Elyse Graham’s thrilling history of how scholars and librarians helped the U.S. outsmart the Nazis is a pulpy delight.

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Naturalist Joanna Brichetto uncovers the beauty of urban landscapes in her wonder-inducing debut, This Is How a Robin Drinks.

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<B>America’s passion for cash</B> <B>Greenback</B> is a history of America as seen through its money from the currency initially adapted by the colonies and territories from their mother countries to today’s credit and debit cards. While the combination of history and money may seem like the formula for a two-stage sleeping pill, Goodwin keeps his appraisal lively by concentrating on the colorful characters who made the creation, accumulation and dispensation of cash a ruling passion. Beyond its utility in everyday commercial transactions, money ultimately helped bind the nation together (after binges of fiscal individualism) and open up the West. In telling his story, Goodwin spotlights a succession of emblematic characters, among them the 17th-century Massachusetts-born treasure hunter, Sir William Phips, an early exemplar of the rags-to-riches theme that would become peculiarly alluring to Americans; self-taught inventor Jacob Perkins, who devised machinery for thwarting counterfeiters; and the tenacious Civil War spy,Lafayette Baker, whom Goodwin calls "America’s first secret agent." On more familiar ground, Goodwin explains how differing concepts of money widened the philosophical rift between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and how Andrew Jackson made political hay through his opposition to Nicholas Biddle and the Bank of the United States. Photos of America’s evolving currency are included throughout the text.

It should be pointed out that this book is in no way an economic treatise. It poses no new theories of wealth or how wealth can be put to its greatest use. It has nothing to reveal about the workings of the stock market. If Goodwin has a grand point to make, it is that money takes on a life of its own, one that is seldom congruent with the original aims of its creators. "Money won’t be confined," Goodwin observes. "It runs into the street. Money likes making friends. Money can’t bear to be idle, can’t keep to itself, can’t help but chase after the latest fad or the hottest show. Fickle as love, it will gladly promise itself to anyone. Money’s curious, prying, venturesome, and unforgiving: you can’t lock money up when the sound of the band wafts through the grille."

A coming-of-age in India

by Anne Bartlett

Business & Finance

Business & Finance

Getting a grip on your golden years

Review by bookpagedev

by Stephanie Swilley

A regular on National Public Radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, Jordan Goodman wants you to know that it’s OK to dream big for retirement. In fact, stop reading and take a minute to visualize your best-case scenario. Think golf, grandkids and great vacations. Now ask yourself two questions: When do you want to retire? How long do you expect to live? Those are two big pieces of the retirement puzzle, and Goodman’s Everyone’s Money Book on Retirement Planning is a good place to start finding the answers. Whether your want to save for your children’s college fund, understand real estate investing or create a great financial plan, the six titles in Goodman’s Everyone’s Money Books series cover a multitude of financial topics in a concise, readable format. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the different options for your money, but Goodman devotes each book to explaining a single topic and never sends the reader into information overload. He compiles a great list of resources worksheets, Web sites, newsletters, consumer groups and government agencies to help you put the advice to immediate use.

Do you still have that dream of retiring at 50 and moving to Tahiti? Good, because you’ll need it to recover from the shock of calculating how much moolah it will take to finance those golden years. Wisely predicting that most Americans come up short in the saving department, Goodman gives tips for playing catch-up in Retirement Planning. Whether you’re self-employed, contributing to a 401(k) (“the greatest thing since sliced bread”) or hoping for a pension, you need to understand your choices and responsibilities. If you want to retire in style, dream big and start planning today.

A regular on National Public Radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, Jordan Goodman wants you to know that it’s OK to dream big for retirement. In fact, stop reading and take a minute to visualize your best-case scenario. Think golf, grandkids and great vacations. Now ask yourself two questions: When do you want to retire? How long […]

A charming journey to the Emerald Isle

by bookpagedev

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

The joy of sharing books

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Alice Ozma grew up with a single father who was a dedicated elementary school librarian. Even her two middle names, under which she writes, testify to a love of children’s literature. So it wasn’t out of character when the two decided to formalize their nightly reading sessions into an attempt at reading aloud for 100 consecutive nights. When that was handily completed, “The Streak” grew . . . and grew . . . and eventually continued for eight years, until Ozma started college. The Reading Promise is a memoir woven from the stories they shared.

Some of the book’s funniest moments stem from the pair’s commitment to get their reading session in by midnight: Ozma’s father might have to pull her from a late theater rehearsal and recite from Harry Potter by streetlight, or barely whisper when he had laryngitis. It’s both funny and touching when he tries to protect her from a book’s frank discussion of puberty by reducing it down to “all the stuff,” having one character add, “Yes, I already know about that so we don’t need to talk about it.” Generally obedient, Ozma nevertheless sneaks into her father’s room later to read the chapter, laughing at his censorship of a completely age-appropriate and informative passage.

After Ozma leaves for college, her father suffers a setback when his school decides to eliminate its reading program and replace the library’s books with computers. He tries to keep the program in place, since it serves poor children who may struggle to attain basic literacy without it, but is overruled and ends up leaving the school—and finding a new audience as a reader in retirement homes.

The Reading Promise is a sweet tribute to a devoted single parent and a powerful reminder of the bond that shared stories can create.

Say goodbye to debt

by bookpagedev

Nonfiction

Nonfiction

Plane crash in paradise

Review by Edward Morris

by Edward Morris

It started as a Sunday afternoon lark and developed into one of the strangest survival stories of WWII. On May 13, 1945, a group of American soldiers—among them several members of the Women’s Army Corps—boarded a twin-engine C-47 in Hollandia, New Guinea, intending to do a brief flyover of a remote valley located high in the island’s central mountains. With luck, they’d be back in time for dinner.

A year earlier, an American pilot had spotted the lush valley and the tribes that inhabited it. The natives were so visibly excited when his plane swept in low above them that he concluded they had never seen an aircraft before. He also surmised that they might be headhunters or cannibals. News of his discovery spread quickly, and soon others were lining up to take the tour. To some, the valley’s beauty and inaccessibility brought to mind the mountain-fringed paradise James Hilton described in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Hilton called his valley “Shangri-La.”

Less than an hour into the flight, the pilot miscalculated the C-47’s altitude and flew it into the side of a mountain. Three of the 24 on board survived: Lieutenant John McCollom, Tech Sergeant Kenneth Decker and Corporal Margaret Hastings. Drawing on a wealth of documents and personal recollections, author Mitchell Zuckoff has reconstructed an almost hour-by-hour narrative of how the survivors, two of whom are seriously wounded, descend the mountain into the mythical valley, deal with the suspicious but generally friendly natives and eventually aid in their own perilous escape from Shangri-La.

A lot of readers are going to fall in love with Hastings. Thirty years old at the time of the crash, she is smart, flirtatious, fearless and gorgeous, a thoroughly modern woman even by today’s standards. It is a joy witnessing how adroitly she holds her own in situations normally controlled by men. Zuckoff’s impressive research includes dozens of photographs of the survivors and those involved in their rescue. He even makes a pilgrimage to the valley—now a much-violated Eden—to interview tribespeople who were children when the strange trio first hobbled into their midst. Lost in Shangri-La is a movie waiting to be made.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read our interview with Mitchell Zuckoff for Lost in Shangri-La.

The business of beauty

by bookpagedev

History

History

Blithe spirits in wartime Washington

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

Jennet Conant’s 109 East Palace told the story of how the atomic bomb was constructed in the "secret city" of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Now in The Irregulars, she uncovers another World War II episode: the invasion of Washington, D.C., by a corps of dashing, well-spoken British spies whose job was to turn the country from isolationism to full-throated support of England’s fight against fascism.

Among this gifted phalanx were the playwright and actor Noël Coward, future James Bond creator Ian Fleming, future advertising genius David Ogilvy, classical scholar Gilbert Highet, the ridiculously rich and handsome Ivar Bryce (of whom it was said, "It’s terrible the advantages he’s had to overcome") and, towering above them all, budding writer and Royal Air Force veteran Roald Dahl. Dahl is the focus of Conant’s breezy (but well-documented) narrative.

Organized under the British Security Coordination by Canadian-born spymaster William Stephenson, these agents planted news stories, sowed suspicion toward England’s perceived enemies, whispered into influential ears at cocktail parties and summer outings, and flattered and romanced America’s most powerful women, from liberal first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to conservative U.S. Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (wife of Time and Life publisher Henry Luce). Through the patronage and close friendship of American newspaper and oil tycoon Charles Marsh, Dahl quickly became a fixture in the Washington social scene. He became a trusted companion of Vice President Henry Wallace, played poker with Missouri Sen. Harry Truman and swapped stories with rising political star Lyndon Johnson. Dahl’s was hardly a furtive cloak-and-dagger operation.

Even after America committed itself wholeheartedly to the war, the "Irregulars" stayed on, monitoring and nudging internal politics and gathering information about the country’s plans for its postwar global dominance. Dahl would go on, of course, to become internationally famous as the writer of adult and children’s fiction (most notably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and husband of the actress Patricia Neal.

Edward Morris writes from Nashville.

Jennet Conant’s 109 East Palace told the story of how the atomic bomb was constructed in the "secret city" of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Now in The Irregulars, she uncovers another World War II episode: the invasion of Washington, D.C., by a corps of dashing, well-spoken British spies whose job was to turn the country […]

Hats and gloves required

by bookpagedev

Memoir

Memoir

At warp speed

Review by bookpagedev

by Lynn Green

Whether you recognize him as Captain Kirk of “Star Trek,” Denny Crane from “Boston Legal” or that Priceline guy, chances are you’ve encountered William Shatner at some point during his 60-year career. In Up Till Now, a memoir that moves at the same frenetic pace as Shatner himself, the actor zooms through his childhood in Montreal, his training as a Shakespearean actor and his early days on television. Shatner has written about “Star Trek” before and doesn’t dwell on it here, though there should be enough tidbits to interest Trekkies. With this wacky, self-deprecating and decidedly unique account of his life, Shatner goes where no author has gone before.

This will give you the creeps

by bookpagedev

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Maria Ressa

By Sarojini Seupersad

Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.