were they thinking when they gave such a cumbersome title to one of the year’s most memorable business books? If You Want to Make God Really Laugh, Show Him Your Business Plan (Amacom, $22.95, 0814404987) is a combination of stand-up comedy and dead-serious business sense from former Burger King CEO Barry J. Gibbons. Get past the title, and you’re in for the funniest biz read since Jerry Della Femina’s From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor (Simon &and Schuster, 1970, out of print).

Interspersed with the author’s zany asides are his 101 Universal Laws of Business, a set of precepts illustrated by episodes from a career spent managing large operations on both sides of the Atlantic and watching business plan scenarios turn to dust. Both the humor and the rules project an insider tone, as though Gibbons were addressing a closed-door gathering of fellow corporate chieftains on a golfing retreat. Gibbons is frank about his own failures as a manager.

He has clearly learned from those shortcomings, developing a refreshingly humane vision of management in the process. Imagine if his universal law of motivation caught on nationwide: Pay people till their eyes water, share with them the value they add, trust them, and avoid doing dumb things that demotivate them. Plenty of bosses would view such notions as heresy. That’s why there’s still so much misery today in our supposedly enlightened workplaces.

For a guy who admits to being rich and satisfied with himself, Barry Gibbons displays a surprising humility in this book. I don’t think he would claim it as a virtue to be humble about leading an organization; I think he’d say it’s a necessity, given the certainty that the CEO will embarrass himself or herself at some point. And when that moment comes, he or she had better be able to laugh about it.

In Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role (Harvard Business School Press, $24.95, 0875847501), consultant Dan Ciampa and Harvard professor Michael Watkins have plenty to say about what can go wrong from the start. They, too, are doing a Milton, focusing the minds of aspiring executive readers by presenting examples of disasters in the careers of people just like them.

People don’t often talk on the record about why they got fired. But they do in this book (anonymously), as do many who have endured lesser career reversals and emerged from them as stronger leaders. This valuable guide to surviving at the top draws on interviews with dozens of high-level executives in business, government, and academia. Ciampa and Watkins let these managers speak for themselves in lengthy quotes that provide enough context to understand each element of leadership under discussion from securing early wins in the first weeks on the job to building coalitions and projecting self-image.

The interviewees speak with a candor rarely if ever found in statements to the press from members of the corporate elite. Equally valuable, though, are the authors’ analyses of the myriad threats sure to beset the new EVP or CEO. It’s no good for the newcomer to rail about office politics, communication gaps, or institutionalized barriers to change in the workforce. The leader needs to understand why these challenges arise, and what elements of his or her own style may be making them worse, in order to overcome them. This book can help the recently promoted cope with those frightening career moments that arise as soon as you get what you’re after.

Briefly noted: two July books try to get inside the heads of employees and employers. Workplace psychologist Leonard Felder’s well-received 1993 book Does Someone at Work Treat You Badly? is out in a new paperback edition (Berkley, $13, 0425165124). Felder retells the traumas endured by his counseling clients at the hands of schemers, screamers, sexual harassers, and other walking job hazards and tells of the techniques that helped victims gain the upper hand. New from British business psychologist Sandi Mann is Hiding What We Feel, Faking What We Don’t: Understanding the Role of Your Emotions at Work (Element, $16.95, 1862044643), which explores why we all wear happy, hostile, caring, or uncaring masks at work from time to time.

Also of note this month: William F. Joyce’s MegaChange: How Today’s Leading Companies Have Transformed Their Workforces (Free Press, $28, 0684856255), a manifesto for a management theory based on assumptions of human capability instead of human limitations. And, from Hollywood biographer Bob Thomas, Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire (Hyperion, $14.95, 0786884169) tells the story of the other Disney, Walt’s brother.

Nashville journalist E. Thomas Wood is the author of Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (Wiley).

Management and Murphy's Law Anyone who has ever read Paradise Lost knows that things gone wrong make for catchier story lines than things going right. That's why Milton's Satan is a more memorable character than any of the good guys in his epic. Four of…

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