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The Work of Art

The Work of Art is a visionary compendium of ephemera that makes visible the bridge between idea and artwork.
The Work of Art is a visionary compendium of ephemera that makes visible the bridge between idea and artwork.
NonfictionBiography

Ingenious

Richard Munson’s splendid biography of Benjamin Franklin provides an insightful view of the statesman’s lesser known accomplishments in science.
Richard Munson’s splendid biography of Benjamin Franklin provides an insightful view of the statesman’s lesser known accomplishments in science.
NonfictionLiteratureBiography

Didion and Babitz

Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz is a freewheeling and engaging narrative about two iconic literary rivals and their world in 1970s Los Angeles.
Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz is a freewheeling and engaging narrative about two iconic literary rivals and their world in 1970s Los Angeles.
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Business & Finance

Building on your strengths

Review by bookpagedev

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it

Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom (Portfolio, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 1591840023), tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice ("If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails" and "Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.") to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that?

It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality ∧ Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a "friend." Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales

Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

 

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world's greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super…

Nonfiction

A story of hard luck and hope

Review by bookpagedev

In the 1980s, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc embarked on an ambitious personal assignment to candidly explore and characterize a culture that’s often overlooked. She immersed herself in the chaotic world of the Bronx to get the story, sleeping on slum floors, visiting jail inmates and hanging out on the steps of projects. The 11-year journey culminated in her book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, the fascinating true story of two inner-city Puerto Rican girls growing up fast during the heyday of Wall Street and crack cocaine. The tale begins with Jessica a voluptuous, hazel-eyed beauty who gets swept up in a volatile romance with Boy George, a young heroin dealer who showers her with fur coats, jewelry and exotic trips abroad. Coco, a sweet-natured 14-year-old, falls hard for Jessica’s younger brother, Cesar, an aspiring criminal who fathers two of her children. The early days are full of joy rides, nightclubs and passionate couplings, but the good times don’t last. Boy George and Jessica are investigated by the FBI and DEA, and Cesar goes on the lam following a botched robbery. Coco is left to survive as best she can through a fluid network of kinship relationships. The two women are products of an environment rampant with casual sex, drugs and violence, and they fall into a seemingly inevitable cycle of poverty and abuse. By the time she’s 20, Coco has four children by three different men. She tries to provide for her kids while maintaining a long-distance and dysfunctional relationship with Cesar. Jessica and Coco are taught “to be sexy, to respect family, that all men were dogs but that without them women were nothing,” LeBlanc writes, and the contradictory messages reinforce a sense of despair. But the women are resilient and scrappy, forging family ties where they can find them. Too soon, they are the young, single parents of teenagers heading down the same rocky paths with little chance of escape. Steering clear of judgment and sentimentality, LeBlanc matter-of-factly presents the complex cycle of intergenerational urban poverty. What could be an unlovely portrait of a broken-down world becomes, in her hands, a bittersweet tale that sheds some much-needed light on the plight of poor, inner-city families. Written with candor, sensitivity and respect, Random Family is ultimately more than a hard-luck saga; it’s a universal story of survival and hope. Journalist Rebecca Denton writes from Nashville.

In the 1980s, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc embarked on an ambitious personal assignment to candidly explore and characterize a culture that's often overlooked. She immersed herself in the chaotic world of the Bronx to get the story, sleeping on slum floors, visiting jail inmates and…
History

The life, death and famous last words of a patriot

Review by bookpagedev

Nathan Hale is best known for what are reported to have been his last words, often misquoted or paraphrased, before he was hanged by the British as an American spy during the Revolutionary War. The most authoritative source we have puts Hale’s famous last line this way: “I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.” As M. William Phelps demonstrates in his extensively researched and compellingly written new biography, Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy, the young man responsible for these last words was a serious scholar and fun – loving patriot, a man of courage and accomplishment. Phelps takes issue with those who see Hale as no more than one of many junior officers who, had he not died as he did, would not have been long remembered.

Phelps goes to great lengths to separate fact from legend or myth; the footnotes alone make for fascinating reading. Drawing on letters to and from Hale and many other sources, Phelps is able to plausibly reconstruct his subject’s life: his youth on a Connecticut farm, his student years at Yale, his time as a teacher, his service as an officer in George Washington’s army and his capture and execution in New York. Phelps also keeps us advised of developments in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and troop movements in Boston and other places throughout Hale’s life. We get a strong sense of Hale’s growing commitment to the new republic and, from his upbringing in a religious home, his understanding that it was God’s will for him to fight against England.

Based on Hale’s journal during the period when he served in Boston, Phelps shows that he was held to a much higher standard than other captains because he was intelligent, well – educated and well – read. Many others of his rank were illiterate. Also, it is very likely that one of the reasons Hale was chosen for the ill – fated spy mission was his scientific knowledge.

Phelps quotes from the diary of a British officer who heard about the spy’s death from witnesses at the scene. They spoke of Hale’s composure and resolution and reported that Hale said it was the duty of every good officer to obey orders given by his commander – in – chief and “desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.” This extraordinarily well – documented biography brings Hale and his times vividly to life. Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Nathan Hale is best known for what are reported to have been his last words, often misquoted or paraphrased, before he was hanged by the British as an American spy during the Revolutionary War. The most authoritative source we have puts Hale's famous last line…
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Got water?

Review by bookpagedev

Americans buy more bottled water than they do milk and beer – and the numbers are closing in on soda, journalist Elizabeth Royte (Garbage Land) tells readers in her latest book. Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is an intrepid, intelligent analysis of Americans’ raging thirst for bottled water, a probe of the industry, plus the politics, trafficking and scientific analysis of our drinking water. Royte reveals the powerful agendas that drive corporations such as Nestle; (Poland Springs), Coke (Dasani) and Pepsi Co. (Aquafina) to voraciously plunder, package and sell public/municipal waters, nationally and internationally.

Taking the water fiasco in Fryeburg, Maine, as a microcosmic example, Royte shows how corporate giants commercialize and profit from what many consider a “fundamental human right” (water access); the social and environmental impacts of depleting natural water sources and of shipping water worldwide; and a close (often gross) look at the purity, processing and safety of potable water.

In sum, Royte finds that “bottled water does have its place. . . . But it’s often no better than tap water, its environmental and social price is high, and it lets our public guardians off the hook for protecting watersheds, stopping polluters, upgrading treatment and distribution infrastructure, and strengthening treatment standards.” Alison Hood still drinks tap water.

 

Americans buy more bottled water than they do milk and beer - and the numbers are closing in on soda, journalist Elizabeth Royte (Garbage Land) tells readers in her latest book. Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is an…

Nonfiction

Breaking the secrets of the unbreakable

Review by Pete Croatto

Diamonds—those glittery, magical conclusions of the courtship process, those small, pricey declarations of love—have a less glamorous meaning for 26-year-old Alicia Oltuski. Her father, Paul, is a diamond dealer and a fixture on New York City’s bazaar-like Diamond District. Her late uncle and her retired grandfather, who still visits his old stomping grounds on 47th Street, were also in the diamond trade.

Even the younger Oltuski briefly worked for her father. Now a journalist, she turns her attention to every nook and cranny of this natural resource in Precious Objects, an enjoyable mélange of reporting, memories and profiles of the people who give the diamond industry—and a stretch of city street—its sparkle.

The author introduces us to various Midtown movers and shakers. We meet Dan and Elie Ribacoff, the “diamond detectives” whose crime-solving methods include donning fake disguises to track down perpetrators, and a young up-and-comer who uses the Internet to make his mark and learn how dealers procure and sell their goods. We also meet the powerful and controversial Martin Rapaport, whose crazy notion to publish a price list of diamonds in the late 1970s nearly killed his career. “He was listing the price of the finished goods, so how in the world were we supposed to make a living?” asks a 1970s-era diamond manufacturer.

Oltuski’s narrative goes beyond New York—we discover the tragic origins of the phrase “blood diamond”—and covers a lot of ground, sometimes too much. You want her to scale back on some topics (e.g., trade shows, auctions) and expand on others (e.g., the Diamond District’s architectural facelift). She builds her story around that of her family, especially her father. Hardworking and somewhat eccentric (he rarely admits his occupation), Paul is the narrative’s face. Through the Great Recession, advancing technology and his brother’s untimely death, Paul Oltuski remains an entrepreneurial survivor.

What redeems Precious Objects is that we understand that adaptation is a way of life in the industry, including the Diamond District, which still stands despite business methods steeped in old-fashioned values and the tenets of Judaism. So, more change is coming. That is the diamond industry’s one constant.

Diamonds—those glittery, magical conclusions of the courtship process, those small, pricey declarations of love—have a less glamorous meaning for 26-year-old Alicia Oltuski. Her father, Paul, is a diamond dealer and a fixture on New York City’s bazaar-like Diamond District. Her late uncle and her retired…

NonfictionMemoir

A long, strange trip to sobriety

Review by Marianne Peters

Sacha Scoblic lived to drink, until the morning she stumbled out of a bar with only vague memories of the night before. She gave up alcohol that day, sick of the person she had become. But without alcohol, who was she? In Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety, she discovers that sobriety has its own strange trips.

Memoirs about recovery travel a well-trodden path, but not many of them manage to be this piercing and ribald. Scoblic’s memoir uncovers the everyday frustrations recovering alcoholics face as they negotiate a world saturated with their drug of choice. It’s a hilarious, honest and heart-breaking glimpse into the routine torments of addiction.

Terribly insecure and already addicted to booze, 30-something Scoblic feels intimidated by her sophisticated new colleagues at the New Republic. “At the time, I assumed either cosmic intervention or a gas leak in the building had led to me getting hired at the New Republic magazine,” she writes. “Still, I was completely ready to emulate Hunter S. Thompson: I’d drink all night and write colorful scene-scapes about American zeitgeist by day.” She relies on drinking to transform herself into a snarky party girl willing to try anything once, even if it also makes her cruel, self-centered and prone to property damage.

But after years of hangovers, panic attacks and relationships as empty as last night’s beer bottles, Scoblic finally gives it up. She struggles to stay clean, fantasizing about wacky scenarios that would require her to drink again, such as celebrating a successful nuclear arms treaty with Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and a bottle of Russian vodka.

Fearful of becoming banal without the stimulation of alcohol, Scoblic realizes that a sober life has its own richness. In the end, she finds that sobriety is a life of unmissed opportunities, authentic love and forgotten dreams waiting to be rediscovered.

Sacha Scoblic lived to drink, until the morning she stumbled out of a bar with only vague memories of the night before. She gave up alcohol that day, sick of the person she had become. But without alcohol, who was she? In Unwasted: My Lush…

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