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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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MusicArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Now approaching its 74th anniversary, the Grand Ole Opry is more than just America’s longest-running radio show. It is also a cultural force of limitless reverberations, one whose impact far surpasses that of any of its biggest stars whether of Roy Acuff, its first musical titan, or Garth Brooks, its current behemoth.

No scholar is better suited to reveal the Grand Ole Opry’s historic underpinnings than Charles K. Wolfe. He has written extensively on the subject before and has contributed valuable studies of such country music luminaries as Kitty Wells, Grandpa Jones, the Louvin Brothers, and DeFord Bailey, the Opry’s first major black personality. A tireless interviewer of peripheral figures and a rooter-out of obscure archives, Wolfe’s most recent offering was The Devil’s Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling.

In his new book, Wolfe chronicles the Opry from its advent November 28, 1925, on Nashville radio station WSM as a regional barn dance to its development into a cherished national institution by 1940. He explains as well how the Opry cast evolved in its first 15 years from a loose collection of musically talented amateurs into a corps of polished show business professionals. At the center of all this activity stood the Opry’s originator and guiding spirit, station manager George D. Hay, the solemn old judge. Wolfe’s research turns up a number of notable firsts. By his account, the Binkley Brothers and Jack Jackson’s I’ll Rise When the Rooster Crows, recorded in 1928, was the first country hit to come from Nashville. Obed Dad Pickard, who made his Opry debut in 1926, became the show’s first vocal star. And the Vagabonds, who came to the Opry in 1931, are credited with creating its first souvenir songbook and establishing Nashville’s first country music publishing company. A segment of the Opry first began airing regularly on the NBC radio network in October, 1939. Wolfe also points out that in spite of the Opry’s growing importance Nashville did not become a country music recording center until the mid-1940s. Although many of the Opry’s early performers made records, they did so in such faraway places as Atlanta and New York.

This fact-filled text is enriched by 46 photos and a complete annotated listing of the Opry’s cast members from 1925 to 1940. It bears emphasizing that Wolfe is as readable as he is detailed.

Edward Morris is a Nashville-based journalist and former country music editor of Billboard.

Now approaching its 74th anniversary, the Grand Ole Opry is more than just America’s longest-running radio show. It is also a cultural force of limitless reverberations, one whose impact far surpasses that of any of its biggest stars whether of Roy Acuff, its first musical titan, or Garth Brooks, its current behemoth. No scholar is […]
Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Fantastic journeys: backward and inward Anyone who has viewed the captivating and informative programs on the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, or Animal Planet is familiar with their quality camera work, matchless beauty, and authoritative content. Now, these fast-growing cable networks have joined together in a new venture with Random House, Inc. to take readers on many more exciting journeys of discovery. This unique partnership will produce books based upon scheduled television specials as well as other projects.

The first two titles now ready for spring 1999 are Cleopatra’s Palace: In Search of a Legend, based on a March special hosted by The Discovery Channel, and Intimate Universe: The Human Body, an eight-part television series from The Learning Channel.

Cleopatra VII is the Egyptian queen with whom most people are familiar. The story of her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony are legendary, as is her untimely death in 30 BC. Cleopatra’s Palace by Laura Foreman begins our first journey with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great and traces the young queen’s ascent to the Egyptian throne amid treachery and betrayal. The recent discovery of her palace by underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio has succeeded in mapping the Royal Quarter of ancient Alexandria, now submerged beneath the Mediterranean by cataclysmic earthquakes. This is a lavishly illustrated volume with over 200 full-color photos and drawings. A blend of history, legend, and modern exploration which journeys back in time, it documents the challenge of underwater archaeology. Goddio’s expedition uncovers the sunken remains of Cleopatra’s palace and displays recently discovered artifacts in pages filled with maps and fine art depictions of the life of Egypt’s last pharaoh. The second journey is closer to home. Did you know that if the body’s network of blood vessels were placed end to end, they would stretch for 60,000 miles? Did you know that scientists estimate that it takes 200,000 frowns to make a brow line? Intimate Universe by Anthony Smith (Discovery Books, $35, 0679462511) has been published to coincide with The Learning Channel’s eight-part televised series airing in April and August. This expedition takes place in the least traveled part of the universe the human body and it promises to be (quite literally) the trip of a lifetime. Exploring each stage of our physical selves, the Intimate Universe takes us from birth to death. Even though we are closer to this hidden landscape, we are, for the most part, ignorant of the intricate processes that play out within ourselves each day. Smith documents the week-by-week account of the unfolding of a new life developing inside its mother, and answers questions we’ve all asked: how can a baby, a separate and genetically different human being, be created, but not rejected by a mother’s body? Why can a young child learn languages more easily than an adult? Why does the body break down in old age? How has our brain made us the most successful species on the planet? Supporting the author’s narrative are 150 full-color illustrations, computer-generated images, and state-of-the-art microphotography. Intimate Universe is a valuable addition to the family reference library and will take your family on one of the most intriguing journeys of their lives. Discovery Books has only begun to offer readers informative guides for the family bookshelves. In July, they will release the first four titles in a new series of nature handbooks that deliver the same acclaimed content of Discovery Channel programming. The series gives practical advice for learning about each subject firsthand and includes these titles: Birds, Night Sky, Rocks and Minerals, and Weather. Each book is organized into three sections: background information, how-to advice, and field identification guide. These handy, affordable guides contain more than 300 full-color photos and illustrations to increase your enjoyment of your continuing journey through life.

Pat Regel is a reviewer in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

Fantastic journeys: backward and inward Anyone who has viewed the captivating and informative programs on the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, or Animal Planet is familiar with their quality camera work, matchless beauty, and authoritative content. Now, these fast-growing cable networks have joined together in a new venture with Random House, Inc. to take readers […]
Memoir

Behind the Book: A very personal take on the self-help industry

Behind the Book by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro

When she set out to write a book about Americans' long-standing interest in self-improvement, writer Jessica Lamb-Shapiro was forced to confront a painful event in her own family history. The resulting journey forms the heart of her insightful and often funny new book, Promise Land.

Truth be told, a book about self-help was the last thing I wanted to write. My father, a child psychologist, had been writing self-help books since I was a child, and subjecting me to self-help culture for just as long. Self-help was about as interesting to me as the homemade cooperative board games my father and I used to play (no one wins). But when my father signed up for a weekend workshop with one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul authors, I was intrigued. It seemed odd to me that someone with so much experience writing self-help, who was smart and thoughtful and by normal standards successful, could still be seduced by the promise of improvement.

"Thinking about my mother’s suicide while writing a book about self-help suddenly seemed not just ironic but incredibly, regrettably, relevant."

Going to that conference with my dad reminded me how funny and absurd self-help could be, and at the same time how meaningful or tragic. It reminded me that self-help is not about Tony Robbins or Eckhart Tolle, but about the countless individuals whose irrepressible, unrelenting desire to improve sustains them. I’ve always been fascinated with the never-ending aspect of the American Dream. I also wanted to explore the idea that people who didn’t read self-help books were still affected by self-help culture, how it’s part of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Once I looked into the history of self-help and found out Victorians loved it, I was sold on the topic.

For a few years I struggled with the structure of the book. I had the idea that I could look at different genres of self-help—books on parenting or grieving or dating—but it ended up feeling flat and repetitive.

When I started looking at books on grieving, I couldn’t help but think about my mother’s suicide when I was a young child. My father and I had barely talked about her death, and reading those books gave me a sense of community and continuity and made me feel like less of a motherless weirdo. Thinking about my mother’s suicide while writing a book about self-help suddenly seemed not just ironic but incredibly, regrettably, relevant.

Not only had I started a book about self-help, which I hadn’t really set out to write, I was now writing a book about a taboo subject in my family, which no one wanted to talk about. On top of that, I had a real aversion to “memoir,” and it seemed especially ridiculous for someone in their 30s to write anything resembling one. Worse, I had been writing a book that was supposed to be funny. You know what’s not funny? Mother suicide. I felt like I had been batting a piñata, but instead of candy and toys severed human limbs fell out. Children screamed, and everyone left the party.

On the plus side, adding a memoir element solved my structure problem. A pyrrhic victory.

I’ve always liked that about writing, the way it can blindside you. The way you can blindside yourself. This is why I titled my prologue “On Missing The Obvious.” Writing the book forced me to talk to my father about my mother. Over the years I spent writing Promise Land: My Journey Through America's Self-Help Culture, we visited her grave for the first time, and my dad started talking to me about her life, and what her death was like for him. It was difficult for me to bring up something that I knew was so painful for him, but talking about it together seemed to help. Which isn’t to say that some days didn’t end in tears and hours of watching of puppy videos on the Internet for emotional triage. But ultimately, my book about self-help ended up being a kind of self-help exercise for me, and maybe even for my dad—which, if you think about it, is kind of funny.

 

Promise Land is the first book by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, who has published fiction and nonfiction in The Believer, McSweeney's, Open City and Index magazine, among other publications. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York.

When she set out to write a book about Americans' long-standing interest in self-improvement, writer Jessica Lamb-Shapiro was forced to confront a painful event in her own family history. The resulting journey forms the heart of her insightful and often funny new book, Promise Land. Truth be told, a book about self-help was the last […]
Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Martial artists in movies often overcome overwhelming odds to meet their goals, from taking on hordes of black-garbed stuntmen to fighting a deadly showdown with a megalomaniac master. In The Way of Aikido, George Leonard overcomes an obstacle no less daunting: sidestepping the media-fueled perceptions of martial arts to describe the way its practitioners use their training every day without fighting. In this slim volume, Leonard lays out the spiritual benefits gained by practicing the Japanese art of Aikido, which he describes as protecting both the defender and the attacker. And he presents these benefits in a way that anyone can incorporate into their lives to achieve spiritual equilibrium.

The do in aikido means way, indicating that study of a martial art is a lifelong path. Leonard pulls no punches in describing the intensive physical training required to achieve competence in what is considered one of the most difficult martial arts. But the real lesson is the sense of inner peace and confidence that comes with following the way. In this philosophy, seeing oneself as the center of the universe is not an ego trip, but the ultimate act of humility, as one then becomes in harmony with the universe and conflict is not possible.

Leonard breathes new life into concepts as familiar as chop-socky film cliches. In asserting that conflict with others is essentially conflict with oneself, he recounts events in which an aikidoist prevents an attack merely by standing, calm and centered, while the aggressor’s inner turmoil turns to impotence. He returns frequently to the central concept of ki, or spirit (the ki in Aikido), the reservoir of energy that martial artists envision as residing in the body’s center of gravity. And there’s action, too, as aikido masters seem to disappear from in front of slashing sword attacks or a circle of charging black belts, only to be seen standing calmly to the side as the attackers look up from where they’ve fallen. Readers unfamiliar with martial arts may be surprised to read Leonard’s emphasis on avoiding conflict by blending with an adversary. Leonard recounts numerous martial artists who overcome adversaries both on the practice floor and in tense business meetings by seeming to yield, but in actuality allowing aggressive thrusts to dissipate far from them. Leonard urges his readers, martial artists and otherwise, to apply the principles of blending and centeredness to everyday life. Simple experiments demonstrate the power a change in mental focus can provide.

Gregory Harris, a writer and editor living in Indianapolis, is a third degree black belt and instructor in Taekwondo.

Martial artists in movies often overcome overwhelming odds to meet their goals, from taking on hordes of black-garbed stuntmen to fighting a deadly showdown with a megalomaniac master. In The Way of Aikido, George Leonard overcomes an obstacle no less daunting: sidestepping the media-fueled perceptions of martial arts to describe the way its practitioners use […]
Family & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In the 21 years they’ve been husband and wife, Dennis and Vicki Covington have been through plenty alcoholism, depression, infertility. You could say theirs has not been a storybook marriage. Dennis is a journalist and author of the 1995 National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain; Vicki is the author of four novels, including The Last Hotel for Women. In Cleaving: The Story of a Marriage, alternating between her point of view and his, the Covingtons expose many dark elements of their marriage, including myriad infidelities. Cleaving is more, though, than a story of men and women behaving badly. With the inclusion of insightful details, the Covingtons put human faces to their dalliances: I met him in parking lots mostly, Vicki writes of one man with whom she had an affair. I’d get in his car. Sometimes he’d have starched white shirts from the cleaner’s hanging in the back seat, and they mesmerized me. I didn’t know a man other than my dad who wore things like this. The Covingtons include stories that have little to do with their marriage which, ironically, are some of the most interesting. In graduate school Dennis took a class from author Raymond Carver, and the two used to meet for drinks. As a child, Vicki was afraid of the dark, people who wore glasses, and accidentally shouting obscenities in church. The Covingtons also write at length about spirituality their dedication to their Baptist church on Birmingham’s Southside, and even a dalliance with the snake-handling, fundamentalist congregations Dennis wrote about in Salvation on Sand Mountain. Dennis has worked as a journalist in Central America and instigates missions with Vicki, their two daughters, and members of their church to drill wells in impoverished areas of El Salvador. Through their faith and missionary work, the couple searches for meaning and redemption in their complicated lives. Some will be offended by the Covingtons’ behavior; some might find them maddeningly unapologetic. Yet Cleaving, unfailingly honest, will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever marveled that no matter how imperfect and mismanaged, life and, in their case, marriage does go on.

Rosalind S. Fournier is managing editor of Birmingham magazine.

In the 21 years they’ve been husband and wife, Dennis and Vicki Covington have been through plenty alcoholism, depression, infertility. You could say theirs has not been a storybook marriage. Dennis is a journalist and author of the 1995 National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain; Vicki is the author of four novels, including […]
History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio’s current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad. DiCaprio was lucky to be aboard James Cameron’s film Titanic. By now, as everyone knows, the film can be described only in superlatives. It is the most expensive movie ever made, the highest-grossing motion picture of all time, the first film ever to gross $1 billion worldwide. Its soundtrack is surprise the best-selling ever. And it won more Oscars (11) than any film since, God help us, Ben Hur. The ship itself may have sunk for good, but its story has been resurrected, with a mixture of horror and glee, in books, documentaries, exhibitions, movies, and even a Broadway musical. And still they come. Herewith, marking the September release of Titanic on home video, a harvest of new books and booklike things. We might as well begin with another superlative the two biggest, most impressive, and most expensive books on our list. Even if you barely know the Titanic from the good ship Lollipop, you will enjoy Titanic: An Illustrated History (Hyperion, $39.95, 078686401X), by Don Lynch. Throughout, the lively text is illuminated by photos, drawings, maps, and the beautiful photorealistic paintings of Ken Marschall, who has emerged as the disaster’s visual historian. Marschall gets his own book, with text by Rick Archbold, in a fascinating survey of his three decades of work, Art of Titanic (Hyperion, $40, 0786864559). Sketches, photos, and 80-plus gorgeous paintings illuminate the complicated process of historical illustration. No photograph can match Marschall’s poignant visions of either the gaiety aboard ship or the gloomy depths of the wreckage.

Simon and Schuster is publishing Titanic: Fortune and Fate ($30, 0684857103), the companion volume to the Mariner’s Museum exhibition of the same name. Artifacts include personal mementos, letters, and other moving records of the lives lost that night in 1912, with a text emphasizing less the well-known play-by-play and more the personalities involved. There are all sorts of stories of the shipwreck, but naturally eyewitness accounts are the most impressive. One such survivor, an observant young woman named Violet Jessup, wrote her memoirs in 1934. They are published for the first time in Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessup, Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters (Sheridan House, $23.95, 1574090356). She was a steward aboard the Titanic and a wartime nurse aboard the Britannic, and her story is as compelling as any in the disaster’s lore. Surprisingly, it’s also funny.

If you worry you missed the boat and want to catch up, you might try The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Titanic (Alpha Books, $18.95, 0028627121), by Jay Stevenson and Sharon Rutman. Like others in this series (which add up to a veritable idiot’s encyclopedia), this book manages to cram an astonishing amount of information into an irresistible browser format. Robert D. Ballard, co-leader of the 1985 expedition that found the sunken ship, first published his story in 1987. Now there is a newly updated trade paperback edition, The Discovery of the Titanic: Exploring the Greatest of All Lost Ships (Warner, $13.99, 0446671746), by Robert D. Ballard. Its many illustrations include paintings and touching sea-bottom photos.

If you really want to get behind the scenes, you should turn to a paperback entitled The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcripts of the 1912 Senate Investigation, edited by Tom Kuntz. Following its 500 or so pages of compelling (okay, somewhat compelling) transcripts you’ll find an index of witnesses and a digest of their testimony. The most original new contributions to Titaniana are not even books at all. The Titanic Collection: Mementos of the Maiden Voyage (Chronicle, $24.95, 0811820521) is a handsomely packaged collection of facsimile documents. They come in a booklike box designed to resemble a steamer trunk, complete with hinges. A tray sets inside the trunk, and both spaces are filled with extraordinary facsimiles. Items include copies of a first class passenger ticket, the menu for the fateful night, the music repertoire, telegraph flimsies, luggage labels (yes, they’re adhesive), smudged and scribbled postcards, and many other documents. The packaging on Titanic: The Official Story (Random House, $25, 0375501150) is not quite so impressive, but the facsimiles are great fun. These documents are larger, and include stateroom charts, a newspaper page, the ship’s register form, telegrams. Far more evocative than mere photos of artifacts.

As you leave the bookstore with this armload, on your way to buy the video of Cameron’s *Titanic*, rest easy in the knowledge that at least a sequel seems unlikely. Michael Sims is a frequent contributor to BookPage and the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio’s current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad. DiCaprio was lucky to be aboard James Cameron’s film Titanic. By now, as everyone knows, the film can be described only in superlatives. It is the most expensive movie […]

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