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

Biography, Literature, Nonfiction

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.

Crafts, Hobbies & Home, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Garden Wonderland

With its seamless integration of gardening principles with advanced design ideas, Garden Wonderland is the perfect gift for new gardeners—or anyone in need of a little inspiration.

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Parenting with patience Guidebooks to peruse while hiding in the bathroom

by bookpagedev

Family & Relationships

Family & Relationships

Looking for love?

Review by Katherine Wyrick

by Katherine Wyrick

Paulette Kouffman Sherman is a dating expert and psychologist with a holistic approach to finding a mate. In her practice, she noticed that her clients' negative thoughts were actually driving away the partners they desired. Therein lies the genesis of Dating from the Inside Out: How to Use the Law of Attraction in Matters of the Heart. In this guide, Sherman claims that the pathway to an enduring, fulfilling relationship begins with "setting clear intentions for love, and learning to be the partner they wish to attract." It's no secret, Sherman insists, that if you live consciously, love will follow. Meaning, know thyself and love thyself before you ask someone else's self to do the same. Anyone who's heard of that not-so-secret book The Secret will find themselves on familiar terrain here.

DESKTOP DATING
According to Leslie Oren, top Hollywood publicist and author of Fine, I'll Go Online!, finding someone you click with might be just a click away. Internet dating is no longer considered a mysterious, shady endeavor; instead it is, in this day and age, an accepted and legitimate way to meet a mate. But there are rules in this ether-world and a certain protocol to follow. Oren intends this guide to be both entertaining and informative. If anyone knows about effective marketing, which she surmises is just what the dating game is all about, it is Oren. Here she shows readers how to create an image, "the best possible version of your authentic self," for online dating. She outlines how to write the perfect online profile, why you must post a photo, what not to write in an e-mail, why the first date should only be meeting for coffee or a drink and what constitutes online dating success. If this book had a theme song, it might be something like "Lookin' for love in all the MySpace pages . . ."

LAUGHING MATTERS
There really is a guide for everything. Having survived the wilds of the dating world, you now need help navigating those early years of matrimony. In There's a Spouse in My House Peter Scott, author of Well Groomed: A Wedding Planner for What's-His-Name (And His Bride), shows us how to achieve and maintain marital bliss—well, if not bliss, at least some semblance of harmony. (If he writes a sequel, may we suggest the title There's a Crib in My Crib?) Chapter topics range from cohabitation to the challenge of staying in shape after the wedding. Scott has clearly learned a thing or two about being a good husband, judging from chapter titles such as "So, These Hand Towels are Merely Decorative and Never to Be Used, Right?" Laughter is key, the author insists, and if you need an infusion of it into your relationship, this book is a good place to start.

STRESS TEST
Now if you really want to shed some light on those issues you've just made light of, John Gray's new book, Why Mars &andamp; Venus Collide: Improving Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress, is the next stop on the love train. Gray's writing career was launched into the stratosphere with the publication of the original Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and the follow-up Mars/Venus books. The latest in that galaxy of bestsellers builds on Gray's previous work and examines how traditional male and female roles have evolved and how this evolution contributes to stress, which in turn affects relationships. He explores the different ways men and women approach their problems and then offers a practical program to get those planets aligned. Looking at the science of the sexes, he examines the roles testosterone and oxytocin play in our daily lives and relationships. The information therein is both thought-provoking and illuminating.

DOWN AND OUT
The aforementioned guides are bent on creating lasting partnerships, but, alas, not every love story is a success story. Thankfully, there's Ben Karlin, who offers us Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me, an homage to failed relationships. Karlin, best known as the former executive producer of both "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report," knows what's funny, possibly with the exception of Neal Pollock's off-color essay involving his cat (mee-EWWWW). Here Karlin invites some of today's greatest comedic minds, or dare we say hearts, to pontificate about heartbreak. Not sentimental or touchy-feely (unless by touchy-feely you mean actual groping), this anthology offers insights from the likes of Stephen Colbert, Andy Richter and Nick Hornby.So this year, put on that novelty tee that says "I'm with Cupid" (arrow pointing sideways), and fall in love—with a tall, dark and handsome book.

More natural cures for what ails you

by bookpagedev

Arts & Culture, Pop Culture

Pop Culture Arts & Culture

Welcome to the future

Review by John T. Slania

by John T. Slania

What's Next: The Experts' Guide is the perfect title for Jane Buckingham's book forecasting the future because the reader never quite knows what topic will be tackled next. The "experts" interviewed here explore subjects as weighty as the environment, medicine and politics; and as fluffy as dating, reality television and plastic surgery.

This may be disappointing for readers looking for scholarly insight into the future, but for those who keep an open mind and don't take the topic too seriously, What's Next will be a fun read. After all, where else can you get analysis of the future of law from Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in the same book where the future of fashion is explored by designers Chip & Pepper? And since What's Next is a page-flipper—with essays on 50 different topics—readers can browse to find topics of interest. Some sample predictions: NFL star Shaun Alexander thinks professional sports will become more international and offer increasing opportunities for women. MIT robotics professor Rodney A. Brooks says robots will be increasingly used in our homes, at work and by our military. Drug researcher Mitch Earleywine believes illegal drug use will be halted by a combination of legalization, regulation and taxation. Space researcher (and PayPal co-founder) Elon Musk thinks tourists could be traveling to the moon in the next decade. Columnist Liz Smith says that with the growth of the Internet, there seems to be no limit to Americans' appetite for gossip.

Buckingham, president of a trend forecasting firm, admits that the list of topics is not comprehensive: She just wants it to be thought provoking. Even if the predictions prove wrong, Buckingham writes, "We're all responsible for becoming better educated about the way things are, so that we can join our experts in clearing a path for the way things could be." What's Next is a sometimes educational, sometimes entertaining book worthy of anyone curious about what the future might hold for things both great and small.

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

A screen gem for Oscar season

by Pat H. Broeske

Arts & Culture, Literature

Literature Arts & Culture

Lasting impressions

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

Cuba In Mind, edited by Maria Finn Dominguez, is a collection of essays, short fiction, reports and poems by such luminaries as Anthony Trollope, Steven Crane, Graham Greene, Langston Hughes, Elmore Leonard, Oscar Hijuelos and Andrei Codrescu. It is essentially a catchall of impressions by those who have found something to admire in the island and its people. Ernest Hemingway liked the fact that one could raise and fight cocks legally there and shoot live pigeons as a club sport. Allen Ginsberg, who was booted out of the country in 1965, was sympathetic to the Revolution’s basic goals but enraged by its abuse of homosexuals. Reflecting years later on his ill-fated visit, he told a reporter, “Well, the worst thing I said was that I’d heard, by rumor, that Raul Castro [Fidel’s younger brother] was gay. And the second worst thing I said was that Che Guevara was cute.”

Face of the revolution

by bookpagedev

Memoir

Memoir

Life with mother

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

by Linda M. Castellitto

Felicia Sullivan grew up in 1980s Brooklyn, in the un-hip section where poverty, drugs and crime are facts of life. The author's mother, Rosina, was herself a criminal and a drug addict, as well as a breathtakingly selfish and uninterested parent. Even worse, she engaged in emotional and physical abuse, frequent near-overdoses, and chronic unreliability—the epitome of a bad role model. The list goes on and on, and the sadness builds with every page of Sullivan's memoir, The Sky Isn't Visible from Here, as it becomes clear that the author's efforts to be a good girl did not capture her mother's attention.

Sullivan evokes the tempo of her confusing existence by jumping from the present to the past and back again; no matter the time period, there is always an underlying sense of the author's shame and yearning. Sadly, readers who have endured this sort of parent, or know people who have, will not find many aspects of Sullivan's memoir surprising or unfamiliar. As in many addiction memoirs, there are depictions of the inevitable consequences of drug and alcohol abuse—alienated friends, hours lost to blackouts, loss of a job and the like. Sullivan's, that is: While the author is a high achiever (she graduated from Fordham, earned a master of fine arts degree from Columbia, and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee) she's also done a lot of shoplifting and consumed a great deal of alcohol and cocaine in her attempts to forget her past. Fortunately, she made peace with her former life, admitted and faced her addiction, and is now creating a new sort of future.

There is another bright spot in Sullivan's story: She has maintained a relationship with Gus, the kindest and most loyal of her mother's ex-boyfriends. She writes touchingly of their time together, and thanks him in the book's acknowledgements. It's heartening to learn that, despite all she has endured—and put herself through—she has maintained a loving relationship with this man, whom she considers her father. Of course, his affection can't make up for the grief Sullivan clearly feels at not having had the kind of mother she longed for. But he may well have been just the life raft she needed.

Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina.

Music matters

by bookpagedev

Medicine

Medicine

Alive and kicking–for now

Review by Eliza McGraw

by Eliza McGraw

The thing about The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead is that it sounds like a very depressing book. Instead, however, it's an involving read, an unusual blend of science, culture and family history.

In his ninth book, David Shields uses sources from around the world and from his own life to consider what it means to be alive and human. This is a far-reaching quest: Lyndon Johnson, Arthur Schopenhauer, Shields' cat Zoomer, Wallace Shawn, Kurt Cobain, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Neil Young are all here, offering momentary points of illumination for Shields' often obscure search. Shields frames his unruly investigation in terms of his relationship with his 97-year-old father, and frames his book in terms of the human life cycle. At 51 years old, the author is preoccupied with mortality and encroaching death, while his aged father, fascinated by survival, also typifies it.

The author begins, naturally enough, with a chapter about infancy, and the chapters march along chronologically with discussions of adolescence, middle age and old age. Within several sections, there are chapters called "Decline and Fall," an echoing reminder of how different stages of life prefigure or recall others. Just as a 40-year-old realizes that his 30s, his most creative years, are behind him, a 65-year-old has to grapple with the loss of one-tenth of his brain cells. Each stage of life comes complete with its own downfall.

This is not necessarily an uplifting book, simply because its author's questioning of and sadness at the relentless nature of aging are too prescient to allow anyone to feel entirely carefree while reading it. But the book is not without hope, and Shields' constant probing is no less a means of survival than his father's tenacity. "He's strong and he's weak and I love him and I hate him and I want him to live forever and I want him to die tomorrow," Shields writes of his father. What, really, could sound more alive?

Eliza McGraw is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

In his ninth book, David Shields uses sources…

A timely account of germ warfare

by bookpagedev

Animals

Animals

The Philosoher’s Dog

Review by bookpagedev

by Linda Stankard

The Philosoher’s Dog If your brow is high enough and your quest for a deeper understanding of the intricate bond between animal and human life is strong enough, The Philosopher’s Dog: Friendships with Animalsby Raimond Gaita offers provocative insight. “The person who has rid himself of the need of others, who longs and grieves for no one, is not someone who is positioned to see things most clearly,” Gaita suggests, and he extends this need to include the love of animals. A professor of philosophy, Gaita uses what he calls a mix of “storytelling and philosophical reflections on the stories” to analyze mankind’s connection to animals. If you are as comfortable with quotes from Socrates and Kierkegaard as you are with tales of Jack the cockatoo and Gypsy the German Shepard, Gaita’s book offers both intellectual challenges and anecdotal treasures.

The Philosoher's Dog If your brow is high enough and your quest for a deeper understanding of the intricate bond between animal and human life is strong enough, The Philosopher's Dog: Friendships with Animalsby Raimond Gaita offers provocative insight. "The person who has rid himself…

Preserving a precious resource

by bookpagedev

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