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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.
NonfictionPhotographyLifestylesAnimals

Faithful Unto Death

Faithful Unto Death is a thoughtful investigation into the bonds of pets and their owners that chronicles the ways in which we grieve and remember the animals we love.
Faithful Unto Death is a thoughtful investigation into the bonds of pets and their owners that chronicles the ways in which we grieve and remember the animals we love.
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Business & Finance

New frontiers in medicine and law

Review by Alice Cary

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

Weinstein's legal defense made history when his lawyer claimed that a benign brain cyst had caused him to go temporarily insane and commit the murder. As Kevin Davis explains in The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America's Courtrooms, this was the first U.S. case in which a judge ruled that PET scan (positron-emission tomography) images could be shown to a jury determining a verdict.

The case is compelling, and Davis eloquently chronicles the many personal, medical, and legal details involved. A jury found Weinstein guilty; he served 14 years in prison before being released on parole in 2006 and dying in 2009.

The Brain Defense examines a variety of additional legal cases in which neuroscience has played a role, including those committed by veterans suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and TBI (traumatic brain injury), and athletes suffering from concussions and TBI. One mystifying crime involved a New Jersey man who in 2012 hit his head and fell into a brief coma for six hours, then awakened feeling unsteady, tired, and paranoid. Five days later in the middle of the night he inexplicably beat his wife, his 24-year-old daughter and himself with a 5-pound metal dumbbell, sending all three to intensive care. In this case, the defendant was found not guilty by reason of insanity, given psychiatric treatment and welcomed home by his family.

Davis interviews a variety of experts who work at the increasingly common intersection of neuroscience and law, including a Florida defense attorney who asks every one of his clients to undergo a brain scan. Davis notes that while brain science can sometimes be misused, it can be vital in deciding how to handle juvenile defenders, whose brains aren't fully formed, and in redefining "society's concepts of guilt and punishment." While neuroscience can't currently determine a person's thoughts or intent when a crime is committed, it can be extraordinarily useful in reducing incarceration rates and improving rehabilitation.

As one federal judge says, "The worst thing that can happen with neuroscience is that it gets into the courtroom before it's ready. There is a communication barrier between lawyers and scientists. We need to learn to speak the same language."

Herbert Weinstein was a charmer whose two adult children called him "Mr. Zen" because of his easygoing ways. They and everyone else who knew him were flabbergasted when, in 1991, during an argument, the 65-year-old retired advertising salesman strangled his second wife then threw her body out the window of their 12th-story Manhattan apartment in an attempt to make her death appear a suicide.

Essays on female ambition

Welcome to a lively, provocative gathering of women talking about the force that inspires, compels, thwarts and confounds them: ambition. Bring along your own life experiences and compare notes as these essayists give the word its due. Double Bind, edited by author and memoirist Robin Romm, is a collection of 24 essays, authored by novelists, playwrights, psychiatrists, poets, critics, scientists, actors, producers, editors, professors, a tech industry executive, a butcher and a dogsled runner. They are also stay-at-home moms, wives, mothers and daughters. Some are immigrants or daughters of first-generation immigrants. All make the reader think.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

A sweeping view of a forgotten American war

Review by Edward Morris

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities. Ironically, the conflict's leaders—General Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph—would, in the years afterward, become close, if wary, acquaintances and crucial to the heightening of each other's national reputation.

Sharfstein, a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt, begins his panoramic narrative with Howard losing his right arm to Confederate gunfire in the early days of the Civil War. Still, Howard continued to lead his troops and achieve rank. After the war, he was appointed head of the Freedmen's Bureau and charged with integrating the newly freed slaves into full citizenship. In that capacity, he established the university that still bears his name. But the resistance of white Southerners and their political allies stifled his most ambitious aims and contributed to his growing tendency to rationalize his failures, both bureaucratically and on the battle field.

Chief Joseph, as Sharfstein explains, was less a war leader than a diplomat. Long before and after the 1877 war, he argued incessantly for his tribe to be allowed to occupy its Oregon homeland rather than be harried to a reservation. However, the waves of settlers seeking to open up the resource-rich Northwest simply washed over him. Sharfstein paints his pictures of this beautiful and terrifying region on a canvas that stretches from daunting inland mountains to bustling seacoast towns.

Deftly woven into the story are portraits of such fascinating figures as Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who served as Howard's aide and later became a political radical, and the fierce warrior Yellow Wolf, whose remembered accounts of battle provide Sharfstein with some of his most chilling descriptions.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 was fought over a four-month period between the U.S. Army and various bands of Nez Perce Indians along a zigzagging, 1,200-mile course through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and into Montana almost to the Canadian border. Neither side wanted the war, but both were relentless in its prosecution and equally given to committing atrocities.

A wonderful biography about a towering literary figure

Jonathan Swift is often regarded as the finest satirist in the English language. He was a complex, fascinating and perplexing mixture of literary genius and contradictions in almost every aspect of his life. John Stubbs brilliantly captures all of this in his marvelously detailed and richly rewarding Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel. An intrepid researcher, Stubbs, the author of the award-winning John Donne: The Reformed Soul (described by Harold Bloom as “an exemplary literary biography”) mines many sources to give us a vivid portrait of his subject. Swift had “ a tendency to love and hate things simultaneously, to grow attached to what he once despised and vice versa, and forget the opposite was ever true.”

YA NonfictionYAMemoir

Notes from the underground

Review by Justin Barisich

Here’s the most terrifying fact about a cult: Nobody has any clue what’s happened, or is still happening, inside until someone finally escapes. With The Dead Inside, Cyndy Etler reveals that dark unknown from the inside out.

As a teenager, Etler was sexually abused by her stepfather. Rather than stop it, her mother simply turned a blind eye. However, what she did always seem to notice was 14-year-old Etler’s “dangerous” and “rebellious” behavior that resulted from this abuse. So when Etler finally found solace with a few friends who were into heavy metal and occasionally experimented with weed and beer, her mother tossed her into the den of another abuser: Straight, Inc.

Drawing from her own firsthand experience of surviving 16 months inside Straight—a supposed drug rehab facility for teens—Etler spares no details. She shows readers just how the program is designed to break down troubled teens, removing any sort of spirit, personality or individuality.

Etler’s tales of her months inside Straight are nearly impossible to believe. But in The Dead Inside, she tells them so matter-of-factly that her horrors will haunt you for years to come. And hopefully, they’ll also make you more compassionate toward a “troubled” teen.

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Here’s the most terrifying fact about a cult: Nobody has any clue what’s happened, or is still happening, inside until someone finally escapes. With The Dead Inside, Cyndy Etler reveals that dark unknown from the inside out.

Confessions of a chef

Out of Line details Barbara Lynch’s extremely unlikely journey from a “project rat” (her term) to a three-time James Beard award-winning chef living la belle vie. Along the way she falls in and out of infatuations, describes glorious meals and keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

NonfictionBiography

The king-in-waiting

Review by Keith Herrell

Were you on the edge of your seat for the Netflix series “The Crown”? Do you still have the Charles and Diana coffee mug you badgered a London friend to send you 36 years ago?

If so, you’ll have a jolly good time reading Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, billed as the first major biography of the Prince of Wales in over 20 years. If not, you’ll still enjoy it as a psychological case study of a man who’s spent almost his entire life waiting for a role that might never be his. (For one thing, Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, remains active in her 90s.)

Charles, 68, has lived a life in the spotlight, with some of his most intimate secrets exposed thanks to those pesky intercepted phone conversations. So author Sally Bedell Smith doesn’t claim to expose any great secrets, concentrating instead on writing a highly readable account of Charles’ life, with emphasis on what makes him tick. In this she succeeds admirably.

As for the passions mentioned in the title, rest assured that Charles’ disastrous marriage to Lady Diana Spencer is recounted along with his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he married eight years after Diana’s death. But—you must eat your broccoli, you know—Smith devotes equal weight to Charles’ more prosaic passions, such as alternative medicine and environmental sustainability.

And the paradoxes? That’s where the psychology comes in, and Smith makes it clear that Charles could provide full employment for a team of psychoanalysts. And that’s with many more chapters of his life still to be written, kingship or not.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Were you on the edge of your seat for the Netflix series “The Crown”? Do you still have the Charles and Diana coffee mug you badgered a London friend to send you 36 years ago? If so, you’ll have a jolly good time reading Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, billed as the first major biography of the Prince of Wales in over 20 years.

The beginning of a legend

Woods dives deep into his preparations for and experience at the 1997 Masters. Just 21 at the time, he electrified fans with his decisive win and became a global icon.

NonfictionTravel

Setting out into the unknown

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

It takes a great deal of planning, support and courage to leave a life of comfort to travel around the world. But this is exactly what Kim Dinan and her husband, Brian, did. After saving their money, selling their belongings and quitting their jobs, they traveled to locales such as Ecuador, Peru, India, Nepal and Vietnam. The story of their transformative journey is chronicled beautifully in Dinan’s debut book, The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World.

Before embarking on this powerful experience, Dinan was at a turning point. She wasn’t sure what she wanted; she just knew she wasn’t happy and wished to see the world. Happily, some generous friends give her and Brian a yellow envelope with $1,000 inside that they named the “Kim and Brian Yellow Envelope Fund.” They wanted the couple to help “make the world a better place” by giving the money away however they saw fit. As Dinan fondly describes, they “were asking us to be a conduit for their goodness.”

However, things don’t go exactly as Dinan had imagined in just about every way—from the places they visit to her relationship with Brian to the gifting of the Yellow Envelope money. Her brutal honesty is admirable, particularly when recounting her doubts, mistakes and mishaps in vivid detail. She doesn’t sugarcoat the situations they encounter that end up having life-changing ramifications for them both.

But there are many joys along with the missteps. These experiences help Dinan find inner peace and realize that she was already everything she needed to be. Having the Yellow Envelope made “ordinary interactions more meaningful,” teaching her how to give not just money, but of herself. The Yellow Envelope is an uplifting memoir of bravery and self-discovery.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It takes a great deal of planning, support and courage to leave a life of comfort to travel around the world. But this is exactly what Kim Dinan and her husband, Brian, did. After saving their money, selling their belongings and quitting their jobs, they traveled to locales such as Ecuador, Peru, India, Nepal and Vietnam. The story of their transformative journey is chronicled beautifully in Dinan’s debut book, The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World.

An infected family tree

Imagine watching your father die slowly from a degenerative neurological disease so rare that there is no cure. Imagine, then, coming to grips when you learn the disease is genetic and there is a good chance that you carry those genes, and will not only die from the disease but pass it along to your children. If you could take a simple blood test to reveal whether or not you have the genes, would you take it?

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

Back to the beginning

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

Even if you don’t know much of the Bible, you know this story: Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, the serpent, the apple, banishment by God—familiar, yet so ancient as to be utterly strange. But the account from Genesis of Adam and Eve has much to tell the 21st-century reader about love, family and equality, writes Bruce Feiler.

In The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us, Feiler aims to show why Adam and Eve still matter, diving into their story through a wide range of sources. As in his books Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths and Walking the Bible (and its companion PBS series), Feiler visits experts and pertinent sites on multiple continents, from the purported Garden of Eden in Iraq and Adam’s tomb in Jerusalem to the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel and John Milton’s cottage outside London. Feiler’s style is chatty, and he builds an argument by setting a surprising scene (now he’s in Mae West’s archive! What could that have to do with Adam and Eve?), dropping back to describe a particular aspect of Adam and Eve’s story, then returning to the more contemporary scene to reveal more. Some unexpected but compelling detours include visits with Mary Shelley, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, all of whom spun their own interpretations of Adam and Eve. One of Feiler’s key conclusions? Eve is Adam’s equal and partner, not his inferior.

The First Love Story serves as a kind of relationship book, too; each chapter illuminates an aspect of Adam and Eve’s experience, which Feiler then applies to modern relationships. He concludes with six principles, or “What Adam and Eve Taught Me About Relationships”—covenant, connectedness, counterbalance, constancy, care and co-narration. “This is what I took from Adam and Eve,” Feiler writes. “Love is a story we tell with another person. And as with them, the telling never ends.”

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Even if you don’t know much of the Bible, you know this story: Adam, Eve, the Garden of Eden, the serpent, the apple, banishment by God—familiar, yet so ancient as to be utterly strange. But the account from Genesis of Adam and Eve has much to tell the 21st-century reader about love, family and equality, writes Bruce Feiler.

The making of a massacre

Even now, after all the mass killings of recent decades—9/11, Oklahoma City, all the rest—the Jonestown massacre is still staggering in its horror. More than 900 Americans—nearly 300 of them children—died in a Guyanese jungle in 1978 after a dangerous crackpot named Jim Jones told them to commit suicide by swallowing a poison-infused drink.

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