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Golden Years

James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
NonfictionArtLifestylesArt

About Face

Jonathan D. Katz’s About Face celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with deep scholarship and thrilling artworks.
Jonathan D. Katz’s About Face celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with deep scholarship and thrilling artworks.
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Arts & Culture

If these walls could talk

Review by bookpagedev

The princes and artists of the Italian Renaissance strove mightily to revive the glories of classical Greek and Roman culture. In one respect, they certainly hit the mark: Even the more outlandish of the Caesars had nothing on the colorful bunch of men who ascended to the papacy in those years, though most of the popes were a tad less likely to kill their relatives.

From the intellectual Nicholas V through the warrior Julius II and on to the Counterreformation popes, these were guys with big ideas. The biggest, at least in material terms, was tearing down the hallowed Basilica of St. Peter, dating to 326, and replacing it with the St. Peter’s that many today consider the architectural highpoint of the Roman Catholic Church. While Nicholas conceived the idea around 1450, it was Julius who laid the first stone of the new church on April 18, 1506 500 years ago. To mark that anniversary, author R.A. Scotti has written Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal, Building St. Peter’s, a brisk and satisfying narrative history of the two-century building project that involved a procession of hero-artists: Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini. Raphael was a young man during his brief tenure running the project, but Scotti makes it clear that it was old men in a hurry who really drove the work forward. That was particularly true of the storied dome, an engineering marvel. Scotti writes of Bramante setting the foundation piers that made the Basilica his own, Michelangelo approaching his 89th year and staving off death to assure that his dome would crown the mother church, [Pope] Sixtus V holding his architects to a frenzied schedule. By the time Bernini put the finishing touches on the basilica in the mid-17th century, the world of the Roman Church had changed. The project itself helped trigger the Reformation, as Martin Luther protested what he perceived as the popes’ outrageous fundraising to pay its massive expense. The popes who followed responded aggressively, in part with the crowd-pleasing Baroque style that Bernini’s work epitomized. Combining as it does Renaissance brilliance and Baroque drama, Scotti writes, the Basilica was truly catholic. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

 

The princes and artists of the Italian Renaissance strove mightily to revive the glories of classical Greek and Roman culture. In one respect, they certainly hit the mark: Even the more outlandish of the Caesars had nothing on the colorful bunch of men who…

LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Impatient patience

Review by bookpagedev

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can’t help but get outside and dig something. The last frost doesn’t come until mid-April, but that never stops me from putting some little thing out that would have preferred to stay inside. I am very, very impatient. This year a number of books are helping me take a breath, step back, and find patience in waiting for the seasons to change. I have enjoyed the work of Ken Druse for many years. His first book, The Nat-ural Garden, was a revelation, filled with pictures of places that hardly looked like “gardens” at all. Artful jungles is more like it. Druse is not trimming topiary; he is creating subtle, elegant gardens that feel like they were planted by Mother Nature herself. He is all about staying close to the place you are gardening: use native plants, be sensitive to the microclimate of your property, remember nature. Each book he writes is an occasion for joy, and his new book, The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime (Clarkson Potter, $50, 256 pages, ISBN 0517707888) is his most joyful yet.

Druse has covered a lot of technical ground in his previous books, the “what” of gardening. Here he focuses on the ineffable “why”: what is it that draws people to the garden? He introduces us to gardeners who share his passion for gardening as a lifelong pursuit. A varied group of gardens (one with a topiary, even!) is at the heart of this book, each photographed in a beautiful, careful way. At the core of these gardens is a lot of knowledge and talent and vision. But most of all, there is a passion an infectious kind of love that will inspire all of us who love to make gardens.

Dutch treat Cousins to Ken Druse might be Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsen, a renowned pair of gardeners from the Netherlands who are getting a lot of attention for their idea of the natural garden. For the past 20 years, they have scoured Europe and the United States for plants that are sturdy and low maintenance, but have the beautiful appearance of familiar cultivated perennials and annuals. Their gardens have the same looseness and unmanicured appearance that Ken Druse’s have. Planting the Natural Garden (Timber, $34.95, 144 pages, ISBN 088192606X) is their magnum opus of plants a Hall of Fame listing of their time-tested favorites. Included are cultivation details and photographs of each plant, along with suggested combinations and planting diagrams. Anyone who longs to move beyond the basics will marvel at this book for its fresh notion of a natural garden that holds up without looking weedy.

The basics? Begin here I am a Taylor’s junkie. When I first got serious about gardening 10 years ago, Taylor’s Master Guide to Gardening was my bible. If Taylor’s liked a plant, so did I. If it wasn’t in Taylor’s, it wasn’t in my garden.

The latest Taylor’s Guide a whopper as big as the Master Guide continues the same concise, clear format that has helped me so much. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (Houghton Mifflin, $45, 447 pages, ISBN 0618226443) is filled with more than 1,200 plants: perennials, annuals, grasses, trees, shrubs. It’s not every plant ever propagated; it’s every plant that the Taylor’s Guide experts feel is a good choice for North American gardens. A plant encyclopedia can be many things: a reference, a wish book, a troubleshooter. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants is all these, produced in the most straightforward, lovely way possible.

One small note: Taylor’s gives the pronunciation of each plant, which is a merciful thing when you are trying to sound all smart and name that little blue flower but can’t figure out how to say “platycodon.” (It’s “plat-ee-KOE-don.”) Getting the yard you want The only television channels safe to watch anymore are the Food Network and HGTV. The worst beating you’ll see on Emeril Live is a meringue in process; the most violent act on Landscapers Challenge is the brutal ripping-out of a crummy deck. The landscaping shows on HGTV are mesmerizing, the sort of armchair gardening that is perfect for those evenings when you have had it with your own plot of land. Those enterprising HGTVers have now turned to books, and there’s much to absorb in Landscape Makeovers: 50 Projects for a Picture-Perfect Yard, edited by Marilyn Rogers.

This book gives the details of projects you may have seen on HGTV programs. Curb appeal, privacy, overcoming problem areas there are tons of ideas in here to help make your landscape beautiful. Each project is rated in difficulty, time, cost and skills required. Landscape Makeovers is as satisfying as a night watching HGTV. Unlike the shows, however, this book explains exactly how to achieve the results you want. In this book, all seems possible.

The ultimate in patience Sometimes, impatience is bad for the environment. Terrible, in fact. Now that I have read The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food by Tanya L.K. Denckla (Storey, $22.95, 484 pages, ISBN 1580173705), I promise I will never spray my roses again with that toxic, brain-eating stuff. It only takes a few minutes to pick off those Japanese beetles, and all the good bugs in my garden will thank me.

Denckla is such a gentle advocate for organic gardening that you can’t help but want to try it, too. There is nothing shrill or dogmatic about the way she explains her subject. She debunks all the myths of organic gardening (it’s expensive/difficult/time consuming) with sensible truths, and the result is this manifesto of how to grow food that is in tune with nature.

In the book, Denckla reveals her own evolution as an organic gardener. Wanting to learn about the old ways, she began collecting information, and after four years, she discovered she had a book. A wonderful one, in fact. She explains how to grow every imaginable vegetable, nut and fruit, explaining the importance of rotating crops, planting a diverse garden and growing certain plant allies near each other. There’s a rogues’ gallery of evil pests, with non-toxic remedies; a list of plants that grow well together allies; and appendices full of organic gardening standards and resources. You will learn a lot with this book, and it may change the way you treat your garden.

A soggy epilogue At the end of Ken Druse’s Passion for Gardening is a stunning photograph of his garden, his beloved garden, flooded by the river that runs beside it. However traumatic this was for him (it had to be akin to Hemingway losing a manuscript), he writes about it with equanimity. I am taking to heart his conclusion: “I am indeed the junior partner in this collaboration with nature” a partnership that requires nothing but patience. Ann Shayne is a former editor of BookPage. She tends her garden in Nashville.

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can't help but get outside and dig something.…
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Impatient patience

Review by bookpagedev

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can’t help but get outside and dig something. The last frost doesn’t come until mid-April, but that never stops me from putting some little thing out that would have preferred to stay inside. I am very, very impatient. This year a number of books are helping me take a breath, step back, and find patience in waiting for the seasons to change. I have enjoyed the work of Ken Druse for many years. His first book, The Nat-ural Garden, was a revelation, filled with pictures of places that hardly looked like “gardens” at all. Artful jungles is more like it. Druse is not trimming topiary; he is creating subtle, elegant gardens that feel like they were planted by Mother Nature herself. He is all about staying close to the place you are gardening: use native plants, be sensitive to the microclimate of your property, remember nature. Each book he writes is an occasion for joy, and his new book, The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime (Clarkson Potter, $50, 256 pages, ISBN 0517707888) is his most joyful yet.

Druse has covered a lot of technical ground in his previous books, the “what” of gardening. Here he focuses on the ineffable “why”: what is it that draws people to the garden? He introduces us to gardeners who share his passion for gardening as a lifelong pursuit. A varied group of gardens (one with a topiary, even!) is at the heart of this book, each photographed in a beautiful, careful way. At the core of these gardens is a lot of knowledge and talent and vision. But most of all, there is a passion an infectious kind of love that will inspire all of us who love to make gardens.

Dutch treat Cousins to Ken Druse might be Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsen, a renowned pair of gardeners from the Netherlands who are getting a lot of attention for their idea of the natural garden. For the past 20 years, they have scoured Europe and the United States for plants that are sturdy and low maintenance, but have the beautiful appearance of familiar cultivated perennials and annuals. Their gardens have the same looseness and unmanicured appearance that Ken Druse’s have. Planting the Natural Garden is their magnum opus of plants a Hall of Fame listing of their time-tested favorites. Included are cultivation details and photographs of each plant, along with suggested combinations and planting diagrams. Anyone who longs to move beyond the basics will marvel at this book for its fresh notion of a natural garden that holds up without looking weedy.

The basics? Begin here I am a Taylor’s junkie. When I first got serious about gardening 10 years ago, Taylor’s Master Guide to Gardening was my bible. If Taylor’s liked a plant, so did I. If it wasn’t in Taylor’s, it wasn’t in my garden.

The latest Taylor’s Guide a whopper as big as the Master Guide continues the same concise, clear format that has helped me so much. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (Houghton Mifflin, $45, 447 pages, ISBN 0618226443) is filled with more than 1,200 plants: perennials, annuals, grasses, trees, shrubs. It’s not every plant ever propagated; it’s every plant that the Taylor’s Guide experts feel is a good choice for North American gardens. A plant encyclopedia can be many things: a reference, a wish book, a troubleshooter. Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Garden Plants is all these, produced in the most straightforward, lovely way possible.

One small note: Taylor’s gives the pronunciation of each plant, which is a merciful thing when you are trying to sound all smart and name that little blue flower but can’t figure out how to say “platycodon.” (It’s “plat-ee-KOE-don.”) Getting the yard you want The only television channels safe to watch anymore are the Food Network and HGTV. The worst beating you’ll see on Emeril Live is a meringue in process; the most violent act on Landscapers Challenge is the brutal ripping-out of a crummy deck. The landscaping shows on HGTV are mesmerizing, the sort of armchair gardening that is perfect for those evenings when you have had it with your own plot of land. Those enterprising HGTVers have now turned to books, and there’s much to absorb in Landscape Makeovers: 50 Projects for a Picture-Perfect Yard (Meredith, $19.95, 224 pages, ISBN 0696217643), edited by Marilyn Rogers.

This book gives the details of projects you may have seen on HGTV programs. Curb appeal, privacy, overcoming problem areas there are tons of ideas in here to help make your landscape beautiful. Each project is rated in difficulty, time, cost and skills required. Landscape Makeovers is as satisfying as a night watching HGTV. Unlike the shows, however, this book explains exactly how to achieve the results you want. In this book, all seems possible.

The ultimate in patience Sometimes, impatience is bad for the environment. Terrible, in fact. Now that I have read The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food by Tanya L.K. Denckla (Storey, $22.95, 484 pages, ISBN 1580173705), I promise I will never spray my roses again with that toxic, brain-eating stuff. It only takes a few minutes to pick off those Japanese beetles, and all the good bugs in my garden will thank me.

Denckla is such a gentle advocate for organic gardening that you can’t help but want to try it, too. There is nothing shrill or dogmatic about the way she explains her subject. She debunks all the myths of organic gardening (it’s expensive/difficult/time consuming) with sensible truths, and the result is this manifesto of how to grow food that is in tune with nature.

In the book, Denckla reveals her own evolution as an organic gardener. Wanting to learn about the old ways, she began collecting information, and after four years, she discovered she had a book. A wonderful one, in fact. She explains how to grow every imaginable vegetable, nut and fruit, explaining the importance of rotating crops, planting a diverse garden and growing certain plant allies near each other. There’s a rogues’ gallery of evil pests, with non-toxic remedies; a list of plants that grow well together allies; and appendices full of organic gardening standards and resources. You will learn a lot with this book, and it may change the way you treat your garden.

A soggy epilogue At the end of Ken Druse’s Passion for Gardening is a stunning photograph of his garden, his beloved garden, flooded by the river that runs beside it. However traumatic this was for him (it had to be akin to Hemingway losing a manuscript), he writes about it with equanimity. I am taking to heart his conclusion: “I am indeed the junior partner in this collaboration with nature” a partnership that requires nothing but patience. Ann Shayne is a former editor of BookPage. She tends her garden in Nashville.

Books that soothe the itch to get back in the dirt Anybody who loves to garden is having a hard time right now. Here in the mid-South, March gives up a few days so mild that I can't help but get outside and dig something.…
Social Science

The lives of the global megarich

Review by Edward Morris

Plutocrats is an immensely useful and entertaining book, not only because it lets the striving 99 percent of the world’s population see how the glittering 1 percent live but, more significantly, because it provides insight into the mindsets and methods of the super-rich—insights that sympathizers will regard as instructional manuals and opponents will seize upon as Achilles’ heels. A former reporter for the Financial Times, the Economist and the Washington Post, the author moves with ease among the financial titans she anatomizes, chatting with the likes of investor George Soros and Google chief Eric Schmidt and moderating panels at international economic conferences where the wealthy ponder ways of remaining so.

Freeland does not concern herself here with mere millionaires. Her microscope is trained on those whose outsized wealth gives them global impact. She seeks to determine the factors that enabled them to become wealthy and then considers what the social effects may be of the widening gap between the self-satisfied rich and the resentful middle class and poor.

The two biggest factors in gestating today’s megafortunes, Freeland concludes, have been advances in technology and the breaking down of national trade barriers. Add to these basics such economic opportunities as the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent privatization of its state-owned resources, China’s rapid embrace of capitalism and the U. S. government’s shielding of Wall Street from the consequences of its risky speculations and you have an entrepreneur’s concept of heaven.

Freeland is a bit too ready to buy into the “self-made” rationale from which some plutocrats derive smug comfort. “[T]he bulk of their wealth,” she says, “is generally the fruit of hustle, intelligence, and a lot of luck.” Overlooked in this sunny equation is the essential contribution of workers whose pay and benefits are kept low by outsourcing, union busting and lax or non-existent labor laws. One may get by but no one gets rich on his own, much less super-rich.

Using the economic rise and fall of 14th-century Venice as a cautionary tale, Freeland lays out a warning to plutocrats. Once Venice’s entrepreneurial class had made its vast fortunes, she says, it tried to safeguard them by closing off the very social mobility that enabled these fortunes to be created in the first place. Today’s plutocrats are inclined to do the same, she says, through manipulating laws and regulations and disregarding “the interests of society as a whole.” That path, she acknowledges, is fraught with peril.

Plutocrats is an immensely useful and entertaining book, not only because it lets the striving 99 percent of the world’s population see how the glittering 1 percent live but, more significantly, because it provides insight into the mindsets and methods of the super-rich—insights that sympathizers…

Business & Finance

Looking for that dream job

Review by bookpagedev

If your goal is to make sure the graduate in your life eventually finds gainful employment, the book to give is The Intern Files: How to Get, Keep, and Make the Most of Your Internship. Author Jamie Fedorko wrote the book after completing his own internship, and it’s filled with been-there, made-that-mistake advice. From the practical (preparing your resume) to the personal (hooking up with another intern), The Intern Files covers it all, and explains how important internships can be in securing that dream job and in discovering what you want to do with your life. After all, isn’t that what college is all about?

If your goal is to make sure the graduate in your life eventually finds gainful employment, the book to give is The Intern Files: How to Get, Keep, and Make the Most of Your Internship. Author Jamie Fedorko wrote the book after completing his…
Social Science

Shedding light on the working poor

Review by bookpagedev

The American Myth tells us that anyone who works hard and lives sensibly can achieve financial well being in the United States. Those who fail have only themselves to blame. The American Anti-Myth tells us the opposite: poverty is the fault of society. The poor face a rigid system that makes it close to impossible for them to rise.

Writer David K. Shipler identifies those two competing visions in The Working Poor: Invisible in America and proceeds to demolish both. He persuasively demonstrates through scores of compelling examples that the real answer is “all of the above.” The system is rigged, and people make terrible decisions. The common problems low wages, poor health care and housing, bad education, clueless parenting, sexual abuse, addictions are interlocking, creating what Shipler calls “the destructive synergy of many hardships.” Shipler, a former New York Times reporter, approaches the topic like the journalist he is, with profiles of a wide range of people struggling to get by. The tales of their lives are heartbreaking. Take Caroline from New Hampshire, a hard-working striver trying to support a learning-disabled daughter who was molested by her father. With little education, overwhelming burdens and a need for instant gratification, she moves from one dead-end job to another. Claudio, an illegal immigrant from Mexico working in the farm fields of North Carolina, lives with his wife in a cinderblock camp; together the couple is paid a total of $40 a day after deductions for “expenses.” They owe $2,300 to the “coyote” who smuggled them here, and have a sick 14-month old at home. Most of Working Poor is descriptive, but Shipler has a strong point of view, and his last chapter offers provocative prescriptions. His “holistic remedies” would include minimum wage rates that vary by region, sophisticated job training, a radical change in school funding and universal health insurance. Not everyone will agree. But at the least, his well-researched book should make the working poor a little less invisible. Anne Bartlett is a journalist who lives in South Florida.

The American Myth tells us that anyone who works hard and lives sensibly can achieve financial well being in the United States. Those who fail have only themselves to blame. The American Anti-Myth tells us the opposite: poverty is the fault of society. The poor…

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