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

Lifestyles, Nonfiction, Social Science

Eerie Legends

Bold, offbeat illustrations by Ricardo Diseño lead the way in the spooky-fun Eerie Legends.

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This Is How a Robin Drinks

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

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All the lonely people

Review by Rebecca Steinitz

by Rebecca Steinitz

We all have lonely moments, but for several years in her 30s, Emily White was persistently, deeply and inescapably lonely, despite a successful career and nearby family and friends. Unable to stem her loneliness, she decided to investigate it. The result is Lonely: A Memoir, in which White intersperses her own story with a thorough examination of the research on loneliness—which was not easy to compile. Loneliness is a fairly recent field of study, and White combed academic and Internet sources, called doctors and psychologists around the world and advertised on Craigslist for lonely people willing to be interviewed. Luckily, she was tenacious in her quest, and she is thorough and clear in her explanations and analysis.

Loneliness, it turns out, is distinguished more by a perceived absence of intimacy than the literal absence of other people. While some people seem to be genetically programmed for loneliness, childhood isolation and adult losses are frequently the catalysts for chronic loneliness (which is qualitatively different from the situational loneliness most of us experience at some point). Loneliness has fairly dramatic negative effects on physical as well as mental health, and its prevalence is increasing, to the point of becoming a public health problem. At the same time, cultural and commercial representations of social life and friendship have made it an increasingly shameful and stigmatized condition. The most effective treatments for loneliness involve active support and guidance for learning how to reach out and connect.

White is just as clear-eyed as she tells the story of her own retreat into alienation and her ultimate re-emergence into an intimate relationship, if not a full social life. Sometimes her story fits her research; her parents’ divorce when her two much older sisters were almost out of the house clearly helped spur her lifelong sense of loneliness. At other points, she is less convincing, as when she insists that the stress of coming out of the closet in her 30s and a history of depression had little to do with her loneliness. Still, despite the occasional stumble, Lonely is a useful overview of an important and under-discussed issue.

Rebecca Steinitz is a writer in Arlington, Massachusetts.

An examined life worth living

by Linda Stankard

Essays, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Essays

New collection by a master of the form

Review by John T. Slania

by John T. Slania

Most journalists strive to write the “definitive piece,” an article so thoroughly researched and reported that it becomes the standard for a particular subject. John McPhee has been writing definitive pieces most of his life, and he offers us a sampling in his new book, Silk Parachute.

After reading an essay by McPhee, you feel you have gained a deep understanding of the topic. Consider “Spin Right and Shoot Left,” an essay about lacrosse, in which McPhee covers not only the history of the game, but all its rules and strategies. When you’ve finished reading, you feel ready to pick up a lacrosse stick and run onto the field. The experience is similar with “Checkpoints,” about fact-checking at The New Yorker. The essay leaves you impressed with the editors’ attention to detail and gives you an insider’s look at magazine publishing.

Many of the essays in Silk Parachute have appeared previously in The New Yorker, where McPhee has been a staff writer since 1965. Over those 45 years, he has written hundreds of essays, many of which have been compiled in one of his 28 books. His body of work includes Annals of the Former World, his authoritative book on geology that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

Clearly, McPhee is a master of his trade, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s accustomed to writing the definitive piece. Yet Silk Parachute also offers a personal side of this accomplished author. In the book’s title essay, McPhee recounts his boyhood memories of his 99-year-old mother, while in “Season on the Chalk,” he relates travels with his family along the English Channel. “Nowheres” is an account of his life in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was born, and where he now resides.

Silk Parachute offers an eclectic sampling from an accomplished author who is as comfortable writing about the intricacies of impersonal topics as he is sharing the intimacies of his personal life.

John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Listening to what our choices tell us about ourselves

by Heather Seggel

American History, History

History American History

Forensic pioneers follow the trail of a silent killer

Review by Brian Corrigan

by Brian Corrigan

Fans of television’s “CSI” and its myriad spin-offs will no doubt find much of morbid interest in Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook, a lushly detailed account of how the discipline and profession of forensic science emerged from the “poison playground” of 1920s New York to become an indispensable argumentative tool in the modern-day crime-fighter’s arsenal. In particular, Blum focuses on the turbulent lives and trailblazing careers of the city’s chief medical examiner, Charles Norris, and his trusty toxicologist, Alexander Gettler. Through their diligence, persistence and selfless devotion to the cause, Norris and Gettler laid the intellectual groundwork for a new—and potentially invaluable—field of study in the span of a few short decades. All the while, the pair waged an uphill battle against popular (and political) scientific ignorance and faced resistance, often fierce, from clueless city-hall bureaucrats and budget-cutters.

Known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning work as a journalist and science writer, Blum displays a remarkable gift for narrative storytelling in The Poisoner’s Handbook, weaving together, from seemingly disparate elements, an old-fashioned tale of suspense that is as readable as it is densely informative. Each chapter of the book takes its title from a particular periodic element or compound, introducing the reader to these lethal substances in the kind of vivid language novelists often utilize to introduce their main characters. While the pages are populated with plenty of human villains, these killer compounds are the book’s real antagonists. Whether used as a murder weapon or ingested accidentally, each poses a unique and complex puzzle for Norris and Gettler, prompting the pair to devise ever more cunning procedures for the detection, in human tissue, of lethal quantities and trace amounts alike. They work tirelessly, selflessly, even courageously at fine-tuning and perfecting their craft, using their own meager salaries to cover laboratory expenses and generally learning as they go—at times from their own deadly mistakes.

The Poisoner’s Handbook is that rare nonfiction book that has something for everyone, whether you are a true-crime aficionado, a political-history buff, a science geek or simply a fan of well-written narrative suspense.

Brian Corrigan lives and writes in Florence, Alabama.

Fans of television’s “CSI” and its myriad spin-offs will no doubt find much of morbid interest in Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook, a lushly detailed account of how the discipline and profession of forensic science emerged from the “poison playground” of 1920s New York to become an indispensable argumentative tool in the modern-day crime-fighter’s arsenal. […]

Jane Austen’s enduring appeal

by Alison Hood

Nature

Nature

Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection

Review by bookpagedev

by Deanna Larson

More than 65 million American households have a pet, so it’s difficult to comprehend that many living creatures in this country are neglected, abused and cruelly murdered each year. Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection explores this contradiction as it exposes the suffering of domestic and wild animals in America. Bypassing complicated philosophical arguments, authors Erin E. Williams of the Humane Society of the United States and Margo DeMello of the House Rabbit Society coolly present sordid details of the human-animal relationship in America, from the meat, textile, hunting and medical experiment industries, to the use of animals as family and entertainment. The realities are brutal and no myths are left unturned: That delicious Sunday roasted chicken survived on a factory farm in a cage so small it couldn’t flap its wings, covered in feces and fattened until it couldn’t stand, to provide dinner at the cheapest price possible. Rationalizations and arguments about history, necessity and overpopulation don’t stand up to the heavily footnoted studies and points made here; if you’re going to eat that chicken, at least honor it by acknowledging what it went through to get to your table. Why Animals Matter ends with a manifesto for compassion and decency toward all living things, but remains a difficult look at America’s heart of darkness.

Tales worthy of the great detective

by Edward Morris

Nature

Nature

Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Review by bookpagedev

by Deanna Larson

<b>Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog</b> The dilemma of the canine’s true nature is explored by award-winning writer Ted Kerasote in <b>Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog</b>. Touches of a crunchy-granola-hippie philosophy infuse the story that begins when a dog approaches outdoorsman Kerasote and his friends while they’re on a river camping trip in Utah. Apparently living on its own in the scrub among the Navajo, the friendly Lab mix endears itself to the whole camp; when they pack up for their next site downriver, the dog runs along the shore, unsure about leaving behind its familiar territory. But as in the best Disney story, the dog jumps into the boat at the very last second and chooses somewhat loosely Kerasote as his companion. Merle and the free-spirited writer return to his small Wyoming town and settle into the give-and-take of getting to know each other, mano-a-dogo. Kerasote observes, romanticizes, admires and resorts to the inexplicable to indulge, then curb Merle’s behavior, confused about how to help the dog adjust to life with humans while remaining wild. Though he often takes the observations of experts (Dr. Temple Grandin, the Monks of New Skete, Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, Dr. Richard Skinner) out of context to bolster his own preconceptions, Kerasote retains deep respect for Merle’s essential nature and longing for freedom. Blasting out of his doggie door to explore the countryside, visiting neighbors and hunting wild animals then returning to home and hearth, Merle leads Kerasote to ponder, make mistakes, love and learn. The unapologetic imperfection of Kerasote’s choices proves that relationships with dogs are as complicated as human ones, a reflection of our own essential humanity.

The challenge and inspiration of our animal companions

by bookpagedev

Arts & Culture, Music

Music Arts & Culture

Highbrow fidelity

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Alec Rose

This is the ultimate book for classical music record geeks. Imagine John Cusack and Jack Black in High Fidelity obsessing about Wagner’s Ring instead of the Velvet Underground, and you’ll have an idea of the passion with which British music critic Norman Lebrecht details the century-long decline and fall of the classical recording industry. The Life and Death of Classical Music is a sad and sordid tale in other words, a real page-turner. Lebrecht does not hold back from expressing his Old-Testament-prophet horror over the unholy marriage between art and commerce. His lament is all the more lyrical because of his comprehensive grasp of the social and political context in which the quality of classical music recordings waxed (vinyled?) and waned. It’s bad enough to know that von Karajan’s recording career flourished under the Nazis; to learn, however, that the label Deutsche Grammophon employed slave labor during the war (including inmates from Auschwitz) to press those von Karajan recordings is enough to make you want to pull those old DG LP’s off your dusty shelf and smash them.

There’s something gleefully perverse about a book that hopes to sell by kvetching about how its subject won’t sell anymore. Lebrecht loves the recordings he loves, but he loves hating the recordings he hates even more. That’s one sublime geek.

Michael Alec Rose is an associate professor of composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

This is the ultimate book for classical music record geeks. Imagine John Cusack and Jack Black in High Fidelity obsessing about Wagner’s Ring instead of the Velvet Underground, and you’ll have an idea of the passion with which British music critic Norman Lebrecht details the century-long decline and fall of the classical recording industry. The […]

Midlife escape plan

by bookpagedev

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