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Children's & YAPicture BookMiddle Grade

Following Honest Abe on his journey into history

Feature by Ellen Trachtenberg

Did you notice how frequently Abraham Lincoln's image was conjured during the recent presidential election? The symmetry between the early political careers of the 16th and 44th U.S. presidents seems to have captured the imaginations of many. Adding to the fascination is an important milestone: February 12 marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Children's book publishers have responded in kind, and the season brings an impressive display of new titles that chart the course of Lincoln's life in its entirety, from lighthearted looks at pivotal moments from his youth to painterly representations of his famous speeches. There are rare glimpses of Lincoln as a family man and an engrossing new spin on biography that revisits the aftermath of the president's assassination. Taken as a whole, this collection is an invaluable and multifaceted lesson in American history for young readers.

What might have been
Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale takes place "on the other side of yesterday, before computers or cars, in the year 1816" as seven-year-old Abe sets out with his good friend, Austin Gollaher, on a partridge-finding expedition down by Knob Creek. Problem is, the boys must cross the raging waters to get close enough to the birds. This proves to be a nearly impossible task, but determined to brave the danger, Abe shows his mettle. The results are nearly disastrous and if Austin wasn't close by—well, let's just say that the course of American history might have been drastically altered. Author Deborah Hopkinson (a BookPage contributor) and illustrator John Hendrix have created a delightful, folksy tale that depicts Lincoln before political aspiration took root. Clever intervention from the storytellers provides a playful yet profound "what if" factor. The final pages depict President Lincoln wistfully remembering his childhood friend while Hopkinson provides the following wisdom: "Let's remember Austin Gollaher, who, one day long ago, when no one else was there to see, saved Abe Lincoln's life. And without Abraham Lincoln, where would we be?"

United by a cause
From Nikki Giovanni and illustrator Bryan Collier, the acclaimed duo that brought us Rosa (winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and a Caldecott Honor book), comes Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship. Here readers are treated to a glimpse of Lincoln in his formative years through the stirring combination of Giovanni's prose and Collier's celebrated collage depictions. This time, we're shown the ethical parallels between the future president and his longtime ally, Frederick Douglass. When Lincoln was a newly elected congressman, Douglass paid him a visit, and "A friendship flowered based on mutual values, a love of good food, and the ability to laugh even in the worst of times." Adamantly principled on the topic of slavery, both men devoted their public lives to the cause of abolition. The Civil War cast a pall over the festivities that accompanied Lincoln's inauguration as president, but there was one guest that Lincoln insisted on seeing at the White House that evening, despite the rules that prohibited Negroes from entering. When Douglass finally arrives, the men gaze over the balcony and renew their shared commitment to freedom for all people.

A new birth of freedom
Two new books exemplify Lincoln's impact by incorporating his own words into the narrative. In What Lincoln Said, author Sarah L. Thomson uses direct quotes from pivotal moments in Honest Abe's life. Illustrator James E. Ransome presents a more jovial, less stern depiction than we're accustomed to seeing. The story ends with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day in 1863 as Lincoln humbly states, "If ever my name goes into history, it will be for this act . . . and my whole soul is in it."

Destined to be a classic, Abe's Honest Words by Doreen Rappaport (author of the Caldecott Honor book, Martin's Big Words), features divine, luminous illustrations by Kadir Nelson (known best for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, also a Caldecott Honor book and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner). Rappaport's own prose is coupled with Lincoln's thoughts on the importance of reading and education, the horrors of slavery, the challenges of being a young and unknown politician, and, of course, the iconic speech delivered on a Gettysburg battlefield.

Family matters
Beloved author Rosemary Wells shines a light on a personal dimension of Lincoln's life in Lincoln and His Boys. This is history as seen through the eyes of his young sons, Willie and Tad, who, after Lincoln is elected president, accompany him on the 12-day train ride (unfathomable to us now) from Illinois to Washington, D.C. They gleefully interrupt cabinet meetings and pray with their parents to heal the soldiers as the war escalates. The boys persistently ask questions of their adoring "Papa-day," trying to make sense of events as they unfold. Illustrations by P.J. Lynch are warm and vivid, capturing the genuine bond between a famous father and his sons.

The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary takes readers ever deeper into the lives of Lincoln, his family and his country. Author Candace Fleming has painstakingly compiled rare photographs (including the only known photo of Abraham with both Willie and Tad), insights into the Lincolns' marriage, accounts of White House mischief by their sons, biographical information about the president's cabinet, humorous anecdotes about stovepipe hats and three tales about Mary that you won't want to miss. This is the type of book that will invite readers to examine and re-examine its pages. Each time they do, they'll be rewarded with more captivating details.

Extra, extra: A special edition tells Lincoln's story
Books about Abraham Lincoln are plentiful this year, but one of the most impressive tributes comes in the form of Lincoln Shot: A President's Life Remembered by Barry Denenberg, featuring enthralling artwork by Christopher Bing. The format is eye-catching: a special edition of a newspaper, dated April 14, 1866, marking the one-year anniversary of Lincoln's death. From the very first page, readers get the sense that they're examining privileged archival documents. The headline reads "President Dies at 7:22, Nation Mourns Fallen Leader." The search for assassin John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators is recounted. After the villains' apprehension and execution, all told with riveting specifics, the paper turns to Lincoln's life, from boyhood hardships in the Indiana wilderness, to spelling bee triumphs, through his early career as a lawyer and romance at age 30 with a charming socialite named Mary Todd. Lincoln's entire political career is offered for inspection and the Civil War is fascinatingly detailed. In fact, though the book is only 40 pages long, there's hardly a moment of Lincoln's life that's missed. With its mimicry of a 19th-century newspaper, complete with archival photography, authentic typesetting and period advertisements, this type of alternative biography is sure to capture the imagination of both ready and reluctant readers. When the story ends with Lincoln's assassination, only five days after the Union victory, we come away with new perspectives on a most famous historical figure and the era he represented, all derived from the unique learning experience that this book provides.

Ellen Trachtenberg is the author of The Best Children's Literature: A Parent's Guide. 

Did you notice how frequently Abraham Lincoln's image was conjured during the recent presidential election? The symmetry between the early political careers of the 16th and 44th U.S. presidents seems to have captured the imaginations of many. Adding to the fascination is an important milestone:…

Forget perfection

Feature by Deanna Larson

A long overdue anti-perfectionist trend is overtaking the fitness world. Being overweight isn't always unhealthy. You can think yourself thin—and you don't need to spend hours in the gym. Feel like crying with relief over your stack of New Year's resolutions? Read on.

Count calories, sure, but keep weight off with different thinking. Dr. Judith S. Beck uses the power of the mind to push dieters to lose once and for all in The Complete Beck Diet for Life: The Five-Stage Program for Permanent Weight Loss. Daughter of pioneering cognitive therapy founder Aaron Beck and director of the Beck Institute of Cognitive Therapy, Beck (The Beck Diet Solution) is a diet coach who helps dieters feel in control and remain motivated while losing at a steady rate and still eating favorite foods. The "getting ready to lose" section is a mental and emotional workout, followed by beginner and maintenance phases of her "Think Thin Program." Each section includes "In Session with Dr. Beck" counseling scenarios, food plans and sidebars like "Reality Check" and "Success Skills." Beck knows you'll make mistakes, or even decide that enjoying a few more calories is a fair exchange for a few extra pounds. But her mantra is: you will turn mistakes into opportunity, you will maintain your weight loss. Sample daily menus, recipes for healthy meals and snacks, a bibliography and plenty of charts and graphs for amateur scientists and left-brainers round out this authoritative guide to getting off the diet-go-round.

Fitness through the years
Weight creep as we age isn't a given. Orthopedic surgeon Vonda Wright, director of PRIMA (the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes), believes that a sedentary lifestyle rather than biology accelerates the "aging" process. Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age is an approach to post-midlife fitness through the F.A.C.E. system of flexibility, aerobic exercise, "carrying" load-bearing exercise and achieving equilibrium and balance. Illustrated exercises, chapters on healing and avoiding injury when exercising as well as hydration and good nutrition are about as dry as a physical therapy pamphlet, but reiterating the basics will doubtless ensure you don't become "merely a bad sequel to your 20-year-old self."

It's not you, it's your genes
If you want to be a size zero, "choose your parents well," says Dr. Linda Bacon in Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight . Bacon—a therapist and recovering "weight obsessive" with an ironic name who holds a doctorate in physiology and specializes in eating disorders and body image—looks at the disconnect between modern food processing, diet culture and the actual science behind the "moral imperative" to lose weight. She disproves the assumption that being fat equals being unhealthy and deconstructs food and fat politics. There are plenty of thin people among McDonald's regular customers, according to Bacon, who explores why diet and exercise programs often don't work, and offers practical advice on how to recast the "weight problem" by helping the vulnerable respect their bodies and souls, taking care of real hungers and changing taste in the process. The best way to lose is to give up the fight and turn control over to your body, according to the book. "You will find that biology is much more powerful than willpower," Bacon writes. "Body weight might be a marker for an imprudent lifestyle in some people but its role in determining health . . . is grossly exaggerated."

Motivation in pictures
That's a "fattitude" heartily endorsed by comic-strip creator Carol Lay in her intriguing graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude. The L.A. based writer and creator of the WayLay comic strip that has appeared in The San Francisco Examiner, L.A. Weekly and Salon.com, is a "born eater." After learning unhealthy eating—and dieting—habits from her parents, Lay spent her college years in denim maxi dresses, gorging on home-baked bread and fake cookie dough, followed by addiction to amphetamine-based weight-loss pills. She starts the action with a comic strip featuring a hostess greeting her recent self with "You've lost so much weight! You look great! How did you do it?" "I count calories and exercise every day," she answers, followed by a trio of wordless panels showing the hostess dumbfounded for seconds on end. Her seriocomic weighty adventures have a fresh Californian vibe while communicating slightly self-righteous weight-loss tips, but before you hate this cool chick for her steely self-control, she draws a panel about the dangers of emotional binging after a breakup. On a holiday. Or imagines how the Devil would tempt her in the so-Hollywood "Day in the Diet" fantasy strip, which features George Clooney arriving unannounced with hot sausage biscuits, hash browns and a double chocolate chip "crappicino" from Mickey D's. Handwritten calorie charts (her recommended plan only provides about 1,350 calories, a bit low for healthy weight loss), eating plans and recipes and lists of "dodgy foods" round out this quirky but useful motivational tool for achieving thinner peace.

No time? No problem!
Weak-willed? Time-strapped? Get The 90-Second Fitness Solution: The Most Time-Efficient Workout Ever for a Healthier, Stronger, Younger You. New York trainer Pete Cerqua probably got sick of clients moaning about their desire for defined tank-top arms without having a minute to do a thing about it. His brilliant 15-minute-per-week workout promises to beat cardio at shedding pounds and reduce bodies by a half-dress size without changing food choices. His simple illustrated exercises, which only require resolve, a wall and a floor, are done in 90-second reps using pauses and holding weights in key positions rather than slow movements. Busting myths up and down the fitness spectrum, Cerqua advocates four simple secrets to success: short workouts, simplified eating, fewer supplements and a stress-proof life to eliminate time-consuming symptoms, not to mention life-altering illness. Bright, clean and breezy with its "Ask Pete" sidebars, real-life 90-Second Success Stories, speed reader's synopses, lightning-fast gourmet recipes and oversized exercise scorecards, this is the trend-setting fitness guide for the rest of us.

A long overdue anti-perfectionist trend is overtaking the fitness world. Being overweight isn't always unhealthy. You can think yourself thin—and you don't need to spend hours in the gym. Feel like crying with relief over your stack of New Year's resolutions? Read on.

Count calories, sure,…

Crafts, Hobbies & HomeBusiness & Finance

Less can be more, in the world of work

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Now's the time to usher in the new year—and perhaps a new approach to your career. If you've resolved in 2009 to work smarter, be more productive, follow your dreams or find more fun in the daily 9-to-5, this quartet of books will come in handy.

Back to basics
Is your life overscheduled and overrun by clutter, whether piles of paper on your desk or way too many commitments on your calendar? Leo Babauta has the solution. In The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential. . . in Business and in Life he has created "a how-to manual on how to simplify and focus on the essential. How to do less while accomplishing more." Babauta isn't just paying lip service to the importance of learning to focus on what's important. Over the last few years, he's accomplished quite a list of goals (running two marathons, doubling his income, eliminating his debt, writing this book) while parenting six children. His secret lies in his ability to focus on one thing at a time rather than trying to juggle too many things at once. In the book, Babauta offers targeted suggestions for slowly but surely finding focus (and thus, greater efficiency). A 30-day challenge provides a kick-start, and simplification strategies and tips abound.

Control is key
David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, published in 2001, sold a million copies and significantly increased demand for Allen's Getting Things Done, or GTD, seminars, delivered at companies and government agencies worldwide. Not surprisingly, he found time to write another book: Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life. This time around, he offers "new and deeper perspectives about why [the GTD] information works as well as it does and how universally it can be applied." The first few chapters explain the GTD concept and set up Allen's plan for Making It All Work. Perspective is important to this process, and the author skillfully frames the various levels of perspective as distances, which range from 50,000 feet (career, purpose, lifestyle) to 10,000 feet (current projects) to "runway" (daily actions, like managing email). The author says adhering to his principles will enable you to "quickly gain coherence and reorient yourself for the next round when you're faced with disruption"—a useful skill to have in a recession, for sure.

Entrepreneurial excitement
Donny Deutsch's CNBC television show "The Big Idea" profiled entrepreneurs who've achieved the American Dream of having, well, a big idea, and working hard to make it a reality. In the show's companion book, The Big Idea: How to Make Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Come True, from the "Aha Moment" to Your First Million, written with Catherine Whitney, Deutsch's energy and enthusiasm are infectious. The Big Idea is a fine mix of advice gleaned from his own experiences running an ad agency, plus stories of successful idea-implementers who have appeared on his TV show. Those profiled include the founders of Subway, Spanx and Sam Adams, plus proprietors of lesser-known companies like the Ugly Talent Agency, which fills the need for regular-looking folks on movie sets and in magazines. This book will serve as a useful how-to manual for would-be entrepreneurs, and provide "If they can do it, so can I!" inspiration.

Cubicle-bound creativity
Unlike most career-related books, Who Took All the Paperclips? Fun Things to Do with Office Supplies When the Boss Isn't Looking supports—nay, encourages—pilfering office supplies. Author Rachel Rifat advocates using those Post-its and paperclips to make crafts that will perk up a boring cubicle. Rifat opens her compendium of crafts with "Matchstick Incense: When nature calls and the whole office doesn't need to know!" and includes step-by-step instructions for a beaded privacy curtain and a pillow made from bubble-wrap, among other projects. Quirky illustrations and funny captions add to the book's appeal, as does the author's explanation of why she left her own corporate job: "she decided she could not stand to see another manager wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts at a beer bust." It's hard to argue with that.

Linda M. Castellitto makes Post-it origami in North Carolina. 

Now's the time to usher in the new year—and perhaps a new approach to your career. If you've resolved in 2009 to work smarter, be more productive, follow your dreams or find more fun in the daily 9-to-5, this quartet of books will come in…

Fiction

Take a journey around the world in stories

Feature by Harvey Freedenberg

From Mexico, to the former Soviet Union, to England, Japan and the United States, the reach of the short story spans the globe. These five collections, some by established authors and others by writers just beginning to make their mark, offer a generous introduction to the richness of modern short fiction.

Chilly slices of modern life
Ali Smith, author of the critically praised novel The Accidental, has observed, "Stories can change lives if we're not careful." In The First Person and Other Stories, her fourth collection, she offers her unsettling take on contemporary life.

Smith's book is most notable for its air of experimentation. The story that opens the collection, "True Short Story," begins with a writer in a café, observing two men and imagining the story of their relationship before halting the exercise. ("I stopped making them up. It felt a bit wrong to.") It concludes with a series of pithy observations on the nature of the short form from writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway and Alice Munro.

Smith's style is terse and edgy, almost daring the reader to settle in. In most of these stories, the characters are nameless, and it's only possible to know their setting because of a passing allusion to London or some feature of British life.

One of the more startling tales is "The Child," in which a woman discovers a baby abandoned in her grocery store shopping cart. When she takes the child with her, it begins spouting conservative political dogma, soon laced with racist and sexist jokes. The First Person and Other Stories won't appeal to everyone's taste, but those who like their stories provocative and enigmatic are likely to find it a satisfying work.

Weird, wonderful and wild
Although he's unknown to the American audience, Yasutaka Tsutsui has captured awards in his native Japan for his science fiction. His collection, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, translated by Andrew Driver, contains several examples in that genre, but it also sparkles with biting pieces of social and political satire that reveal a formidable talent.

Tsutsui excels at creating protagonists living in worlds uncomfortably recognizable as our own and yet decidedly dystopian. In "Rumours of Me," a young man suddenly begins to hear and read news stories about the most mundane aspects of his daily life. "Anything can become big news if the media report it," a newspaper editor tells him, bringing to mind the short-lived obsession with "Joe the Plumber" in last fall's presidential campaign. "Commuter Army" is a brilliant satire on the insanity of war, imagining platoons of soldiers who board the train each morning like office workers, the fortunate survivors returning home the same evening. "Hello, Hello, Hello" features a meddlesome "Household Economy Consultant" whose bizarre counsel sheds a revealing light on modern capitalism and our consumer culture.

The title story, the longest in the collection, is a complex exploration of human sexuality and evolutionary biology that plays out in the context of a space adventure. Throughout this wildly varied assortment of tales, Tsutsui's voice is witty and quirky, seducing us to suspend our disbelief for even the most fanciful narrative.

Riding the waves
Whether as a force for life or one of destruction, water in all its forms is the unifying theme in writer and artist Peter Selgin's powerful collection, Drowning Lessons. Selgin is never heavy-handed in his use of metaphor, and it's rewarding to trace the skill with which he employs it in many of these 13 stories.

In the opening tale, "Swimming," an elderly man disgruntled with the state of his marriage offers swimming lessons to an attractive younger woman. "Our Cups Are Bottomless" features a man in a coffee shop in a dying mill town, contemplating the suicide notes he's written as the town's two rivers rise in a raging downpour.

The most dramatic story in Drowning Lessons is "The Sea Cure." In it, two brothers take a trip to Mexico. Lewis becomes ill after drinking the local water, and Clarke meets a mysterious woman he believes will help secure medical treatment for Lewis, whose condition becomes more desperate with each page, until the story reaches its haunting climax. The collection concludes with the alternately hilarious and touching "My Search for Red and Gray Wide-Striped Pajamas." Its narrator suffers from mysterious fainting spells while wandering New York City seeking a pair of pajamas like the ones worn by his late father, his search a metaphor for the attempt to find his way in the world.

Coming to America
When a young writer's first two stories are published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic, it's a safe bet she's on the fast track to recognition in the world of literary fiction. In One More Year, Sana Krasikov, born in Ukraine and now living in New York, demonstrates why the early notice she's achieved is well-deserved.

Krasikov's fiction focuses on her fellow immigrants. Unlike the affluent Bengalis depicted in the stories of another young star of contemporary short fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri, however, her characters are struggling to plant their feet firmly on the first rung of the ladder of success in America. Most of the stories are set in Westchester County, New York, but it's hardly the country club and cocktail party world of John Cheever.

In stories like "Companion," "Asal" and "Maia in Yonkers," women from the former Soviet Union find themselves in low-end personal care jobs. Maia's son sums up her plight when he berates her, "Every year you say 'It's one more year, one more year!' " and his blunt indictment sums up the predicament of most of Krasikov's characters. Representative is Anya, the protagonist of "Better Half," 22 years old, married for a few months and working as a waitress, who observes that "trying to escape your tedious fate only led you back to it."

Their task won't be easy, but at the end of this consistently strong collection we're left with a feeling that the determination by Krasikov's characters to establish themselves in a new land will be rewarded.

Living and loving in Mexico
Carlos Fuentes, perhaps Mexico's most distinguished living writer, offers a rich collection of stories in Happy Families. Taking his ironic title from Tolstoy's legendary observation, Fuentes exposes the dark corners of his characters' emotional lives with a piercing light.

Fuentes' prose is lush, almost poetic, as presented in this translation by the distinguished translator Edith Grossman. Indeed, after each story there is a free verse "chorus," many of them illuminating some troubling aspect of modern Mexican life.

In its 16 stories, Happy Families covers the subject of love in all its complexity. We meet a long-married couple raking over the dying coals of their relationship ("Conjugal Ties (1)"), a priest who's fathered an illegitimate daughter and lives with her in an isolated mountain village at the base of a volcano ("The Father's Servant") and a mother desperate to rescue her son from a life of street crime ("The Mariachi's Mother"). Fuentes is a keen student of human behavior, and if his Mexican historic and cultural references occasionally may be puzzling to non-Mexican readers, the emotions on display are universal. In "The Discomfiting Brother," the story of an impoverished man who returns to the home of his prosperous brother after more than 30 years, the former notes, "Life consists in our getting used to the fact that everything will be badly for us." That solemn observation serves as a fitting benediction to this collection by an acknowledged literary master.

Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

From Mexico, to the former Soviet Union, to England, Japan and the United States, the reach of the short story spans the globe. These five collections, some by established authors and others by writers just beginning to make their mark, offer a generous introduction to…

Business & Finance

Bouncing back

Feature by Susan Rucci

What a difference a year can make, especially if you have a 401k or other investments in the stock market. Now that the Wall Street bubble has burst, what's an individual investor to do? A new batch of books sets out to prove that even in bad economic times, you can turn your stock portfolio, bank account or retirement fund around and rebound financially.

Taming the Bear
Two of the best books are part of Wiley's Little Book, Big Profits series that focuses on all things financial, from investment strategies to long-term economic trends. My favorite is The Little Book That Saves Your Assets: What the Rich Do to Stay Wealthy in Up and Down Markets by David M. Darst, a managing director at Morgan Stanley. Darst says to thrive financially today you must practice asset allocation, compiling a financial portfolio with assets that make money when the economy is doing well, but also including assets that make money when the economy slows down. He says it's the approach the wealthy use to maintain their lifestyle even in tough economic times. Darst writes in a reader-friendly manner, often using football analogies to make a point. One of his strongest chapters is called "Building Your House," which compares a financial portfolio to a person's home. He writes that much like a house, a portfolio should reflect an investor's personality and should be "built" to have a mixture of assets that are functioning (steady and reliable, like bonds) and fun (riskier, but with a potentially bigger payoff, like stocks). In another compelling chapter called "The Road Less Traveled That You Should Take," Darst rightly argues that most people no longer have any choice but to be actively engaged in managing their financial portfolio because the days of a guaranteed pension are gone forever. Now all the responsibility rests on the individual.

Another recent book in the series is also well edited and on point. The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Down, by investment advisor Peter Schiff, is a playbook on how to preserve wealth even as the economy falters. After a brief history lesson on the U.S. stock market, Schiff outlines an investment plan that taps into the larger and financially stronger global economy. He particularly likes the money-making opportunities in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). All have seen their economies boom thanks to manufacturing; Schiff is particularly fond of China. Besides the BRIC bloc, Schiff likes Canada, Australia and New Zealand as good wealth-building opportunities through investments in raw materials, oil and minerals. He also recommends investing in precious metals such as gold (either in physical gold or in mining stocks). He closes out his book with a provocative look at the 2008 presidential election and argues that the American investor would be wise to wait until at least 2012 before re-investing in the market. Schiff wrote the bestseller Crash Proof, which accurately predicted the current Wall Street turmoil, so his words are particularly valuable now.

Think globally
Another book that urges a more global approach to your financial portfolio is Game Over: How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy by Stephen Leeb. The book went to print just as the Dow began its tumble last fall. Leeb's premise is fairly depressing; he argues that the economy will take years to recover from inflation, the weakening dollar and, most importantly, runaway national debt. He spends more than half the book discussing resource shortages like oil and water (the latter being the more interesting read of the two) and emerging alternative energies. Leeb urges investors to create portfolios that are inflation-proof and to invest in industries that produce high rates of return in spite of high inflation. Like other authors featured here, he urges investment in gold through exchange-traded funds or individual gold companies. Another interesting nugget from Leeb: he says the last thing any investor should do is turn investments into cash. He contends that money in a checking or savings account will not earn nearly the amount of interest needed to compensate for the decline in its value because of inflation.

The Jubak Picks: 50 Stocks That Will Rebuild Your Wealth and Safeguard Your Future sums up the latest strategies of Jim Jubak, senior markets editor for the website MSN Money, where more than a million investors click on his monthly "Jubak Journal" for financial advice. Jubak asserts that investing in the right macro trends will make you money, and he includes specific, detailed stock picks for each of his suggestions. He says the best investments right now can be found outside the U.S., particularly in China and India; in food (which he calls the new oil), through agriculture and food-commodity stocks; and in technology. Jubak ends his book with a chapter titled "50 best stocks in the world." Exxon, precious metals companies and search engine Google are among those that make the list.

The Ten Roads to Riches: The Way the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!) by Forbes columnist Ken Fischer might be the most fun-to-read book in this group because it delves into one of Americans' favorite topics: how the rich get rich. Fischer knows that road well; he's a self-made billionaire who's on the Forbes 400 list and owns a firm that manages $45 billion in assets. Fischer says there are 10 ways to acquire wealth a lot faster than the idealized "work hard, save your money" mantra. The richest road is also the most obvious and the one most people take—starting your own business. But there are other ways, including managing other people's money, owning real estate and even turning celebrity into wealth. Fischer points out that boxer George Foreman retired from the sport completely broke. An indoor grill bearing his name changed his financial status and now Foreman is not only a household name (at least in the kitchen) but also worth millions. Single women, and maybe some single men as well, will be amused and perhaps inspired by the chapter which outlines marriage as another way to acquire wealth. My, how times have changed. Fischer says you should forget about marrying a millionaire—now you need to marry a billionaire to acquire true wealth.

Most of these books rely on the premise that the reader has money to invest and time to wait out the investment payoffs. What they don't address are the day-to-day financial struggles so many people are facing as jobs vanish and the economy spirals downward. The need for help in those areas should create a bull market in financial advice books as the new year progresses.

This will be another tough year in the housing market, with foreclosures expected to remain at their highest numbers in more than a decade. Two recent books offer timely advice for those facing difficult choices about their homes.

Putting your house in order
How to Sell a House Fast in a Slow Real Estate Market by William Bronchick and Ray Cooper is a smart, fairly fast read on what to do to get your house sold quickly. Some suggestions are obvious: invest in paint, new rugs and curb appeal. Other advice is simply interesting, like knowing the supply quotient for your neighborhood (divide the number of homes for sale by the number of closings in the last 30 days). If you have the time and/or live in the home, the authors recommend you do the selling yourself—you'll get to pocket a real estate agent's three to six percent commission. And there are good ideas about what to do if several months have passed and your home still hasn't sold (try the round-robin strategy, which involves holding an open house over a two-day period and then taking bids from all prospective buyers).

If you're facing foreclosure, pick up a copy of Stop Foreclosure Now, by attorney and mortgage expert Lloyd Segal. Lloyd self-published Stop Foreclosure Now in 2007 with considerable success; AMACOM recently issued a paperback edition. For less than $20, the book is a wealth of information on the foreclosure process, walking the reader through every detail. Early on, Segal advises the reader not to panic because foreclosure is a lengthy process that can take anywhere from three months (in nonjudicial foreclosures) to two years to complete. He urges homeowners to use that time to figure out whether it's better to try to keep the property or lose it. There's a lengthy section on refinancing as well as a chapter devoted to members of the military on active duty who are legally protected from foreclosure and may actually be entitled to a lower interest rate. Foreclosure is complicated and while Segal argues that a homeowner can handle the process, the wiser move still seems to be hiring an attorney to help you navigate the system.

Susan Rucci is a TV news producer who writes from Washington, D.C. 

What a difference a year can make, especially if you have a 401k or other investments in the stock market. Now that the Wall Street bubble has burst, what's an individual investor to do? A new batch of books sets out to prove that even…

Parenting

New releases share the truth about parenting

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

Meet some of the best parenting books of the year so far, culled from the gravid shelves at BookPage. Selected on individual merit, this disparate grouping nonetheless suggests a pattern: truth. These new books seem to concern themselves with rooting out truth no matter how entrenched the myth, how muddled the syndrome, how white the lie, and all entirely to our favor. Truth can be shocking. For example, what we thought was OK for kid’s health is bad, and what we thought was bad is actually OK. Or, we learn our ideals of the “good” mother and the “good” girl must be radically redefined. Or, we find the real nitty-gritty coming home with a newborn is not quite what we expected. Still, these books are just what the doctor should order: a frank, fearless and sometimes very funny heads-up. Of course, the ultimate parenting truth is that we all want to succeed, and with selections like these, we have a pretty good chance.

Myth-busters
How often have you heard these health facts: burns are best treated with ice, wounds should “air out” at night, spinach is a good source of iron, and teething can cause high fever? Guess what? These facts are fiction: baby myths, if you will. Pediatrician Andrew Adesman heard these and hundreds of other baby myths so often, he felt duty-bound to write a book: Babyfacts: the Truth About Your Child’s Health From Newborn Through Preschool. How about: raw carrots improve vision, green mucous always indicates a bacterial infection and cupcakes make kids hyper? Again, not true. If you are surprised, you aren’t alone: a pilot study showed a shocking number of pediatricians are just as credulous about these pervasive myths as the rest of us. Adesman deftly debunks the most common nuggets of misinformation in an easy-to-use, absorbing reference.

Open in case of emergency
The next book debunks myths too, but it specializes in how to distinguish a real emergency from a routine situation or a false alarm. Emergency room pediatrician Lara Zibners has the street cred to teach parents when a trip to the ER is a must, a maybe or a wait-and-see, and ditto for a regular acute office visit. In If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay, Dr. Zibners covers every category likely to be a concern at some point: newborn issues, skin, guts, “plumbing,” allergies, wounds, fever, head injuries and so on. The range is immense (and realistic): swallowed fish-tank gravel, super-glued body parts, high fevers or major trauma, she’s been there. A nice touch is the author’s overriding assertion that parents should always trust intuition: we know our own children best. Keep a copy in the medicine cabinet for quick, straightforward advice when you need it most.

In the trenches
Former war photojournalist Deborah Copaken Kogan is back with more stories from the family front. Picking up where her best-selling memoir Shutterbabe left off, Kogan weaves past and present into a wry portrait of real life at home. In Hell Is Other Parents: and Other Tales of Maternal Combustion the author confronts family challenges that make covering carnage in Afghanistan (which she has done) seem easy by comparison. Her frank take on Mommy & Me classes, life as a reluctant stage mother and encounters with parents who espouse decidedly different childrearing philosophies (i.e. helicopter parents) is delightful. So too are her flashbacks to younger and wilder days: days before she and her family of five must squeeze into a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and get by on a freelancer’s pittance. Above all, do not miss the chapter about sharing a room in the maternity ward with the world’s rudest postpartum teenager.

Instruction manual
New moms and moms-to-be, meet your new best friend. Claudine Wolk, author of It Gets Easier! And Other Lies We Tell New Mothers, tells it (and all of it) like it really is: pregnancy, childbirth and those first, foggy baby months. Never mind all the other advice that will inevitably bombard the pregnant and postpartum: listen to her. Wolk, a mother of three, interviewed hundreds of women to find the real deal: the most helpful tips, most urgent issues and most practical solutions for the transition to motherhood. The three big common concerns—sleep, schedule and guilt—are covered in great detail, but each chapter is packed with invaluable, uncensored advice on absolutely everything. This book is precisely what the subtitle claims: “a fun, practical guide to becoming a mom.” Where, oh where was it when my two kids were new? A must for baby shower and new mom gifts.

The confident parent
Parents who have made it past the baby stage are ready for Jen Singer, award-winning mommy blogger and author of You’re a Good Mom. Singer’s new series began this spring with the publication of Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Toddler Years, and continues with the September release of Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Preschool Years. Singer’s cheery, no-nonsense style helps parents navigate the challenges unique to the three- to five-year-old set (or, as she calls them, “tiny teens in light-up sneakers”). Combining her own experiences with those of veteran moms from her website, MommaSaid.net, she gives the support, advice and insights most of us desperately need. Note the reassuring reader-contributed “It Worked for Me” and “Okay, I Admit It” boxes sprinkled throughout.

Giving girls voice
Rachel Simmons broke new ground with Odd Girl Out, the best-selling exploration of bullying among girls. With The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls With Courage and Confidence she turns her lens to the insidious myth of the Good Girl: a narrow and unrealistic model of female perfection. Far too many girls equate self-esteem with being “good”: thinking and acting only in modest, polite, conscientious and selfless ways. Such a limited repertoire of acceptable feelings limits the healthy development of real self esteem, body image and overall confidence, and prevents girls from cultivating potential. The pattern can start in early childhood and expand throughout life, affecting choices in education, career, relationships and family life, as well as a sense of purpose and worth. Simmons presents case studies and research to illustrate the complexities of the Good Girl syndrome, as well as numerous strategies we can all undertake to encourage the authentic inner—and ultimately outer—voice of girls.

Joanna Brichetto objects to the word “parent” used as a verb, but she parents a teen and a toddler, anyway.

Meet some of the best parenting books of the year so far, culled from the gravid shelves at BookPage. Selected on individual merit, this disparate grouping nonetheless suggests a pattern: truth. These new books seem to concern themselves with rooting out truth no matter how…

NonfictionParentingEducation

That old college try

Feature by Angela Leeper

For many students across the nation, back to school means more than shopping for new pencils, backpacks and clothes. It’s time to start searching for the right college or preparing for the first year away from home. While either experience can be daunting for teens and parents alike, several new books guide readers through the college selection process, the transition to college and even adventurous alternatives to the traditional university route.

“No future decision will carry as much social visibility as the college choice,” contends college advisor and author Joyce Slayton Mitchell. In her accessible 8 First Choices: An Expert’s Strategies for Getting into College, she eases high school students’ pressure by walking them step by step through the college admissions process—from testing, researching universities and selecting eight first choices to how financial aid works and how to nail the college essay, application and interview. In an age where college applications are at an all-time high and still on the rise, she shows the specifics deans are looking for, with tips from some of the most selective universities. Mitchell also describes how to demonstrate diversity, personalize the college selection process and stand out among thousands of applications, even if you’re an overrepresented applicant. Above all, she encourages high school students to take ownership of the decisions that will direct their future. In a concluding chapter to parents, she addresses their concerns while gently reminding them to foster their children’s independence in this character-building experience.

Temptation Island
For young women who’ve earned a spot in college (hopefully, one of their eight first choices), U Chic: The College Girl’s Guide to Everything offers hip yet down-to-earth suggestions on all areas of campus life. More than 30 women who’ve recently graduated from universities across the country give an insider’s scoop on getting along with roommates, dorm decorating, sororities, college perks and thriving when in the minority. While they touch upon studying and other ways to succeed in class, deciding on a major, campus safety, budgets, exercise and nutrition, the majority of this guide is dedicated to topics that parents tend to avoid. As one contributor writes, “College is the ultimate Temptation Island.” Whether it’s ditching the dorm and getting more involved on campus, “tech etiquette for a Facebook Age,” the dating scene, sex ed, “dormcest,” partying responsibly, depression or eating disorders, the authors dish it out with frank advice on surviving the newfound freedoms and temptations.

Letting go
Teenagers may think they know everything, but they can always use some help making the switch from high school to college. So can parents. Marie Pinak Carr’s Sending Your Child to College: The Prepared Parent’s Operational Manual provides myriad tips for parents’ new role and for preparing their children for the next big step in their lives. Kicking off with the mountains of required paperwork and making sure they aren’t billed twice for insurance, this chatty guide also reminds parents about checking accounts, budgets, laundry, campus safety, alcohol and drug use and other important topics they need to discuss with their fledgling collegiates. While some chapters focus on more serious matters, such as navigating campus, travel arrangements, health care and car emergencies, other chapters on furnishing a dorm room and thematic care packages remember the fun side of college. For parents who really want to stay connected, there’s even a quick chapter on volunteer possibilities, whether near or far from campus. But it’s the extensive checklists and forms throughout that are reasons enough to purchase this useful manual.

While the book above touches on the practical side of college, Marjorie Savage’s You’re On Your Own (But I’m Here if You Need Me): Mentoring Your Child Through the College Years focuses on the emotional transition—for students and parents—and makes an excellent companion guide. For parents who want to give their children space but also want to know how soon they can call after settling them into their dorms, this comprehensive book explains the change from primary caregiver to proud mentor and supporter. It addresses how college affects the entire family, from students’ range of emotions, especially in their first six weeks away from home, to ways parents can avoid empty nest feelings. Always encouraging parents to help and not “helicopter,” the author does let them know when their insights are important to share in such matters as finances, health, safety and the social scene. Each chapter concludes with a list of “Quick Tips for Students” for parents to pass along to their children. And just when parents are starting to grasp their new relationships with their children, they come home again. Luckily, there’s a section that covers this adjustment, too!

Going global
If all the talk of standardized tests, college applications and high tuition rates are causing extreme dizziness and heart palpitations, then the “anti-college prep handbook” The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education may be the best guide yet. In the summer of 2005, author Maya Frost, her husband and four teenage daughters left their suburban life in Oregon to live around the world. Whether parents are considering sending their high school- or college-age children to study abroad or the “full-family deal,” a short stay or total immersion, Frost describes how all of these options focus on children’s total development rather than just on their education and help prepare them for a global workplace. While packing up the family and moving to a foreign country may seem scary or like a glamorous never-ending vacation, the author also explains how to let go of fear, numerous expat misconceptions and key qualities for making the experience a success. A plethora of first-hand statements from experienced travelers reveals invaluable insight and the inspiration to get up and go—abroad.

Angela Leeper is the Director of the Curriculum Materials Center at the University of Richmond.

For many students across the nation, back to school means more than shopping for new pencils, backpacks and clothes. It’s time to start searching for the right college or preparing for the first year away from home. While either experience can be daunting for teens…

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

You can do it

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

DIY has never been hotter. Thanks to the rise of hipster culture and the fall of the economy, crafting is uber-cool. Really, why pay for a pricey photo album, lamp or tote bag when a handmade one is personalized—and priceless? This sextet of new books offers inspiration, instructions and ideas aplenty. Craft on!

A new perspective on paper
In her introduction to Home, Paper, Scissors: Decorative Paper Accessories for the Home, Patricia Zapata confesses to a strong affinity for paper. So strong, in fact, that she collects all manner of colors, textures and types, but can’t bring herself to write on any of the precious pages. She can, however, create with them, and her book offers projects suitable for a wide range of tastes and skill-levels. How-tos (including photos, materials lists, patterns, and time-estimates) cover Decorating, Entertaining and Gifting, from a Fluttering Mobile to Mosaic Place Mats to a Pocket Photo Album. This lovely book is perfect for crafters looking to explore an inexpensive new medium.

A bevy of bags
By now, thanks to increased eco-awareness, most of us have purchased a few canvas totes—and maybe even remember to use them at the grocery store. With Sew What! Bags: 18 Pattern-Free Projects You Can Customize to Fit Your Needs, crafting veterans and amateurs alike can go a step further by designing and making their own totes, plus 17 other bag-esque projects. Author Lexie Barnes puts her experience as a handbags and accessories designer to work in this great guide, which includes detailed instructions, inspiring photos and plenty of you-can-do-it encouragement. Spot-on tips for hemming, choosing fabric and breaking out of the pattern mold help ensure this book is a crafter’s delight.

Dress up your dorm room
If Theresa Gonzalez and Nicole Smith have anything to say about it, dorm rooms will no longer be drab. Rather than view a 200-square-foot space as a bland box, they urge, “Think of it as a creative challenge.” And instead of fighting the arrival of the inevitable concrete block, view it as a bed-booster and a “cute bookend that you adapt into a cinderblock cozy.” While Dorm Decor: Remake Your Space with More Than 35 Projects  mainly uses the feminine pronoun when addressing readers, guys would do well to check out the book as well; the sleek, Jonathan Adler-esque Stone’s Throw Pillow; the witty Oh Dear, Deer Head; and the ever-useful Laundry Day Backpack are just a few examples of projects that will appear to dorm-dwellers of either sex. The book (spiral-bound, with full-color photos) is organized by function, such as sleep, dress and hang out. This is one book enterprising crafters won’t mind studying.

Making the past present, through linens
EllynAnne Geisel knows her vintage linens. In The Kitchen Linens Book: Using, Sharing, and Cherishing the Fabric of Our Daily Lives she writes and rhapsodizes about tablecloths, hot pads, towels and more. A devoted fabric collector, she writes, “My vintage kitchen linens, like my aprons, speak of past generations, but they also inspire me to think of future gatherings.” To that end, Geisel provides instructions for fabric care, embellishing linens, packing a picnic and making a proper pot of tea. She also shares other linen aficionados’ touching stories and remembrances. There are recipes, too, and a vintage Butterick transfer pattern is tucked in the back. The author’s knowledge of and love for fabric artifacts is evident—and infectious—in this enjoyable read, which surely will inspire readers to look at linens from bygone days with renewed respect and appreciation.

Delicious creativity
From biscotti to fudge to preserves to spiced olives, Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen is just the book for creative types who like to bestow delicious homemade presents on family and friends. Traditional recipes—kugelhopf (a fruit-and-nut cake), gingerbread and macaroons—mingle with more unusual ones, including Pine Nut Brittle, Candied Grapefruit Peel and Lemon Spice Olives. Foodwriter and farmer Georgeann Brennan provides gift-packaging ideas as well, such as glittery cones to hold candy, a teacup-as-cookie-holder and a bread board as the foundation for packaging a cake. Readers likely will want to dive into these recipes—and begin taste-testing—right away.

T-shirt transformation redux
When it comes to t-shirts, Megan Nicolay is a seemingly tireless innovator. In her follow-up to the popular Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt, the author has come up with ideas for scarves, oven mitts, dresses, baby booties—and of course, a selection of t-shirts with a twist. In Generation T: Beyond Fashion: 120 New Ways to Transform a T-shirt, witty titles (Pom-Pom Circumstance for a toddler’s hat, Love it or Weave It for a crisscross tank top) share space with step-by-step instructions, line drawings, variations and photos of people and pets wearing the creations. Projects such as a wine cozy, pet bed, plant hanger and car floor mats up the DIY ante, but tutorials on tying, stitching and laundering—plus no-sew options—will boost beginners’ confidence. Thanks to the projects’ low-cost raw materials (t-shirts the crafter is already hoarding, scissors and a needle and thread) they offer crafters a recession-proof way to perk up a wardrobe, add some oomph to household décor or give thoughtful and personalized gifts. Generation T: Beyond Fashion is a t-shirt-transformation sourcebook that crafters will refer to again and again.

Linda M. Castellitto has plans for her stack of concert t-shirts.

DIY has never been hotter. Thanks to the rise of hipster culture and the fall of the economy, crafting is uber-cool. Really, why pay for a pricey photo album, lamp or tote bag when a handmade one is personalized—and priceless? This sextet of new books…

Animals

A walk on the wild side

Feature by Deanna Larson

The animal kingdom is full of insights into human nature. These new books give readers a fascinating glimpse of some of the connections.

Near and deer
Nature as nemesis is a foreign concept to anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (The Secret Life of Dogs), who embraces and even encourages the scourge of modern suburban gardeners in The Hidden Life of Deer: Lessons from the Natural World (Harper, $24.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780061792106). One fall, Thomas noticed that acorns were thin on the ground around her New Hampshire farmhouse, so she sprinkled corn on the ground for the wild turkeys.

Then came the hungry deer. Thomas, who grew up with her scientist parents among the Kalahari people of Africa, started scattering pounds of corn each day, the better to attract, track and observe usually hidden deer behaviors. “I could do no more than the bears and whitetails do—keep looking and listening for more information,” Thomas writes of her curiosity about the deer. “You find questions you cannot answer, and mysteries you cannot solve.”

As she begins to identify each doe, buck and fawn and follows the herds from season to season, Thomas draws readers into her compassionate, insightful accounts of everyday courage on behalf of wildlife, including standing up to an armed neighbor to make sure an injured bear wasn’t shot dead (he later bends her backyard birdfeeder pole like a paper clip and casually empties the seed into his mouth, proof of his vitality). Her accounts of the treatment of whitetail deer that survive impacts with cars are heartbreaking, but this “tree-hugging grandmother” passes a hunting license course with a near perfect score at the age of 68 and then goes hunting with her neighbor in the name of conservation and research. “I didn’t learn how to hunt but I did learn how it feels to hunt,” she writes, “which is all I really wanted.” Anyone with an interest in wildlife will adore spending time with Thomas and her sensitive, inquisitive mind.

Amazing animal rescues
World-renowned ethologist and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall made her name studying and living among the chimpanzees of Tanzania. She later founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a nonprofit that encourages individuals to take “informed and compassionate action to improve the environment of all living things.” Horrified by the destruction of primate habitats, she left the field in the mid-1980s to raise awareness about conservation. Her new book, Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink, co-written with Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard, host of the NPR’s The 90-Second Naturalist, is a report on species once on the verge of extinction whose populations are now being revived.

Gathered firsthand by Goodall and colleagues in the field, and from scientific and historical record, these accounts detail the heartening yet life-threatening challenges of conservation work. From the graduate student who dyed the tufts on the heads of cotton-top tamarin monkeys to tell them apart while observing this endangered primate, to the 19th-century lighthouse cat that killed the last remaining wrens on Stephen’s Island, New Zealand, to the California condor chick reintroduced into the wild and then rushed into surgery after its young parents fed it trash instead of bone fragments, these stories could galvanize even the most cosseted animal lover to action. “It comes down to a conflict between concern for the individual and concern for the future of a species,” Goodall writes. “[But] I found that people got really excited about the idea of sharing the good news, shining a light on all the projects, large and small, that together are gradually healing some of the harm we have inflicted.”

Finding the wolf within
Did the dog and human evolve together, and did canines become so successful because they had access to the even bigger human brain? Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jon Franklin (Molecules of the Mind) uses research in brain science and anthropology, plus interviews with experts and primary experience with his own dog, to explore the relationship between ancient wolves, canines and humans in The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection Between Humans and Dogs. “With respect to dogs,” Franklin writes, “the picture science had painted for us was woefully inadequate.” So he sets out on a long, smart and sometimes meandering research trip into the evolution of the wolf brain and its possible relationship to human and canine development.

Franklin tracks down the sexy and non-sexy research into canine evolution, and therefore, human evolution— from current research into what transformed humans 12,000 years ago, canine fossil material found in China, 150,000-year-old wolf skulls in an ancient cave and the lack of grant money to research dogs. (“I can’t get money for work on dogs,” one scientist laments. “I’m tired of struggling with it. Nobody cares about dogs.”) The story really gets interesting when Franklin gets a poodle puppy, Charlie, as a “marriage price” from his wife, then reluctantly observes the lengths to which humans go to “train” their companions, and how their efforts often say more about the humans than the dogs. He watches his wife prepare Charlie for competitive obedience trials (“Could dogs be a tool of one’s ambition?”) and goes to the nursing home where Charlie performs “songs” and realizes he can’t laugh with him, only at him, and that the dog knows the difference. As he muses on his dog as an “amplifier of nature,” Franklin leads dog lovers to ponder the critical role their own pets may play in shaping their daily lives.

Cat fancier
Millions of viewers fell in love with the story of Christian the lion on YouTube, wishing they were the ones getting that big cat hug. Kevin Richardson has lived that fantasy as a self-taught behaviorist and animal custodian at Kingdom of the White Lion in South Africa. He teams with writer Tony Park for a fascinating glimpse into the dangers and joys of working with lions, hyenas and other predators in Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. Working as an exercise physiologist after college, Richardson met a rich man who had just bought a local lion park and encouraged him to visit with two little lion cubs, Tau and Napoleon. “Before I knew it,” Richardson writes, “I was responsible for an entire family of extreme creatures.” Without aspirations to become an animal wrangler or leeu boer (Afrikaans for lion farmer), the former zoology major instead developed relationships with these dangerous animals without a stick—the usual way of handling lions at the time—feeding them from his hand and following his own observations and instincts. Richardson still gets his fair share of lion “slap arounds” and tooclose encounters, which make for hair-raising reading. His respect for the big cats as he continues to learn and risk all makes his story endlessly fascinating.

The animal kingdom is full of insights into human nature. These new books give readers a fascinating glimpse of some of the connections.

Near and deer
Nature as nemesis is a foreign concept to anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (The Secret Life of Dogs), who…

FictionClassics

A curious quartet for the spooky season

Feature by Michael Alec Rose

Beneath all the fun, Halloween upholds its spooky essence. On a single October night, we celebrate the darkest side of ourselves: our fundamental desire to transcend our natures, to exceed mortal limits, to claim unwarranted power. We let our children don horrific masks and gather loot from neighbors whom they barely see for the rest of the year. As a community, we gleefully become monsters.

Deeper and more durable than trick-or-treating are the delights of ghost stories and horror tales. So many of the classic works in the genre, Frankenstein and Dracula above all, set into high gear the unbridled Halloween impulse to break through the bonds of mortality and assume mastery over life and death. Under the sway of Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker, we seize for real the power to which Victor Frankenstein and Count Dracula fictitiously pretend. Inert matter (ink on a page) comes to shocking life, and that which is dead (the author, for one thing) is summoned from the grave to haunt us and feed upon the lifeblood of our imaginations.

Year in and year out, the horrors are told and retold, retuned, rediscovered and revamped (or re-vampired). The books recommended here offer a splendid quartet of such variations.

A monster collaboration
Most diehard fans of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein come to it in its third edition of 1831. Now, English professor Charles Robinson rips away the veil of the novel’s origins and takes us back to the thrilling night in 1816 when two of the greatest living poets—Lord Byron and Percy Shelley—joined in contest with Shelley’s wife Mary and their friend Dr. Polidori to devise the scariest ghost story. Without any doubt, Mary took the laurel with her story of a “Modern Prometheus” and went on to expand the terrifying premise into her famous novel, first published in 1818.

So far, this history is common knowledge. But Professor Robinson digs yet deeper in The Original Frankenstein. Through close examination of the manuscripts, he has been able to determine that the novel came into being as a sustained and extraordinarily intimate collaboration between Mary and Percy, with Percy’s hand literally evident on almost every page. Feminists need not be concerned: Robinson’s research is not another patriarchal theft of a woman’s achievement. Indeed, the professor gives us Mary all on her own in the second half of his volume—two Frankensteins for the price of one—and it is clear that the wife’s raw, “unhusbanded” text is the more forceful one. But in the other text, Robinson allows us to bear witness to a marriage of true minds. The inspiring collaboration between Mary and Percy is the greatest possible antidote to Victor Frankenstein’s solitary and overweening ambition.

Rewriting history—and fiction
Peter Ackroyd seeks no such remission from Dr. Frankenstein’s colossal error. On the contrary, the acclaimed British novelist and biographer swings the monstrous electrical lever of his fiction to its maximum position, committing every conceivable historical outrage in the process. Leave it to this most distinguished living biographer of British poets to fabricate such a delectable conflation of history and imaginative literature. In Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, the infamous narrator becomes the inseparable chum of (who else?) Percy Shelley at Oxford, and Mary comes to love Victor as a trusted friend. The Shelleys inadvertently abet Victor’s unholy investigations into the founding principle of life, and in the end—ha! Did you think I would tell you? However inured you may think you are to the shocks of horror fiction, Ackroyd will violate your defenses with his diabolical intelligence and his uncanny empathy for both real-life and imaginary characters.

The vampire authority
Anyone who has had the good fortune to visit Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan knows what a paradoxically overpopulated and uncluttered paradise he has created for book lovers. The very same qualities inform Penzler’s work as an editor. His latest collection, The Vampire Archives, presents an unprecedented cornucopia of stories, ranging from pure pulp (Stephen King) to high art (D.H. Lawrence). Even so, the experience of reading the anthology feels like a walk in a beautifully landscaped cemetery, perfectly laid out with varying tactile delights and far vistas. The gigantic bulk of this book is counterbalanced by its lucid editorial touches, including a 110-page bibliography of vampire literature.

Sibling love gone awry
Douglas Clegg has been busy building his own 21st-century empire of supernatural fiction (check out his state-of-the-art website). His latest novel, Isis, is a feat of old-fashioned storytelling. When 16-year-old Iris Villiers loses her beloved older brother in a tragic accident, she will do almost anything to get him back. But, as any wise reader knows, summoning the dead back to Earth against their will often has grave consequences. This brief chiller should be read aloud, in a happy company ready to be distressed, while a surplus of Halloween candy sweetens Clegg’s bitter little masterpiece.

Michael Alec Rose is a composer who teaches at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Beneath all the fun, Halloween upholds its spooky essence. On a single October night, we celebrate the darkest side of ourselves: our fundamental desire to transcend our natures, to exceed mortal limits, to claim unwarranted power. We let our children don horrific masks and gather…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Mummies and monsters and scarecrows, oh my!

Feature by Ellen Trachtenberg

Something is lurking out there. Scarecrows are stirring, black cats are making mischief, and innocent young girls are taking to their broomsticks. It must be, it must be . . . this season’s bumper crop of fabulous Halloween picture books. By the time everyone’s favorite dress-up day arrives, there will be candy to fill young bellies and literary treats to feed imaginations. You’ll recognize many of the authors and artists—including Jane Yolen, Ed Emberley and Lois Ehlert—and a few newer storytellers have been added to the brew. This particular blend of spooky stuff will draw so much deserved attention, Frankenstein’s monster will be positively green with envy.

Mummy dearest
When you first glance at the cover of The Runaway Mummy, you may be overcome with a spooky sort of déjà-vu. In case you missed the thread that began with last year’s best-selling Goodnight Goon, Michael Rex’s latest parody is a ghoulishly gleeful take on Margaret Wise Brown’s classic, The Runaway Bunny. And while the cast of characters may not be as warm and fuzzy as in the original story, the mummy love is ever abundant. While her son morphs into a series of crazy creatures, mom is hot on his trail. “If you try to get me,” said the little mummy, “I will turn into a serpent that lurks at the bottom of the sea.” But Mother Mummy has him covered, delivering a squeeze worthy of a giant squid. Little mummy finds that independence is elusive until a surprise ending turns the story on its tail, leaving readers wondering what sort of mischief Michael Rex might make with The Big Red Barn.

Garden of delights
Sure to be another monster hit for author and artist Lois Ehlert, Boo to You! lends her impressive trademark multimedia collage style to an autumn feast for the eyes, set to rhythmic verse. A harvest party is being planned by the garden mice but a pesky cat is determined to spoil the fun. It’s really a dilemma, because “A raccoon or a squirrel might bite a veggie, but a cat loves meat, and that makes us edgy.” The crafty mice devise a plan to scare the kitty, and it unfolds with a satisfying surprise. You know Ehlert from Eating the Alphabet, Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and many others. Her latest effort will bring jack-o-lantern grins to the faces of a whole new generation of admirers.

Monsters afoot
The Monsterologist: A Memoir in Rhyme is an exuberant collection of poems about monsters of every stripe—in the engaging form of letters, notes and secret files—that gives readers a rare and comical glimpse at their private lives and predilections. There’s a personal invitation from Count Dracula, a warning about werewolves, an exclusive interview with the Loch Ness Monster and a classified email about zombie research. Appropriately, this is Bobbi Katz’s 13th poetry collection. Her others include We the People: Poems and Once around the Sun. Adam McCauley’s mixed media design is great fun and likely to convince children that they are indeed holding a rare collection of monster memorabilia.

It’s time for a sing-along. “There was an old monster who swallowed a tick. I don’t know why he swallowed the tick ‘cause it made him feel sick.” The creepy critters being ingested by our gluttonous friend in There Was An Old Monster! range from ants and bats to lizards and a lone jackal. It culminates with a lion and, well, it’s not necessarily a happy ending. The Emberley family—Rebecca, Adrian and Ed, a Caldecott Medal winner for Drummer Hoff—has joined together to give us a twisted take on an already twisted tune that will be a memorable addition to Halloween pageants everywhere. Readers who can’t seem to get the catchy refrain out of their heads will be happy to find it available for download on Scholastic’s website.

Vampires next door
The new neighbors are a vexing bunch to young Bram Pire. In Dear Vampa Bram dashes off a letter to his Vampa in Transylvania to blow off a bit of steam. For starters, the Wolfson family stays up all day long and seems overly fond of sunshine (“Mom says it’s disgusting”). They lock their windows at night (“It’s so inconsiderate”), and call the cops when the Pires engage in a bit of rooftop revelry at midnight. When the Wolfsons take up slingshots to shoot the Pires out of the sky during their “evening flutter,” it’s the last straw for Mom and Dad. But are the Wolfsons keeping a dark secret of their own? Ross Collins, the author and illustrator of Medusa Jones and Germs, introduces irony into his story at a level that won’t fly over the heads of young readers and his mod-goth style will appeal to graphic novel devotees in the making. This is Halloween hilarity at its hippest.

As the (scare)crow flies
Scarecrows aren’t normally known for their fancy footwork, but in the hands of Jane Yolen and illustrator Bagram Ibatoulline, one comes alive with wild abandon in The Scarecrow’s Dance. When the wind began to blow “He shrugged his shoulders / And a grin / Just like a corn row, / And as thin, / Broke out along / His painted face. / He gave a leap— / And left the place.” The scarecrow dances past the barn and peers in the window of the farmhouse where he glimpses a young boy reciting his prayers. As he leans in to listen to the child’s appeal for a healthy corn crop, the scarecrow knows he must return to his post to do his part. Ibatoulline’s gouache and watercolor illustrations are breathtaking and readers of all ages will appreciate Yolen’s refined verse and the book’s final message about responsibility.

Ellen Trachtenberg is the author of A Parent’s Guide to the Best Children’s Literature.

Something is lurking out there. Scarecrows are stirring, black cats are making mischief, and innocent young girls are taking to their broomsticks. It must be, it must be . . . this season’s bumper crop of fabulous Halloween picture books. By the time everyone’s favorite…

Military History

Military histories honor veterans of American conflicts

Feature by Howard Shirley

Veterans Day, November 11, began as Armistice Day—the day on which World War I, or The Great War as it was then known, came to a messy, awkward close. But as later wars became more significant to America, Armistice Day changed to Veterans Day as a way to celebrate all veterans of conflicts past and present. In keeping with that goal, five excellent new books offer fresh perspectives on the American military experience.

A grandfather’s legacy
James Carl Nelson’s The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War began as a quest to uncover the past of one American veteran of that war—Nelson’s grandfather, a taciturn Swedish immigrant named Jon Nilsson. He came to America only to be drafted by his newfound nation and sent back across the ocean to fight on the very continent he had left behind. Knowing only that his grandfather had been wounded by a German machine gun in the battle of Soisson, Nelson was inspired to discover his story, as well as the story of the other men who found themselves running into the German lines on that fateful July day. The result is a moving account of young men swept into a war few truly understood, who nevertheless found exceptional courage amid horrors they never imagined. Using personal accounts derived from journals and letters of the men and their families—many who never knew their sons’ and husbands’ final fates—Nelson recreates their experiences in vivid detail. The Remains of Company D immerses the reader in the world of the doughboys, helping us see a war of dwindling memory through the eyes of those who lived—and died—while waging it.

From Pusan to Inchon
Another war even less well-known to modern readers is nevertheless considerably closer in time—the Korean War, with origins almost as muddled as that of World War I. The Darkest Summer: Pusan and Inchon 1950: The Battles that Saved Korea—and the Marines—From Extinction, by Bill Sloan, recounts the origins and first year of what almost became America’s greatest military disaster. As might be expected from the subtitle, Sloan focuses heavily on the contribution of the Marine Corps, which prior to the Korean conflict was in danger of being reduced to little more than a ceremonial guard. In Korea, the Marine Corps proved itself to be America’s only truly battle-ready force in the wake of drastic post-WWII military cuts. Sloan deftly combines a thorough explanation of the causes and politics behind the Korean War with riveting descriptions of the battles, from the near rout as North Korean forces pushed the woefully ill-equipped and under-trained U.S. Eighth Army almost into the sea at Pusan, to the stunning reversal at Inchon that handed the U.S. its greatest military triumph since D-Day—only to be reversed yet again when China poured human wave attacks across the Yalu River. Sloan’s account ends there—but one hopes he will pick up the story once more. In era when the world is once again facing strategic challenges in Korea, The Darkest Summer is a compelling read and a timely reminder of a “forgotten war.”

New appraisals
Like the veterans of World War I, the men and women of World War II are slowly leaving us behind, and with them goes the living memory of their deeds. Antony Beevor’s D-Day: The Battle for Normandy is a powerful reminder of just how great their accomplishments were. Beginning with the build-up to invasion, Beevor follows the Allied forces through the greatest amphibious landing in history, across the hedgerows of France and through the glorious entry into Paris. From the upper-level planning of generals to the desperate fights of the men themselves, Beevor skillfully covers the full scope of the summer offensive that liberated France and signaled the inevitable end of Hitler and the Third Reich. Whether you’re familiar with the names and events of 1944 or curious to learn more, Beevor’s D-Day is a comprehensive and thoroughly engaging journey back through time.

Equally engaging is John Keegan’s The American Civil War: A Military History. The master of military history sets his pen to what may be the most seminal war of the American experience, the war that remains the bloodiest conflict and the most indelible in the American historical consciousness. Whereas many books share the story and causes of the war, or discuss the personalities, politics and battles, Keegan examines how and why the war unfolded as it did—both the deliberate strategy-making and the almost accidental developments brought about by such disparate concerns as geography and social politics. The result is a highly readable overview of the war that goes far beyond merely describing who fought where. Through Keegan’s book, one gains an understanding of why the battles happened as they did, where they did, and how they fit into the whole story of the war and its resulting influence on our nation. Both the casual reader and the Civil War buff will find much to appreciate in this excellent work.

Final rest
Lastly, we come to a book about a place that is unquestionably the most sacred military site in the national psyche. No battle was ever fought there. It saw no triumph of arms, no treaty, no surrender, no speech of resounding note—but its importance to the nation and the nation’s military is unequaled, because it is the final resting place of our most honored dead. Robert M. Poole’s On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery explores the history of the vaunted cemetery across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., and the uniquely American approach to honoring our military heroes. What began as a way to punish Robert E. Lee by seizing his Arlington, Virginia estate and rendering it “inhospitable” for his return, turned into one of the greatest sources of healing for a grieving, divided nation. It also inspired an unparalleled commitment by the country to find, identify (if possible) and, if requested by the family, bring home with honor the body of every American service person who died in battle, regardless of where or when. Poole’s book is both sobering and inspiring as it explores the history of this remarkable tradition and the quietly majestic site to which many of those men and women have returned. As we celebrate the living on Veterans Day, On Hallowed Ground is a beautiful portrait of the place where we honor their fallen comrades.

Howard Shirley is a writer in Franklin, Tennessee.

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Veterans Day, November 11, began as Armistice Day—the day on which World War I, or The Great War as it was then known, came to a messy, awkward close. But as later wars became more significant to America, Armistice Day changed to Veterans Day as…

Biography

Bright lights, big names

Feature by Pat H. Broeske

The star names shine particularly bright on the bookshelves this holiday season. Where to begin? How about age before beauty . . .

The good ol’ boys
The life, times and works of an iconoclast filmmaker are examined in Robert Altman: The Oral Biography. Author Mitchell Zuckoff rounded up family members (including exes), associates and countless actors who assess the director known for ensemble casts, overlapping sound, a dense and naturalistic style and disdain for the Hollywood system. To Altman, the great films were inexplicable; a moviegoer might not be able to recount the plot, but they knew they’d experienced something. Little wonder Altman’s Nashville is so revered.

A former documentary filmmaker (see 1957’s compelling The James Dean Story) who directed episodic TV in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Altman became a counterculture force with the 1970 film M*A*S*H. (He had nothing to do with the TV series, which he hated.) Critical successes followed, as did flops. But the rollercoaster career was never boring. Neither was the hard-living Altman, who died in 2006 at the age of 81. As confounding as his films, he was alternately gregarious, self-absorbed and bitter. He demanded loyalty from the troops; sensing otherwise, he held a grudge. “His eyes were fantastic instruments of reprimand and reproach,” recalled composer John Williams. But as careers go, Altman gave it his all, and he did it the hard way—by remaining true to himself.

Another famous maverick is the subject of the unauthorized American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood. But this is no “gotcha” tome; author Marc Eliot is reverential as he links Eastwood’s personal life with his professional choices. Based largely on previously published works, the book moves along quickly, fueled by Eliot’s astute knowledge of the Eastwood filmography, including the performer’s three essential screen personae: The Man With No Name (the spaghetti Westerns); nihilistic “Dirty” Harry Callahan; and the good-natured redneck. All “are viscerally connected to the real-life Clint,” Eliot argues. Eastwood’s Army days were a conduit to Hollywood—and beyond. As a base lifeguard and projectionist, he met young actors like David Janssen and Martin Milner, who served in the Special Services. (Like Janssen and Milner, Eastwood became a contract player at Universal.) Being stationed at Fort Ord allowed him to explore the fabulous Northern California coastline—and the quaint city of Carmel, where he would ultimately become mayor.
Like the men he has portrayed, Eastwood goes his own way, and is not to be crossed. Though he had a long first marriage, he was never the faithful type. Over the years and under the radar, he fathered four illegitimate children, in addition to two with his first wife and one with the current Mrs. Eastwood (who is much younger than Eastwood’s 79 years). A palimony suit involving his former lover, actress Sondra Locke, put his unorthodox personal life in the spotlight. But his cinematic artistry on the big screen has remained unspoiled over the years—a testament to hard work, resourcefulness and a deft understanding of moviegoer’s tastes. As for Eastwood’s special allure, the Italian director Sergio Leone once said, “It seemed to me Clint closely resembled a cat.” He’s moved like one, too—pouncing to the top of the Hollywood fence.

Glamour girls
Though Liz Taylor long ago lost her perch as a leading lady, her name continues to evoke fame like few others. William J. Mann dissects the crafty machinations of her stardom in the biographical How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood. The author, who last wrote about Katharine Hepburn, interviewed Taylor sources and exhaustively examined the publicity that has accompanied the life and career of a woman who once casually observed that she couldn’t recall when she wasn’t famous. Mann concentrates on what he calls the “chocolate sundae” years—those of the great films and great romances. That period encompasses her carefully staged illnesses and botched suicide attempt, the Liz-Eddie-Debbie drama, the scandalous Liz-Dick Cleopatra hookup, her friendships with gay icons Monty Clift and Rock Hudson . . . which all played out publicly, with Liz working the media. Say what you will about her, the woman knew how to be a star.

Grace Kelly knew how to evoke style, class and an on-screen cool. Celebrity biographer Donald Spoto met her in her incarnation as Princess Grace of Monaco, while writing one of his many books on Alfred Hitchcock, director of three films in which she starred. At her request, he waited 25 years after her death to write High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, a respectful take on a woman whose impassive calm hid great passion (there were many lovers) and whose serenity masked her melancholy.

Another screen icon is profiled in Doris Day: The Illustrated Biography, by frequent BBC broadcaster and prolific celebrity biographer Michael Freedland.The book hits the career highlights and personal benchmarks of a complex woman whose life is at odds with her sunny image. First published in the U.K. in 2000, the book doesn’t include recent events in Day’s life, such as the death in 2004 of her only son, record producer Terry Melcher. But the slender volume succeeds as a stocking stuffer-sized introduction to the vivacious actress-singer-animal rights activist.

All about Paul
Ending on a musical note, Paul McCartney: A Life, is a page-turner that depicts McCartney as an ambitious, intuitive musical innovator, ever in competition with the rougher-edged John Lennon. Peter Ames Carlin, author of an acclaimed bio of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, is a journalist-fan who’s dug deep and written authoritatively. It’s all here: the genesis of the Beatles; McCartney’s relationship with the sophisticated and cultured Jane Asher—and her family (with whom he lived); his romances and marriages; the contractual battles with John and Yoko. And of course, there’s the music, with Carlin arguing that it was the “cute” Beatle who was the real force behind the Fab Four. Be prepared to be convinced.

Author-journalist Pat H. Broeske has written about Hollywood for publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly.

The star names shine particularly bright on the bookshelves this holiday season. Where to begin? How about age before beauty . . .

The good ol’ boys
The life, times and works of an iconoclast filmmaker are examined in Robert Altman: The Oral Biography. Author…

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