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.

Essays, Nature, Nonfiction

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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A veteran war correspondent’s experiences in Iraq

by Howard Shirley

Memoir

Memoir

A family’s troubled waters

Review by Pete Croatto

by Pete Croatto

Life on a boat sounds like a dream: sailing in and out of tropical locales, embracing the staggering vastness of the sea, seeing the world up-close and in living color. Then there's the reality: homesick kids, pirates, costly and time-consuming repairs, squabbling. Black Wave details John and Jean Silverwood's tumultuous, yet ultimately rewarding, experience on the Emerald Jane, their 55-foot catamaran. In a span of two years, the California couple and their four kids (ages three to 14 at the start), traveled from the Atlantic coast, into the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean.

Then, near the end of the adventure, the boat hit a reef in French Polynesia, and was ravaged, pinning John under its mast in the process. With help hours away and John slipping toward death, the family sprung into action, pulling him from the wreckage and keeping him alive. "There is no time to rehearse; whoever you are in those moments is exactly who you are," John writes. "It is who your family is, too." Jean Silverwood complements the book's nautical action with substance. She throws readers into the frenzy of the wreck and details the highs and lows of life onboard, coming across as personable, vulnerable and concerned – in short, a real person and not an adrenaline junkie.

Given the material, it's impossible for Black Wave to be boring; there's plenty to keep readers turning the pages a steady clip, making this an ideal beach (or boat) read.

Revisiting an old ballgame

by bookpagedev

Animals

Animals

In focus

Review by bookpagedev

by Amy Scribner

Mammals of North America is the latest entry in the Kaufman Focus Guides series, launched to much acclaim last year with Kenn Kaufman’s Birds of North America. This innovative nature series uses digitally enhanced photographs, rather than drawings, to help users identify each entry. The new guide, Mammals of North America, limits its scope to those wild mammals known to occur on our continent, and the result is a perfect gift for campers and avid outdoorsmen. With keys for recognizing every animal from the elk to the marmot, this user-friendly guide also includes a map of the area in which each animal is likely to live, as well as the size and appearance of the animals’ tracks. “For the most part, mammals are what we have in mind when we think about the thrill of seeing wild animals,” Kaufman writes. “Let a fox or deer cross the path, let even a chipmunk approach the group, and it will become the center of attention. The mammal trumps everything else.” Amy Scribner is a writer in Olympia, Washington.

Mammals of North America is the latest entry in the Kaufman Focus Guides series, launched to much acclaim last year with Kenn Kaufman’s Birds of North America. This innovative nature series uses digitally enhanced photographs, rather than drawings, to help users identify each entry. The new guide, Mammals of North America, limits its scope to […]

Ancient history made vividly alive

by bookpagedev

Animals

Animals

Dinosaurs of the sea

Review by bookpagedev

by Amy Scribner

What is it about sea turtles that make them so mysterious? Is it the laborious egg-laying process, in which thousands of females lumber up the beach to deposit their eggs? Is it their immense size? Their prehistoric roots? According to author James R. Spotila, the director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at Drexel University, it is all of this and more. In Sea Turtles, he writes, “The seven species alive today are ancient reptiles living dinosaurs if you will swimming through our oceans just as they did one hundred million years ago.” Sea Turtles is a compelling look at these ancient creatures, which can live for decades and reach weights of up to 2,000 pounds. Spotila traces the history and life cycle of the sea turtle, as well as efforts to preserve the seven species, many of which have been hunted to the brink of extinction. Sea Turtles profiles several individuals and programs aimed at saving the turtle. Beautiful color photos and lyrical writing make this book a must-have for any nature enthusiast on your gift list. Amy Scribner is a writer in Olympia, Washington.

Soldiers’ stories

by Martin Brady

Memoir

Memoir

Fondness and loathing, Gonzo style

Review by bookpagedev

by John T. Slania

When I picture the late Hunter S. Thompson, it is not a photograph I see, but a caricature of him in a floppy hat and aviator sunglasses, carrying an elegant cigarette holder. Images like this one have been produced for almost four decades by Thompson’s longtime friend and travel companion Ralph Steadman. A flamboyant artist, Steadman illustrated many of Thompson’s best-known articles and books, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Now the artist turns author in his new book, The Joke’s Over, a memoir of his escapades with Thompson.

The pair first met in 1970, when Steadman traveled from his native Britain to illustrate a magazine article Thompson was writing on the Kentucky Derby. They spent most of the trip drinking and taking drugs, and it culminated with Thompson spraying Steadman in the face with Mace. But it also resulted in some wild, cutting-edge writing and illustrations, and gave birth to Gonzo journalism. Their subsequent assignments had them covering The America’s Cup yacht race, the 1972 presidential campaign, the Watergate hearings and the infamous road trip to Las Vegas in search of the American Dream.

Steadman’s memoir is bittersweet. At times he writes of Thompson in affectionate terms, at others he accuses him of being a cold-hearted acquaintance who cheated the illustrator out of royalties on their books. Yet their sometimes chilly 35-year relationship warmed in the latter years, and Steadman was among the 300 mourners at Thompson’s 2005 funeral, when his ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot-tall tower. Steadman was there from beginning to end, and thus has license to write a credible tale about life with Thompson. Hunter was a different animal, Steadman observes. He learned the balance between living out on the edge of lunacy and apparently normal discourse with everyday events. The Joke’s Over is a must read for both longtime fans of Thompson, and the curious who want to learn about a risk-taking writer who left his indelible mark on American journalism. John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Wild things

by bookpagedev

History

History

History in the making

Review by bookpagedev

by James Summerville

What reader of history hasn’t fantasized about traveling back in time? Who wouldn’t thrill to hear Washington calm the rebellion by his unpaid soldiers and save the revolution that he and they had won? Or stand with Meriwether Lewis on the Continental Divide? Or be privy to the conversations between President Kennedy and his brother Robert about our nation’s course in Vietnam? Byron Hollinshead, a publisher and consultant to PBS, invited a score of writers to answer the question, What is the scene or incident in American history that you would like to have witnessed and why? Thus charged, our contributors rode madly off in all directions, in the words of humorist Stephen Leacock.

Mary Beth Norton wishes she could fill gaps in the historical record. If only she had been at the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, she might now understand the people’s mental state during the crisis. Phillip Kunhardt calls on old newspapers to make a historical record about Jenny Lind’s American debut in 1850 never mind that the publicity was orchestrated by the king of hype, P.T. Barnum. Bernard Weisberger wishes he could have heard Robert LaFollette’s 1917 speech against America’s entry into the Great War. But regardless, he knows enough to blame the United States for virtually all the rest of the warfare of the 20th century.

So here’s the past, however you want to imagine it, invent it or condemn it from our righteous, morally superior time. I Wish I’d Been There is a book that will find its way into gift shops of historic houses and museums, stacked alongside picture postcards and replica china. What a treat for the historians on your shopping list! James Summerville writes from Dickson, Tennessee.

Dear ol’ Dad

by Howard Shirley

Animals

Animals

The allure of pigs

Review by bookpagedev

by Amy Scribner

Okay, so maybe you don’t know anyone whose true pet passion is the pig. That should not deter you from picking up The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs, a lovely yes, lovely book from the Smithsonian Institution. This well-researched and beautifully illustrated volume is crammed with facts about pigs, from the domestic pink pig to more exotic varieties. Author Lyall Watson displays a charming enthusiasm for swine (his childhood pet was an orphaned warthog called Hoover in honor of his vast appetite), and the book is chock-full of his own pig anecdotes from decades as a zoologist.

Watson’s love of this highly intelligent animal is contagious. “There is something cryptic about them,” he writes, “a mystery waiting to be resolved, a sense of intellectual potential that will not be denied, no matter how hard some people try to relegate them to the farmyard as ignorant oinkers.’ ” Read this book and you’ll never look at bacon the same way again.

Amy Scribner is a writer in Olympia, Washington.

Okay, so maybe you don’t know anyone whose true pet passion is the pig. That should not deter you from picking up The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs, a lovely yes, lovely book from the Smithsonian Institution. This well-researched and beautifully illustrated volume is crammed with facts about pigs, from the domestic […]

Mother of the Confederacy

by Faye Jones

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