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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Breaking free of prison walls

by bookpagedev

Religion & Spirituality

Religion & Spirituality

Seeking a soulful, spiritual connection

Review by bookpagedev

Thomas Moore, author of the best-selling Care of the Soul, now presents a long-awaited companion book, The Soul’s Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life. In a time of heightened interest in spiritual themes, The Soul’s Religion offers a substantive and unique perspective on the subject. A psychotherapist, lecturer and former Catholic monk, Moore has a varied background with degrees in theology, musicology and philosophy. The culmination of life experience and ideas, as well as Moore’s own personal spiritual odyssey, provide the foundation for this extraordinary book. The content is rich and personal, and new insights and meaning are found with each reading. As Moore described in Care of the Soul, the soul is nourished by a vital spiritual experience. Without this connection a person cannot enjoy all that life has to offer. In his new book, he elaborates further on lessons involved in the cultivation of spirituality with a series of interesting and nontraditional meditations. His approach involves the acceptance of wonder and uncertainty, and a willingness to move through life without a plan or goal, recognizing mystery as the real substance of a spiritual and religious existence. He describes alchemy as a natural process of transformation and spiritual depth, beginning with a descent into the stuff of everyday life, but ending with the release of the winged spirit and an effective way towards a fullness of spirit.

According to Moore, the spirit is not always found in a positive quest for meaning sometimes it occurs only after we have been broken and torn apart by failure and sadness. As Moore sees it, God is to be found in the thick of life or not at all. Moore confesses that the religion he envisions in this book is difficult to spell out. Nevertheless, his meaningful presentation is masterful and powerful, in no small measure because the author is intimately acquainted with the lessons himself. In this provocative book, the reader is challenged to re-imagine how a rich and personal spiritual life can be within the grasp of every seeker. Karen Jenks is a nurse in Nashville.

Thomas Moore, author of the best-selling Care of the Soul, now presents a long-awaited companion book, The Soul's Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life. In a time of heightened interest in spiritual themes, The Soul's Religion offers a substantive and unique perspective on…

Everybody loves Raymond

by bookpagedev

Humor, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Humor

Get their motors running

Review by bookpagedev

by Martin Brady

BBC writer and car buff Richard Porter takes another, decidedly different, view of automobiles with his Crap Cars, a delightful photo-and-text rundown of 50 of the more lamentable models foisted on an unsuspecting public from the ’60s to the ’90s. For the American audience, Porter’s coverage might lean too often on European cars, since few of us on this side of the Atlantic would be familiar with the Aston Martin Lagonda or the Maserati Biturbo. But plenty of us know a crap car when we see it (or have owned or driven one), and we know exactly what Porter means when he sarcastically weighs in against such monstrosities as the AMC Gremlin, the Ford Pinto, the Chrysler K-Car, the Chevrolet Citation or the Yugo GV. The VW Beetle also comes under particular heavy attack, which only proves that a crap car can have a marketing life of nearly 40 years. Crap Cars is fun reading and a nice visual spike for nostalgia buffs.

Martin Brady is making out his Christmas list at home in Nashville.

Testing the taboos of Charleston

by bookpagedev

Arts & Culture, Photography

Photography Arts & Culture

Get their motors running

Review by bookpagedev

by Martin Brady

Yet another volume distinguished by marvelous photography is Porsche 911: Perfection by Design. Car historian Randy Leffingwell provides the ample text, but he also shares the photo-taking duties with David Newhardt. The result is around 300 color and black-and-white shots of this hot-blooded Porsche sports car, from the early forerunners that first appeared in the 1950s, to the beginning of its distinctively long 40-year run in the 1960s (with the Type 901), on to the present 2005 models. Leffingwell’s words provide the inside scoop on the vision behind the inspired aesthetic and technical design of the 911, drawing upon interviews with dozens of Porsche engineers and executives as well as competitors who were admittedly influenced by the automobile’s powerful, sleek image and its nonpareil manual-shift high performance. Casual car buffs might get a little daunted by Leffingwell’s discussion of things like digital engine management systems, while full-blown gearheads will be solidly engaged. But everyone will revel in the views of the various incarnations of this incredibly stylish car through the decades, distinguished by subtle, tasteful body tweaks and carefully thought-out mechanical enhancements, resulting in ultra-cool specific models such as the Turbo, the Carrera, the Cabriolet and the Speedster, many produced in limited editions and carrying price tags of upwards of $200,000. If you could afford one, you’d surely buy it, and this gorgeous volume shows why.

Martin Brady is making out his Christmas list at home in Nashville.

A Cold War clash on the chessboard

by bookpagedev

Sports

Sports

Sports-centered

Review by bookpagedev

by Martin Brady

For pure sports journalism, one would be challenged to find a finer book than John Taylor’s The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball. Taylor, a New York magazine editor and regular Esquire contributor, tells the concurrent tales of basketball’s most famous big men: Russell, who led the Boston Celtics to numerous championships, and the irrepressible and legendary Chamberlain, who usually eclipsed Russell in individual statistics but was hard-pressed to defeat him in a big game. Taylor relates his subjects’ life stories, then deftly interweaves their career accounts, especially as the two behemoths squared off in critical NBA playoff encounters. Russell comes to life as a proud, defiant, determined and hardworking African-American man with a keen social conscience, while Chamberlain emerges as a gregarious but also sometimes-broody black superstar with a chip on his shoulder and a sense of showmanship that may have eclipsed his desire to win. The additional portraits of team owners, players and coaches, in particular the Celtics’ Red Auerbach, help to provide needed perspective about the inner workings of the NBA, particularly through the 1950s and ’60s. Sports history at its best.

Martin Brady is making out his Christmas list at home in Nashville.

For pure sports journalism, one would be challenged to find a finer book than John Taylor's The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball. Taylor, a New York magazine editor and regular Esquire contributor, tells the concurrent tales of basketball's most…

Sports-centered

by bookpagedev

Nonfiction, Politics

Nonfiction Politics

Recalling another disputed election

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

In December of 2000, Chief Justice Rehnquist sided with a majority of U.S. Supreme Court judges in awarding Florida’s electoral votes and thus the American presidency to George W. Bush. Rather than focus on that still-contentious decision, Rehnquist examines here a parallel incident: the disputed presidential election of 1876. In this fray, Democrat Samuel Tilden, who won the popular vote (just as Al Gore would in 2000), ultimately lost the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The contest was finally decided strictly along party lines by an Electoral Commission made up of five Democratic members of the House of Representatives, five Republican senators and five Supreme Court justices. Florida’s electoral votes were at issue in 1876, too, as were those of Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. Since the Electoral Commission’s ruminations were fairly brief and not intrinsically dramatic, Rehnquist embellishes his account with brief biographies of the principal players, frequent historical asides and an explanation of how the Supreme Court of that time differed from today’s court. But the meat, of course, is his assessment of the arguments made by Hayes’ and Tilden’s proponents. Between the lines, he appears to be justifying his own vote.

“In the Hayes-Tilden dispute, [the] concept of state sovereignty played an important role,” Rehnquist observes. “The Republican position was that the Constitution left the choice of electors to the states, and that with rare exceptions Congress could not . . . examine the correctness of the vote count certified by state officials.” Sound familiar? Tilden was philosophical if not gracious in defeat: “Everybody knows that, after the recent election, the men who were elected by the people as President and Vice President were counted out,” he said, “and the men who were not elected were counted in and seated. If my voice could reach throughout our country . . . I would say: Be of good cheer. The Republic will live.”

In December of 2000, Chief Justice Rehnquist sided with a majority of U.S. Supreme Court judges in awarding Florida's electoral votes and thus the American presidency to George W. Bush. Rather than focus on that still-contentious decision, Rehnquist examines here a parallel incident: the…

A provocative portrait of Civil War gentleman-rogue Gen. Dan Sickles

by bookpagedev

Memoir

Memoir

Lynne Cox’s whale tale

Review by Lynn Hamilton

by Lynn Hamilton

While others are stretching and reaching blindly for that first cup of morning coffee, legendary swimmer Lynne Cox is earning her breakfast with a miles-long unsupervised swim in the cold Pacific Ocean. This championship swimmer has dodged ocean liners, conquered channels, and written perceptively about it all in an acclaimed memoir, Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer. But her latest book, Grayson, isn't about the swimmer's restless drive to push some new boundary. Instead, it looks back on a morning 30 years ago a morning that started with a routine ocean workout. Cox isn't scared of much, but she did get nervous when she realized an enormous marine animal was stalking her.

Well, not stalking. The baby gray whale, Grayson, had lost its mother and fixed on Cox. Did he read her mind? Did he somehow intuit that, out of all the mammals in the sea, this one would not abandon him to his fate? Soon Cox's tale changes from that of a solitary swimmer, menaced ˆ la Jaws by a creature from the deep, to a desperate search for the mother gray whale. Shunting worries that the baby will starve or that she herself will go hypothermic and drown, Cox escorts Grayson through miles of ocean, looking for mom while Coast Guardsmen and fishermen scan the horizon for a solitary mother.

It leads to a tear-wrenching conclusion that could only have been lived and written by a woman unafraid to challenge the unknown in nothing but her swimsuit.

Where country has always been cool

by Edward Morris

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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.