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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.
NonfictionCrafts, 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.
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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LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Aging well

Review by bookpagedev

With his white beard and twinkling smile, Andrew Weil bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain North Pole denizen. As a doctor, Weil delivers gifts in the form of health and nutrition books, including the best-selling The Healthy Kitchen with former Oprah Winfrey chef Rosie Daley. In Healthy Aging, Weil presents a fascinating, compassionate argument for changing the way we view getting older. In addition to tips for eating well and staying active, he also explores the spiritual side of aging, borrowing ideas from cultures that seem to have discovered the fountain of youth. Okinawans, who have the highest life expectancy in the world (81.2 years), revel in aging and believe that a second childhood begins at 97. In fact, senior Okinawans often proudly introduce themselves by their age. Their secret (which is no surprise) is healthy eating, and staying physically and socially active. Weil combines the best of modern medicine with intriguing ideas, and he delivers a powerful new way of thinking about aging.

With his white beard and twinkling smile, Andrew Weil bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain North Pole denizen. As a doctor, Weil delivers gifts in the form of health and nutrition books, including the best-selling The Healthy Kitchen with former Oprah Winfrey…
Sports

Hank Aaron

Review by bookpagedev

For more than 20 years, Hank Aaron quietly went about his work, doing all the things that Mantle and Mays did, but with less media attention. That is, until he came within striking distance of the most prestigious record in baseball: Babe Ruth’s 714 lifetime home runs. The two seasons (1973-74) Aaron spent closing in on Ruth’s mark should have been a time of excitement and joyful anticipation. Instead, it was a horror. In recognition of the 30th anniversary of the feat, Tom Stanton takes a look at the withering pressures the slugger faced in Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America.

The increasing media focus and demands on his time as well as the daily grind of being an aging athlete were compounded by the small mindedness of those who believed that Aaron, as an African American, had no right to such acclaim. Instead of enjoying the ride, it reached the point where Aaron told reporters, “I want to get this nightmare over with.” Stanton mixes sport with social commentary as he describes the racism Aaron faced, including death threats to himself and his family, hate mail and the inexplicable indifference of baseball’s commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

For more than 20 years, Hank Aaron quietly went about his work, doing all the things that Mantle and Mays did, but with less media attention. That is, until he came within striking distance of the most prestigious record in baseball: Babe Ruth's 714…
Biography

In the shadow of no man

Review by Lynn Hamilton

Ten years in the making, Dale Peterson's definitive biography Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man finally shows us Goodall's life as a whole: her charmed childhood in the English countryside, her early career as a secretary, her association with renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey and her later role as animal rights activist. From Peterson, we learn that Goodall's defining scientific discovery that chimpanzees create and use tools to secure their termite lunches came in her first year of life among the chimps. Goodall's other landmark achievements her documentation of a chimp-enacted genocide, her many books and films and her advocacy for laboratory chimps all unfold with a satisfying wealth of detail. Goodall fans will be interested to learn the important role her mother, Vanne, played as a companion in Jane's earliest African sojourns and the occasional suffocation Goodall felt in both her marriages to domineering men. The chapter in which Goodall's student assistants are kidnapped and held for half a million dollars in ransom is also a serious page-turner.

Perhaps more importantly, Peterson captures the qualities of character and determination that have made Goodall a legend. We see the young scientist marching tirelessly ahead of her male escorts, none of whom were able to keep up with her and who threatened mutiny against Goodall's regimen of long hours, hard climbs and Spartan meals. We see her turning over nearly all her income to establish research foundations and tirelessly rescuing mistreated chimps. An epiphanic moment in Peterson's book shows us a cab driver recognizing Goodall in his rearview mirror. Soon he has pulled the car over to the side of the road; driver and celebrity have a long discussion about Goodall's work and what it means to the cabbie's children. In this small episode, we see that Goodall's importance is almost impossible to measure because she means so much to so many people, legions of whom live far from the ivory towers of academic science. The lessons of Goodall's life cheer spiritual seekers, rally animal rights activists, affirm wilderness conservationists, and walk alongside young women incubating their own hopes and dreams.

Ten years in the making, Dale Peterson's definitive biography Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man finally shows us Goodall's life as a whole: her charmed childhood in the English countryside, her early career as a secretary, her association with renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey…

Sports

Ted Williams

Review by bookpagedev

All due modesty aside, Ted Williams considered himself among the greatest hitters who ever lived, and he was not alone in that assessment. Leigh Montville takes a fresh look at the Red Sox slugger in Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero.

Williams was a true hero, and not just in the hyperbolic lexicon of the sports world. He put in two stints as a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea and helped to establish several charities. Montville offers numerous accounts of Williams’ friendship and generosity to the “little man” over the years. But for all his success, Williams’ family life was a dismal disappointment: three failed marriages and a manipulative son who, even as Williams was dying, sought ways to cash in on his father’s fame. These antics continued after Williams’ death, when his son had his father’s remains stored at a cryogenics lab, a sad coda to the life of this proud and vibrant personality. Montville’s extraordinary insight and access into Williams’ life outside the sports spotlight makes this a fascinating volume sure to pique the interest of fans.

All due modesty aside, Ted Williams considered himself among the greatest hitters who ever lived, and he was not alone in that assessment. Leigh Montville takes a fresh look at the Red Sox slugger in Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero.

…
Biography

Keeper of great literary company

Review by bookpagedev

From the early 19th century until his death in 1859, Leigh Hunt was a significant and controversial man of letters. He was an essayist, poet, literary and theater critic, playwright, editor, journalist, founder of periodicals and political radical. It was his keen eye for literary talent, however, that enabled him to make his most important contributions. At the height of his career, Hunt’s close friends, whose careers he helped to advance, included the Romantic poets John Keats, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, and the esteemed essayists Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Later, Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were encouraged by him and became his friends.

Anthony Holden, known for his biographies of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Prince Charles and Laurence Olivier, superbly chronicles Hunt’s ambitions, literary feuds and chronic financial problems in The Wit in the Dungeon: The Remarkable Life and Times of Leigh Hunt Poet, Revolutionary, and the Last of the Romantics. The title comes from Byron, who wrote those words in a verse letter to a friend before the first of his many visits to Hunt during the two years the latter was imprisoned for libeling the Prince of Wales.

Hunt considered personal essays he wrote for his journal Indicator to be his best writing, while his friend Thomas Carlyle praised Hunt’s Autobiography as by far the best book of the autobiographic kind in English. At the other extreme, desperate for money, Hunt wrote a commercially successful book that was notable for its assault on Byron, with whom he had had a falling out. Holden writes, While Hunt was reviled on all sides for ingratitude towards a man who had offered him substantial patronage, his bestseller was as avidly (if guiltily) read as are all such indiscreet memoirs of the famous. Holden’s well-researched and wonderfully readable biography of Hunt shows us the literary life in a very productive period among writers whose works are still widely read and admired today.

From the early 19th century until his death in 1859, Leigh Hunt was a significant and controversial man of letters. He was an essayist, poet, literary and theater critic, playwright, editor, journalist, founder of periodicals and political radical. It was his keen eye for literary…
Religion & Spirituality

Finding your sweet spot

Review by bookpagedev

The idea that we are each made for a purpose is not new, nor are books offering to help us find that purpose. But Max Lucado’s take on the common question what do I do with my life? is uniquely refreshing and thought-provoking. A San Antonio pastor and best-selling Christian author, Lucado believes that we each have specific gifts and that the truest worship of our creator comes only when we pursue those gifts. To that end, Lucado’s book is more than just a way to find a career, but rather a way to build a life.

Using life stories and everyday parables, Lucado offers encouragement and hope, as well as practical, concrete ways for readers to examine their talents and passions to discover the direction God intends for their lives. The latter half of the book includes exercisesto help readers to discover their sweet spot, that unique melding of talent, passion and purpose that makes a life unique.

Lucado avoids familiar tools such as personality measurements and lists of spiritual gifts. Instead, he concentrates on finding the little clues and sometimes the big, overlooked ones each person has from birth. What has always drawn you? What do you lose track of time doing? These and other questions focusing on who you are, not on who others say you should be are the key aspects of the book. Lucado combines this approach with scriptural references and illustrations, examining how Biblical characters from Moses to Jesus revealed clues and details throughout their lives that pointed to their own sweet spots. Along the way, Lucado also offers gentle, welcome advice, from helping children follow their own bent (and not a parent’s will), to remembering to rest and recharge to keep your sweet spot hitting true.

As we begin the new year, resolutions to change your life are common. Cure for the Common Life can help you make your own resolution to find a new direction an uncommon success. Howard Shirley is a writer in Franklin, Tennessee.

The idea that we are each made for a purpose is not new, nor are books offering to help us find that purpose. But Max Lucado's take on the common question what do I do with my life? is uniquely refreshing and thought-provoking. A San…

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