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Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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Lifestyles

Exploring the color spectrum

Review by bookpagedev

When British journalist Victoria Finlay began her research into the history of color, she didn’t expect to unearth stories of corruption, poisoning, killing and politics. But that’s precisely what she found.

It turns out that colors ochre, black, brown, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, hues used on everything from canvas to cloth are not as easy to come by as they might seem. The glossy shades that modern-day artists casually squeeze from tubes have been a source of heartache and controversy, even death, for centuries.

In Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Finlay explores the physical makeup of colors, as well as the social and political meanings that different hues have come to represent. For her research, Finlay spent years traveling through mountains, deserts, caves and villages in countries such as Afghanistan, Indonesia, China and Australia to piece together a thorough history of each color’s origins and development. The result is quite an accomplishment: a 448-page volume about color that reads like an adventure novel. Inspired by the human quest for color, this is a book full of stories and anecdotes, histories and escapades mostly in art, but also in fashion and interior design, music, porcelain and even, in one example, pillar boxes. Many revelations in Finlay’s “paintbox journeys” are fascinating. Take, for example, the fact that carmine one of the reddest dyes the natural world has produced is made from the blood of cochineal beetles harvested on plantations in Chile. The additive is used today in cosmetics, soft drinks, paint and many other products. Finlay also tells how steaming piles of manure were used by the Dutch to make lead for white paint during Rembrandt’s time, and how Egyptian corpses were a key ingredient in a brown pigment called mommia, or “mummy.” (One 19th-century artist is said to have given his tubes of brown paint a proper burial when he found out.) Written with a sense of humor and wonder, Finlay’s first book is a captivating journey that entertains as much as it teaches. Rebecca Denton is a freelance writer and reporter in Nashville.

When British journalist Victoria Finlay began her research into the history of color, she didn't expect to unearth stories of corruption, poisoning, killing and politics. But that's precisely what she found.

It turns out that colors ochre, black, brown, white, red, orange, yellow,…
LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Tackling a weighty problem

Review by bookpagedev

Beginning with this book’s subtitle “How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World” you get the idea that the author, journalist Greg Critser, isn’t going to pull any punches. And he doesn’t. Readers looking for an easy solution to the nation’s weight problem or their own won’t find it here. As Critser explains it, a convergence of circumstances, none particularly ominous in itself, brought us to where we are today. A relaxation of trade barriers in the 1970s, combined with simultaneous advances in food-processing technologies, gave us cheap sweeteners and cooking fats. These enabled fast-food and snack-food purveyors to increase portion sizes without substantially increasing their costs, an irresistible incentive for us to overeat. Also during this period, tax-cutting movements reduced school budgets. This factor led to the dropping or cutting back of physical education classes and the introduction of high-fat fast foods into the schools. At the same time, more women were joining the work force, which meant that they had less time to prepare food at home and monitor the family diet. Even as our individual and collective weight problems grew, Critser says, opportunists made money and reputations by convincing us that there were swift and painless ways to handle the consequences of our gluttony. Some diet theories held that we could eat more and still lose pounds. Special interest groups protested that too much attention to weight would drive young girls to anorexia and cause overweight people to form poor self-images. But there is more here than history and harangue. Having explained why Americans have become fat, Critser then details what this costs in terms of such diseases as diabetes and cancer. He also explores the roles that culture and class play in this national epidemic. Although breezily written, Fat Land is a profoundly disturbing book. The forces that drive Americans to overeat are so strong and entrenched that when we reach Critser’s final chapter, “What Can Be Done,” it seems like a straw in the wind.

Beginning with this book's subtitle "How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World" you get the idea that the author, journalist Greg Critser, isn't going to pull any punches. And he doesn't. Readers looking for an easy solution to the nation's weight problem…
Medicine

A guided tour of the child

Review by bookpagedev

In contrast to most writing on science and medicine targeted at the general public, Darshak Sanghavi’s A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body is an example of expert storytelling a true page-turner. A pediatrician and medical researcher, Sanghavi has worked chiefly at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, but also in rural Appalachia, Japan, Kenya, Peru and in Navaho country for the Indian Health Service. His profession has provided him with a wealth of illuminating stories that he weaves together seamlessly in his first book.

His wife’s positive pregnancy test, confirming that he was to become a father, influenced Sanghavi’s decision to write A Map of the Child. The narrative is structured as a guide to the organ systems of the pediatric body lungs, heart and brain, for example. It explains how they develop, explores the things that can go wrong with them and shows how those things can be made right. Although the child is the major focus, Sanghavi takes a broader view, writing “with the hope that understanding medicine and disease can itself be healing.” That understanding can improve the odds of having a healthy newborn, as well as comfort a family dealing with a child’s illness.

Sanghavi celebrates the medical advances that have saved the lives of countless children. Among the many examples he describes are surfactants, super-slippery substances that now rescue most of the more than 20,000 babies born each year with immature lungs. But he’s also aware of the limitations still to be overcome: bone marrow transplants can work miracles, although only when the match to the recipient is near-perfect. One of the book’s most moving narratives relates the death of a teenager whose transplant didn’t work.

Sanghavi’s broad perspective encompasses a range of topics, from anatomy and physiology to such controversial subjects as circumcision, vaccination for chicken pox and alternative medicine. Compelling, thoughtful and informative, A Map of the Child deserves a wide audience. Albert L. Huebner, a physicist, writes on science for numerous publications.

In contrast to most writing on science and medicine targeted at the general public, Darshak Sanghavi's A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body is an example of expert storytelling a true page-turner. A pediatrician and medical researcher, Sanghavi has worked chiefly…
Memoir

Finding the father inside

Review by bookpagedev

Sherwin Nuland recalls his “ambivalent heritage” Throughout his childhood in the 1930s and ’40s, Sherwin Nuland viewed his immigrant father through a prism of fear and embarrassment. Meyer Nudelman was never a violent man, according to his son, but he did have an unpredictable and volcanic temper that withered anyone in its path. Moreover, he suffered from a progressively crippling disease that made it difficult for him to walk about his Bronx neighborhood without his self-conscious son at his elbow. This tense proximity was so emotionally wrenching, Nuland says, that he had to write his new memoir, Lost In America: A Journey With My Father to finally come to terms with it.

Despite its ominous beginning, the book emerges as a heart-melting story of delayed compassion and love. Formerly a clinical professor of surgery at Yale and now a teacher of bioethics and medical history there, Nuland is also the author of The Mysteries Within, Leonardo da Vinci, and the National Book Award-winning How We Die. “I think my father left me with this ambivalent heritage,” the author explains, speaking to BookPage from his home in Connecticut. “As a child, as an adolescent, in my 20s, I always felt that the way to pattern my life the way of bringing up my own children, the way of being a husband was to be exactly the opposite of what he was. But clearly something was churning inside of me because of this very strong identification I had with his disabilities. . . . It wasn’t a question of consciously perceiving that he was with me all the time but that, in fact, he was inside of me without my knowing it.” Nuland’s reactive approach notwithstanding, his life began falling apart when he was in his late 30s and early 40s, long after his father had died. In addition to seeing his first marriage collapse, Nuland descended into such deep and unresponsive depression that he had to be hospitalized and subjected to a long series of electroshock treatments. “If you had seen me during this time,” he says, “you would say, My God, he has become his father!’ I spoke that way. In profile, I looked that way. I responded that way.” Even after he recovered (“I’m the least depressed human being on earth when I’m not actually depressed,” he says cheerfully), the filial complexities lingered.

Another strand of Nuland’s remembrances is of cultural assimilation. Until his death, Meyer Nudelman remained a transplanted Russian Jew not homogenized. He never lost his impenetrable accent, nor tried to, and he showed little interest in exploring his alien surroundings. Son Sherwin, however, was a quick study in fitting in, in assessing and mastering the landscape. “I think [assimilation] is the arc of a life,” Nuland says. “For some people, there’s a conscious need to accelerate it, because you really want to leave behind what you have been born into. To others, the motivation is more forward in the sense that you don’t necessarily want to leave what you have and what you are, but you’re really planning to become this other thing in this society which you find yourself. For me, it was both. But I think it was largely the first that I really had to get out of this atmosphere that I thought was stifling.” While still in high school, he legally jettisoned his father’s last name in favor of the more English-sounding Nuland. Eventually, he departed from his father’s religion as well. “It’s been one of the conflicts of my life,” he says. “It didn’t resolve until I fell apart. I came out of that experience realizing that I had truly always been an agnostic and that what had brought me in previous years to the synagogue was my inability to separate myself from my background, from my love of family and that whatever obsessional religious forms I carried out were just that they were obsessional. They were not real. They were not genuine, because I really had no belief.” Nuland concedes that his intelligence not only provided him a way out of his surroundings but was also a comfort while he was still in. “I was amazed by it. I could never figure it out. Of course, the Bronx was sort of a crucible for smart, hardworking kids in those days. I remember when I first started school, there were about five of us in class who seemed to be completely different from all the other kids. Eventually, we all skipped a grade. . . . My curiosity just seemed to be built in. But the realization that I had this ability to see things in certain ways that most other kids couldn’t was a real source of joy to me. It opened the world up. It made everything possible.” It eventually made possible Nuland’s acceptance into the Yale School of Medicine. The distance between New York and New Haven lessened the flash points between father and son. Meyer Nudelman spoke proudly to all who would listen about his son’s progress toward doctorhood. He doted on him, doing him small favors like preparing massive batches of chocolate pudding every time he returned home. For his part, Nuland visited his father dutifully during his increasingly long stays in the hospital, and rushed to his bedside to tell him in person when Yale awarded him the hotly competed for post of chief resident. As his father slowly absorbed the good news, Nuland writes, he saw in the old man’s face “something beyond pride. It was vindication; if was fulfillment; it was the love of a father for his son. . . . I threw my arms around Pop’s shoulders and made no attempt to disguise the tears.” After tackling deeply personal topics in Lost In America, Nuland turns in his next book, nearly completed, to a more detached subject the life of the 19th-century obstetrician Ignatz Semmelweis. Edward Morris is a freelance writer in Nashville.

Sherwin Nuland recalls his "ambivalent heritage" Throughout his childhood in the 1930s and '40s, Sherwin Nuland viewed his immigrant father through a prism of fear and embarrassment. Meyer Nudelman was never a violent man, according to his son, but he did have an unpredictable and…
NonfictionParentingMemoirFamily & RelationshipsBiography

Give mom the gift of good reading

Review by Amy Scribner

Finding the perfect gift for Mother's Day can be about as much fun as shopping for, say, new tires. Does your mom really need another coffee mug, or yet another bottle of bubble bath? Fortunately, this year there is a book for every taste, from the heartbreaking to the sublimely bizarre.

Read, white and blue
One might expect longtime Republican adviser Mary Matalin's new book to be a juicy peek inside the George W. Bush White House, but that's not the case. Letters to My Daughters is a collection of tender essays on life and love written to Matalin's two young daughters. The letters are exceptionally personal; Matalin displays a vulnerability one would not expect from the fiery conservative seen on TV. She writes about sex, body image, female friendship and other thorny topics her daughters are sure to face in the not-so-distant future. Matalin weaves wonderful life lessons into her tales, encouraging her daughters to travel widely and find careers about which they feel passionate.

Not surprisingly, the book isn't entirely nonpartisan family fare. Although Matalin writes that she and her husband Democratic political consultant James Carville try not to influence their daughters' political leanings, she can't resist tucking a few digs at Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader into her letters, just as she can't help a few laudatory mentions of the current president. Matalin's daughters are sure to count this book among their most prized possessions, and readers outside the Matalin/Carville clan Republican, Democrat or independent will find much to love in it as well.

Mutter dearest
There's no way around it, Let Me Go is a tough read without a happy ending. It is, however, a courageous book with many rewards for the reader. Helga Schneider's mother abandoned her family when Schneider was just four years old. Her reason for leaving was horrific: she became an officer in the Nazi SS, highly regarded for her cold-blooded work as a guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Let Me Go recounts Schneider's reluctant final encounters with her mother, by then a frail old woman in a Vienna nursing home. It is an exceptional series of visits in which a daughter searches for the hint of humanity that might allow her to forgive her long-absent mother. Schneider interrogates her about her brutal work during the war, demanding answers the older woman is ill-equipped to give. Schneider's anger bubbles just under the surface on every page. Her mother's pride in her work in the SS is undeniable. "I never stopped feeling proud, and worthy, to have belonged to the Germany of our great FŸhrer," she tells her daughter. This is not what Schneider wants to hear, but it is what she gets and she relays it honestly in this searing, bare bones memoir.

Mame and company
Aunts sometimes seem like cooler, less judgmental versions of mom. They come by this designation somewhat unfairly, of course, since aunts are free to act like a hip older friend while moms are stuck doing the thankless business of actually mothering. Nonetheless, as the introduction to Aunties: Thirty-Five Writers Celebrate Their Other Motherlaments, there is no Auntie's Day. This book, edited by Ingrid Sturgis, aims to change that. Written by a variety of contributors, Aunties includes poignant, well-rounded tributes to an eclectic assortment of women who hail from all corners of the country. One aunt is a tough woman who raised two children alone in the poverty of sweltering south Texas. Another is a voluptuous 40-something beauty who loves form-fitting clothes and proclaims, "I don't care what people say. I live for me!"

It could happen to you
What woman hasn't moaned the title words of I'm Becoming My Motherwith a mixture of pride and horror? This hilariously quirky gift book offers a wink at the traditional notions of motherhood and domesticity. Colorful, '50s-retro photos of women in aprons and pearls are captioned with words that are, it can be safely said, unexpected. Author Anne Taintor tweaks the conventional notions of happy family by pairing tranquil scenes of home and hearth with acidic quips. One woman grins maniacally as she sits in front of a sewing machine, saying "Curtains! Slipcovers! This must be Heaven!" A mother-and-child photo is accompanied by this bon mot: "Wow! I get to give birth AND change diapers!" Every page of this slightly off-balance book yields a chuckle. This just might be the perfect book for any mom who hates vacuuming but loves a good laugh.

Amy Scribner writes from Turnwater, Washington.

Finding the perfect gift for Mother's Day can be about as much fun as shopping for, say, new tires. Does your mom really need another coffee mug, or yet another bottle of bubble bath? Fortunately, this year there is a book for every taste, from…

Self-HelpLifestyles

The flame of change

Review by bookpagedev

Books to light your path to personal growth Is your life like a three-dollar bottle of champagne gone flat? Would you like to expand your sense of personal choice and freedom? Are you unhappy? Unmotivated? Unfulfilled? Do you have a hidden dream that you’ve hidden so well, you can’t remember where you put it, let along find the chutzpah to chase after it? If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, a little getting to know thyself and doing something with your newfound knowledge may be in order. Whether you need a few simple ingredients for a spicier life, or some in-depth analysis, we’ve identified a few of the best in new personal-growth books to guide you on your way and help ignite that internal flame of change.

Maybe your life needs no more than a little spark to rekindle your sense of adventure. Chucking your job and backpacking in the Himalayas isn’t the only way to rediscover the joy and wonder of daily existence. A New Adventure Every Day: 541 Ways to Live With Pizzazz (Sourcebooks, $12.95, 384 pages, ISBN 1570719462) by David Silberkleit is chock-full of ideas to jump-start your joie de vivre. With 540 ideas to choose from, under categories ranging from home life to relationships to the office, you’re bound to find a personal ice-breaker in its pages to fit almost any situation, temperament or degree of daring. If No. 503 (“Dance with a tree in the wind”) is too outlandish for you or your neighbors (should they be watching), there are more conservative exercises like No. 408 (“Explore a debt-free lifestyle. Strive to pay off everything so that money loses its hold over you”).

On the other hand, maybe happiness and success haven’t eluded you at all. In fact, maybe you have a great, lucrative career and are deliriously giddy with fame and fortune. And yet. And yet. Something’s missing. You know what the rest of the world can’t see. You aren’t being something you know you were meant to be. (Hello, Nashville! Is that a song lyric?) If you’re searching for something more, read Po Bronson’s, What Should I Do With My Life? (Random House, $24.95, 400 pages, ISBN 0375507493). Bronson makes a great case for turning your back on the almighty buck and following your star. In fact, he talks about the bad side of success, the temptations of money and an idea so scandalous it could rock the world. But here it is: “Productivity explodes when people love what they do.” Hey, he said it, not me.

The Traveler’s Gift: Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success (Thomas Nelson, $19.99, 224 pages, ISBN 0785264280) by Andy Andrews is an unpretentious little work of fiction that picks up where the Capra heart- warmer It’s A Wonderful Life leaves off. Like George Bailey, Andrews’ modern-day protagonist, David Ponder, is at a crisis point in his life. Bailey, (c’mon, you know, James Stewart in the Christmas classic) miraculously gets a chance to see what the world would be like without him in it, discovering that his life is not only a precious gift to him, but to countless others as well. Ponder gets a different gift he gets to travel through time, gathering the wisdom of such notable figures as Abraham Lincoln and Anne Frank but his catharsis comes in discovering the power of a single, heartfelt decision. “There is a thin thread,” one of his messengers proclaims, “that weaves only from you to hundreds of thousands of lives. Your example, your actions, and yes, even one decision can literally change the world.” That’s a lot of pressure! But like Ponder, by the end of this inspirational tale, having learned the “Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success,” you will be better equipped to make choices with kindness, confidence and wisdom. This is a wonderful book to put into the hands of some promising young man or woman struggling with the inevitable incongruities, ambiguities and loneliness of modern day life.

From the best-selling author of the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series, comes What About the BIG Stuff? (Hyperion, $19.95, 294 pages, ISBN 0786868848), in which Richard Carlson addresses how to handle major life dilemmas like an impending divorce or the loss of a loved one without totally coming apart at the seams. Carlson contends that human beings have essentially two modes or mind-sets, and that one of them is “healthy” and one “reactive.” “In our healthiest state of mind,” he writes, “we dance’ with life. We’re patient, wise, thoughtful and kind. We make good, sound decisions.” But we have a flip side. In our reactive mode “we are less patient . . . we struggle and churn. . . . We are frustrated and hard on ourselves and others. Our problem solving skills are limited.” The good news here is that knowing we have the capacity for both states of mind, we can begin to nurture one and let go of the other. “By acknowledging the existence of a healthy state of mind you can learn to trust it,” Carlson assures us, “and access it, more often.” Not that doing so is an easy task. As psychologist Gary Buffone points out in The Myth of Tomorrow: Seven Essential Keys for Living the Life You Want Today, “Unlike physical aging, spiritual and emotional maturity do not develop automatically; they exist only as a possibility. They must be intentionally and consistently pursued via commitment, effort, and struggle.” Using the experiences of patients who have faced life-threatening situations, Buffone offers guidance on how to break out of a “holding pattern” and start reinventing your life today. “Spirituality,” he explains, “is about developing the ability to see the sacred in our daily lives and opening the door to a life filled with passion and depth.” Finally, The Art of Serenity: The Path to a Joyful Life in the Best and Worst of Times, by T. Byram Karusu, M.D., (Simon ∧ Schuster, $24, 256 pages, ISBN 0743228316) offers a more literary and philosophical slant, an “intellectual bridge” as it were, to get from wanting to knowing a life of passion and depth. Chapter titles alone (“The Love of Others,” “The Love of Work,” “The Love of Belonging”) if simply read and contemplated upon, might lead to higher thought. But the book is full of philosophical and spiritual quotations. “No seed ever sees the flower.” Zen saying. Wow. Think about that. Not that a book alone can teach you how to put into practice and live a life full of meaning, purpose and depth. That is something each of us must struggle and churn out for ourselves. But these books can help to ignite the flame. Linda Stankard makes her New Year’s resolutions at her home in upstate New York.

Books to light your path to personal growth Is your life like a three-dollar bottle of champagne gone flat? Would you like to expand your sense of personal choice and freedom? Are you unhappy? Unmotivated? Unfulfilled? Do you have a hidden dream that you've hidden…

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