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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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Fashion

For designers, past is present

Feature by Jillian Quint

The holidays always bring a crop of sumptuous books about fashion and décor. And in a time when many are taking stock of what they have and where they’ve come from, designers too are looking back at history for grounding and inspiration.

HAMPTON GETAWAY
The daughter of design legend Mark Hampton, Alexa Hampton comes naturally to her trade, and her interior designs speak to the history that’s clearly been instilled in her. The Language of Interior Design is the younger Hampton’s first book, and it succeeds as both a window into the stunning residences she revamps and a practical guide to the elements of good design.

Organized by four governing aesthetic principles—contrast, proportion, color and balance—this elegant tome takes readers through 18 impressive residences from Hampton’s portfolio, including a landmark New York pied-à-terre, a palatial Tudor home and a tucked-away Queen Anne summer cottage. Hampton explains that a client’s style and needs must be honored, but at the same time shows how she brings her own flair to all her projects—from her use of grouped furniture as a way to balance large spaces, to her untraditional combination of French, Moroccan and Swedish influences in one beach-side living room.

The lessons learned are applicable to even modest homesteads, and the sheer beauty of Hampton’s work is impossible to ignore.

HEAD FIRST
Anyone familiar with American film history is no doubt familiar—at least by sight—with the work of Edith Head. Known for her Dutch-boy haircut and trademark sunglasses, Head was one of Hollywood’s leading and most influential costume designers, as well as a pioneering woman in a man’s industry. She worked on more than 400 films, including Double Indemnity and The Birds, and ultimately received more Academy Awards than any woman in history.

But her story is fascinating beyond the Grace Kelly ball gowns and Dorothy Lamour sarong, as Jay Jorgensen shows in his biography-cum-coffee table book, Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer. Jorgensen’s scrupulously researched and handsomely assembled work follows Head from her humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nevada, through her unparalleled success and struggles with industry politics, and up to her final years and ensuing legacy. Filled with pithy anecdotes and never-before-seen sketches, Edith Head is the book for the costume design enthusiast.

THE WAY SHE IS
Barbra Streisand is undoubtedly an entertainment icon. But who knew she was a home designer as well?

Babs’ first foray into the world of writing, My Passion for Design, is a refreshing counterpoint to the celebrity tell-alls and workout regimens that litter bookstore discount bins. Instead, Streisand treats readers to her philosophy on architecture and construction as it pertains to her most recent Malibu homes, along with 350 vibrant photographs of these modern-day refuges. Her taste is both refined and lively (glimpses of her ravishing gardens are enough to make even the most green-thumbed jealous) and her look takes its cues from American design of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Word has it that Streisand initially set out to write a more traditional memoir, but early in the process realized that her living spaces were the true portals to her life. My Passion for Design provides access to these portals, and lets fans see a new side of the woman behind the persona.

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD
In the past year, there’s been a crop of books related to the Emmy-winning TV series “Mad Men,” from entertaining guides to ad industry tell-alls. So it was only a matter of time before the show’s impeccable 1960s clothing got the publishing treatment.

The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men by Janie Bryant, costume designer for the acclaimed program, takes fans and costume enthusiasts inside the show’s design process, while at the same time showing every woman how to channel her inner Joan, Betty or Peggy.

As one might expect, there are plenty of examples of how Bryant styles her now-iconic women (pastels and blues for icy Betty, small patterns for naïve and hopeful Trudy). But there’s also useful advice for readers looking to bring the sophistication and femininity of “Mad Men” to a more modern look. For instance, Bryant recommends that all women get acquainted with their body type before hitting the stores. “You can conveniently forget your age, but you had better be clear on your bust size,” she warns. Likewise, she explains how to use undergarments and shapewear to one’s advantage, creating the figure that will work best with your wardrobe.

There’s even a section on how to style your man, so you can make him Don Draper-dapper—if, hopefully, a little less of a cad.

LESS IS MORE
Even runway aficionados often take Minimalist style for granted, reducing the easily recognizable looks of Balenciaga and Jil Sander to “classic” or “simple.” But the truth is, this mainstream aesthetic owes everything to the rich history of Minimalist design as it pertains to both high art and high fashion.

Parsons professor and fashion historian Elyssa Dimant’s weighty-but-approachable new volume, Minimalism and Fashion: Reduction in the Postmodern Era, traces the evolving genre—from its roots in 1960s art and architecture up through contemporary concepts of neo-minimalism and the 21st-century machine.

Organized chronologically and featuring 150 breathtaking images, Minimalism and Fashion examines the work of many fashion greats—Coco Chanel, Issey Miyake, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada—as both products of their time and ambassadors for the style that has been at the design forefront for more than half a decade. And at every turn, Dimant compares trends in the world of clothing with those in the world of art—Sol LeWitt’s sculptural cube opposite Helmut Lang’s 2003 Spring/Summer collection, Calvin Klein’s streamlined, androgynous wardrobe in dialogue with 1980s and ’90s postminimalist feminist work.

“Minimalism is about moving forward without nostalgia,” boasts Francisco Costa’s appropriately restrained foreword. True though that may be, we’re glad that Dimant took the time to look back.

The holidays always bring a crop of sumptuous books about fashion and décor. And in a time when many are taking stock of what they have and where they’ve come from, designers too are looking back at history for grounding and inspiration. HAMPTON GETAWAY The daughter of design legend Mark Hampton, Alexa Hampton comes naturally […]
NonfictionPop CultureMusicBiography

Let’s hear it for the boys

Feature by Martin Brady

For the men on your list, this year’s selection has a sporty bent, with side trips into macho movies, manly pursuits and muscular journalism.

EYE OF THE TIGER
Leading off the pack—and combining good reporting with a story ripped from the headlines—is Tom Callahan’s His Father’s Son: Earl and Tiger Woods. Callahan, author of the acclaimed bio Johnny U, brings a two-tiered approach to the story of the two Woods men, outlining father Earl’s life and maverick mindset and placing the great golfer Tiger’s own life and career into that broader context. Is the child father to the man? Perhaps so, though Callahan seems better able to profile Woods the father, with his varied markers as military man, Vietnam vet, college athlete and major influence on Tiger. We also gain some insight—if not outright understanding—into the Woodses’ way with women, and that should interest many readers, this being the first major volume to grapple with Tiger’s personality since his endlessly publicized fall from grace in late 2009. (That said, Tiger still comes off here as pretty elusive emotionally.) Callahan infuses his text with many accounts of Tiger’s achievements at major tournaments and also quotes notable golf figures such as Ernie Els, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer on Tiger—the athlete and the man.

ALL ABOUT B-BALL
Two seasons ago, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac took the sports publishing world by storm with its offbeat collaborative writing and unique graphics approach. The writers identified with FreeDarko.com are at it again, in The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, which applies the same on-the-edge journalism to analysis of the game’s past, from the development of the early leagues, to the rise of the NBA, to rundowns of the impact on the sport by figures such as Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain through to the more modern era of Bird, Magic, Jordan, Barkley, Shaq, Kobe, etc. The text, as quirkily readable as ever, further ranges over pop culture, books, movies and on- and off-court events that have become emblazoned in the public mind in the television age.

BONE, JAMES BOND
For the escapist, movie-fan guy, two new entries in the Bond Collection offer fun reading and browsing. With text by Alastair Dougall, Bond Girls and Bond Villains present nostalgic, evocative pictorial coverage of all the evil geniuses, henchmen and seductive and/or poisonous ladies encountered by the seven cinema James Bonds, in films ranging from Dr. No (1962) to Quantum of Solace (2008). These are fabulously entertaining volumes, though curiously, the actors who played the many roles, men and women, are never identified by name in the text, nor are the Bonds (spanning Sean Connery through Daniel Craig). In that case, the book is particularly recommended for those who think of the Bond phenomenon—and its many personalities—as more fact than fiction.

BLOWING SMOKE
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. In an age where tobacco is anathema to most—a sneaky killer and a social no-no—there are still folks who treasure the singular culture surrounding the cigar (which still goes nicely with brandy, by the way). Churchill, for example, supposedly smoked 8 to 10 of them a day (and Sir Winston lived to be 90). Don’t forget George Burns, Bill Cosby, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain and Fidel Castro, to name but a few on the long and worthy list of tokers. For those who embrace the occasional habit, Lawrence Dorfman’s The Cigar Lover’s Compendium: Everything You Need to Light Up and Leave Me Alone is pretty much a must-have volume. Like cigars themselves, Dorfman’s guidebook is, uh, thoroughly satisfying—from the history of cigar-making to connoisseur considerations to anecdotes and aphorisms. Plus, there’s a useful list of cigar bars and shops in the U.S. and Canada; also a glossary of terms. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

THE BEST OF THE BEST
Finally, in praise of good writing—and an interesting gift for the guy who appreciates it—is The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese. Talese is internationally known as a purveyor of the so-called New Journalism and author of literary nonfiction classics like The Kingdom and the Power and Thy Neighbor’s Wife. Yet Talese was also a sportswriter, first plying that trade as a teenager for the Ocean City (N.J.) Sentinel-Ledger. Later, he wrote for the University of Alabama’s Crimson-White and eventually the New York Times, Esquire and other major publications. This anthology gathers his pieces from every era—the earliest dating from 1948­—and displays his interest in more than merely the final score, with notably atypical, sometimes surprising reportage on basketball, football, baseball, golf, horse racing and even speed-skating, with a 1980 profile of Olympians Eric and Beth Heiden. He weaves discussion of race, media and society into these stories, and, apropos to his age group (Talese is now 78), there’s a good deal of coverage on boxing, as befits its former standing as a major, print-ready sport. Though Talese famously sympathized with underdogs, the book’s title derives from his famous 1966 Esquire article on Joe DiMaggio—still, decades later, a sports icon.

For the men on your list, this year’s selection has a sporty bent, with side trips into macho movies, manly pursuits and muscular journalism. EYE OF THE TIGER Leading off the pack—and combining good reporting with a story ripped from the headlines—is Tom Callahan’s His Father’s Son: Earl and Tiger Woods. Callahan, author of the […]
Religion & SpiritualityMemoirCrafts, Hobbies & HomeBusiness & Finance

Books to inspire personal change

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Are you ready to make a fresh start in the new year? We’ve lined up a bevy of guidebooks to help you launch 2011 with a renewed sense of purpose and effective new strategies for dealing with life’s challenges. Choose the approach that best suits your lifestyle and take those first steps toward a new and improved you.

LESS IS MORE

Dave Bruno was a success: booming business, loving family, nice home and solid Christian faith. He owned lots of stuff, which led to wanting more stuff, leading to a blog called Stuck in Stuff, where he complained about consumerism but continued to buy—wait for it—more stuff. Finally, all that stuff started to take its toll, and in a quest to examine his consumption more closely, Bruno decided to pare back to just 100 personal items for one year. He chronicles that journey in his inspirational new memoir, The 100 Thing Challenge.

Bruno’s book is often funny, as when he finds a pair of cleats he will never use again but had kept “in case I started to age in reverse.” One-liners like those sometimes steal focus from the project, which is only described in detail halfway through the book. By that time, our attention has been diverted down so many side paths it’s hard to remember what we came for. Thankfully, a detailed appendix will assist readers inspired to try the 100 Thing Challenge themselves, as many apparently have.

After reading about Bruno’s experience—which he says helped him to regain his soul—you’ll never look at the contents of your junk drawer the same way again. And don’t feel too conflicted about buying the book: Bruno counts his whole “library” as one item, a form of cheating any avid reader would wholeheartedly endorse.

—Heather Seggel

CHANGING THE STATUS QUO

Guides to sustainable living bend the shelves at bookstores these days, but David Wann takes sustainability farther than most. In The New Normal, he maps out a future without dependency on fossil fuels, cheap goods or processed food. Because we are all faced with a warming world, he offers steps to deeply transform our resource-dependent routines to self-reliant, more fulfilling lives that are easier on our planet.

Changes in population, technology and available resources have outdistanced our cultural ideals, says Wann. For our “new normal,” we should ditch old status symbols, such as huge McMansions in the suburbs, and instead value actions that build local communities, such as bike-friendly thoroughfares, energy-efficient housing and shorter food and energy supply lines. Wann describes how meeting our needs locally will make life not only sustainable but more meaningful, through closer ties with our family and neighbors.

The New Normal provides both the vision and the actions needed to change the status quo. It is an excellent resource for people who want specific information on creating a sustainable culture where they live—and beyond.

—Marianne Peters

FROM ANXIOUS TO PEACEABLE

Dr. Henry Emmons’ new book, The Chemistry of Calm, offers natural solutions to overcoming anxiety, maintaining that there is an alternative to panic attacks and Prozac. Emmons, a psychiatrist, laid the groundwork for a holistic path to wellness with his last book, The Chemistry of Joy. In this follow-up, Emmons outlines what he calls the Resilience Training Program.

Meditation, diet, exercise and supplements comprise the program. What Emmons lays out is a very doable regimen for readers that begins with self-care and acceptance. Although many other self-help books center on fixing the problem(s), Emmons takes the position that individuals are innately healthy and simply need to refocus.

The shift from anxious to peaceable takes seven steps. Emmons walks readers through each in The Chemistry of Calm, from how to choose better food options at the grocery store, to using dietary supplements linked to brain health, to integrating a routine of meditative exercises.

For Emmons, “Mindfulness” is the key to corralling the thoughts and emotions that ratchet up our anxiety, and The Chemistry of Calm is an in-depth how-to guide that can benefit us all.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR FINDING PEACE

Fifteen years after the phenomenal success of Simple Abundance, which spent a year at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, author Sarah Ban Breathnach admits, “All the money’s gone.” Her new book, Peace and Plenty, explains how she hit bottom and offers an approach perfectly timed for the new year: “a fresh start for all of us: living well, spending less, and appreciating more.”

Ban Breathnach’s writing is therapy on a page as she copes with her monumental losses: multiple homes, nine assistants, extravagant purchases (Isaac Newton’s prayer chapel in England, Marilyn Monroe’s furs) and a thieving husband. In dealing with the aftermath, she uncovers the emotionally volatile relationship women have with money.

Instead of writing another dry investing how-to, Ban Breathnach gives women a guide to finding spiritual and emotional peace after financial loss. Anyone who has suffered financial catastrophe—losing a home to foreclosure, losing a job to the recession, losing it all in a messy divorce—will find reassurance and compassion. With gentle advice, Peace and Plenty helps readers face their guilt about past money mistakes and move forward.

Ban Breathnach brings her Victorian sensibilities to plain-Jane finance; her budget includes a Christmas Club, her cash system creates a pin money stash. Readers rediscover the “thrill of thrift” by cleaning out purses and closets for a fresh start, and pampering themselves with poetry and early bedtime routines.

Ban Breathnach, who popularized the Gratitude Journal, now recommends several more tools for inexpensive self-reflection. The Journal of Well-Spent Moments, the Contentment Chest and the Comfort Companion all focus on finding the positive without spending much money.

Advice and anecdotes from famous women who’ve dealt with their own reversals of fortune are included throughout, but Ban Breathnach is at her best when sharing the deeply personal stories of her own financial foibles. And perhaps her greatest lesson came from the treachery of her English husband: Protect yourself first, she advises.

Sharing tears, laughter and many cups of tea with Ban Breathnach, readers will come away with a new perspective for finding peace.

—Stephanie Gerber

FOLLOWING THE GOLDEN RULE

Everybody knows the world lacks compassion, yet it’s something we deeply desire. To care about others, we must set aside our own egos, which is hard. Toward this end, self-described religious historian Karen Armstrong has written Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, calculated to mirror other 12-step programs and help us “dethrone ourselves from the centre of our worlds.”

Armstrong is the 2008 TED Prize winner and creator of The Charter for Compassion, crafted in 2009 by prominent religious leaders of many faiths and the general public. She believes that all religions are saying the same things, albeit in different ways, and that we must restore compassion to the heart of our religious practices. Considering that her narrative draws from the myths and precepts of many disparate faiths, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, her prose is clear and her concepts surprisingly easy to follow; it’s a warm and, yes, compassionate book. Yet she is still able to convey a sense of urgency: We are hardwired for compassion as well as cruelty, and it’s time to take the high road.

Armstrong’s genius is her ability to distill an impressive amount of information into just over 200 pages, making complex concepts easy to understand. In the end, living compassionately means following the Golden Rule: Always treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. With Armstrong as a guide, we can learn to do just that.

—Linda Leaming

YOUR PERSONAL MONEY TRAINER

If getting your family’s financial house in order seems like an overwhelming task, then Ellie Kay’s The 60-Minute Money Workout is for you. Every topic is broken down into chunks that make paying down debt, planning for retirement and even college planning doable in just one hour a week. From warm up to cool down, Kay acts as your money trainer as you discover your money personality and get on the same page with your partner.

Kay is called America’s Family Financial Expert for good reason. She brings real wisdom from supporting seven children on an annual income of just $55,000. The Kay family pays cash for cars, has no college loans and even paid off $40,000 in debt.

Her head-of-household experience shines in chapters like “Cha Ching Guide to Paying Less” and “Travel and Fun Guide Workout.” She shares loads of family-friendly ways to shop smarter for groceries, clothes and gas, saving time and money that can then be spent on more meaningful family vacations. She addresses other common family money matters with “workouts” for situations from launching a home-based business to determining children’s allowances.

Kay admits to being born thrifty, but she balances it by giving generously. Her 10/10/80 spending budget allocates 10 percent to giving and 10 percent to savings. That’s a hefty chunk for someone overwhelmed with credit card debt. But her Giving Guide Workout challenges you to strengthen your generosity muscle by doing more to share your time, resources and money, promising that you’ll feel and live better. And if you don’t have a dollar to spare, she includes 25 gifts that don’t cost a cent.

—Stephanie Gerber

Before you can start using your brain most effectively, you must understand it. This is the thinking behind Your Creative Brain, which contains the most up-to-date research-based exercises and rules to help you deliver your creative potential. For those who consider themselves “uncreative types” or are too attached to tried-and-true concepts, Your Creative Brain acts as an interactive guide to determine your weaker points and put them to work.

According to Harvard psychologist and researcher Shelley Carson, creativity is not an attribute reserved only for crafty types or inventors. Carson is the first researcher to frame creativity as a set of neurological functions, and Your Creative Brain lets you discover her findings for yourself.

Carson’s research explains the seven “brainsets” of the mind and how you can use those brainsets to increase creativity, productivity and innovation. Quizzes and exercises help you understand how your brain works, determine where your creative comfort zone lies and pinpoint the areas in your creative process which need some beefing up.

From Rorschach tests to association exercises, Your Creative Brain doesn’t simply teach you how to be more creative—it actually starts the process for you.

—Cat D. Acree

THE GIFT OF GRATITUDE

When John Kralik was a boy, his grandfather gave him a silver dollar, along with the promise of another if Kralik would send a thank you note. He wrote the letter and got the second dollar, but Kralik didn’t get the lesson behind it until midlife.
Overwhelmed one New Year’s Day by a series of personal and professional setbacks, he decided to focus on gratitude by sending one thank you note per day for a year, to anyone and everyone: his children, clients of his law firm, an on-and-off girlfriend, even his regular barista at Starbucks. And things did change in Kralik’s life; his work life and home life both improved, he reconnected with old friends and boosted his health and self-esteem, and his focus shifted from the problems in his life to the things that were going right, and deserving of recognition and thanks.

For a small story predicated on a seemingly minor activity, 365 Thank Yous is told with impressive humility, heart and soul. It’s touching when the Starbucks worker explains his reluctance to open Kralik’s note, anticipating another complaint from an entitled three-dollar-latte drinker, only to be pleasantly surprised by the gift of simple appreciation.

Readers will forgive Kralik for taking 15 months to write all 365 notes, and thank him for sharing the fruits of the project in this sweet and uplifting book.

—Heather Seggel

 

 

Are you ready to make a fresh start in the new year? We’ve lined up a bevy of guidebooks to help you launch 2011 with a renewed sense of purpose and effective new strategies for dealing with life’s challenges. Choose the approach that best suits your lifestyle and take those first steps toward a new […]
Black HistoryAmerican History

From the famous to the forgotten

Feature by Ron Wynn

Black History Month shines a light on lesser-known topics from our past and has the potential to open new conversations on historical events often taken for granted. The latest crop of books on black history achieves both goals.

LIVING HISTORY IN HARLEM
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’ enlightening Harlem Is Nowhere takes a new approach in her look at the venerable community. Rather than crafting a detached, straightforward account, Rhodes-Pitts makes it personal, showing Harlem’s impact on her during the time she lived there. Her trips include stops at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Lenox Avenue’s famous funeral parlor, where many of the Harlem Renaissance’s key figures were laid to rest. She encounters knowledgeable, flamboyant types like longtime Harlem resident Julius Bobby Nelson, who seems to know everything that’s ever happened there, and neighbors Miss Minnie and Monroe, who quickly become surrogate parents and close confidants. They give her insider details and a scope available only from longtime residents.

Rhodes-Pitts includes tales about photographer James Vander Zee, authors Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, and activist Marcus Garvey, among many others. Still, Harlem Is Nowhere is more an inspirational memoir than a retrospective work, and should motivate others who’ve only heard about Harlem from a distance to inspect it more closely.

FIGHTING ON TWO FRONTS
Elizabeth D. Leonard’s Men of Color to Arms! looks at black soldiers who defended a nation that hadn’t yet fully recognized their humanity. In the period between 1863 and 1865, more than 180,000 African Americans joined the Union Army due to promises of freedom in exchange for service. Instead they often encountered vigorous anger and resentment from whites who saw them as inferior and even responsible for the deaths of their comrades, despite the bravery of soldiers such as Medal of Honor winners Sergeant Major Christian A. Fleetwood, John Lawson, Thomas Hawkins and Robert Pinn, who distinguished themselves in combat.

There was another enlistment surge later in the decade, when blacks joined the wars against the Sioux, Apache and other Native American nations. Once again, black soldiers found themselves fighting dual sets of enemies. They were isolated and often abandoned by their white counterparts after battles and regarded with contempt by the Native Americans, who wondered how blacks could fight alongside people who openly loathed them. Yet Men Of Color to Arms! reveals the triumphs and victories achieved by black soldiers as well as the efforts undertaken on their behalf by whites of good will against vicious and sustained opposition and hatred.

THE FUTURE OF HISTORY
Although Thomas C. Holt’s comprehensive new historical work, Children of Fire, revisits familiar territory, he does an excellent job of including newer subjects and areas of interest too. He traces the evolution of black Americans from the earliest arrivals to 21st-century figures, highlighting obscure figures alongside established giants like Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For example, Anthony Johnson, a slave in Virginia during the late 1600s, not only bought his freedom but became one of Virginia’s most prosperous landowners. In describing how Johnson was eventually cheated out of his entire empire through a series of overtly bigoted (and now illegal) court rulings, Holt reveals how racism increasingly became part of the South’s judicial and agricultural systems.

Though Holt acknowledges the debt his book owes to other major scholars, Children of Fire includes plenty of his own assessments on topics from Reconstruction to the rise in interaction between black Americans and immigrants from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Holt’s work is both a significant addition to other vital histories of the African-American past and a suggestion of new directions for the future.

CROSSING THE LINE
Daniel J. Sharfstein’s The Invisible Line doesn’t offer apologies for the conduct of the three black families it highlights, all of whom passed for white, but seeks to put their actions into context. The Gibsons knew all the land they’d amassed in 18th-century South Carolina would be taken over in a flash if the populace knew that blacks were the real owners. The Spencers of the mid-19th century became part of a poor community in the eastern Kentucky hills where racial backgrounds were obscured by the common struggle to survive. And the Walls ultimately revealed their true identity and paid the price, forfeiting a sizable amount of fame and wealth in Washington, D.C., in the early 1900s.

By 21st-century standards, the ability of the Gibsons to fool people and the reluctance of the Spencers to even discuss the subject of their origin with their neighbors seems woefully naive, even timid and disgraceful. But as Sharfstein’s research shows, the restricted path for blacks in those eras was such that neither family was willing to give up what they saw as their rightful status. Both became skilled at mimicking the language, customs and actions of whites. When contrasted with the severe price the Walls paid for coming forward, their choices might seem easier to understand. The Invisible Line is a detailed and instructive look at America’s tortured history and still-evolving attitudes toward race.

A STRUGGLE REMEMBERED
Finally, journalist Wayne Greenhaw’s Fighting the Devil in Dixie is the first complete chronicle of the struggle against segregation in Alabama, a state second only to Mississippi in terms of hatred and viciousness against its black citizens. The 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls got international coverage, but killings, lynchings and other attacks had been happening in Alabama long before. Greenhaw, who covered every major event in Alabama’s civil rights era, begins with the 1957 beating and drowning of Willie Edwards Jr., a truck driver attacked by a mob for allegedly assaulting a white woman. Edwards was married with a family and had just received a promotion.

Combining personal memories with a wealth of sources gleaned from that period, Greenhaw tracks many major developments, among them the “Bloody Selma” march, the Freedom Rides and the election of George Wallace and his rise to national fame as the face of segregation. He also documents the role of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which became one of the few organizations that publicly stood against the tide and helped ultimately defeat those who wanted to keep the Jim Crow era alive in Alabama. Fighting the Devil In Dixie shows the power of perseverance and chronicles one of the great victories in America’s ongoing struggle for social justice.

Black History Month shines a light on lesser-known topics from our past and has the potential to open new conversations on historical events often taken for granted. The latest crop of books on black history achieves both goals. LIVING HISTORY IN HARLEMSharifa Rhodes-Pitts’ enlightening Harlem Is Nowhere takes a new approach in her look at […]
Women's History

Strong women who paved the way

Feature by Deanna Larson

The theme of Women’s History Month 2011 is “Our History is Our Strength.” These new books present biographies full of intellect, tenacity, courage and creativity.

WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY
Actress and blogger Elizabeth Kerri Mahon puts readers smack in the middle of some incredible female lives with her blog, Scandalous Women. Her mini-biographies are now compiled in Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women. Mahon, a self-proclaimed “history geek,” reclaims history “one woman at a time” in short, lighthearted accounts of the lives of rich and famous—and ordinary—women who caused wars, created drama, “defied the rules and brought men to their knees.” Each chapter features five women who created whole genres of scandal, from Warrior Queens (Cleopatra, Eleanor of Aquitaine), Wayward Wives (Jane Digby, Zelda Fitzgerald), Scintillating Seductresses (Emma Hamilton, Mata Hari), Crusading Ladies (Ida B. Wells, Anne Hutchinson), Wild Women of the West (Calamity Jane, Unsinkable Molly Brown), Amorous Artists (Camille Claudel, Billie Holiday) and Amazing Adventuresses (Anna Leonowens, Amelia Earhart). While many of the facts surrounding these lives are familiar, Mahon weaves page-turner narratives from her passion and affection for these spectacular but often misrepresented women.

AN ENDURING LEGACY
The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, was a controversial and groundbreaking book that turned the myth of the “content and fulfilled” housewife and mother on its head. The best-selling and radical book by Betty Friedan—often read undercover—inspired a generation of women to buck societal pressures and the prevailing belief that “women’s independence was bad for husbands, children, and the community at large” and seek change in their lives. In A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, award-winning social historian Stephanie Coontz conducts interviews with nearly 200 women (and men) who were affected by Friedan’s book and traces its societal impact, including its influence on issues of gender equality today. Coontz examines the eras of relative freedom for women that predated the book, from getting the vote and the bobs and short dresses of the 1920s to hard-working Rosie the Riveters of the 1940s, and the erosion of those freedoms in postwar America. Friedan, “just another unhappy housewife” and writer for women’s magazines, conceived her book in the Mad Men era, when men had total legal control over the lives of their families and women couldn’t get credit in their own names. While other books of the time tackled similar problems, Friedan—a former activist—made readers feel passionate and validated in their frustration with their gilded cages. Packed with fascinating statistics and research on 20th-century American social history, including the effect of “liberation” on middle-class, working-class and African-American women, Coontz shines new light on a landmark work.


WOMEN WHO RULES BEFORE ELIZABETH
Elizabeth I ruled England with history-making style. But Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou and Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, were equally powerful, ambitious women who thrived in a cutthroat world well before her reign. Award-winning British historian Helen Castor (Blood and Roses) tells their extraordinary stories in She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. “Man was the head of woman, and the king was the head of all,” Castor writes. “How, then, could royal power lie in female hands?” Castor answers that suspenseful question in dense, historically rich accounts that set out every detail of the complex social mores, political machinations, familial manipulations and feuds that formed their paths to power and influence. Women who claimed their earned power—even their birthright—outright during the 12th-15th centuries were seen as fanged, bloodthirsty “she-wolves.” “Freedom to act,” Castor writes, “did not mean freedom from censure and condemnation.” Their stories—like young French bride Isabella’s fight for her royal rights in England at the age of 12—featured subtle negotiations, covert confrontations, manipulations and sharp analysis worthy of any male ruler during such tumultuous, war-ravaged times, and She-Wolves makes for exceptional, even inspirational reading.
 

The theme of Women’s History Month 2011 is “Our History is Our Strength.” These new books present biographies full of intellect, tenacity, courage and creativity. WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY Actress and blogger Elizabeth Kerri Mahon puts readers smack in the middle of some incredible female lives with her blog, Scandalous Women. Her mini-biographies are now compiled […]
Memoir

On the front lines of motherhood

Feature by Amy Scribner

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is both a blessing and a challenge—and that you deserve to celebrate Mother’s Day each year.

A FRESH NEW VOICE
In this wry, warts-and-all memoir, Good Housekeeping contributing writer Kyran Pittman offers up snapshots from her life, and she is nothing if not very, very human. We’re barely into the first chapter of Planting Dandelions when she reveals that she cheated on her first husband. Later in the book, she writes about very nearly cheating on her second husband, and she is equally candid on plenty of other topics, including nearly losing their house to foreclosure.

Yet this confessional tone is balanced with her clear affection for family life in all its messiness. Now a mommy of three, Pittman is just as passionate when writing about life in suburbia as when musing on postpartum sex.

“The slope of my nutritive backslide can be plotted by each of my kids’ first birthday cakes,” she writes. “When the oldest turned one, I made him a whole wheat carrot cake with pineapple-sweetened cream cheese on top. Two years later, it was a homemade chocolate layer cake, frosted with buttercream, for my middle child. Three years after that, I ran by the warehouse club and picked up a slab of corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, spray-painted blue, for the baby.”

Being a mom isn’t always (or even usually) glamorous, but Pittman recognizes the beauty of family life in this interesting, funny and fresh entry in the mommy memoir genre.

ADVICE YOU CAN TRUST
I’ll be honest: This book reminded me why I will never, ever have another baby. I was exhausted just reading the section called “A baby’s life: sleeping, eating, peeing and pooping,” with its accompanying chart on 24 hours in the life of a newborn. On the plus side, I was glad to learn my stomach wouldn’t be in any better shape had I used cocoa butter during pregnancy.

The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is full of such useful tidbits, penned by three Los Angeles OB/GYNs whose TV show “Deliver Me” airs on Oprah’s new network. With common-sense information and advice on everything from breastfeeding to baby blues, these are the doctors every new mommy wants at her side.

The comparisons to the seminal What to Expect When You’re Expecting are inevitable, but the Mommy Docs write in a more conversational, matter-of-fact tone. With anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book, authors Yvonne Bohn, Allison Hill and Alane Park share their own experiences as mothers and doctors. They do occasionally lapse into medical jargon, but mostly this is a thorough and useful guide from conception to pregnancy and delivery.

THE GIFT OF LOVE
This book touts itself as “dispatches from the ridiculous front lines of parenthood,” but it’s actually more like “dispatches from two incredibly selfless and loving humans.” Astonishing and deeply humbling, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene’s account of raising four biological children and five more adopted from Bulgaria and Ethiopia.

After their eldest biological child left for college, Greene and husband Don worried they’d be empty nesters before they knew it. Some might solve this by planning a home remodel or a retirement vacation. Instead, the couple brought home five more children over the next decade.

“Donny and I feel most alive, most thickly in the cumbersome richness of life, with children underfoot. The things we like to do, we would just as soon do with children,” Greene writes. “Is travel really worth undertaking if it involves fewer than two taxis to the airport, three airport luggage carts with children riding and waving on top of them, a rental van, and a hall’s length of motel rooms?”

But Greene is no Mother Theresa (thank goodness). In one of the most affecting chapters, she writes candidly about her struggles after bringing home their new son, Jesse. He doesn’t speak English and is developmentally delayed from years in a Bulgarian orphanage. Greene anguishes over her decision, at one point thinking, “If I leave right now, drive all night, and check into a motel in southern Indiana, no one could find me.”
Needless to say, Jesse eventually fits into the family as one of many puzzle pieces. In the end, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a lovely patchwork of moments from a house filled with love, life and acceptance.

LIFE GOES ON
“Four months ago I saw my husband lying in a coffin. Tomorrow I get to hold my baby boy in my arms for the first time.”

In Signs of Life, a clear-eyed account of the months following her husband’s accidental death at age 27, author Natalie Taylor recounts what it was like to be a five-months-pregnant widow, navigating a strange new world with humor and honesty.

A high school English teacher, Taylor turns to classic literature to help tell her tale. It’s a neat trick that works surprisingly well. She compares her sense of powerlessness to that of migrant farm worker George from Of Mice and Men, and her grief and frustration to the scene from The Catcher in the Rye when Holden Caulfield breaks his parents’ windows after the death of his brother. Pop culture also figures in Taylor’s imagination, as when she fantasizes about a version of the popular TV series “The Bachelor,” which she would call “The Widowette”: “I’d insist that the entire show be filmed here in Michigan, in the middle of February when the days are gray and bleak and snowy and no one has a tan,” she writes. “The first guy to wake up early and scrape the ice off of my car and shovel the driveway gets a rose.”

Taylor’s story really kicks into high gear after she gives birth to son Kai. Through sleepless nights and maternity leave, she struggles to find her new normal. This is a story remarkably free of self-pity, instead focusing on the power of relying on others and drawing on the strength you didn’t know you had.

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is both a blessing and a challenge—and that you deserve to […]

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