Booklist articles from January 2004

Booklist archives from January 2004

Chapin, Ted. Everything Was Possible: the Birth of the Musical Follies.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $30 (0-375-41328-6). As a gofer for the production team of Stephen Sondheim's landmark musical Follies, Chapin knew something big was happening. He kept a journal that became the basis of one of the most important books ever about...

Geesaman, Lynn and Klinkenborg, Verlyn. Gardenscapes.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Aperture, $40 (1-931788-20-0). To confer painterly qualities on her ravishing photographs of formal gardens, Geesaman experiments with degrees of coloration in the darkroom and realizes a new, unsentimental photographic pictorialism as...

Hughes, Robert. Goya.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $40 (0-394-58028-1). Hughes, art critic for Time, offers an expert, passionate, and profound appreciation for Goya's revolutionary genius, "immense humanity," and indelible works of both bold satire and epic tragedy in a fresh and...

Reynolds, Nancy and McCormick, Malcolm. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Yale, $50 (0-300-09366-7). Twentieth-century dance encompasses an astonishing range of innovations and styles, thanks to the vision of a group of seminal choreographers, who are sensitively profiled in conjunction with authoritative...

Baiev, Khassan and others. The Oath: a Surgeon under Fire.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Walker, $26 (0-8027-1404-8). This remarkable memoir tells the story of a surgeon in Chechnya who, through two invasions of his homeland, refused to take up arms, choosing instead to treat civilians and soldiers on both sides, even as he...

Bate, Jonathan. John Clare.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $35 (0-374-17990-5). Often writing as beautifully as his subject did, Bate creates the first full-scale biography of the farm laborer who is now considered the peer of his fellow second-generation British Romantic poets, Byron,...

Bizot, Francois. The Gate.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Tr. by Euan Cameron. Knopf, $24.95 (0-375-41293-X). As the only Westerner to survive one of Pol Pot's prison camps, Bizot saw up close the faces of the ideologues who dragged Cambodia into the nightmare of genocide. His tale of his...

Bruck, Connie. When Hollywood Had a King: the Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Random, $29.95 (0-375-50168-1). In this riveting account of power-broking in Tinseltown, Bruck shows how Lew Wasserman managed both to end the era of movie moguls (by freeing the stars of the 1940s from their studio contracts) and then to...

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Tr. by Edith Grossman. Knopf, $26.95 (1-4000-4134-1). Nobel laureate Garcia Marquez tells the entrancing story of his remarkable family, chronicles the turbulence of his troubled country, Colombia, and offers a piquant portrait of himself...

Gilmour, David. Curzon: Imperial Statesman.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $45 (0-374-13356-5). Many of the men who administered the British Empire possessed immense intellect, creativity, and curiosity. Here Gilmour chronicles the life of one of the true giants of the latter stages of the empire, and it...

Moorehead, Caroline. Gellhorn: a Twentieth-Century Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Holt, $27.50 (0-8050-6553-9). Acclaimed biographer Moorehead offers a riveting portrait, the first, of Martha Gellhorn, intrepid world traveler, war correspondent, and true free spirit, who covered the twentieth's century's most horrific...

Nuland, Sherwin B. Lost in America: a Journey with My Father.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $24 (0-375-41294-8). Although Meyer Nudelman died without having revealed much of his tragedy-stalked early life, his son Sherwin (who changed his last name) makes of what he knew and learned a book to stand with Edmund Gosse's...

O'Faolain, Nuala. Almost There.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Riverhead, $24.95 (1-57322-438-3). With a candor that is both rare and startling, sixtysomething Irish Times journalist O'Faolain speaks poignantly and eloquently about the struggle for emotional growth in the face of pain and midlife...

Silverman, Kenneth. Lightning Man: the Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $35 (0-375-40128-8). Masterful biographer Silverman's great talent, in this exemplary work about the inventor of the electric telegraph, lies in the way he refrains from expostulating directly, allowing Morse's habits and actions to...

Starkey, David. Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $29.95 (0-694-01043-X). In Starkey's account of the fates of the six wives of England's king Henry VIII, the detail is profuse but luscious. Truly, this is history made as fluent and compelling as excellent fiction.

Taubman, William. Khrushchev: the Man and His Era.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $35 (0-393-05144-7). Taubman highlights the paradox at the center of Khrushchev's life--although he was complicit in the crimes of the Stalinist era, he nevertheless retained his natural humanity. This outstanding work will...

Wolff, Geoffrey. The Art of Burning Bridges: a Life of John O'Hara.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $30 (0-679-42771-6). Often drunk, obsessively vain and thin-skinned, writer John O'Hara gave fits to his friends, ammunition to his enemies, and headaches to his editors. Wolff makes a compelling story from the juxtaposition of his...

Applebaum, Anne. Gulag.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Doubleday, $35 (0-7679-0056-1). With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the gradual opening of KGB archives, the full horror of the Gulag is gradually emerging, and Applebaum has done a masterful job of chronicling the origin, growth,...

Hemley, Robin. Invented Eden: the Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $25 (0-374-17716-3). Hemley revisits an infamous and persistently enigmatic chapter in the long and harrowing conflict between traditional cultures and industrialized societies in this compelling and exacting inquiry into the 1971...

Rocco, Fiammetta. The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $24.95 (0-06-019951-2). Rocco magisterially unfolds the saga of quinine, from seventeenth-century Spain's South American colonies to today's Congo, in the age-old battle against one of humanity's most persistent and...

Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $25.95 (0-06-621285-5). The eloquent, prolific British writer submits a fascinating account of the cataclysmic explosion of the East Indian volcanic island of Krakatoa in 1883. As exciting as the details are, Winchester gives...

Hirsch, Edward. Lay Back the Darkness.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $23 (0-375-41521-1). As Hirsch travels between the hectic and painful present and the timeless underworld--the wellspring of archetypes, dreams, and visions--in a quest for understanding life's hidden dimensions, his beautifully...

Poets of World War II.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ed. by Harvey Shapiro, Library of America, $20 (1-931082-33-2). Compared to the upper-class men who wrote the most famous English World War I poems, America's World War II poets lack patriotism and camaraderie. That doesn't detract from the...

Williams, C. K. The Singing.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $20 (0-374-29286-8). Williams addresses the dark mysteries of lost love, brute aggression, hate, and death with philosophical candor and a bracing command of language and imagery in this transfixing and cathartically probing...

Zahl, Paul F. M. The First Christian: Universal Truth in the Teachings of Jesus.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Eerdmans, paper, $16 (0-8028-2110-3). Pastor and theologian Zahl re-presents the Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom of God and announced the good news of salvation but also made clear that each person's salvation depends solely on God, not on...

Gallison, Peter. Einstein's Clocks and Poincare's Maps: Empire of Time.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $23.95 (0-393-02001-0). Gallison shows how Einstein's work was influenced by French cartographer Henri Poincare and by the physicist's own experience working in a Bern patent office, where the numerous patent requests for devices...

Mackenzie, Dana. The Big Splat; or, How Our Moon Came to Be.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Wiley, $24.95 (0-471-15057-6). Ace science writer Mackenzie's account of humanity's long relationship with Earth's only natural satellite, from a probable lunar calendar found in the Lascaux caves to the new "giant impact" theory of the...

Quammen, David. Monster of God: the Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $25.95 (0-393-05140-4). Seasoned science writer Quammen offers a unique and thought-provoking history of our species' complex relationship with man-eating lions, tigers, bears, and crocodiles, revealing how our fear of and...

Watson, James and Berry, Andrew. DNA: the Secret of Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $35 (0-375-41546-7). It's been 50 years since James Watson and Francis Crick divined the structure of DNA, and Watson celebrates by writing with great clarity about the revolution that followed, elucidating the biochemistry of...

Berry, Wendell. Citizenship Papers.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Avalon/Shoemaker and Hoard, $24 (1-59376-000-0). Berry's recent essays may restate what he has said before--that agribusiness and the new globalism are inimical to human thriving--but they say it better, and through different immediate...

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers' Republic: the Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $32.50 (0-375-40750-2). Without question, this is a difficult, demanding, and dense book--but it is also a greatly significant contribution to business literature. Prizewinning author Cohen submits a copiously researched,...

Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $18 (1-4000-4093-0). Tight, rigorous reasoning stands behind Kagan's cold analysis of the growing disparity between U.S and European views of the post-cold war world and how best to achieve peace and order. The controversial...

Kennedy, Randall. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Pantheon, $30 (0-375-40255-1). Kennedy offers a brilliant analysis of one of the most controversial areas of American race relations--interracial sex. The text weaves together history, law, literature, and politics in a searing examination...

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Crown, $25.95 (0-609-60844-4). Larson's ambitious, engrossing tale of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 focuses primarily on two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect who was the driving force behind the exposition, and Henry H. Holmes, a...

Light, Michael. 100 Suns: 1945-1962.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $45 (1-4000-4113-9). The "suns" Light presents to readers in this unprecedented and unforgettable photography collection are manmade: aboveground atomic detonations captured on film both in the Nevada desert and at sea, terrifyingly...

McKibben, Bill. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Holt/Times, $25 (0-8050-7096-6). Technological advancements are proceeding so rapidly that we will soon need to make decisions about how much technology is enough. McKibben makes genetic engineering understandable even to those who are not...

Seaman, Barbara. The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Hyperion, $24.95 (0-7868-6853-8). Scathingly indicting hormone replacement therapy in general and estrogen in particular, science journalist Seaman demonstrates that the pandemic abuse of the trust women place in their doctors begins with...

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $26 (0-385-50385-7). Atwood conjures a bleak, all-too-plausible future in this hijack-intense and caustically humorous speculative novel about a man struggling to survive in the wake of a bioengineering-stoked...

Boyle, T. C. Drop City.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Viking, $25.95 (0-670-03172-0). Mesmerizing storyteller and shrewd satirist Boyle writes with seductive detail about a hedonistic hippie commune that coalesces in California and then moves to Alaska, where survival is a more serious...

Bukoski, Anthony. Time Between Trains.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Southern Methodist. $22.50 (0-87074-479-8). In some of the most beautifully written short stories since Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Bukoski presents the people of Superior, Wisconsin's Polish East End, each of them passionate,...

Cantor, Jay. Great Neck.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $29.95 (0-375-41394-4). Cantor explores the psychology of revolt and the high cost of radical activism in this many-faceted novel about a group of young Jews growing up in Great Neck, New York, who are shocked to learn about the...

Carey, Edward. Alva & Irva: the Twins Who Saved a City.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Harcourt, $24 (0-15-100782-9). Novels come no odder than Carey's daft and poignant human comedy about six-foot-two, blonde twins, whose secretly built scale model of their middle European city, Entralla, comes in handy after a major...

Dislocation: Stories from a New Ireland.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ed. by Caroline Walsh. Carroll & Graf, paper, $14 (0-7867-1206-6). New Irish writers from both sides of both waters (the Irish Sea as well as the Atlantic) prove diverse in content, style, and approach but even in quality in this gathering...

Dybek, Stuart. I Sailed with Magellan.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $24 (0-374-17407-5). Dybek presents a suite of 11 extraordinarily imaginative interconnected stories about the coming-of-age of one Perry Katzek on Chicago's ethnically diverse South Side, tales that are by turns magical and...

Epstein, Leslie. San Remo Drive.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Other/Handel, $26 (1-59051-066-6). Epstein portrays a premier but troubled Hollywood family drawn into the HUAC debacle and confronted with anti-Semitism, all seen through the eyes of the eldest son. A cinematically vivid and deeply...

Erdrich, Louise. The Master Butchers Singing Club.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $25.95 (0-06-620977-3). This emotionally powerful, richly detailed novel displays the full breadth of Erdrich's literary talents. Combining a cast of remarkable characters, a compelling plot, and an unforgiving North Dakota...

Goodwin, Stephen. Breaking Her Fall.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Harcourt, $24 (0-15-100806-X). Goodwin homes in on parents' deepest fears and their all-too-flawed attempts to keep their children safe. A layered, compassionate, extraordinarily graceful novel.

Griesemer, John. Signal & Noise.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Picador, $26 (0-312-30082-4). This rousing historical adventure set in the mid-nineteenth century, an ambitious, technology-obsessed era, features an immense cast of characters, head-spinning changes in scene (from the bleak coast of New...

Hazzard, Shirley. The Great Fire.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $24.95 (0-374-16644-7). With fierce knowledge and clean, pure prose freighted with feeling, Hazzard describes a disquieting time much like our own. Set in postwar Japan, her novel follows sensitive people dispirited by the war as...

Hospital, Janette Turner. Due Preparations for the Plague.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $24.95 (0-393-05764-X). Drawing as she did in Oyster on our greatest fears, Hospital turns this time to terrorism--and its effect on individual psyches. Through the lives of children whose parents died in an aircraft hijacking, the...

Jones, Edward P. The Known World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins/Amistad, $24.95 (0-06-055754-0). Through deftly portrayed characters, this elegantly written novel explores the complexities of slavery and social relations in a Virginia town just before the Civil War. Jones moves back and...

Maillard, Keith. The Clarinet Polka.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $24.95 (0-312-30889-2). Maillard brings home the warmth of community in his heartfelt depiction of a depressed war vet who is saved by the red-hot music of an all-girl polka band. This hilarious, often sentimental...

McCabe, Patrick. Call Me the Breeze.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $24.95 (0-06-052388-3). Joey Tallon, a bartender from Northern Ireland, has never quite fit in, whether as a flower child in the midst of the IRA or a Mohawk-sporting Travis Bickle. But with his physical girth, intellectual...

Millhauser, Stereo. The King in the Tree.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $23 (0-375-41540-8). This triptych of novellas further confirms Millhauser's brilliance in using language and his creativity in technique and subject matter. The characters range from an American housewife to Don Juan to Tristan and...

Morrissey, Donna. Downhill Chance.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Houghton/Mariner, paper, $14 (0-618-18927-0). In this superb successor to her acclaimed first novel, Kit's Law, Morrissey returns to the insular world of Newfoundland's remote fishing villages. Beginning during World War II and following...

Morrison, Toni. Love.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $23.95 (0-375-40944-0). As a vivid painter of human emotions, Morrison is without peer. This is a surprisingly accessible and profound novel about a once magnificent black seaside community run by the powerful Bill Cosey. The novel...

Murray, John. A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... HarperCollins, $24.95 (0-06-050928-7). Murray's stunning story collection examines well-educated, successful characters whose lives seem doomed by forces of science and heredity. The stories are set in intriguing locations across the...

Parkhurst, Carolyn. The Dogs of Babel.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Little, Brown, $21.95 (0-316-16868-8). Linguistics professor Paul obsessively researches animal communication because he wants his dog, the only witness to his wife's death, to tell him what happened. Subtly building emotion, Parkhurst...

Phillips, Caryl. A Distant Shore.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $23 (1-4000-4109-0). Phillips, an impeccable stylist, continues his dramatic inquiry into the African diaspora. This searing tale of outsiderness focuses on the fate of an African man living in an English village who befriends a...

Powers, Richard. The Time of Our Singing.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $28 (0-374-27782-6). When Jewish physicist David Strom meets African American Delia Daley at Marian Anderson's Washington Mall concert in 1939, they fall in the most unlikely love. A sweeping story forging stunning connections...

Scott, Gail. My Paris.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Dalkey Archive, paper, $12.95 (1-56478-297-2). This is a novel of place, of urban place, and Scott captures postcard Paris, bourgeois Paris, and even scruffy Paris. Ostensibly the journal of a Canadian writer in temporary residence in a...

Tremain, Rose. The Colour.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Farrar, $25 (0-374-12605-4). This is an authentically detailed, compellingly plotted historical novel set in the wilds of nineteenth-century New Zealand during the gold rush. Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone play out their destinies...

Turner, Frederick. 1929.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Counterpoint, $25 (1-58243-265-1). In this extraordinary first novel about the meteoric life of musician Bix Beiderbecke, Turner conjures America in the late 1920s, when bootleg booze and red-hot jazz could be found in almost any speakeasy...

Brazaitis, Peter. You Belong in a Zoo! Tales from a Lifetime Spent with Cobras, Crocs, and Other Creatures.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Random, $24.95 (1-4000-6012-5). In this exciting memoir, a former superintendent of reptiles at the Bronx Zoo describes his unruly, reptile-obsessed adolescence and his diverse career, which includes nabbing drug dealers and animal...

Everest: Summit of Achievement.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ed. by the Royal Geographical Society. Simon & Schuster, $50 (0-7432-4386-2). Spectacular photographs and gripping text commemorate nine historical Everest expeditions. The climbers' physical accomplishments are balanced by...

Gonzales, Laurence. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $24.95 (0-393-05276-1). In these true stories of miraculous survival, Gonzales explores the unexpected ways in which adventures go wrong.

Hart, Mickey and Kostyal, K. M. Songcatchers: in Search of the World's Music.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... National Geographic, $30 (0-7922-4107.X). Grateful Dead drummer Hart offers this fascinating, nicely designed introduction to the world's traditional music. Lively text and captivating photographs.

Humes, Edward. School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Harcourt, $25 (0-15-100703-9). One of the nation's most successful public schools, in a Los Angeles suburb, is the setting of this searing look at the pressures faced by high-achieving high-school students.

Roach, Mary. Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Norton, $23.95 (0-393-05093-9). With wit and precision, Roach investigates what happens to human bodies after they are donated to science. The unusual anecdotes keep the science exciting without sensationalizing.

Salzman, Mark. True Notebooks.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $24 (0-375-41308-1). Salzman reluctantly entered Los Angeles' Central Juvenile Hall to teach writing to violent teenage offenders. He emerged with this powerful intimate account of his students, whose voices are included in excerpts...

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Pantheon, $17.95 (0-375-42230-7). Using the format of comics, the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor offers an unforgettable, personal view of her experiences as an early adolescent during the Ayatollah Khomeini's authoritarian...

The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-Hop, and the Poetry of a New Generation.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ed. by Marc Smith and Mark Eleveld. Sourcebooks, $24.95 (1-4022-0037-4). This vibrant collection of spoken-word poetry captures the raw street-savvy language of rap and hip-hop and the aggressive energy of slam poems, as well as other...

Summer, Lauralee. Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Simon & Schuster, $24 (0-7432-0102-7). Summer recounts how she won a wrestling scholarship to Harvard after spending much of her life homeless. Without self-pity, she describes her clashes with the Ivy League community and her painful...

Barry, Max. Jennifer Government.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Doubleday, $21.95 (0-385-50759-3). In an America governed by massive corporations, Hack Nike is a merchandiser embroiled in a murder plan, while Jennifer Government, a tough agent, pursues him. A hip, ironic adventure filled with futuristic...

Davis, Amanda. Wonder When You'll Miss Me.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Morrow, $24.95 (0-688-16781-0). Faith, a lonely, outcast teen, has one friend--the Fat Girl, who appeared to Faith after a vicious sexual assault drove her to attempt suicide. Davis' novel is a dark, unsettling, and deeply affecting...

Douglass, Sara. Beyond the Hanging Wall.(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Tor, $24.95 (0-765-30449-X). Fourteen-year-old Garth and his father are healers who discover a missing prince in this rousing fantasy.

Gamble, Terry. The Water Dancers.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Morrow, $24.95 (0-06-054266-7). From WWII to the Vietnam War, this family saga tells a moving story of prejudice and the frictions between classes. The story begins with teenage Native American Rachel, who falls in love with a wealthy heir....

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Doubleday, $22.95 (0-385-50945-6). Fifteen-year-old Christopher is an autistic math genius determined to find out who killed his neighbor's poodle. Haddon's debut novel is an inventive mystery about self-discovery and living with illness.

McCafferty, Megan. Second Helpings.(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Crown/Three Rivers, paper, $10.95 (0-609-80791-9). In this sequel to Sloppy Firsts, Jessica Darling negotiates her senior year with the same wry, comical insight that made the first book compulsively readable.

Mending the World: Stories of Family by Contemporary Black Writers.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ed. by Rosemarie Robotham. Basic/Civitas, $25 (0-465-07062-0). With contributions from fiction writers teens will recognize, this fine collection focuses on young black people who struggle to define themselves as they learn the truth about...

Mosher, Howard Frank. The True Account.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Houghton, $24 (0-618-19721-4). The Lewis and Clark expedition inspires a wild, funny spin-off in this tale about an eccentric Vermont uncle and his nephew who race across the American landscape, determined to beat the famous explorers.

Shamsie, Kamila. Kartography.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Harcourt, $24 (0-15-101010-2). Amid the violence and upheaval of Karachi, Pakistan, a boy and a girl grow up as best friends, until a separation and adolescence change their feelings for each other. A thoughtful, romantic story that...

Wolff, Tobias. Old School.(Book Review)(Brief Review)
January 1, 2004... Knopf, $22 (0-375-40146-6). In a 1960s New England boarding school, an aspiring writer longs to fit in with his privileged classmates. Wolff's clear, precise prose articulates the anxieties and yearning of adolescence.

Arrington, Frances. Prairie Whispers.(Brief Article)(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Putnam/Philomel, $17.99 (0-399-23975-8). Gr. 7-12. "Oh what a tangled web we weave" might be the motto of this story, set on the South Dakota prairie. Colleen brings home a baby girl whose mother has died, substituting it for her mother's...