That tragedy may befall us regardless of how sensibly we conduct our lives is a reality almost too unsettling to contemplate. So we instinctively try to rationalize random catastrophes. It is this need to find a cause for every horrifying happening that gives rise to Tom Zoellner’s A Safeway in Arizona, which examines the circumstances leading up to (although not necessarily responsible for) the January 8, 2011, massacre near Tucson that left six people dead and U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded with a bullet through her brain.

Zoellner is a longtime friend of Giffords, whom he met when he was reporting for the Arizona Republic and she was beginning her first term in the Arizona House of Representatives. After leaving the newspaper, Zoellner campaigned for Giffords in her successful runs for Congress. He wonders here if there is something about his home state that inspired and enabled 22-year-old Jared Loughner to clash so violently with Giffords that chilly morning at the Safeway supermarket. Did it have something to do with Arizona’s institutionalized enthusiasm for guns, the apocalyptic rants of its politicians, its economic “starvation” of publicly funded mental health services—or could it be attributed solely to Loughner’s paranoia?

While Zoellner arrives at no single and satisfying explanation of why the shooting occurred, he does provide an insider’s view of Arizona’s peculiar appeal to people eager to re-invent themselves (among them Giffords’ grandfather, a Lithuanian Jew who changed his name from Akiba Hornstein to Gif Giffords and then made a fortune selling tires). Zoellner also dwells on the tendency of Arizonans to insulate themselves from each other instead of striving to form cohesive communities. And he spotlights such disruptive, larger-than-life personalities as Joe Arpaio, the hard-nosed, publicity-seeking sheriff of Maricopa County; Tucson talk-show provocateur Jon Justice; and Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law. (Pearce was voted out of office in a special election after this book went to press.)

Compelling as his probing of the Giffords shooting is, Zoellner’s greatest service here is illuminating the darkest corners of this sun-drenched seedbed of rugged individualism.

People concerned for the welfare of children born and raised within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days Saints will take small comfort in knowing that the church’s pedophile leader, 55-year-old Warren Jeffs, was recently sentenced to life imprisonment in Texas. While Jeffs’ conviction should halt forever his preying on young girls and his banishment of teenage boys who might have competed with him for underage “wives,” he still leaves behind the theological mechanism and eager disciples to perpetuate this sad saga of child abuse committed in the name of God. Besides being victims of sexual depredations, FLDS children were, and are, denied access to education and cultural awareness that would enable them to function independently of the church.

Among the dozens of wives Jeffs took during his nine-year reign were some as young as 12 years old. Other child brides were conferred on Jeffs’ favorite lieutenants, many of whom were also middle-aged or older. So strong was Jeffs’ authority that fathers and mothers seeking his goodwill enthusiastically surrendered their daughters to him. Anyone who resisted or hesitated to comply with his draconian, ever-changing rules ran the risk of being driven from the community and having his or her family taken away.

In Prophet’s Prey, Sam Brower, a private detective and member of the mainstream Mormon church—a very distinct entity from its fundamentalist offshoot—all but sputters with outrage as he recounts Jeffs’ increasingly flagrant offenses. Brower began investigating the FLDS after a trip to its headquarters on the Utah/Arizona border in 2004. There he found a closed, clannish and menacing society designed solely to perpetuate an us-vs.-them mentality. State and local law enforcement agencies tended to look the other way. From that point on, he began compiling evidence of Jeffs’ offenses and their effects on his followers. Occasionally, Brower worked in league with author Jon Krakauer, who had already written about two murderous fundamentalist Mormon brothers in his book Under the Banner of Heaven and provides the foreword here.

Although his focus is on Jeffs, Brower’s narrative makes it clear that as long as government officials are overly solicitous of religious practices—no matter how vicious and antisocial they are—children and childishly naive adults will always suffer.

When a series of anthrax-filled letters appeared in the U.S. right after the unimaginable tragedy of September 11, the powers that be were misinformed and easily swayed. In American Anthrax, noted anthrax expert Jeanne Guillemin takes a step back and examines the personal problems and bureaucratic missteps lost in the cloud of fear and panic. It’s a riveting—and sometimes frightening—read.

Guillemin expresses her key points simply, allowing for a grimacing page-turner. Decision-makers were in foreign territory. For example, after anthrax was first reported at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, D.C., the building remained open for days. Employee weren’t tested for anthrax until October 18, a week after the suspicious letter arrived. As the concern over biological warfare mounted, the federal government pushed for mass smallpox vaccination, even though the Dryvax vaccine had serious side effects. There was widespread misunderstanding over how much anthrax was harmful and the origin of the material inside the letters.

Regarding the latter, key experts convinced influential figures that the anthrax was from a foreign source, a completely false assertion. Both parties got what they wanted: Along with unlikely doomsday scenarios, the U.S. got an excuse to invade Iraq. And civilian biodefense research and development became a profitable business, as its federal budget line surged from $271 million in 2001 to $3.74 billion in 2003.

Meanwhile, Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, became the FBI’s top suspect behind the fatal letters. But it took years for investigators to zero in on him, mainly because testing methods had to improve and too many people overlooked Ivins’ bizarre pattern of behavior.

There was no satisfying resolution to the anthrax scare. Ivins committed suicide in 2008, before any suspicions could be confirmed in court, and the government’s approach to bioterrorism, Guillemin says, remains misguided. It’s still “fixated on the idea of foreign bioterrorism—almost as if no greater threat to national health exists,” which stops us from seeking “more positive policies.” Guillemin’s wonderful book provides some clarity so that we can avoid making the same mistakes twice. After all, the room for error fits inside a casket.

The high school lunch bell has just sounded; where are you going to sit? Do you have a spot reserved at the popular table? Or are you a band geek, trying to find your friends and avoid being tripped by the preps? Maybe you’re a floater, able to mingle with the different cliques and groups. Forget that pop quiz in biology; lunch hour is often the most stressful period in the school day, pointing out as it does the layers of division among school kids.

Into this world comes author Alexandra Robbins (Pledged, The Overachievers). The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth wears its bias right in the title. While observing seven distinct types at different schools across the U.S., Robbins repeatedly unearths evidence of the value brought to the setting by so-called “nerds,” “geeks,” “emos” and others often singled out for exclusion or abuse. Her “quirk theory” posits that the very qualities that make these kids outsiders in school are the ones that will have positive real-world applications later. But for those talents to be realized they must be nurtured, not squelched. This book takes an interesting approach to righting that wrong.

Where in the past Robbins merely reported on what she saw, now she gets into the trenches, creating challenges designed to expand the social circles and safe points of contact for the people she profiles. It’s a relief to see band geek Noah come out of his shell and develop new leadership skills, and “popular bitch” Whitney thrives when she’s allowed to ditch her high-maintenance power clique and talk to whomever she likes.

The revenge of the nerds prophesied here should please anyone who was ever left out of a group for being too much themselves. Students, parents and teachers working to facilitate more social cross-pollination will appreciate the tips on how to create a safe space for creativity to thrive. Robbins makes the case that it’s necessary work, because the harshest consequence of enforced conformity “is that so many . . . students . . . think that they have done or felt something wrong.” The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is fascinating; here’s hoping it finds a place in the curriculum for teachers and students alike.

Some notable National Enquirer headlines include “500 Ft. Jesus Appears at U.N.,” “Oprah Hits 246 Pounds” and “John Edwards’ Mistress’ Story.” We’re not talking highbrow material here. So readers shouldn’t expect anything more from Paul David Pope’s new book, The Deeds of My Fathers. The book chronicles his family’s publishing empire, which included that sensational supermarket tabloid, the National Enquirer. But what The Deeds of My Fathers lacks in terms of great literature, it more than makes up for with dishing the dirt. And that’s the guilty pleasure of reading this book.

Pope is the scion of a family that used street smarts, hard work and bare-knuckle tactics to create a publishing powerhouse. The book begins with the life of the author’s grandfather, Generoso Pope Sr., an immigrant who turned the Italian-language Il Progesso into an influential New York City newspaper that helped launch the political careers of Franklin Roosevelt, among others. Generoso most adored his youngest son, Gene. On his deathbed, Generoso pledged to leave his entire empire to Gene, who refused. But when his father died, his mother and two brothers gained control of the estate and left Gene nearly broke.

Resiliency being a character trait of the Pope family, Gene borrowed $75,000 from a gangster and bought the failing New York Enquirer. Within a few years, he had transformed it into a sensational tabloid called the National Enquirer, devoted to stories on celebrity scandals, sex, dieting and strange science stories. At its peak in 1978, the National Enquirer sold 6 million copies a week, and it was the prototype for today’s celebrity news magazines.

The best stories in this book are about the National Enquirer’s “paycheck journalism,” offering cash to sources for information. Sometimes these stories were a sensation, as in 1977, when the newspaper published “Elvis, The Untold Story,” which detailed Elvis Presley’s final hours and included a photograph of the King in his coffin. Sometimes Gene Pope bought stories he chose not to publish, his son writes, such as the time he acquired information that Ted Kennedy had impregnated Mary Jo Kopechne, the young campaign worker who drowned when the senator drove his car off the Chappaquiddick Bridge in July 1969. Why did Gene Pope kill the story? His son contends that his father used the story as bait to get the Kennedy family to feed him dirt on a larger catch: the glamorous widow Jacqueline Kennedy.

So have fun reading The Deeds of My Fathers. Read it with the same discretion and deliciousness with which you’d pick up a copy of the National Enquirer in the checkout line. No need to feel embarrassed. After all, enquiring minds want to know!

Ben Franklin is worried. “My dear America may well have reached its majestic zenith,” he frets, “thus being poised to begin its slide from grace.” But the sage of Philadelphia is too constitutionally optimistic to succumb to despair. While he doesn’t propose an overall program to save the republic, he does offer some more of the common sense ideas he first put forth in his various editions of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Persnickety critics may kvetch that Franklin has been dead for 220 years and thus has no business sticking his disembodied nose into our peculiarly 21st-century problems. But they have not reckoned with the time-bridging skills of author Tom Blair, who channels herein both Franklin’s can-do spirit and his epigrammatic literary style.

Before he assumed this Founding Father mantle, Blair founded several companies, the most recent of which is Catalyst Health Solutions. This may help explain his skepticism toward the recently enacted national health-care bill, which his alter ego labels “both anemic and misengineered.” His is not a broadside, however. It’s more a probe into human nature and political realities.

Chief among our faux Franklin’s concerns are America’s enormous and escalating debt, the power Congress accords lobbyists and the privileged lifestyle (not a word he would use) that saps the strength and resolve of American citizens. He calls for a constitutional amendment that would require taxpayers to fund congressional political campaigns and thus do away with lobbyists. (After all, he notes, taxpayers already subsidize lobbyists—and at considerably greater expense.) As did his flesh-and-blood predecessor, the new Ben sometimes treads the peripheral. He devotes two pages to arguing that flag-burning should not be a First Amendment right—as if that activity has ever posed a danger—and he drolly asserts that the moment of conception occurs when a suitor “pulls the cork from the second bottle of Madeira.”

Like its 18th-century model, Poorer Richard’s America is fun to read and moderately thought-provoking. The sentences are straightforward and pithy, and the tone is gentle, even when it’s chiding something. Note the price “Ben” affixes to this book. Dead or alive, he always has a gimmick.

When Entertainment Weekly senior editor Karen Valby was assigned to find a place in America untouched by popular culture, she landed in Utopia, a tiny and isolated farming town in Texas. The biggest event of the year for residents of Utopia (pop. 1,000) is the Fall Festival parade, when carefully decorated floats drive down Main Street, then make a U-turn and drive back down the other way.

But things are changing fast, even in this town where the retired “coffee drinkers” still gather every morning at the general store to provide slightly off-color running commentary on all the happenings in town. Families who have lived there for generations are moving away or dying out, and newcomers are bringing foreign values and cultures into the community. The young adults of this sometimes bleak town—who, through blogs and social media, have a glimpse of the bigger world that many of their parents never had—yearn for something more. “I just wish something would ever happen in this town,” says high school senior Kelli, the only African-American girl in her class and a promising student who plans to move to Austin as soon as she graduates. “I just feel like I’m pushing through a hot fog.”

Valby’s rich portrait of several local residents is incredibly appealing for its honest look at the struggles of modern families in small-town America. There’s Kathy, the loud, profane mother of four rambunctious boys, who talks about what it’s like to have three sons serve in Iraq and only two come home. There’s 22-year-old Colter, an outcast who works on a local road construction crew while he figures out how to avoid becoming a sun-baked rancher like his father.

But it’s Ralph, one of the coffee drinkers, who is the true heart and wisdom of Welcome to Utopia. Former owner of the general store, he is a gruff, good-hearted man who speaks his mind. One wishes Valby could have devoted even more pages to his less-than-politically-correct, but razor-sharp perspective: “ ‘People always say nothing changes. . . . Everything changes. You just don’t always know it when it’s happening.’ ”

Of all the tough jobs that Gabriel Thompson did while he was researching his book on immigrant labor, the toughest was not the most physically demanding. Picking lettuce and cutting up chickens were exhausting and dull, but not nearly as discouraging as the verbal abuse and disrespectful treatment he faced while he hauled plants at a wholesale flower business.

Luckily for him, it didn’t last long: He was fired for smiling too much. His good cheer unnerved his supervisors. Such are the indignities of low-wage work in the United States.

In Working in the Shadows, Thompson, a labor union researcher and freelance journalist, shows us what it’s really like to be an undocumented immigrant worker, employed in jobs that most Americans can’t or won’t do.

To that end, he spent two months each working undercover in the farm fields of Yuma, Arizona, a poultry plant in Russellville, Alabama, and the delivery trade in New York City. In every case, prospective employers were baffled that any non-Latino would want such awful work. He wouldn’t last long, they told him—and indeed, he struggled, even though he’s young, healthy and motivated. Although his sympathies clearly lie with the workers, Thompson recounts his experiences dispassionately, fairly and with considerable wry humor about his own failings. He never did become much of a lettuce picker.

Thompson found wage and safety rule violations, aggressive anti-union campaigns and lackadaisical government oversight. But he also encountered some decent companies and a majority of workers who regard employment in the U.S., however life-shortening and underpaid, as a vast improvement over Latin America.

In every job, he was treated with consideration by fellow workers, Latino immigrants and native-born Americans, in what he calls “a strong ethos of cooperation.” Even American workers at the poultry plant (there were none at the other workplaces) who complained in the abstract about illegal immigrants got along well with Latinos on a personal level. Thompson’s experiences were heartening about human nature, if not about what he sees as employer exploitation.

Thompson believes the solution isn’t any intellectual mystery, just immigration reform and labor organizing. He acknowledges that those goals will be hard to accomplish—but perhaps not nearly as hard as years killing chickens on the overnight shift.

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

During the years they were held hostage by leftist guerrillas in the Colombian jungle, American military contractors Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell would talk about selling the rights to their story to moviemaker Oliver Stone if they ever got out alive. But the chronicle of their captivity has more the feel of a John Huston movie, with its mix of tragedy, intrigue, black comedy and, ultimately, heroism.

The three men were employees of a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, assigned to flights over the jungle to spot cocaine laboratories. Their plane crashed in early 2003, and they were quickly captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s (FARC) guerrilla army. In Law of the Jungle, longtime Latin America newspaper correspondent John Otis weaves their story with the misadventures of a group of Colombian soldiers sent to rescue them and the wider context of Colombia’s long struggle with political violence, corruption and drug trafficking.

Few emerge with much credit in this even-handed book: American corporations ignore warnings about aircraft problems; U.S. officials in Washington distracted by the Iraq war pay little attention to the hostages’ plight; Colombian government and military officials are alternately inept and criminal; the guerrillas are brutal and staggeringly ignorant. Through it all, the hostages endure. Some of the book’s most fascinating passages describe their lives in jungle camps, where they were held with politicians, soldiers and police officers who had also been kidnapped. The only prisoner who managed to escape was a police officer who provided information that led to a breakthrough for rescue efforts.

Despite years of neglect and setbacks, the outcome was a triumph. The hostages were rescued in mid-2008 by a bold Colombian intelligence trick, carried out almost flawlessly and recounted by Otis with verve. By then, Oliver Stone had publicly called the FARC “heroic,” though he said the kidnappings went “too far.”

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

The Salwen family lived the American Dream. Fast-track careers afforded parents Kevin and Joan a beautiful home, luxury cars, world travel and private school educations for their teenage children, Hannah and Joseph. In their affluent neighborhood, new was better and more was the norm. But one day, witnessing the sharp social contrast between a homeless man and a man driving a Mercedes, Hannah experienced a profound “aha” moment that sparked a family dialogue—one that ultimately led the Salwens to sell their Atlanta McMansion and commit half the proceeds to a worthy charity.

The resulting book, The Power of Half, is a poignant story with a powerful message about creating a new family standard that involves giving rather than taking. With today’s economic concerns, the Salwens’ book is not only timely but truly inspiring. The idea of “the power of half” is simply a point of measure to help people to gauge their giving efforts. Ideally, readers will come away from this work with a realization that we all have something to give. Whether one contributes money, time or talent, the effort is its own reward.

Through a unique roundtable dynamic that gave each family member an equal say in all project decisions, it’s clear the Salwens did more than talk the talk. They walked the walk. The Power of Half reveals some remarkable life lessons, including working templates that serve to better ourselves and the world. For this family, the effects of their project were surprisingly twofold. In choosing to help the plight of villages in Africa, the Salwens not only transformed the lives of others, but in the process they experienced several powerful transformations of their own.

The tandem writing team of father and daughter emphatically reinforces the concept of family working together. The generational blend of thoughts, ideas and energies, moving towards a common goal, is undoubtedly a mighty force. This thought-provoking read compels us to appreciate what we have. More importantly, it is an affirmation of life’s true worth, realized in our sense of self, in our commitment to family and in our efforts to leave a positive imprint on the world. The message is truly empowering.

Carol Davala is a freelance writer in Lake Wales, Florida, where, inspired by The Power of Half, she contributes to knitting projects for the charitable WarmUpAmerica organization.

The crucial matters of civilization, contends Ted Conover in The Routes of Man, invariably occur on and alongside roads, be they ground-based pathways or navigable rivers. Here is where cities are built, commerce conducted, cultures mingled, empires extended and invaders admitted. Just about every good thing a road enables is matched by something bad; the same route that conveys one’s goods to market can just as swiftly bring back disease and political disruption, or it can create a momentarily bustling economy at the expense of scarce natural resources.

To demonstrate the more particular consequences of modern roads, Conover invites the reader to accompany him on sometimes long and frequently hazardous journeys through Peru, the Himalayas, East Africa, the West Bank, China, Lagos and Nigeria. In Lagos, he hangs out with an ambulance crew stationed beside an incredibly clogged and robber-infested freeway. In China, he joins a rally of newly minted car enthusiasts for a weeklong excursion from Beijing to Hubei province. In the Himalayas, he trudges with villagers along the frozen river that is their only winter outlet to the outside world.

Conover rides “shotgun” in the West Bank with both Palestinian residents and the Israeli soldiers who patrol and monitor the region’s roads. Ubiquitous and maddeningly arbitrary in their operation, the soldiers’ checkpoints are an unrelenting source of frustration and humiliation to the Palestinians: “Most permit both vehicles and pedestrians to pass, but some allow only pedestrians. Some close at dusk and open at dawn. . . . Some allow anything to pass once the soldiers have left for the night. And some change the rules from day to day.”

Although the narrative occasionally gets bogged down in what appears to be detail for its own sake, The Routes of Man is an absorbing read. Conover may not reach any grand conclusions about the future of roads, but he does illuminate the myriad functions of these vital but underappreciated structures—not the least of which is their symbolic importance to the human race, which is constantly on the move. 

Save for our popular culture and our fast food, there is little that the United States exports anymore. But move over Miley, Madonna and McDonald’s: America’s newest export is madness. At least, that’s the thesis of Ethan Watters’ Crazy Like Us.

Watters argues that Americans are as overbearing and influential in their treatment of mental health as they are with their other major exports. “In teaching the rest of the world to think like us,” he writes, “we have been, for better and worse, homogenizing the way the world goes mad.” More specifically, American-born psychoses like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia are being taught to people in foreign countries. And because American drug companies stand to make billions from treating these worldwide maladies, they are encouraging this behavior.

Watters argues that because of cultural, religious and other historical differences, a one-size-fits-all approach to mental health treatment doesn’t work: “Cross-cultural researchers and anthropologists . . . have shown that the experience of mental illness cannot be separated from culture.” He supports his position with detailed case studies in which Western doctors failed in their treatment of mental health disorders in foreign countries. And from his research, he makes some eyebrow-raising allegations, such as that in Hong Kong, teenagers began suffering from anorexia after Western experts started raising awareness of the disorder. He also posits that when Western crisis counselors swooped in to treat the PTSD they expected after a tsunami devastated a portion of Sri Lanka, in some cases they actually caused local communities more distress.

The major defect of Crazy Like Us is that it doesn’t spend enough time acknowledging that perhaps in some cases, the lessons Americans are teaching foreign nations about mental health treatment might actually be worthwhile. For instance, do Third World countries with no concept of mental disorders benefit in any way when Western doctors provide treatment? Still, the provocative thesis and the exhaustive research behind Watters’ examples makes Crazy Like Usworthy of consideration as we grapple to understand the impact of globalization—even if it is just a state of mind.

John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

The stories we tell ourselves about what is true in our lives have tremendous power, especially when those stories involve what we eat. We humans have strong convictions about food—many of these formed from memories ranging from sublime to scary—that are woven closely into our families and lives, affecting our choices about the foods we crave, purchase and consume. “We are made of stories. . . . Stories establish narratives, and stories establish rules,” writes novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated) in his first nonfiction book, Eating Animals, an idiosyncratic exploration of meat: what it actually is (and isn’t); how it is farmed in modern America; and the economic, social and environmental implications of eating it.

As a college student, Foer had no strong allegiance to any one diet manifesto. An on-again, off-again vegetarian, he maintained a diet of “unconscious inconsistency.” He admits sheepishly that he “just ate what was available or tasty, what seemed natural, sensible or healthy—what was there to explain?” It was not until he became a father that Foer perceived a lack of morality and responsibility inherent in his ongoing dietary vacillation. Now that he was responsible for nurturing and nourishing his son, what stories and lessons would he truly want to transmit to his children?

Two tales, of boyhood meals past and imagined future repasts with his wife and son, serve as bookends for Foer’s horrifically enlightening, thought-provoking examination of how farmed animals—hogs, chickens and cows—are bred, raised, distributed and consumed in our nation. Under cover of darkness, he sneaks into a chicken CAFO (aka “concentrated animal feeding operation”) to observe firsthand its hellish confines. He interviews farmers, like Bill and Nicollette Niman, who are trying to raise animals for consumption with kindness and conscience. He allows a multitude of voices to speak—CAFO workers, animal rights activists, farmers, scientists and literary figures—in order to build a case for conscious and ethical food consumption.

Foer employs an adroit blend of storytelling, philosophical reflection and rigorous investigative journalism to illustrate “how our food choices impact the ecology of our planet and the lives of its animals,” and to persuade us toward unflinching self-examination in how we choose our nourishment. He admirably presents fact and science, while pricking the reader’s conscience by recounting his own probing questions about dietary choice and moral acceptability. Eating Animals is “an argument for vegetarianism, but it’s also an argument for another, wiser animal agriculture and more honorable omnivory.”

America, the author believes, has made a choice between basing its meals around harvest or slaughter. And, collectively, we have chosen slaughter. Even using the most humane practices, consuming meat is a social act of war, of aggression. This is, he says, “the truest version of our story of eating animals.” Can we, Foer asks, tell another story instead? For the future of our race and of our fragile and heated planet, the question is timely and well worth any painful self-interrogation.

Alison Hood writes from Marin County, California.

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Read an interview with Foer for Eating Animals.