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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.

Arts & Culture, Cultural Criticism, Cultural History, History, Nonfiction

Nonfiction History Cultural History Cultural Criticism Arts & Culture

American Scary

The rigorous yet still enticing American Scary invites readers to peer into the horror show of American history through the lens of literature and film.

Cookbooks, Lifestyles, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Lifestyles Cookbooks

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.

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By now every literate American knows who Stephen E. Ambrose is. The author of the best-selling Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis and Clark expedition, he was also Ken Burns's primary source for the TV documentary. Now Ambrose returns with Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery. More than a rerun of the author's favorite topic, this beautiful new book combines Ambrose's personal account of his family's retracing of the journey, along with historical background and excerpts from Lewis and Clark's journals. As always with Geographic publications, all the illustrations and layout are wonderful, with paintings, drawings, maps, and dozens of stunning photographs by National Geographic veteran Sam Abell. The result is as much a photographic journey as it is a historical one. The Corps of Discovery, as Jefferson designated them, performed one of the great explorations, and created an enduring American myth. No one describes it better than Stephen Ambrose.

The mind/money connection

by Neal Lipschutz

Crafts, Hobbies & Home, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Crafts, Hobbies & Home

A gem of a reference book

Review by Kathy Bennett

by Kathy Bennett

DK Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia, a one-volume reference book targeted to the interests and reading abilities of young people ages 7-10, is a gem. Created by Dorling Kindersley, it reflects the same outstanding quality as their popular Eyewitness series. The 450 entries are accompanied by 3,500 illustrations including photos, drawings, maps, and timelines.

Like many encyclopedias, the writing is clear and concise. What makes this volume different is its alluring presentation. Single entries deal with timeless questions in a comparative fashion. Using facts and illustrations, this volume educates the reader on puzzlers such as the differences between alligators and crocodiles, rabbits and hares, ships and boats.

Presentation, topic selection, and writing style are excellent in the DK Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia; however, the real challenge of reviewing an encyclopedia comes in evaluating its content. Is the writing fair and unbiased? Does the text deal with the important issues of a subject? My Russian colleague complimented the piece on her homeland, including history and current events, remarking on the factual approach, style, and art work included. My Indian assistant remarked that the entry on India is very good, reliable, and attractive. My Muslim friend, however, made an interesting observation on the entry on Mohammed: He approved of the written text, but noted that there were drawings of Mohammed and the Angel Gabriel, something that does not occur in Muslim culture, and I shared this information with DK.

Years ago, at Peabody Library School, wise Frances Cheney lectured on reference materials, pointing out that it was a rare individual who read an encyclopedia cover to cover.

Times have changed, book design has reached a new art, and the methods of presentation are more exciting than ever. DK Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia will be read cover to cover by individuals of both rare and not-so-rare distinction.

Kathy Bennett is a high school librarian in Nashville, Tennessee.

Down at the End of Lonely Street

by Edward Morris

Biography

Biography

Badge of Courage

Review by Roger Bishop

by Roger Bishop

Stephen Crane was only 28 when he died of tuberculosis in England in 1900. He packed into that time, however, enough highs and lows, achievements and disappointments, as well as adventure, for several lives. Almost a century after his death, his best novels, The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, are American classics. His short stories, “The Open Boat” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” among others, are widely read and enjoyed. It confirms what Crane’s friend, H.G. Wells, said at his death, “I do not think that American criticism has yet done justice to the unsurpassable beauty of Crane’s best writing. And when I write those words, magnificent, unsurpassable, I mean them fully. He was, beyond dispute, the best writer of our generation, and his untimely death was an irreparable loss to our literature.”

Crane was a complex man of great personal charm whose work was a combination of his imagination and experience. Red Badge was set during the Civil War, although Crane was not born until 1871. He drew on his work as a war correspondent in Cuba and Greece for later work including his last novel, Active Service. He was, as Linda H. Davis writes in her outstanding new biography, Badge of Courage, a writer who was always pretending to be someone else. Davis begins with the early influence of Crane’s parents. His father, a Methodist minister, wrote ten pages a day, primarily, it seems, to impress his children with the importance of writing. More importantly, his mother, who bore 14 children, was a social activist and the author of several published short works.

During his brief period as a college student, Stephen began to write seriously and left school to become a newspaper reporter. In 1895 he explained to Willa Cather that he led a double literary life; writing in the first place the matter that pleased himself and doing it very slowly; in the second place, any sort of stuff that would sell. It was a pattern he would follow all his writing life. Although he lived modestly, even in virtual poverty at times, he seems to never have been free of debt. This was due in part to the fact that although he was widely acclaimed as a writer, he earned little from it. Davis notes that “In four years [he] had published five novels, two volumes of poetry, three big story collections, two books of war stories, and countless works of short fiction and reporting.” And yet in three years he had earned just over $1,200 for his entire American output, at a time when the country’s per capita income was $1,200 annually.

Crane was sensitive to the plight of others. His sympathies, as novelist and war correspondent were with the wounded and the private soldier. His defense of a prostitute wrongly arrested by a corrupt New York City policeman cost him the friendship of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. At the same time, he did not write or talk about his feelings for Cora [the bordello madam he met in Jacksonville, Florida, and who lived with him as his wife] yet friends described him as devoted and protective of her. Cora was devoted to him as well. His happiness, well-being, and work were of paramount importance to her something that endeared her to his friends, whether they actually liked her or not. In discussing his life Crane wrote to a friend, “I cannot help vanishing and disappearing and dissolving. It is my foremost trait.” To an admirer he did not know, he wrote “I am clay very common, uninteresting clay. I am a good deal of a rascal, sometimes a bore, often dishonest.” Of particular interest are Crane’s relationships with other writers. In the United States, these included Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells. Later, in England, they were H.G. Wells, Ford Maddox Hueffer (last name later changed to Ford), Henry James, and, most importantly, Joseph Conrad.

Because of his tuberculosis, Crane was convinced that he would die young. Davis speculates, Given Stephen’s personality, his feverish approach to his work, and his penchant for risk-taking, one wonders whether he lived and worked on the ragged edge because he knew he hadn’t much time. Drawing on the latest Crane scholarship, Davis captures all of these aspects of his life and work. Her book is beautifully done, and I finished reading it with the appropriate response to a good literary biography I wanted to read or reread Crane’s work.

Roger Bishop is a monthly contributor to BookPage.

School, sex and TV

by Alice Cary

Children's & YA, Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality

Nonfiction Children's & YA Religion & Spirituality Cookbooks

So many great Halloween books, it’s scary

Review by Emily Abedon

by Emily Abedon

There are some who lock their doors on Halloween, shut off the porch light, and scoff at the events that take place on the high holy day for witches. Who wants to party with ghosts and goblins? It seems most Americans do. Only for Christmas do consumers spend more. And it's not just for kids. All ages are getting in on dressing up their yards, homes, and selves to make light of a holiday that can be as much about harvest happiness as house hauntings. Several new books help hard-core Halloweeners indulge with frightening abandon.

It's as if Martha Stewart meets Elvira in Donata Magginpinto's Halloween Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family. Magginpinto, food and entertaining director at Williams-Sonoma, presents party fare that's tasty and fun when the theme is a scream. Her food from the cauldron, features cold-season favorites, like curried soup and custard, that take advantage of October's trove of squash, pumpkin, and sweet potato. There are also old-fashioned delights caramel apples and popcorn balls that don't require toil and trouble. Halloween Treats is full of clever and creepy concoctions. Cookie-cut marshmallows become ghosts in the cocoa; peeled grapes and shredded carrots are easily mistaken for witch's hair and goblin's eyeballs; thin black licorice strings double as spider legs when placed between chocolate cream sandwich cookies. You'll also find ideas for decorations that little hands can help make. Children can collect colorful autumn leaves for leaf lanterns, decorate mittens for Halloween hand warmers, and go wild with a glitter pen for personalized trick-or-treat bags.

The Big Book of Halloween: Creative and Creepy Projects for Revellers of All Ages is the ultimate reference if you want to turn your house into trick-or-treaters' most popular haunt. Pieces of polystyrene board turned into gravestones in your yard, white sheeted ghosts on your front stoop, ghoulish gourds in your window and a papier-mache tarantula over your shoulder may hinder the kids from ever making it to your candy bowl. Author Laura Dover Doran suggests far more festive treats than bite-sized chocolate bars. She provides a how-to for the ickiest edibles: spaghetti squash brains, pumpkin pulp slime, peanut butter and flour shaped into your favorite internal organs. If you ever thought a Christmas gingerbread house looked dreamy, wait till you see Doran's nightmarish haunted house cake. Sitting in a Vienna wafer cemetery, this sweetly spooked spot has windows boarded up with sugar wafers and a cookie crumb landscape that's a dead-ringer for dirt.

The Big Book of Halloween features fabulous costumes for children and adults, luminaries, topiaries, and table decorations that take the spirit of the eerie eve and fly with it. Many of the projects require a trip to the craft shop and tools like hot-glue guns or craft knives. But Doran's precise and comprehensive directions should take the fear out of the do-it-yourself Halloween. The Big Book of Halloween is chock full of facts, historic tidbits, and safety tips. Herein you can learn of the holiday's roots in Celtic tradition, read about the increasing popularity of vintage Halloween collections, and acquire ten top excuses to tell the kids what happened to their candy when your adult hands started wandering.

But if you're going to blame a ghost, better first get your facts straight. Hanz Holzer's Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond will furnish you with more information that you probably knew existed about the high-spirited apparitions. Holzer is a parapsychologist whose interest in ghosts has taken him around the world to compile this fascinating assortment of haunting tales. Holzer distinguishes between several types of ghosts and tries to clear up common misconceptions. Ghosts do not travel, he explains. They haunt in one place, usually where their death tragically occurred. This is good news, no doubt, for those of us who would choose to run away if confronted by one. Holzer personally documents his own visits to haunted spots as diverse as castles and trailer parks, and details his interviews with the hundreds of people who claim to have experienced a presence that they cannot explain in terms of material reality.

From the start, he acknowledges cynics and non-believers. But those who best understand that ghosts exist, according to Holzer, are psychics, those who have used their extra sensory perception to experience an apparition first-hand. You needn't be psychic to enjoy Ghosts. The number of ghostly testaments is intriguing. The stories themselves are downright scary. But beware: reading this alone at night, especially in a creaky house, could be a health hazard.

Llewellyn's 1999 Magical Almanac allows you to take the spirits into your own hands. Pagans, witches, shaman, astrologers, and herbalists contribute to this collection of pieces that show you how to bring a little magic into your life. You'll find advice for dealing with depression, connecting with your spiritual self, and increasing your energy. But there are even more down-to-earth, practical tips about banishing mildew with herbs, healing with honey, and relaxing with aromatherapy, plus lunar, sunrise, and sunset charts. Llewellyn's Magical Almanac features a love spell and an incantation for acing a job interview. Witchcraft never seemed so benign. Banish all images of pallid, wart-nosed hags, this book advocates the power of looking good, even providing a spell for glamour.

The true charm of this multi-cultural exploration of all things magical, mystical, and divine lies in its gentle reminders to embrace each day, celebrate the natural world, and take your fate into your own hands in October and all year long. If the too-much-candy stomach ache is in full effect, plastic spiders have lost their appeal, and you've conjured up a good year's worth of scariness, Pumpkins may be just the thing to ease you gently out of Halloween. True to it's name, this coffee table book delivers photograph after photograph of the fleshy orange fellows.

Pumpkins displays all shapes, sizes, and types, au naturel in fields, for sale at country farm stands, or piled high alongside their gourd brethren in romantic country settings. The pictures highlight all the subtle differences that make October's favorite fruit entertaining characters even before their faces are carved. Rynn Williams's introduction to Pumpkins reflects on the fruits' tendency to summon childhood memories. In that way, they are akin to Halloween itself, with all of the holiday's food, fun, and frights.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

Inside an art history mystery

by Alison Hood

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

When life goes off script

Review by Kelly Koepke

by Kelly Koepke

They say God laughs when men make plans. Well, God laughs at women’s plans, too, especially the plans of happy women. At least that’s what Alice Eve Cohen thinks. She was one of those happy, planning women. Then she discovered that, although she wasn’t dying of a mysterious illness as feared, she was pregnant at age 44. She had taken birth control pills the first six months of her pregnancy, which meant that her child might be profoundly deformed.

Cohen recounts the events leading to and following the birth of her now seven-year-old daughter in the diary-style memoir What I Thought I Knew. The chapter ending lists of things Cohen “knows” swing wildly from the highs of elation as she schedules her wedding, to the depths of despair as she contemplates ending the pregnancy, her life or both. Compounding her no-win choices are the values of her fiancé, their respective families and the medical establishment.

Cohen is first and foremost a performer—a writer and actor of one-woman plays—so she knows how to build tension to a climax. Her easy intimacy when recounting the events of a pivotal year of her life is amazing. What I Thought I Knew seems made for verbatim adaptation to the stage, with ever increasing emotional highs and lower lows. Many chapters are recounted with the same cold, calculating journalism of a news story, while others are heart-wrenchingly personal. All of them are revelatory.

It runs in the family

by Rebecca Bain

History

History

A moving retelling of the Donner saga

Review by Rebecca Steinitz

by Rebecca Steinitz

The tale of the Donner party is one of the mythic tragedies of American history. In The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown brings the myth to life, transforming faint history class memories into gripping reality. Through painstaking research and powerful narrative, Brown tracks the disparate groups of pioneers who ended up snowbound in the High Sierras in the winter of 1846-1847, infamously turning to cannibalism when their food ran out. While the book ostensibly focuses on Sarah Graves, a young bride traveling with her family and new husband, its scope is panoramic, taking in everything from the Mexican-American War, to mid-19th-century hygiene practices, to conflicts over money, leadership and routes.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, historical research, scholarly studies of topics like survival psychology and the physiology of starvation, and his own retracing of the Donner party’s steps, Brown vividly depicts the sights, sounds and smells of the Emigrant Trail. Most strikingly, he plausibly reconstructs how Graves and other members of the Donner party would have felt, physically and emotionally, as they pushed their wagons up the Wasatch mountains, staggered across Utah’s salt desert, tried to protect themselves from powerful winter storms, and finally faced the choice—or so they thought—of eating the flesh of family and friends or starving to death. It’s not a pretty tale, but Brown makes it utterly compelling, creating a horror story that we keep hoping will have a happy ending, even as we know it won’t.

Except that for some, it did. For much of the book, Graves is an inadequate heroine. Brown himself points out that there is “little record” of her, and she often seems less a focal point than a minor character. But unlike her husband and parents, she survived the horrors, ultimately making a successful life in California for herself and her surviving sisters. In the end, Graves becomes a symbol, not just of the ability to withstand inconceivable hardship, but of hope itself. This book is a fitting tribute to her story.

Rebecca Steinitz is a writer, editor and consultant in Arlington, Massachusetts.

The tale of the Donner party is one of the mythic tragedies of American history. In The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown brings the myth to life, transforming faint history class memories into gripping reality. Through painstaking research and powerful narrative, Brown tracks the disparate groups […]

Thurgood Marshall

by Harold Evans

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