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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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Religion & Spirituality

New books explore the Christian journey of faith

Review by bookpagedev

With all the cute bunnies and Easter eggs around, sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s a deeper meaning to Easter. The celebration of this holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus offers Christians an opportunity to pause and reflect on their faith, and several new books can serve as guideposts for the journey.

The God Who Hung on the Cross (Zondervan, $18.99, 214 pages, ISBN 0310248353), by Dois I. Rosser Jr. and Ellen Vaughn with a foreword by Chuck Colson provides a testament to the power of the Christian message in far-flung spots around the world. Now in his 80s, business entrepreneur Dois Rosser founded International Cooperating Ministries, which works with Christian leaders in developing nations. Since it began in 1988, the ministry has established more than 1,400 churches, developed a radio program that reaches nearly three billion people, and helps care for the orphans and poor. Not bad for a guy most of us have never heard of.

And that’s the message of this fascinating book. God uses little people like you and me to accomplish His biggest miracles. The authors include stories of faith from such diverse locations as Cambodia and Zimbabwe, and along the way readers begin to recognize the God who hung on the cross from a global perspective. Readers interested in an historical view of Jesus should consider The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story ∧ Significance of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus ∧ His Family by Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95, 207 pages, ISBN 0060556609). This new book explores what some are calling the “the most astonishing find in the history of archaeology, ” first announced by scholars last fall. An inscription on a newly discovered, first-century ossuary (a limestone chest where the bones of the deceased were stored) reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” The inscription carries significant religious implications, since it serves as what the authors describe as the first confirmation of Jesus’ existence in an archaeological context. This easy-to-understand book examines the inscriptions, the response of the media to the discovery and the role of James in the early church. Anyone with an interest in archaeology or the historical Jesus will find this book fascinating and find themselves digging a little deeper into their faith this Easter season.

If you know anything about popular writer Joyce Meyer, you’re probably aware that she doesn’t mince words. This gifted Bible teacher, speaker and author of more than four dozen books cuts right to the heart of the matter in her latest title, Knowing God Intimately. Loaded with Scripture, anecdotes and solid Bible teaching, Meyer’s book explores in-depth the Holy Spirit and His role in believers’ lives. The book is divided into four sections described as intimacy levels. Each section is designed to challenge readers in the depth of their relationship with God. In practical terms, Meyers explains how the Holy Spirit can be a tangible part of every believer’s walk with God. And, finally, as a Sri Lankan minister and director of Youth for Christ (YFC), Ajith Fernando is on the frontlines of church work. He has seen firsthand how discouragement, moral failure and compromise can get the best of church leaders, and he challenges Christians of all ages and stages to adhere to the basic tenets of the faith in Jesus Driven Ministry (Cross- way, $19.99, 255 pages, ISBN 1581344457). In this well-written, practical book, Fernando walks readers through fundamental principles of church leadership such as growing team ministry, discipling, scheduling retreats and making pastoral home visits. The pages are filled with inspirational reflections that older believers will find helpful and newer believers will find encouraging. Best of all, Fernando’s background as a Sri Lankan gives him a fresh perspective on timeless truths. Margaret Feinberg writes on Christian publishing from her home in Sitka, Alaska.

With all the cute bunnies and Easter eggs around, sometimes it's easy to forget that there's a deeper meaning to Easter. The celebration of this holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus offers Christians an opportunity to pause and reflect on their faith, and several new…
Religion & Spirituality

New books explore the Christian journey of faith

Review by bookpagedev

With all the cute bunnies and Easter eggs around, sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s a deeper meaning to Easter. The celebration of this holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus offers Christians an opportunity to pause and reflect on their faith, and several new books can serve as guideposts for the journey.

The God Who Hung on the Cross, by Dois I. Rosser Jr. and Ellen Vaughn with a foreword by Chuck Colson provides a testament to the power of the Christian message in far-flung spots around the world. Now in his 80s, business entrepreneur Dois Rosser founded International Cooperating Ministries, which works with Christian leaders in developing nations. Since it began in 1988, the ministry has established more than 1,400 churches, developed a radio program that reaches nearly three billion people, and helps care for the orphans and poor. Not bad for a guy most of us have never heard of.

And that’s the message of this fascinating book. God uses little people like you and me to accomplish His biggest miracles. The authors include stories of faith from such diverse locations as Cambodia and Zimbabwe, and along the way readers begin to recognize the God who hung on the cross from a global perspective. Readers interested in an historical view of Jesus should consider The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story ∧ Significance of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus ∧ His Family by Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95, 207 pages, ISBN 0060556609). This new book explores what some are calling the “the most astonishing find in the history of archaeology, ” first announced by scholars last fall. An inscription on a newly discovered, first-century ossuary (a limestone chest where the bones of the deceased were stored) reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” The inscription carries significant religious implications, since it serves as what the authors describe as the first confirmation of Jesus’ existence in an archaeological context. This easy-to-understand book examines the inscriptions, the response of the media to the discovery and the role of James in the early church. Anyone with an interest in archaeology or the historical Jesus will find this book fascinating and find themselves digging a little deeper into their faith this Easter season.

If you know anything about popular writer Joyce Meyer, you’re probably aware that she doesn’t mince words. This gifted Bible teacher, speaker and author of more than four dozen books cuts right to the heart of the matter in her latest title, Knowing God Intimately (Warner Faith, $21.99, 301 pages, ISBN 0446531936). Loaded with Scripture, anecdotes and solid Bible teaching, Meyer’s book explores in-depth the Holy Spirit and His role in believers’ lives. The book is divided into four sections described as intimacy levels. Each section is designed to challenge readers in the depth of their relationship with God. In practical terms, Meyers explains how the Holy Spirit can be a tangible part of every believer’s walk with God. And, finally, as a Sri Lankan minister and director of Youth for Christ (YFC), Ajith Fernando is on the frontlines of church work. He has seen firsthand how discouragement, moral failure and compromise can get the best of church leaders, and he challenges Christians of all ages and stages to adhere to the basic tenets of the faith in Jesus Driven Ministry (Cross- way, $19.99, 255 pages, ISBN 1581344457). In this well-written, practical book, Fernando walks readers through fundamental principles of church leadership such as growing team ministry, discipling, scheduling retreats and making pastoral home visits. The pages are filled with inspirational reflections that older believers will find helpful and newer believers will find encouraging. Best of all, Fernando’s background as a Sri Lankan gives him a fresh perspective on timeless truths. Margaret Feinberg writes on Christian publishing from her home in Sitka, Alaska.

With all the cute bunnies and Easter eggs around, sometimes it's easy to forget that there's a deeper meaning to Easter. The celebration of this holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus offers Christians an opportunity to pause and reflect on their faith, and several new…
Sports

Baseball 2002: stronger than ever . . . at least on the bookshelf

Review by Ron Kaplan

Over the winter, "contraction" was the buzzword in baseball. Fueled by claims that a majority of the teams were operating in the red, the commissioner's office announced it was considering eliminating up to four clubs and drastically reconfiguring the game as we know it. But you wouldn't know there was any problem with the national pastime from looking at the book industry. From statistical analyses to literary homages, dozens of baseball titles are due out this year. The following are a few we feel merit consideration for M.V.B. (Most Valuable Book) 2002.

"The man in the box office . . . will tell you that a baseball franchise in a large city is a mint'." These words weren't written to counter the commissioner's charges; they come from "Baseball as the Bleachers Like It," an essay by Charles E. Van Loan, written in 1909. His piece is one of many to be found in Baseball: A Literary Anthology, a classic volume of poetry, fiction and nonfiction edited by Nicholas Dawidoff. Author of the best-selling book The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, Dawidoff has assembled a wonderful collection that includes contributions from legendary baseball writers Roger Angell, Roger Kahn and Damon Runyon, as well as unexpected sources like Carl Sandburg, Jonathan Schwartz and Tallulah Bankhead. While there are some familiar pieces here, the book's charm lies in its variety of voices authors not known for sportswriting. Contributions from Thomas Wolfe, William Carlos Williams, Amiri Baraka and Stephen King (who would have expected a genial, non-morbid piece on Little League from the master of horror?) make this anthology special.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Baseball Desk Referenceby Lawrence T. Lorimer is a perfect blend of history, statistics, illustrations and just plain fun that any fan, novice or expert will enjoy. Part encyclopedia, part primer, part pop culture history book, this volume covers all the bases (pardon the pun). Beginning with a timeline of the game's significant events, Baseball Desk Reference contains a year-by-year breakdown of the major leagues, team histories and profiles of hundreds of top players. There's also extensive coverage of baseball around the world, rules, techniques of play and instruction on how to score a game.

Additionally, the book examines baseball's impact on other cultural forms, like cinema, literature and music. This heavyweight book bears the name of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, so expect a high quality addition to your sports library. In Clearing the Bases: The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Last Century, Allen Barra, popular sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Salon.com, presents discussions of the sport's most confounding questions. He examines weighty issues such as why pitchers can't throw complete games anymore, and who should wear the mantle of "Greatest Living Player" now that Joltin' Joe DiMaggio is gone. Among the more compelling and original debates are Barra's theories on the failure of the 1986 Mets to maintain National League dominance, and the "back story" about Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. Barra's clear-eyed analysis makes Clearing the Bases one of the most thought-provoking books on the game to appear in some time.

What is so rare as a day in June? James Buckley Jr., author of The Visual Dictionary of Baseball, offers the answer in Perfect: The Inside Story of Baseball's Sixteen Perfect Games. Yes, that's 16 games out of more than 170,000 major league contests. (You figure the odds; my head reels at the concept.) The first official "perfecto" was pitched in 1880. The most recent, in 1999, came from the hands of Yankee David Cone on "Yogi Berra Day," with Don Larsen himself the pitcher of a perfect game in the 1956 World Series throwing out the ceremonial first ball. Again, the odds. . . . As Buckley reveals, the 16 pitchers who found their four-leaf clovers were by no means the best of their profession. Only five Cy Young, Addie Joss, Jim Bunning (who wrote the foreword for Perfect), Sandy Koufax and Jim "Catfish" Hunter were good enough for consideration and eventual inclusion into the Hall of Fame; the others simply enjoyed their day in the spotlight.

Buckley chronicles each game in fine detail, but perhaps his best work comes when discussing the heartbreak of those who had nearly but not quite flawless games, such as another Yankee, Mike Mussina. With two out and two strikes in the ninth inning of a game against the Yankee's arch-rival, the Boston Red Sox, Mussina lost his bid. Capturing the drama of such unforgettable contests, Perfect is a wonderful appreciation of the sport, a celebration of baseball history as it happened and as it might have been.

Ron Kaplan writes from Montclair, New Jersey.

 

Over the winter, "contraction" was the buzzword in baseball. Fueled by claims that a majority of the teams were operating in the red, the commissioner's office announced it was considering eliminating up to four clubs and drastically reconfiguring the game as we know it. But…

Memoir

Hills of home beckon citified author

Review by Lynn Hamilton

Rick Bragg, be afraid. Be very afraid. Chris Offutt is going to give you a run for your money. Characterized by a clarion style, an ability to capture the voice of the southeastern hill country and a keen, impartial eye for detail, Offutt's new memoir No Heroes tells of the author's return to rural Kentucky where he was born and raised. Originally from Haldeman, Kentucky, Offutt was one of the few boys from his town to go to college, and one of even fewer to attend the local state school, Morehead State University.

Morehead gave Offutt enough steam to propel him into a prosperous writing and teaching career on the West Coast. Though successful, married and blessed with children, Offutt found himself hopelessly homesick for Kentucky—its woods and wildflowers, the truant boys and wayward girls he grew up with. Offutt's opportunity to come home again arrives when Morehead advertises an opening for an English professor. He gets the job, hoping to recognize his own young, ambitious self in his students. But he doesn't mince the cultural limitations of rural Kentucky. The prologue of No Heroes is organized around a list of things Offutt has to bring with him from the city music and books and another list of things he can leave behind: the tuxedo, the foreign car, the burglar alarm and the attitude. In fact the prologue really sets up the dichotomy Offutt experiences throughout the book: his deep emotional connection to the hills of his childhood versus an intellectual hunger for something outside those hills.

While in many ways he has grown distant from his hometown and its unspoken rules, he finds that it is the only place where he can be completely himself. "Here, you won't get judged by your jeans and boots. . . . Never again will you worry that you're using the wrong fork, saying the wrong thing, or expecting people to keep their word. . . . You are no longer from somewhere. Here is where you are. This is home."

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

 

Rick Bragg, be afraid. Be very afraid. Chris Offutt is going to give you a run for your money. Characterized by a clarion style, an ability to capture the voice of the southeastern hill country and a keen, impartial eye for detail, Offutt's new…

Memoir

Memories of a Depression-era American boyhood

Review by bookpagedev

Memoirs of a remote childhood tend to be either idyllic or pockmarked with trauma. In his new autobiography, The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War, Samuel Hynes’ often lyrical recollections lie somewhere between. The period Hynes chronicles is from 1924, when he was born in Chicago, until his induction into the Navy in 1943. His mother died when he was five, but his stepmother was kind, cheerful and attentive. His father was financially ruined in the Depression, yet the family, while living frugally, never lacked the necessities. Most of the action takes place in Minneapolis, although the author presents a charming chapter on the summer he and his brother spent on a farm while their father was getting family affairs in order.

Now retired from Princeton University, where he was a professor of literature, Hynes author of a previous memoir, the much-praised Flights of Passage invests his book with academic exactitude. He recalls or has researched for the reader’s benefit the precise names of classmates, neighborhood streets and stores, household products, the arrangement and furnishings of rooms and even the broadcast times of his favorite radio shows. He remembers recipes and “wise sayings” and the character of particularly brutal snowstorms.

Buttressing this factual precision are family pictures and reproductions of newspaper photos and headlines. Reading Hynes’ accounts of strikes, placid summer amusements and local murders is like paging through the musty black-and-white pages of old Life magazines. His book is as valuable for the local history it preserves as for the personal insights it reveals.

The Depression endowed Hynes with an economic outlook that will seem strange to those who are accustomed to maxing out their credit cards. “Spending isn’t a gift you’re born with,” he says, “you have to learn how to be extravagant. On my birthday, one of those kid years, I was given two dollars and told to buy a toy. I walked all the way to the Sears store on Lake Street and spent an hour or more moving slowly along the counters of the toy department, looking at every single thing there. I didn’t want any of them. . . . But I was supposed to spend my two dollars and so finally, desperately, I bought a Detective Set . . . and walked the long walk home crying, because I had spent my money for something I didn’t want and didn’t need.” Another element younger readers may find quaint but which will be instantly recognizable to older ones is Hynes’ slow and circuitous introduction to the joys of sex from listening to deliciously misinformed playground chatter and peeking through a neighbor girl’s window to the inevitable letdown of first consummation. Hynes is at his best when he moves from description to emotional substance, as he does here in relaying how he felt after his stepmother gave away the train set she thought he’d outgrown. “I felt my loss bitterly. It wasn’t grief, exactly. [It was] more like what you feel when a favorite thing is smashed, or swept away by a stream, or dropped from a moving car onto a highway. . . . Something that was yours is gone forever; and if that can happen, if this thing you treasured can be taken away from you, then everything can.” In our need to reverse such losses, we write memoirs. Or read them.

Memoirs of a remote childhood tend to be either idyllic or pockmarked with trauma. In his new autobiography, The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War, Samuel Hynes' often lyrical recollections lie somewhere between. The period Hynes chronicles is from 1924, when he was…
Travel

The elusive power of flamenco

Review by bookpagedev

Andalusia, a region of southern Spain, is a land of contrasts. Its dusty summer days seethe with intense heat and gradually fade into balmy, scented, star-filled nights. The silent, hot Andalusian afternoons, especially in the gypsy towns of Sevilla and Granada, tremble with the whispers of shimmering sun. The streets and cafes brim with the staccato rhythms and incendiary cries of flamenco dance and song. Jason Webster captures the essence of this culture in his passionate new memoir, Duende: A Journey into the Heart of Flamenco. Choked by the bleak drabness of an academic life in Oxford, he succumbs to the mesmerizing flame of the flamenco life. Unsure of his ultimate direction but starved for life experience, he escapes to Spain, to the eastern coastal city of Alicante, where he studies flamenco guitar and begins an earnest quest to understand duende, that elusive, organic essence of soul connection and emotion conjured by the power of flamenco.

After an intense, destructive love affair with a married flamenco dancer, the author flees to Madrid, friendless and broken-hearted. There he ingratiates himself with outlaw circles of gypsy flamenco musicians. Practicing the guitar endlessly and performing for hours with bleeding fingers, Webster leads a life that is manic and raw, ravaged by drugs, alcohol, crime and poverty. After his treacherous compatriots abandon him, he is bewildered and no closer to grasping duende. Webster goes next to Granada where he recalls a friend’s first words upon his arrival in Spain, “You will go there one day . . . and it will change you forever.” In the magical serenity of the Alhambra’s Generalife gardens he meets an eccentric, older British woman who, ironically, brings him closer to the grail of duende than his gypsy teachers ever could.

Soul odysseys often demand that we lose our way before finding any important truths, and it is a bit painful following the author on his dangerous travels toward self-awakening. But Webster’s evocative descriptions of place blended with his wry, honest, inner narrative seduce readers, as do his exotic glimpses of gypsy ethos and flamenco culture. As for enlightenment achieved, Webster returned, after a five-year absence, to settle in Valencia with a flamenco dancer, still in thrall to the mystery of duende, still “fascinated by Spain, perhaps the only country, as Hemingway suggested.” Alison Hood writes from San Rafael, California.

Andalusia, a region of southern Spain, is a land of contrasts. Its dusty summer days seethe with intense heat and gradually fade into balmy, scented, star-filled nights. The silent, hot Andalusian afternoons, especially in the gypsy towns of Sevilla and Granada, tremble with the whispers…

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