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Everything Is Tuberculosis

Preventable and curable, tuberculosis is still the world’s deadliest disease. John Green illuminates why in Everything Is Tuberculosis.
Preventable and curable, tuberculosis is still the world’s deadliest disease. John Green illuminates why in Everything Is Tuberculosis.
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Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The psychology of money and work Twenty years ago, personal finance writer Andrew Tobias produced a best-selling book with a boastful title. It was called The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. Rather than scare away the competition with that all-encompassing name, the book’s huge success may have helped spark what’s become a growth industry unto itself: the avalanche of books intended to provide care and feeding to the emboldened individual investor. In 1978, very few people actively controlled their own investments, from automated payroll savings to retirement accounts. In 1978, there was no CNBC, no Internet stock trading, not even any Internet stocks to trade. In 1978, the mutual fund industry was a fraction of its current size. Given the enormous change that’s engulfed the world of personal finance, Mr. Tobias decided it was time to return to his original theme. So we have The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: Expanded and Updated Throughout (Harvest Books, $13, 0156005603). As for the compelling title, Mr. Tobias says it was his publisher’s idea, and he agreed in a weak moment. He notes that there are other good investment guides around (and many poor ones), but accurately adds: . . . reading three good investment guides instead of one will surely not triple, and probably not even improve, your investment results. So how does Mr. Tobias’s one-stop shopping site for investors hold up? Quite well. The author is a knowledgeable guide and a gifted writer. The book is a pleasure to read, which is important since so many people regard reading about investment options as an unpleasant if important chore. He covers most of the waterfront, and he is forthright in his opinions. For example, he doesn’t think much of investing in commodities or gold. On commodities, he writes: It is a fact that 90% or more of the people who play the commodities game get burned. I submit that you have now read all that you need ever read about commodities. On gold he offers, Gold itself pays no interest and costs money to insure. It is a hedge against inflation, all right, and a handy way to buy passage to Liechtenstein, or wherever it is we’re all supposed to flee to when the much ballyhooed collapse finally materializes. But if you’re looking for an inflation hedge, you might do better with stocks or real estate. Mr. Tobias is particularly strong in an area many people wouldn’t consider the province of an investment guide: frugality. Simply stated, spending less of your income is a great savings and investment strategy. Given effective tax rates, keeping an after-tax dollar in your pocket rather than in some merchant’s cash register is probably the equivalent of going out and earning two dollars before taxes. The author advises buying in bulk and hard bargaining on big purchases. He takes the reader through the pros and cons of most investment options in an engaging, common sense manner.

Every investor is different, of course. Mr. Tobias, for one, describes himself as rather chickenhearted. People should take on levels of risk that are not only appropriate for their income, goals, and stage of life, but also in line with their psychological ability to withstand risk. In other words, you want your investments to allow you to sleep at night.

Despite our differences, there are some psychological foibles most of us share when it comes to thinking about money. That’s the subject of a fascinating new book, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them (Simon ∧ Schuster, $23, 0684844931) by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich. The authors (Belsky is a journalist who wrote for Money magazine for seven years; Gilovich is a professor of psychology at Cornell University) take us into the world of psychoeconomic theory, which explains how widespread human behavior patterns have an adverse impact on our pocketbooks.

Take the concept of mental accounting, which deals with how we categorize money and treat it differently depending on its source. For example, we more easily fritter away money that was won at the racetrack the night before than we would rashly spend the contents of our hard-earned paychecks. Like other ideas of psychoeconomic theory, the various aspects of mental accounting are presented here through hypothetical scenarios in which readers can participate. This fun approach makes the issues at hand easy to identify with and clear. The bottom line solution to the mental accounting problem is this: Make sure you treat each dollar in your possession equally, no matter whence it came. This popularization of the work of psychologists hits on many interesting issues, including the fact that losses hurt more than gains please. That makes a lot of people more risk averse in their investment decisions than rational investigation would likely lead them to be. And then there’s the sobering fact that most of us are not as smart or as savvy as we imagine. The authors write: . . . for almost as long as psychologists have been exploring human nature, they have been amassing evidence that people tend to overestimate their own abilities, knowledge, and skills . . . in financial matters the tendency to place too much stock in what you know, or what you think you know, can cost you dearly. For most of these interesting tendencies, knowledge that they exist can help you fight them. The authors of this well-researched and clearly written book also offer specific remedies for the financial aspects of these psychological peccadilloes.

Psychology doesn’t abandon us once we put away the bills or monthly investment statements; it accompanies us to work (and everywhere else, for that matter). The ability to cooperate, collaborate, and even inspire our colleagues is a crucial factor in our own personal success as well as in the prosperity of our employer. In 1995, Daniel Goleman wrote a bestseller called Emotional Intelligence, which challenged the dominance of the IQ in measuring smarts. Now he’s taken those concepts to work in Working with Emotional Intelligence (Bantam, $25.95, 0553104624; Audio Renaissance, abridged, $16.95, 1559275154; unabridged, $39.95, 1559275162). Goleman received a doctorate from Harvard University and spent a dozen years covering behavioral and brain sciences for the New York Times. His essential message is an upbeat one: Those qualities that in an earlier time might have been labeled character or made one considered a good person are also the qualities that should help us get ahead at work.

There’s more good news. Your fate isn’t determined by some stagnant measure of your intelligence; you can improve on your emotional intelligence at any stage of life. In today’s work world, hierarchies have been flattened and the success of team work often depends on people’s ability to get along. Emotional intelligence has never been more important.

In readable detail, based on research and corporate profiles, Goleman lays out the personal competencies of emotional intelligence, which include self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, as well as social competencies, such as empathy and social skills. (Each category has more specific sub-categories.) This is an important and helpful book.

The changes in the American workplace in the past couple of decades haven’t all taken place within our heads. One seismic change has been the vastly expanded role of women in the work force, both in terms of number and influence. That change is the subject of Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America (Longstreet, $22, 1563525216) by Matt Towery. For a book about the growing strength of women in business, entertainment, and politics, as well as their dominant place as consumers and voters, the title strikes one as a tad irreverent. Mr. Towery, a former Georgia state legislator, says, however, that many influential women have willingly and proudly accepted the new term. As for why a man wrote this book, the author cites an old newspaper adage, to wit, You don’t have to die to be qualified to write obituaries. Mr. Towery has produced a glowing testament to women in a host of industries who have made it to the top or near top. Through numerous interviews, they tell of their motivations and of obstacles overcome. Among the many interesting points made are that corporate inflexibility might partly be behind the surge in female entrepreneurship and the description of a social phenomena he calls the female bachelor. This describes high-income, high-status single women with lots of disposable income who don’t feel pressured to marry.

Neal Lipschutz is managing editor of Dow Jones News Service.

The psychology of money and work Twenty years ago, personal finance writer Andrew Tobias produced a best-selling book with a boastful title. It was called The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. Rather than scare away the competition with that all-encompassing name, the book's huge…

The Dark Queens

Murders, kidnappings, perilous escapes, suicide missions, poisoned knives, marriage plots, witchcraft allegations: The Dark Queens has them all.
Animals

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ÊTalk about an unscheduled change of plans: Four and a half years ago, Alan Green set out to explore the possibility of writing a behind-the-scenes book about the new incarnation of zoos how they had begun to transform themselves from concrete-and-steel menageries to education-oriented bioparks. For Green, a veteran journalist based in Washington, D.C., the proposed investigation seemed like a natural: A few years earlier, he had worked as a volunteer in the Great Ape House at the National Zoo, and had actually twice considered chucking his writing career for a job as an orangutan keeper.

But when Green began examining box-loads of legal documents chronicling the affairs of a local petting zoo, he found something startling: paperwork showing that the National Zoo had sent some of its surplus animals to this same roadside zoo a practice that’s supposedly a no-no for reputable zoological parks. Thus began a four-year investigation of the domestic exotic-animal industry, an all-encompassing odyssey whose scope kept broadening until it not only included high-profile metropolitan zoos and low-rent roadside attractions, but also an elaborate network of breeders, dealers, and middlemen, as well as Harvard University Medical School and other prestigious schools. What Green found was that all these institutions seemed to be linked as trading partners, moving their unwanted animals from place to place, as if involved in an elaborate shell game. In the end, however, it seemed that the paper trails invariably grew cold and the animals simply disappeared.

In an effort to get at the truth, Green began a manic search for records that took him to 27 state capitals and had him hiring researchers elsewhere. With the backing of The Center for Public Integrity, a research organization known for its investigative reporting, Green culled through a few million documents until he was able to finally start piecing together those elusive paper trails. In the process, he unearthed startling often troubling revelations about the exotic-animal business and the self-appointed guardians of rare and endangered species. Bottom line, he discovered: While these caretakers of exotic creatures publicly trumpet their accomplishments about saving the species, they’re privately offloading other animals that land in basement cages, auction-house rings, and even so-called canned hunts. This is no animal-rights manifesto. It is rather painstaking and evenhanded investigative reporting in the grand tradition of the early 20th-century muckrakers a compelling behind-the-scenes look at a business whose operators have, until now, managed to conduct their seamy affairs entirely in secret. The reporting is so comprehensive that the revelations sometimes unfold in one sentence after another; reading some chapters can feel like being continuously pummeled in a boxing ring, as the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me stories keep getting hurled your way. It is often troubling reading, but it’s too gripping to abandon. And hopefully, it will be a catalyst for dramatic change. Because as the book makes abundantly clear, change is certainly needed.

Lorraine Rose is a writer and psychotherapist in Washington, D.C.

ÊTalk about an unscheduled change of plans: Four and a half years ago, Alan Green set out to explore the possibility of writing a behind-the-scenes book about the new incarnation of zoos how they had begun to transform themselves from concrete-and-steel menageries to education-oriented bioparks.…
History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

What’s black and white and red all over? America 1950 What often comes back to me from the early 1950s is the word communist. I vividly recall, growing up on the gritty sidewalks of the north side of Binghamton, New York, one of my playmates becoming angry when his mother wouldn’t give him money so he could join me in going to the movies. He ranted and stormed and raved and, at the height of his frustration, he reached for the most wounding insult he could think of. You . . . you . . . COMMUNIST! he spat at her, and stormed out the door.

I do not know now if we ever got to the movies, or if my friend was punished for his audacious outburst. I do know that neither he nor I nor his mother could tell a communist from a coloratura, but we all knew communist was not a nice thing to be called.

Communism is one of two chief topics of Lisle A. Rose’s The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950. Rose is not concerned with the social and cultural aspects of an age in which eight- and nine-year-old boys could walk unescorted to and from the movies in perfect safety. His canvas is national and global in extent and portrays an impulsive, often absurd obsession with communism so pervasive that it provided a ready epithet for a witless boy in upstate New York.

1950 is critical, Rose says, because it is when our postwar mood turned sour and uncertain. In 1949, we still exuded a breezy, can-do confidence. One year later, he writes, the United States had become another country. His subtitle could as accurately be America Leading up to 1950, because he roams back in time at some length to explain how the United States got to this pass. Basically, Rose finds a crisis in the old order, the Main Street-Wall Street nexus of Republicans that had ruled the country for decades under the comfortable myth of the moral superiority of commerce.

An entire way of life seemed to be slipping away from Main Street, Rose writes, and the fact that he seems to argue from an old-fashioned liberal point of view in no way diminishes the force of his argument. Anti-communism held an appeal for these foes of the liberal establishment who saw what they believed to be a golden age disappearing.

The apex of anti-communism was, of course, McCarthyism, which to Rose was not merely a partisan attack on the Democratic administration but the first and most piercing middle American protest against all the real and apparent soullessness and incompetence of a large, distant, often unresponsive and, above all, liberal government. As a political and diplomatic history, The Cold War Comes to Main Street is briskly told and formidably documented, though the author is harder on Whittaker Chambers than the facts warrant. He makes him out to be a kind of up-market McCarthy, which is certainly not true, as Sam Tanenhaus showed in his recent biography of Chambers.

Rose’s other chief topic is a related one: the Korean War, which was the Cold War against communism grown hot. In four chapters, he captures its salient political and combat elements. There are, however, a couple of highly disputable assertions.

For instance, he says of the North Korean People’s Army invasion of the south in June 1950, the criminal slowness of the NKPA in advancing into South Korea would cost it the war. For one thing, many Korea historians would disagree with this assessment. For another, why criminal ? Would he prefer that the invaders had succeeded? On the other hand, he is quite right to condemn MacArthur’s vainglorious hot pursuit of the North Koreans right up to the Yalu River. If anything was criminal, it was that. It led to, among other things, the bitter campaign of November-December 1950 when U.

N. forces were overwhelmed by the Chinese and the cold. Through mining newspapers and other contemporary periodicals, Rose gives us a sense of how awful the campaign was for the combatants.

Finally, one of the malicious pleasures of reading a history such as this lies in discovering how wrong newspaper and other pundits of the day got things. For example, in 1950 Hans J. Morgenthau, a leading political scientist, intoned about the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, In comparison with it, all the great issues of the postwar period fade into insignificance. Well, actually, no. Remember that the next time Rush or Maureen tells you something of national or global importance.

Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger@bookpage.com.

What's black and white and red all over? America 1950 What often comes back to me from the early 1950s is the word communist. I vividly recall, growing up on the gritty sidewalks of the north side of Binghamton, New York, one of my playmates…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Listen up, sports fans Joe Garner is the author/compiler of We Interrupt This Broadcast, a popular collection of audio highlights with accompanying text from some of the biggest news stories in the past 65 years. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to figure out what the follow-up should be, since the formula worked so well. Sports events are made for this sort of project, and some of their biggest moments are brought back to life nicely in And the Crowd Goes Wild: Relive the Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast, narrated by Bob Costas. It’s easy to figure out why this volume works even better than the original. With a few exceptions, newscasts don’t feature live descriptions because they aren’t planned. In sports, however, broadcasters are usually on site to tell audiences about history-making events. It’s wonderful, then, to hear the original emotion in the voices of announcers describing such events as Bobby Thomson’s 1951 playoff home run, the New York Mets’ 1969 World Series championship, Jack Nicklaus’s 1986 Masters triumph, and Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run of 1998. There won’t be many avid sports fans who will be able to resist giving this a listen or a read.

Listen up, sports fans Joe Garner is the author/compiler of We Interrupt This Broadcast, a popular collection of audio highlights with accompanying text from some of the biggest news stories in the past 65 years. It doesn't take a leap of imagination to figure out…

The Trials of Harry S. Truman

In the first detailed account of the Harry Truman presidency in almost 30 years, Jeffrey Frank engagingly considers Truman’s most controversial decisions.
Arts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Lifestyles of the artistic and famous Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists by Edward Lucie-Smith is at least three books in one: It is a comprehensive study of the vast expanse of 20th-century art, a presentation of the great movements in this century’s art, and the fascinating life stories of major artists. The book’s greatest strength is the masterful way in which it weaves the life stories of artists into the story of their art. We come away understanding not only what makes these artists work, but also having a good grasp of the significance behind what they did. The life stories are arranged chronologically by movement, from Cubism to American Pop Art. Each subchapter contains a picture of the artist accompanied by at least one well-selected color plate of his or her work. All the familiar names are covered, such as Picasso, Chagall, and Pollock, but also less familiar ones such as David Alfaro Siquieros (who botched an assassination of Trotsky) with life stories equally as riveting.

Lifestyles of the artistic and famous Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists by Edward Lucie-Smith is at least three books in one: It is a comprehensive study of the vast expanse of 20th-century art, a presentation of the great movements in this century's art,…

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

To Walk About in Freedom

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Civil War scholar Carole Emberton titled this insightful study of “freedom’s charter generation,” the first group of enslaved people to be emancipated in 1865, after a soothing quote from the Bible (Psalm 119:45). But she is clear: There was nothing easy about this walk away from slavery for the Black Americans of the Jim Crow South. Their stories, gathered in interviews by the Federal Writers’ Project during the Great Depression, are carefully retold in To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner, a necessary, judicious correction to previously published accounts.

A project funded under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the FWP sent mostly white interviewers across the South to record the stories of formerly enslaved people who were still living. But before publication, the interviews underwent heavy editing to make them align with a more nostalgic vision of the South’s past. It would take Sterling Brown, a Black poet and FWP leader, to insist on authenticity and restore the interviewees’ words. Almost a century later, here they are.

Emberton’s book especially focuses on one woman, Priscilla Joyner, who told her life story to the FWP. Born in 1858, Joyner was never formally enslaved, yet her struggle to be free lasted for her entire lifetime. After the Civil War, former slaveholders did their best to subvert and sabotage the new, fragile laws of Reconstruction. Shocked when the people they had enslaved walked away without looking back, and fearful of a new balance of power, they thwarted Black voting rights and menaced teachers at newly opened schools—or simply burned the schools down.

Joyner experienced much of this hostility firsthand. The white woman who called herself Joyner’s mother did little to nurture or protect her. Joyner’s darker skin enraged her white siblings, who tormented her until, as a teenager, she was abruptly given away to a Black family. Within that community, Joyner found her people, went to school for the first time, wore ribbons in her hair and dresses that fit, and fell in love. Yet she and her family continued to struggle against inequities in pay, health care, education and professional opportunities.

Emberton’s attention to detail, whether she’s describing an inept FWP interviewer, an intimidated storyteller or the heavy-handed project editor, succeeds in debunking any nostalgia attached to the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy.

Carole Emberton’s insightful study of the first group of enslaved people to be emancipated is a necessary, judicious correction to Confederate nostalgia.

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