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

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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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Loads of spice with a dash of sugar Just when you thought you’d seen every imaginable cake, pie or sugar rush-inducing treat, Sweet Memories: A Gingerbread Family Scrapbook will have you wondering who spiked the cookie dough. The answer is writer and cookbook author Sally Ryder Brady and her daughter Sarah Brady Underwood, a garden designer and cookie painter. Using a mixture of puns and other riffs on contemporary culture along with sprinkles, icing and anything else that can be applied to a cookie the pair let their imagination run wild in this kooky confection that tells the story of Fred and Ginger Bread in lovingly preserved photos (the old-fashioned photo corners are a nice touch).

Here is the couple’s wedding photo, the family’s cookie-cutter gingerbread house, the kids’ school pictures, Ginger wearing a black negligee while greeting the milkman. Witty illustrations by children’s book illustrator Sara Pinto augment the story. Pair this with cocoa or a box of tea, a set of cookie cutters and cookie dough (there’s a recipe at the end of the book) and you have a delicious gift package. *An occasional look at some of the stranger books.

Loads of spice with a dash of sugar Just when you thought you’d seen every imaginable cake, pie or sugar rush-inducing treat, Sweet Memories: A Gingerbread Family Scrapbook will have you wondering who spiked the cookie dough. The answer is writer and cookbook author Sally Ryder Brady and her daughter Sarah Brady Underwood, a garden […]

The Da Vinci crime

by Norah Piehl

Memoir

Memoir

Growing up and growing old

Review by Rebecca Steinitz

by Rebecca Steinitz

In this era of hands-on parenting, the mothering memoir has become a bookshelf staple; as our population grows older, the adjacent shelf of aging parent memoirs is also getting crowded. What makes Sybil Lockhart's contribution to both shelves stand out is the fact that she is not just a loving mother and daughter, she's also a neurobiologist who writes with exquisite clarity about the brain.

Lockhart's memoir, Mother in the Middle: A Biologist's Story of Caring for Parent and Child, is an account of the half dozen years during which her two daughters were conceived, gestated, emerged and grew—and her mother descended into Alzheimer's. Lockhart describes the frustrations of being torn between the caretaking demands of the two generations, but she also pays close attention to the parallel processes of development and deterioration happening right in front of her.

Mother in the Middle breaks no new ground on topics like maternal love, marital stress and becoming a writer. But when Lockhart turns to the brain and the nervous system, which, happily for the reader, she does frequently, the book enters a world that will be new for many and enlightening for all. Her discussions of subjects like neurons, embryonic development, what Alzheimer's does to the brain, and the biological nature of memory are riveting (to the surprise of this non-scientific reader). In precise, accessible language and illuminating images, she elucidates words, phrases and concepts we encounter everywhere from high school biology class, to the doctor's office, to the daily news.

At the end of Mother in the Middle, Lockhart is no longer in the middle. Her mother is gone and her children are no longer as needy, she and her husband have reached a new and happier stage in their relationship, and she has come into her own as a writer. In the last pages of the book, she sells her childhood home and moves forward into the future, accompanied by a comforting sense of her mother's presence. We can only hope that future includes more dazzling science writing.

Rebecca Steinitz is a writer in Arlington, Massachusetts.

George Washington’s cultural legacy

by Roger Bishop

History

History

Bridging the seas

Review by James Summerville

by James Summerville

The 51-mile link between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean across the Panamanian isthmus stands as one of the great engineering feats of all human history, comparable to the Great Wall of China or the Apollo moon landings. In The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal, labor historian Julie Greene asks: Was it the princes or presidents who did those things? What about the compass bearers, the joiners and those who fed the horses and cooked the meals?

The central figures in Greene's story—the "builders‚" referred to in her title—are the 35,000 ordinary people who traveled to Panama, and, from 1906 to 1914, raised new towns, built houses, ran railroads, operated commissaries, set up a constabulary and judiciary and, above all, moved dirt. Greene examines how the U.S. government, determined to build the canal as fast as possible, managed this force of working people from all over the world.

"The engineering and constructional difficulties melt into insignificance compared with labor‚" she quotes chief engineer John Stevens as saying. Indeed, Greene finds that project director Col. George W. Goethals tried to apply the ideal of Progressivism: that by regulating environments one could improve human behavior. While the jungle gave way before steam shovels, this social engineering faltered and often failed. Goethals could not control appetites for drink, sex and money; eliminate racial or ethnic prejudice; make people fair or honest; or come close to perfecting the human character. The undeniable success of the project even left an indelible stain on the Republic of Panama, which the U.S. had brought into being: that country's sovereignty over its own territory was not retuned to it until 2000, when the U.S. ceded the Canal.

The great adventure might have taught Americans to take people and nations not as we might wish them to be but as they often are: perverse, selfish, nationalistic. Yet somehow the overtopping idealism and magnificent vision inspired this multitude to build the great Canal.

James Summerville writes from Dickson, Tennessee.

The 51-mile link between the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean across the Panamanian isthmus stands as one of the great engineering feats of all human history, comparable to the Great Wall of China or the Apollo moon landings. In The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal, labor historian Julie Greene asks: Was […]

The occidental tourists

by bookpagedev

Nonfiction, Politics

Nonfiction Politics

A secret map of the world

Review by Edward Morris

by Edward Morris

The “blank spots” of the title of Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map refer to America’s secret intelligence-gathering outposts—from unacknowledged air bases in the Southwest, to innocuous office buildings in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to disguised prisons in Afghanistan, to undeclared spy satellites circling overhead. Drawing on his reporting skills and training as a geographer, Paglen constructs both a history and a remarkably detailed outline of America’s “black” operations, many of which are now in the hands of profit-oriented private contractors who have no allegiance to the taxpayers who fund them—or to constitutional niceties.

Indeed, Paglen argues that government-sanctioned secrecy exacts a severe toll on America’s legal system. The Central Intelligence Act of 1949, he points out, exempts CIA funding from Congressional oversight in spite of the constitutional clause that mandates it. Now, Paglen asserts, the law has been stretched through state-secrecy arguments to embrace wiretapping of citizens without court approval, torture, “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to other countries for interrogation, punishment and concealment and routine denial of due process.

“Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution,” he says, “creating blank spots in the law . . . handing sovereign powers . . . to the executive branch . . . and turning our own history into a state secret.”

To document these conclusions, Paglen monitored (from a distance) secret sites from Las Vegas to Kabul; sifted through government and private documents and extrapolated the data found there; and enlisted the talents of an array of amateur researchers, including a zealous recorder and interpreter of satellite data in Toronto and a retired history professor in Hawaii who specializes in the privatization of intelligence gathering. Paglen engages in no UFO voodoo or conspiracy theories here. He’s just a concerned citizen doggedly attempting to gain relevant facts from a government now designed to conceal them.

Edward Morris gathers intelligence from Nashville.

The “blank spots” of the title of Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map refer to America’s secret intelligence-gathering outposts—from unacknowledged air bases in the Southwest, to innocuous office buildings in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to disguised prisons in Afghanistan, to undeclared spy satellites circling overhead. Drawing on his reporting skills and training as […]

Behind-the-counter wisdom

by bookpagedev

History

History

How Britannia came to rule the waves

Review by bookpagedev

by Roger Bishop

Philip II of Spain was, without question, the most powerful ruler in Europe during the 1580s. A zealous Catholic, he felt it was his role to eliminate heretical Protestantism from the continent. At the same time, he envisioned a Spanish empire that would stretch from the Baltic to the New World. As his country’s relationship with England faltered, Philip began to prepare for what he hoped would be the first link in a chain of events to achieve his goals. He decided to invade England. The result was not what Philip had hoped, but led instead to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, one of the major events of Elizabeth I’s reign and of European history in that period.

Neil Hanson, using a wide range of sources, recreates the period and personalities in both countries in magnificent detail in his The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True History of the Spanish Armada. He explores the diplomatic, military and commercial aspects of the event as seen from the highest level Philip and Elizabeth and their numerous advisors and military leaders and from the lowest the galley slaves and seamen. As Hanson shows, the outcome came as a surprise to many (“some felt that the mere sight of [the Armada] would be enough to make Elizabeth capitulate”). Others, however, were not so certain of victory. The Venetian ambassador in Madrid noted that the Englishmen bear “a name above all the West for being expert and enterprising in maritime affairs, and the finest fighters upon the sea . . . for the English never yield.” English ships that were not only faster and easier to maneuver, but were also, Hanson writes, “armed with weapons that were, by the standards of the day, precision engineered, delivering projectiles with greater frequency, velocity and accuracy, over a greater range.” Hanson also portrays the sharp contrast between the two royal leaders. Philip, austere and remote, consulted with others, yet remained the grand strategist. He had known battle only once, but, having ruled for 30 years, did not lack self-confidence. Neither did Elizabeth, though Morgan believes, “It was evident that neither the Queen nor her ministers had the slightest comprehension of the tactics that had brought her fleet to victory.” Hanson’s riveting narrative enlightens and stimulates our thinking about a major turning point in European history. Roger Bishop is a Nashville bookseller and frequent contributor to BookPage.

More than art in the family

by bookpagedev

Memoir

Memoir

The spy who didn’t love it

Review by bookpagedev

by MiChelle Jones

The spy who didn’t love it Lindsay Moran’s resignation from the CIA didn’t cause the furor that George Tenet’s did, but don’t let that stop you from reading Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy and Other Misadventures. Moran was young, adventurous, fresh from her valedictory speech at Harvard and a little bored when she decided to work for the CIA. She already had several years of training behind her, so why not serve her country while traveling the world? OK, as Moran admits, her training consisted mostly of reading Harriet the Spy books. She rethought her decision.

A few years later, however, Moran again felt herself drawn to the agency, which is where the book’s fun begins. Nothing is as she expects it to be: her recruiter’s limp is not the result of a shoot-out with opposing agents but was acquired at the hands of the FBI during a softball game. The CIA headquarters is, according to Moran, "a colossal structure that is bafflingly and alarmingly well-marked by large signs reading CIA,’ " yet the higher-ups believe the custodial and cafeteria staff to be unaware of their true employer. Armed with a clever sense of humor and an active imagination her field reports must have been masterpieces Moran fills Blowing My Cover with stories of her training at the Farm in Langley, Virginia, and her efforts to cultivate foreign agents in Macedonia. For the most part, her adventures are more "Boris and Natasha" than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

This is fine until one realizes that Moran’s tenure immediately preceded September 11, 2001. Her growing feelings of futility and her disdain for the agency’s old-school mentality lead to her decision to leave "the Company." Her comments about the CIA’s inability to foresee and adequately react to terrorist attacks echo conventional wisdom about the need to revamp U.S. intelligence organizations. Though Moran was generally frustrated by her experiences, the overall tone of this memoir is not despair. How could it be with lines like: "I half expected to find a flask of Jack Daniel’s in my own butt crack when I went to bed that night."

The Gunny sounds off

by bookpagedev

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How to Stand Up to a Dictator

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.