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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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A marriage presented as mosaic

Dani Shapiro is a novelist and short story writer, but above all she is a memoirist. In her three earlier memoirs—Slow Motion, Devotion and Still Writing—Shapiro used the lens of her own life to explore family tragedy, the search for meaning and the act of writing. In her latest memoir, Hourglass: Time, ­Memory, Marriage, she examines her marriage to journalist and screenwriter Michael Maren.

NonfictionPoliticsHistoryAmerican History

The power behind the President

Review by Roger Bishop

When a presidential campaign is over and the winning candidate is in the White House, he (and in the future, she) must face the difficult task of turning political rhetoric into concrete legislation or executive action. Presidents get accustomed to people agreeing with them, but it is imperative that the top elected official in the land has someone with the authority to challenge the president. He or she must be willing to “speak truth to power” when problems emerge and must be ready to accept the blame when things go wrong, but be certain that when things go well, the president is the one who receives credit.

For many years that person has been the White House chief of staff. With his carefully researched, bipartisan and eminently readable The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, Chris Whipple has written a must-read book for all who want a backstage view of the presidency, from the Richard Nixon years through Barack Obama’s two terms. Based on extensive, intimate interviews with all 17 living former chiefs of staff, former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, and many others, this is a treasure trove of ­experiences. James Baker, chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, who later served as treasury secretary and secretary of state, says a strong argument can be made that the position is the “second-most-powerful job in government.” Forty years after he served as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld said the position was “unquestionably the toughest job I ever had,” despite later serving as secretary of defense under two presidents.

Whipple is an acclaimed writer, documentary filmmaker and multiple Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC’s “Primetime.” The remarkably candid interviews and reader-friendly narrative of this book make for very informative and entertaining reading.

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

When a presidential campaign is over and the winning candidate is in the White House, he (and in the future, she) must face the difficult task of turning political rhetoric into concrete legislation or executive action. Presidents get accustomed to people agreeing with them, but it is imperative that the top elected official in the land has someone with the authority to challenge the president. He or she must be willing to “speak truth to power” when problems emerge and must be ready to accept the blame when things go wrong, but be certain that when things go well, the president is the one who receives credit.

A revolutionary childhood

Peter Andreas’ enthralling new memoir describes growing up on the lam with his Marxist revolutionary mother. In a childhood only the American counterculture could create, young Peter and his mother flee the bland suburbs of Kansas for new horizons: a hippie commune in Berkeley, a socialist farm in Allende’s Chile and collective living in Peru. Writing with candor and sincerity, Andreas—now an international studies professor at Brown University—creates an unforgettable portrait of a remarkable woman.

NonfictionMemoir

Twilight of a war hero

Review by John T. Slania

It’s hard for Keggie Carew to process the jarringly different images of her father. There is the present-day Tom Carew, who likes to sleep in the shed with his dogs, mixes Rice Krispies with dog food, and uses his penknife to cut holes in his clothes and shoes. This Tom Carew is an octogenarian who suffers from dementia.

Then there is the Tom Carew of the past, a dashing British soldier who parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II, first during the resistance against Germany, and later against Japan. He was a highly decorated member of the Jedburghs, an elite special operations unit wreaking havoc against the Axis powers during the war.

It is these contrasting portraits that form the basis of Keggie Carew’s moving new book, Dadland, a memoir that describes a daughter’s evolving view of her father.

Like many children, Carew didn’t think too deeply about her father’s past. She knew him as a charming, funny man with an adventurous glint in his eye. Keggie told her teachers her father was a spy.

It wasn’t until years later, when Tom Carew started to falter because of a series of strokes, that his daughter started to dig into his past. She learned that her father’s war heroics earned him the Distinguished Service Order and the nicknames “Lawrence of Burma” and the “Mad Irishman.” An invitation to the 60th anniversary of the Jedburghs prompts Keggie to find out as much about her father’s past as she can before his memory completely disappears. “As dad slowly leaves us,” she writes, “I try to haul him back.”

Dadland is a poignant look at a child’s changing perspective on her father’s life, a journey many children take as their parents grow older. The happy ending to this story is that Keggie Carew always adored her father, and learning more about his storied past only makes her adoration stronger.

It’s hard for Keggie Carew to process the jarringly different images of her father. There is the present-day Tom Carew, who likes to sleep in the shed with his dogs, mixes Rice Krispies with dog food, and uses his penknife to cut holes in his clothes and shoes. This Tom Carew is an octogenarian who suffers from dementia. Then there is the Tom Carew of the past, a dashing British soldier who parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II, first during the resistance against Germany, and later against Japan. He was a highly decorated member of the Jedburghs, an elite special operations unit wreaking havoc against the Axis powers during the war.

A superb biography of a master poet

Only 100 of Elizabeth Bishop’s finely wrought poems were published before she died in 1979. Although her work was greatly admired and she received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, her shyness and extremely complicated personal life meant that she was, for the most part, not a public figure. Since her death, she has become one of America’s most revered poets. In the vivid and compelling Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, Megan Marshall , winner of the Pulitzer Prize in biography for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and the Francis Parkman Prize for The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, explores the complex relationship between Bishop’s life and work.

Nonfiction

A lighthearted exploration of time itself

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

There’s probably no better time to read Alan Burdick’s entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of time in all its facets than early in a new year. Yes, we're already in the second month of 2017. So just why does time seem to fly, faster and faster with each year?

As the subtitle, “A Mostly Scientific Investigation,” suggests, Burdick, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a National Book award finalist for his first book, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, addresses the fascinating subject of our concept of time from primarily (but not entirely) a scientific perspective.

Certainly some of the most intriguing aspects of the work are its exploration of accurate time (it’s more complicated than you might think) as well as interviews with scientists, including developmental psychologist David Lewkowicz, who has studied how infants begin to recognize when things happen together in time. Another section introduces readers to John Wearden, a British psychologist who has spent three decades trying to unravel how humans perceive time. In between Burdick explores the work of St. Augustine, Stephen Hawking, H.G. Wells and lesser known figures, including a French geologist named Michel Siffre who subjected himself to underground experiments to see how he would fare without knowing the time (not so well).

Burdick begins his far-ranging account at a moment we can all recognize: waking in the night to the ticking of a clock and an “understanding that time moves in one direction only.” For, inevitably, it is hard to think about time without reflecting on our own lives. And Burdick does not shy away from that. One of the marvels of Why Time Flies is the grace with which the author weaves into the narrative his own experience as a writer and father of twin sons.

Burdick has created something unique and quite wonderful here, a book sure to be savored by armchair philosophers, avid readers of science, and just about anyone who’s wondered, “Where did the time go?”

There’s probably no better time to read Alan Burdick’s entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of time in all its facets than early in a new year. Yes, we're already in the second month of 2017. So just why does time seem to fly, faster and faster with each year?

Looking back on a poignant romance

Love came quite late and unexpectedly for famed author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose many bestselling books include Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. And it came in the form of writer Bill Hayes, a man 30 years his junior, as Hayes poignantly chronicles in his memoir Insomniac City. Sacks himself had revealed his homosexuality in a book published just months before he died―On the Move: A Life―explaining that after 30 years of celibacy, he and Hayes were sharing their lives.

Nonfiction

The future is (almost) now

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

What is the next step in human evolution? Will human beings become cyborgs, implanted with chips that enable us to control our environment? Or will humans, in their never-ending quest for perfection, become gods, erasing the human altogether?

In his provocative and lively new study, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of the 2015 bestseller Sapiens, asks challenging questions about the future of humanity and the longstanding belief that places humans at the center of the universe (humanism). In the first section of the book, Harari examines the relationships between humans and animals, contending that if we want to understand how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat humans, we should examine how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. He then proceeds to explore how humans elevated themselves to the center of the universe, developing a humanist creed that continues to have both liberating and oppressive consequences (economic prosperity, democratic institutions, wars, poverty).

In a final section, Harari looks at the next stage of human development, or demise, by asking how humanity’s search for “immortality, bliss, and divinity shake the foundations of our belief in humanity.” Harari refuses the role of prophet, but he does contend that Homo sapiens will disappear once technology gives us the ability to re-engineer human minds.

Thought-provoking and enlightening, Harari’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our species.

 

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

In his provocative and lively new study, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of the 2015 bestseller Sapiens, asks challenging questions about the future of humanity and the longstanding belief that places humans at the center of the universe (humanism). In the first section of the book, Harari examines the relationships between humans and animals, contending that if we want to understand how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat humans, we should examine how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. He then proceeds to explore how humans elevated themselves to the center of the universe, developing a humanist creed that continues to have both liberating and oppressive consequences (economic prosperity, democratic institutions, wars, poverty).

NonfictionMemoir

Getting better with age

Review by Heather Seggel

Meredith Maran had been married to the woman of her dreams, living in a gentrifying Oakland, California, neighborhood and making a decent living as an author (of more than a dozen books) and freelance writer. But when her marriage slowly turned toxic and she suffered other personal and financial setbacks, Maran opted for the mother of all do-overs—moving to Los Angeles and taking a job at a clothing company where, at age 60, she became both employee and honorary mom to her younger co-workers. The New Old Me: My Late-Life Reinvention offers a bracing look at the joys and challenges of starting over as an older woman.

Maran starts out couch-surfing in L.A. and struggling to connect, but her writing career has given her a rich network of contacts that she mines like a pro for companionship and wise counsel. Once a fervent political activist, she now spends time in La-La Land supplementing companywide workout days with personal training sessions and exploring the world of nips, tucks and waxing fore and aft. Despite her hopes for reconciliation with her wife, their marriage ends in divorce and Maran begins exploring the world of online dating.

The copywriting job she moves south for borders on L.A. cliché, from nude weigh-ins with body-fat calipers to the rocket science employed to estimate driving distance from the office to anywhere else in town. These are some of the book’s funniest scenes, but the friends she makes at work become part of her tribe as well.

The observations here are sharp and witty; used to living under “the whip of freelance insecurity,” Maran awkwardly relaxes into a far better funded existence. No longer struggling to build a family, career or marriage, she delights in the freedom to have more fun, noting, “I’m not building anything anymore, except bone density if I’m lucky.”

The New Old Me is a smart, funny testament to the value of friendships old and new, and the ways they help us adapt to the inevitability of change.

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

Meredith Maran had been married to the woman of her dreams, living in a gentrifying Oakland, California, neighborhood and making a decent living as an author (of more than a dozen books) and freelance writer. But when her marriage slowly turned toxic and she suffered other personal and financial setbacks, Maran opted for the mother of all do-overs—moving to Los Angeles and taking a job at a clothing company where, at age 60, she became both employee and honorary mom to her younger co-workers. The New Old Me: My Late-Life Reinvention offers a bracing look at the joys and challenges of starting over as an older woman.

Stories from America’s wild past

Tales of the Old West seem to improve with age, as award-winning historian Tom Clavin (The Heart of Everything That Is) demonstrates in his lively new book, Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West. Revisiting the capital of the wild frontier, Clavin focuses on Dodge City’s heyday—the 1870s and 1880s—and brings into sharp focus stories that long ago acquired the sepia tone of antiquity. 

NonfictionTravelHistory

Lost in a tropical daze

Review by Anne Bartlett

Oh, the streets of Havana: the sound of live music heard through big open windows. Spanish spoken so fast, with so many dropped letters. The rotting grandeur. Irreverent jokes, nicknames, arguments. Constant talk, talk, talk—Spanish poet Federico García Lorca called the people of Havana the hablaneros, the talkers.

Havana is sui generis and addictive, and Mark Kurlansky really gets it, as much as any foreigner can. The prolific author has been visiting Cuba’s capital for more than 30 years as a journalist. Now, at a time when U.S.-Cuban relations appear to be in a thaw, he has captured its transcultural essence in Havana: A Subtropical Delirium.

As befits such a kaleidoscopic city, the book covers a little of everything: history, music, literature, food, interesting characters, personal reminiscences. One fun feature is a series of recipes of famous dishes (chicken with sour oranges) and drinks (use Havana Club light dry rum for your mojito).

Kurlansky emphasizes throughout that one strong element of Havana’s distinctive style is the African influence that began with the tragedy of slavery, which lasted until 1886. Havana’s rich and seminal music, dance and literature are an amalgam of Spanish and African traditions. And sadly, its recurrent violence and political instability are in part the legacy of slavery’s social distortions. 

Kurlansky is even-handed about the impact of the Castro government. Yes, he says, Cuba is a repressive police state, but Havana was a place of genuine experimentation in the early revolutionary years. Since the collapse of its Soviet support system, he writes, it has been reverting more to its norm.

Before 1960, that norm included omnipresent U.S. investors and tourists. Americans always adored Havana’s film-noir tone, which Kurlansky describes as “ornate but disheveled, somewhat like an unshaven man in a tattered tuxedo.” Will they return now? We’ll see. 

 

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

Havana is sui generis and addictive, and Mark Kurlansky really gets it, as much as any foreigner can. The prolific author has been visiting Cuba’s capital for more than 30 years as a journalist. Now, at a time when U.S.-Cuban relations appear to be in a thaw, he has captured its transcultural essence in Havana: A Subtropical Delirium.

Poetic highs and lows

Robert Lowell’s poetic imagination emerged from the extremes of New England’s weather, its frozen winters and fiery summers. Similarly, his temperament reflected the seasonal extremes of “passivity and wildness” in the depression and mania that afflicted him throughout his life. Scion of an old New England family with a history of mental illness, Lowell was able to transform his illness into art, becoming one of the 20th century’s most significant American poets. In her new book, Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, brings her medical and personal experience of bipolar disorder to bear on the entwining of Lowell’s poetry and psychology. 

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