Edna Bonhomme’s frank, timely A History of the World in Six Plagues reveals how infectious diseases have been leveraged by colonialism and capitalism.

Design, Nonfiction

Defining Style

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

History, Nonfiction, Women's History

Nonfiction Women's History History

Expect Great Things!

The inspiring, companionable Expect Great Things! celebrates the legacy of the Katharine Gibbs School for women and its tenacious scholars.

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The flame of change

by bookpagedev

Lifestyles, Self-Help

Self-Help Lifestyles

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?. 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 (McGraw-Hill, $16.95, 288 pages, ISBN 0071389172), “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.

The flame of change

by bookpagedev

Black History, History

History Black History

Slices of African-American life

Review by BookPage

by BookPage

Browsing through a copy of the encyclopedia-style volume African American Lives is an exercise that never fails to inform and entertain. Turn to the "M" section, for example, and the two-page biography of Malcolm X is followed by an entry on a lesser known figure, Annie Turnbo Malone, a determined Illinois businesswoman who made a multimillion-dollar fortune in the 1920s with a hair-care products company. These two subjects are among 600 profiled here from slaves to contemporary sports heroes in a volume that was meticulously researched and compiled. Each entry contains fascinating bits of information that add to our understanding of the importance of race and class in America. Edited by scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham and distilled from a forthcoming eight-volume set intended primarily for libraries, this readable collection is a mosaic that offers a unique portrait of the African-American experience.

Running the mile in their shoes

by Alan Prince

History

History

An unlikely figure in Japan’s history

Review by bookpagedev

An unlikely figure in Japan’s history Giles Milton, author of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, returns to the perils and adventures of the 17th-century Pacific Rim in Samurai William. With a novelist’s eye, Milton illuminates a little-known but utterly remarkable period during which the fiercely insular Japanese shogunate opened its doors to the West, thanks mostly to the pluck and perseverance of an unlikely Englishman named William Adams. At the end of a disastrous Dutch expedition seeking a westward route to Asia, Adams’ dilapidated and undermanned ship drifted helplessly into Japanese waters in April of 1600. Adams and his crew were not the first Westerners to reach the Japanese coast Portuguese missionaries had begun to trickle in more than half a century before but they would be the most influential during Japan’s brief dalliance with the West.

Forbidden to return to his native Britain, Adams made the best of his situation, learning the Japanese language and customs, befriending the Japanese shogun and, as Britain and the Netherlands began to establish tentative toeholds of commerce on Japanese soil, becoming a de facto minister of European affairs. It was harrowing, often dangerous work: Japan was fraught with civil wars, and political, commercial and religious tensions frequently boiled over into violence among the Europeans. Shortly after Adams’ death, the Europeans were expelled from Japan, and the island nation again receded into isolation. Two centuries would pass before Japan restored contact with the West. Although almost nothing of the European sojourn had survived the wars and weather of the intervening generations, the memory of the man the Japanese called Anjin Sama, or Mr. Pilot, had been preserved in the name of Tokyo’s Anjincho district. Not only a unique figure in European history, William Adams had also earned his place in the annals of Japan. Adams’ story inspired James Clavell’s fictional Shogun, but the actual events of his life make as worthy a tale as any novel. Milton evokes with equal skill the gritty quays of London, the soupy tropical shores of equatorial Africa and the exquisite palace of Osaka. He has written an adventure tale that will appeal to both the armchair historian as well as the armchair explorer. Elizabeth Entman writes from Manhattan.

An unlikely figure in Japan's history Giles Milton, author of Nathaniel's Nutmeg, returns to the perils and adventures of the 17th-century Pacific Rim in Samurai William. With a novelist's eye, Milton illuminates a little-known but utterly remarkable period during which the fiercely insular Japanese shogunate…

Waging war on sloppy punctuation

by Lynn Green

Biography

Biography

Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Review by bookpagedev

by Julie Hale

Famous for her personal indulgences, as well as her vanity, France’s controversial queen gets a break in Fraser’s best-selling biography. Clearing up some misconceptions about a woman who was, in reality, surprisingly compassionate, Fraser paints a compelling portrait of an unwilling monarch trapped in a loveless marriage and ill-prepared to handle matters of state. Married at the age of 14 to Louis XVI an act of diplomacy between Austria and France rather than a matter of the heart Marie Antoinette entered into a life at court marked by scandal, tragedy and violence, as political upheaval swept through France. With unforgettable incidents, some of which have become the stuff of myth, this is the surprising story of a queen capable of pity and remorse, whose heart went out to her suffering subjects. A reading group guide is available in print and online at www.anchorbooks.com.

Famous for her personal indulgences, as well as her vanity, France's controversial queen gets a break in Fraser's best-selling biography. Clearing up some misconceptions about a woman who was, in reality, surprisingly compassionate, Fraser paints a compelling portrait of an unwilling monarch trapped in a…

Photographs portray the stunning achievement of ‘The Passion’

by Mike Parker

Memoir

Memoir

Final words from a beloved historian

Review by bookpagedev

by Alan Prince

College professors sometimes wish for the impossible: an opportunity to re-convene class to correct or amend lectures they delivered years ago. A full-time university teacher for 35 years before retiring from academia seven years ago, top-selling historian Stephen Ambrose came as close as one can to achieving that feat before his death in October. “I want to correct all the mistakes I made” in the classroom, he said, in explaining his decision to write To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian.

For instance, acknowledging “I did not know then what I do now,” Ambrose says in his final work that, contrary to what generations of students have been taught, it was disease not a deliberate policy of genocide that wiped out many Indian tribes as the government pushed the frontier westward. At first, he denounced the bombing of Hiroshima but, upon learning more, began telling his students: “Thank God for Harry Truman for his courage and decisiveness.” He details why he came to praise rather than condemn the “robber barons” who mined millions of dollars in financing the first transcontinental railroad. And he explains how he evolved from an admitted Nixon hater to someone with a genuine appreciation of the disgraced president.

To America is a mixture of interpretive history, personal recollection and parental musings from one of our country’s most popular historians with subjects ranging from Thomas Jefferson (“an intellectual coward” for doing nothing about slavery) to Lyndon Johnson, from racialism to women’s rights, from war heroes to explorers. Ambrose also shares the work habit that resulted in his writing or editing some 30 books, a number of which sped from the bindery to best-seller lists: “You do it by working hard, six to 10 hours per day, six or seven days a week.” He was also helped by the services of an “in-house” editor; his wife Moira listened to his readings of whatever he wrote each day and offered her suggestions. Thus, his advice to aspiring authors: “Marry an English major.” Ambrose wrote To America after learning in April that he had lung cancer. Unsure how long he would live, he set aside other work to write this final book, which he described as his “best” which means better than such blockbusters as Undaunted Courage, Citizen Soldiers and D-Day June 6, 1944. Whether or not To America is his best work, its pages certainly pulsate with the spirit and optimism of an author who was deeply in love with America.

Seasonal reflections from a 21st century Thoreau

by bookpagedev

History

History

Portrait of a colonial rebel

Review by Sandy MacDonald

by Sandy MacDonald

Small-town life has always been subject to petty power struggles. The political-religious squabbles that beset colonial Boston in the 1630s were especially fervid, given that founding governor John Winthrop foresaw, correctly, that the fate of this hardscrabble "citty on a hill" would ultimately "be made a story and a byword through the world." Little wonder, then, that when a well-spoken newcomer, Anne Hutchinson, the 44-year-old mother of 15 children, began attracting influential men to "conventicles" (scripture discussions) held in her parlor, Winthrop and his ministerial cohorts soon singled her out as a potential enemy of the church and the state in those days, essentially the same entity.

Drawing on a staggering amount of historical detail (including transcripts of Hutchinson's two trials, the only paper trail left by most woman of that era), 12th-generation descendant Eve LaPlante plots her forebear's downfall with the vivid immediacy of a novel. While some of the doctrinal debates recounted might strike the modern reader as hair-splitting sophistry, LaPlante reminds us that, for the colonists, such theological wrangling represented not only the path to eternal salvation, but the be-all and end-all of permissible entertainment.

Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Hutchinson went on to found the colony of Rhode Island (the only woman who can claim such a distinction), but her path ended in tragedy a turn which Winthrop greeted with unseemly schadenfreude. Still, her legacy lives on, and American Jezebel, released during National Women's History Month, comes as a timely reminder of the causes she held dear: freedom of speech, religious and racial tolerance, and the spiritual fulfillment available oh, heresy even to females.

Sandy MacDonald is based in Nantucket and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Revealing glimpses of popular icons

by bookpagedev

Trending Nonfiction

Nonfiction Politics Memoir

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

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.