Booklist articles from January 2002

Booklist archives from January 2002

Adult Books.(Review)
January 1, 2002... The Adult Books editors have selected the following titles as representative of the year's outstanding books for public-library collections. Our scope has been intentionally broad, and we have attempted to find books that combine literary,...

The Quest for Paradise: Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World's Myths and Religions. (Arts & Literature).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Ashton, John and Whyte, Tom. The Quest for Paradise: Visions of Heaven and Eternity in the World's Myths and Religions. HarperSanFrancisco, $30 (0-06-251735-X). Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and Bob Marley's Rastafarian reggae are just...

The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. (Arts & Literature.(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Babel, Isaac. The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. Ed. by Nathalie Babel. Tr. by Peter Constantine. illus. Norton, $39.95 (0-393-04846-2). Remembered primarily for his scorching Red Calvary stories, Babel (1894-1940), elusive and intriguing,...

Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. (Arts & Literature).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America. illus. Univ. of Texas, $70 (0-292-70857-2); paper, $34.95 (0-292-70858-0). Overlooked in most Western art surveys, Latin American art, the fruit of violent collisions among...

Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir. (Arts & Literature).
January 1, 2002... Hogan, Linda. Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir. Norton, $24.95 (0-393-05018-1). Chickasaw novelist Hogan tells her harrowing life story in this beautifully rendered, cathartic, and ultimately transcendent narrative,...

Aaron Rose: Photographs. (Arts & Literature).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Rose, Aaron and Corn, Alfred. Aaron Rose: Photographs. Abrams, $49.50 (0-8109-4224-0). A peerless art photographer, Rose creates black-and-white images, caught in long exposures with a pinhole camera, that he individually tints in the...

Selected Photographs, 1953-1999. (Arts & Literature).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Tice, George A. Selected Photographs, 1953-1999. Godine/Pocket Paragon, paper, $16.95 (1-56792-153-1). Whether photographing rural or urban, intimate or panoramic subjects, Tice produces sublimely still, exquisitely arranged...

Thirteen Senses. (Arts & Literature).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Villasenor, Victor. Thirteen Senses. HarperCollins/Rayo, $26 (0-06-62107-1). The saga Villasenor began in Rain of Gold (1991) continues here, celebrating family, love, and immigrant culture. An enchanting, larger-than-life tale of how...

Ava's Man. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Bragg, Rick. Ava's Man. Knopf, $25 (0-375-41062-7). Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bragg's indelible portrait of his grandfather, who displayed a hard-eyed independence despite harsh poverty, is rendered in eloquent, vivid language....

Norman Rockwell. (Biography).
January 1, 2002... Claridge, Laura. Norman Rockwell. Random, $35 (0-375-50453-2). Rockwell has remained an enigma in spite of the universal fame of his witty and technically brilliant Saturday Evening Post covers. Now Claridge reveals his dreams and...

Marie Antoinette: The Journey. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $35 (0-385-48948-X). A popular British writer clears up myths and fallacies associated with the consort of the guillotined Louis XVI of France in this vivid,...

Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, the Early Years, 1903-1940. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, the Early Years, 1903-1940. Little, Brown, $30 (0-316-88188-0). Those who remember Bing Crosby only for "White Christmas" may be surprised to find jazz-critic Giddins singing Der Bingle's...

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. Random, $35 (0-679-44986-8). Weaving together a chronologically integrated reading of Emily Dickinson's poetry and correspondence, Habegger has written the most...

Churchill. (Biography).
January 1, 2002... Jenkins, Roy. Churchill. Farrar, $35 (0-374-12354-3). This stirring biography concentrates on analyzing the great man's evolution as a political animal, eloquently illustrating how Churchill, perhaps to serve his insatiable ambition,...

Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson's Disease. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Kondracke, Morton. Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson's Disease. Public Affairs, $25 (1-58648-037-5). The coolest yakking head in The McLaughlin Group movingly tells the story of his wife, Milly, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's....

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Mayle, Peter. French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew. Knopf, $24 (0-375-40590-9). Former British ad man Mayle has made a career out of living in the South of France and writing marvelously compelling books about it. His...

John Adams. (Biography).(McCullough, David)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, $35 (0-684-81363-7). McCullough's masterful biography brings the second president out from under the shadow of his legendary predecessor in that office, and the result is a wonderfully...

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random, $29.95 (0-394-57589-X). As she did for Zelda Fitzgerald 30 years ago, Milford resurrects the great and courageous lyric poet Edna St. Vincent Millay from...

Theodore Rex. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. Random, $35 (0-394-55509-0). The sequel to the award-winning The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) follows the course of TR's presidency. The reader experiences joy along with Roosevelt as he takes hold of the...

President Nixon: Alone in the White House. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Reeves, Richard. President Nixon: Alone in the White House. Simon & Schuster, $28 (0-684-80231-7). Reeves plunges into the mountains of material generated by "a presidency... documented with a compulsion that will probably never be...

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Sacks, Oliver. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. Knopf, $25 (0-375-40448-1). In his boyhood before, during, and just after World War II, neurologist-author Sacks was enthralled with chemistry, thanks to an uncle in the...

Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Secrest, Meryle. Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers. Knopf, $30 (0-375-40164-4). Think Richard Rodgers was as wholesome as The Sound of Music and his other collaborations with Oscar Hammerstein? Secrest's warts-and-all...

Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. (Biography).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Wullschlager, Jackie. Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. Knopf, $30 (0-679-45508-6). Fascinating is too mild a word for Wullschlager's life of the great Danish fairytale writer, who came out of more impoverished...

London: A Biography. (History).
January 1, 2002... Ackroyd, Peter. London: A Biography. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $45 (0-385-49770-9). Readers will be both edified and charmed by the renowned British novelist and biographer's chronicle of the "life" of the British capital. Full of glorious...

Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Bernal, Martin. Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics. Ed. by David Chioni Moore. Duke, $84.95 (0-8223-2706-6); paper, $24.95 (0-8223-2717-1). Bernal's controversial book Black Athena (1989) provoked passions with...

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument between Two Great Philosophers. (History).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2002... Edmonds, David and Eidinow, John. Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument between Two Great Philosophers. Ecco, $24 (0-06-621244-8). On the Cambridge University campus in 1946, two of the twentieth-century's most notable...

This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Ehrlich, Gretel. This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland. Pantheon, $27.50 (0-679-44200-6). Nature writer Ehrlich began traveling to Greenland during her recovery from a nearly fatal lightning strike, and her keen, often poetic...

Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Gay, Peter. Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914. Norton, $27.95 (0-393-04893-4). The award-winning historian demonstrates the Victorian era to be the virtual opposite of that century's reputation. Gay feels...

Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Hart, Matthew. Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession. Walker, $26 (0-8027-1368-8). Hart's fascinating account of the glittering business of mining and marketing diamonds is also a story of avarice, theft, aesthetics, monopoly,...

Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Shephard' Sue. Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World. Simon & Schuster, $26 (0-7432-1633-4). In this entertaining, enlightening history of food preservation, Shephard reveals the...

Images from the Storm: 300 Civil War Images by the Author of Eye of the Storm. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Sneden, Robert Knox. Images from the Storm: 300 Civil War Images by the Author of Eye of the Storm. Free Press, $50 (0-7432-2360-8). This album captures a selection of a Union soldier's extraordinary paintings based on his experience in the...

American Colonies. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. Viking, $29.95 (0-670-87282-2). This prizewinning historian adds another entry to his prestigious oeuvre with his interpretation of a continent benefiting from a wealth of cultural groups. A far cry from the...

Venice: Lion City: The Religion of Empire. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Wills, Garry. Venice: Lion City: The Religion of Empire. Simon & Schuster, $35 (0-684-87190-4). Historian Wills authoritatively tackles the complicated but fascinating history of Venice during its golden age of empire in the fifteenth and...

A President in the Family: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson. (History).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Woodson, Byron W. A President in the Family: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson. Greenwood/Praeger, $24.95 (0-275-97174-0). Woodson conveys the pain, pride, and persistence of a remarkable family that faced nearly 200...

The Roads Have Come to an End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen. (Poetry).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Jacobsen, Rolf. The Roads Have Come to an End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen. Tr. by Robert Bly and others. Copper Canyon, paper, $16 (1-55659-165-9). This bilingual (Norwegian-English) edition of 73 poems demonstrates a...

Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001. (Poetry).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Rogers, Pattiann. Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001. Milkweed, $29.95 (1-57131-413-X). Rogers has a scientist's curiosity and a poet's eye and consequently writes of the cosmos--from the subatomic world to the...

Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. (Science).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Chatters, James C. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. Simon & Schuster, $26 (0-684-85936-X). Found in 1996, the oldest near-complete human skeleton in North America was immediately controversial. Chatters colorfully...

Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time. (Science).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Gott, J. Richard. Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time. Houghton, $24 (0-395-95563-7). Gott well understands the complexities that attend any attempt to turn time travel from an idle dream...

Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth ... and Beyond. (Science).
January 1, 2002... Krauss, Lawrence M. Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth... and Beyond. Little, Brown, $26 (0-316-49946-3). Surpassing even Blake's vision of the world in a grain of sand, Krauss offers readers the entire cosmos in a mere...

The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. (Science).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Matthiessen, Peter. The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. Farrar/North Point, $27 (0-374-19944-2). Matthiessen is among the most outstanding nature writers of our time, and his latest book more than amply displays his talents. He...

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. (Social Sciences).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. Random, $24.95 (0-375-50129-0). Pollan intertwines history, anecdote, and epiphany in this paradigm-altering view of the mutually beneficial relationships between...

The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead. (Social Sciences).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Pringle, Heather. The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead. Hyperion/Theia, $23.95 (0-7868-6551-2). Besides outstanding members of the scientific association that gathers as the Mummy Congress, Pringle limns the many...

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith. (Social Sciences).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Terkel, Studs. Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith. New Press, $25.95 (1-56584-692-3). Gifted interviewer Terkel talks to 60 people about their encounters with death. His subjects range from...

The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. (Social Sciences).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Waal, Frans de. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. Basic, $26 (0-465-04175-2). A great primatologist summarizes 30 years of observing animals, arguing that, since other animals create cultures, they are...

Strange Fire. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Bukiet, Melvin Jules. Strange Fire. Norton, $24.95 (0-393-04938-8). Bukiet's black and biting satirical fiction has been well received, but this is his breakthrough book--a smart, crisp, political page-turner narrated by a blind Russian...

Gabriel's Story. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Durham, David Anthony. Gabriel's Story. Doubleday, $23.95 (0-385-49814-4). In this powerful coming-of-age story about two post-Civil War African American teens who leave home to become cowboys, Durham both recalls the work of Cormac...

Look at Me. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Egan, Jennifer. Look at Me. Doubleday/ Nan A. Talese, $24.95 (0-385-50276-1). In her arresting and masterfully plotted novel of a Midwest girl who becomes a New York model and her bold young namesake, Egan dramatizes the dichotomies of...

The Royal Physician's Visit. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Enquist, Per Olov. The Royal Physician's Visit. Tr. by Tiina Nunnally. Overlook, $26.95 (1-58567-196-7). In this masterful Swedish novel about the Danish revolution of 1768-72, a deranged king, his adolescent queen, his...

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Erdrich, Louise. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. HarperCollins, $26 (0-06-018727-1). In this saga of the common-law widow of a German farmer who finds her mission in life by impersonating a dead priest, Erdrich offers a...

The Corrections. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Franzen, Jonathan. The Corrections. Farrar, $25 (0-374-12998-3). Franzen has taken a potentially sentimental framework, a midwestern woman's desire to have all three of her adult children home for Christmas before their father succumbs to...

The Pickup. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Gordimer, Nadine. The Pickup. Farrar, $23 (0-374-23210-5). Gordimer takes a postapartheid South African woman out to a widening world in this story of Julie Summers--rich, white, and guilty--who follows her Arab immigrant lover home to his...

The Grand Complication. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Kurzweil, Allen. The Grand Complication. Hyperion/Theia, $24.95 (0-7868-6603-9). Alexander Short, NYPL reference librarian, comes to the aid of a bibliophile who is searching for information about an unusual eighteenth-century cabinet. In...

The Rock: A Seventh-Century Tale of Jerusalem. (Fiction).
January 1, 2002... Makiya, Kanan. The Rock: A Seventh-Century Tale of Jerusalem. Pantheon, $26 (0-375-40087-7). Immersing the reader in seventh-century Jerusalem, Makiya brings to life K'ab, a Jewish advisor to the fourth caliph of the Islamic empire, who...

Taps. (Fiction).
January 1, 2002... Morris, Willie. Taps. Houghton, $26 (0-618-09859-3). The last book by this gritty, feisty, and eloquent Mississippian (who died in 1999) reads like a summary statement of his fondness for his native state as he follows 16-year-old Swayze...

Azarel. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Pap, Karoly. Azarel. Tr. by Paul Olchvary. Steerforth, paper, $14 (1-58642-019-4). Gyuri Azarel's grandfather takes the toddler from his parents to live a life of extreme Jewish Orthodoxy until passage to Israel is arranged. But his...

The Nautical Chart. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Perez-Reverte, Arturo. The Nautical Chart. Tr. by Margaret Sayers Peden. Harcourt, $26 (0-15-100534-6). Merging the swashbuckling spirit of the best sea adventures with an introspective, philosophical meditation on the idea of navigation,...

Fury. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Rushdie, Salman. Fury. Random, $24.95 (0-679-46333-X). The author's latest novel, about the abrasions on the soul inflicted by today's cell-phone society, is a brilliant paradigm of contemporary commercial crassness and sexual exhaustion,

Empire Falls. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Russo, Richard. Empire Falls. Knopf, $25.95 (0-679-43247-7). In a warmhearted novel of sweeping scope, Russo animates the dead-end world of Empire Falls, Maine, and shows an unerring sense of the rhythms of small-town life, balancing his...

Secret Love. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Schneider, Bart. Secret Love. Viking, $25.95 (0-670-89492-3). In a double love story set against the civil rights activism of the early 1960s, four characters embrace forbidden relationships with tenderness and passion and then must deal...

Highwire Moon. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Straight, Susan. Highwire Moon. Houghton, $24 (0-618-05614-9). In her acutely observant and compassionate fourth novel, Straight casts Southern California as a microcosm of injustice in an involving, often sad, ultimately affirming tale...

Hotel Honolulu. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Theroux, Paul. Hotel Honolulu. Houghton, $26 (0-618-14613-X). Theroux perfectly captures Hawaii's unique cultural and racial amalgam in a tale rich in vigorous description, complex pathos, and ironic humor. The action is set in a funky old...

The Feast of the Goat. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Feast of the Goat. Tr. by Edith Grossman. Farrar, $25 (0-374-15476-7). In a powerfully drawn anatomy of tyranny and tyrannicide, the great Peruvian master reenvisions the Dominican Republic in 1961, at the time of...

John Henry Days. (Fiction).(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Whitehead, Colson. John Henry Days. Doubleday, $24.95 (0-385-49819-5). Whitehead conducts an inventive, funny, and bittersweet inquiry into the significance of folk hero John Henry by paralleling the legend of the steel-driving man who...

Adult books for young adults.(Review)
January 1, 2002... Chosen by the Books for Youth editors, the following titles constitute the year's best personal reading for teenagers among the adult books published in 2001. More on suggested audience, content, etc., can be found in the full-length Booklist...

The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Burger, Joanna. The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship. Villard, $23.95 (0-679-46330-5). In a warm, funny pet story that is also scientifically accurate, ornithologist Burger and her husband adopt a 35-year-old parrot, and...

The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora. Ed. by Edwidge Danticat. Soho; dist. by Farrar, paper, $15 (1-56947-218-1). Gripping, frank, immediate, and very easy to read, these searing essays and poems talk about the pain and...

Daughters of Absence: Transforming a Legacy of Loss. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Daughters of Absence: Transforming a Legacy of Loss. Ed. by Mindy Weisel. Capital, $26.95 (1-892123-37-1). Twelve daughters of Holocaust survivors--many of them writers and artists--talk eloquently about growing up in the shadow of their...

Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir. (Nonfiction).
January 1, 2002... Hogan, Linda. Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir. Norton, $24.95 (0-393-05018-1). For older teens, this is a haunting, courageous memoir by Chickasaw novelist Hogan, much of it about young people who are lost, broken, and...

Help Wanted: Tales from the First Job Front. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Lewis, Sydney. Help Wanted: Tales from the First Job Front. New Press, $25 (1-56584-369-X). Twenty-five young people talk about what it's like to enter the workforce: to search for a job, encounter great bosses and survive horrible ones,...

Gold in the Water: The True Story of Ordinary Men and Their Extraordinary Dreams of Olympic Glory. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Mullen, P. H. Gold in the Water: The True Story of Ordinary Men and Their Extraordinary Dreams of Olympic Glory. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-26595-6). Young athletes will be enthralled by this realistic, personal view of the...

When the Drama Club Is Not Enough: Lessons from the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Perrotti, Jeff and Westheimer, Kim. When the Drama Club Is Not Enough: Lessons from the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students. Beacon, $22 (0-8070-3130-5). For both students and adults, this is a moving account of many teens'...

Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Pollitt, Katha. Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture. Random/Modern Library, paper, $12.95 (0-679-78343-1). Based on Pollitt's popular columns for the Nation, these witty, passionate, irreverent essays open...

The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Reid, T. R. The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution. Random, paper, $13.95 (0-375-75828-3). With excitement and clarity, Reid explains the technology, traces the history of electronics, and tells the...

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Houghton, $25 (0-395-97789-4). As consumers and as minimum-wage workers, teens are at the center of this gripping and sometimes scary account, which tells the truth...

Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Stark, Peter. Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance. Ballantine, $24 (0-345-44150-8). What happens when you freeze or drown or die of thirst or contract malaria or fall from a mountain? The combination of...

Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. (Nonfiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Walker, Rebecca. Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. Riverhead, $23.95 (1-57322-169-4). In a candid, unforgettable memoir, the daughter of Alice Walker and Mel Leventhal talks about growing up confused about race,...

Yokota Officers Club. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Bird, Sarah. Yokota Officers Club. Knopf, $23 (0-375-41214-X). Both funny and heartbreaking, this is a gripping novel of family secrets, told through the viewpoint of a teenage army brat, who blames herself for her parents' problems even as...

Open Season. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Box, C. J. Open Season. Putnam, $23.95 (0-399-14748-9). In his rookie year as game warden in Wyoming, Joe Pickett uncovers a many-tentacled scam involving an oil pipeline and an endangered species. The mystery in the rugged outdoors will...

All Loves Excelling. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Bunting, Josiah. All Loves Excelling. Bridge Works, $22.95 (1-882593-40-5). The pressure to get into a prestigious college is the drama in this realistic, contemporary story of a hardworking high-school student who is driven to a breakdown...

Bombingham. (Fiction).
January 1, 2002... Grooms, Anthony. Bombingham. Free Press, $24 (0-7432-0558-8). A young soldier in Vietnam remembers his coming-of-age during the civil rights era in Birmingham, Alabama, and his loving family's struggle with his mother's critical illness.

The Boys' House: New & Selected Stories. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Heynen, Jim. The Boys' House: New & Selected Stories. Minnesota Historical Society, $19.95 (0-87351-413-0). Part vignette, part story, these short, gentle, earthy, mysterious, and hilarious pieces about midwestern farm boys are rooted in...

The Serpent's Shadow. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Lackey, Mercedes. The Serpent's Shadow. DAW; dist. by Penguin, $24.95 (0-88677-915-4). Set in an alternate Victorian London, this fantasy is about Dr. Maya Witherspoon, daughter of a Brahmin lady and an English physician, who practices...

The Rover. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Odom, Mel. The Rover. Tot, $25.95 (0-312-87882-6). Combining farce and derring-do, Odom pushes the conventions of fantasy to the max in a rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud romp with wonderful characters and nonstop action.

Flight and Other Stories. (Fiction).(Young Adult Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2002... Skinner, Jose. Flight and Other Stories. Univ. of Nevada, paper, $15 (0-87417-359-0). Fourteen realistic coming-of-age stories about young Latinos in the Southwest introduce readers to a variety of people and places and the distances...