Booklist articles from June 2008

Booklist archives from June 2008

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door. By David Kaufman. June 2008. 512p. illus. Virgin, $29.95 (9781905264308). 791.4302. After reading Doris Day's own memoir, Doris Day." Her Own Story (1975), Kaufman decided to...

Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters. By Nancy Pelosi. July. 2008. 192p. Doubleday, $23.95 (9780385525862). 328.73092. As Pelosi points out in the preface to this slim volume, becoming Speaker of the House was not so...

The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President. By Geoff Shepard. June 2008. 256p. Sentinel, $27.95 (9781595230485). 973.924. Between John Dean's efforts to gain immunity from prosecution for his central involvement in the Watergate...

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us).(Brief article)(Children's review)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us). By Tom Vanderbilt. Aug. 2008. 416p. Knopf, $24.95 (9780307264787). 629.28. This may be the most insightful and comprehensive study ever done of driving behavior and...

The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War. By Asne Seierstad. Tr. by Nadia Christensen. Sept. 2008. 352p. Basic, $25.95 (9780465011223). 947.5. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Seierstad, a freelance journalist who has written...

Chasing Darkness.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Chasing Darkness. By Robert Crais. July 2008. 273p. Simon & Schuster, $25.95 (9780743281645). Crime Fiction. When Lionel Byrd is charged with murder, his attorney hires Elvis Cole. The PI corroborates Byrd's alibi through a...

Devil Bones.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Devil Bones. By Kathy Reichs. Aug. 2008. 320p. Scribner, $25.95 (9780743294386). Crime Fiction. In an era when many mystery writers feel compelled to add forensics to their investigations but do so in a tentative, superficial...

Foreign Body.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Foreign Body. By Robin Cook. Aug. 2008. 448p. Putnam, $25.95 (9780399155024). General Fiction. Medical-thriller writer Cook has made a tidy sum scaring the bejesus out of his readers with medical catastrophes ranging from Coma...

Alfred and Emily.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * Alfred and Emily. By Doris Lessing. Aug. 2008. 288p. illus. HarperCollins, $25.95 (9780060834883). General Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In her first major work since receiving the Nobel Prize, Lessing looks back to the...

Good People.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Good People. By Marcus Sakey. Aug. 2008. 336p. Dutton, $24.95 (9780525950844). Crime Fiction. Sakey, whose debut novel, The Blade Itself (2007), garnered a truckload of praise, returns with a chilling story that combines an...

The Gypsy Morph.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Gypsy Morph. By Terry Brooks. Aug. 2008. 416p. Del Rey, $27 (9780345484147). SF/Fantasy. The conclusion of Brooks' Genesis of Shannara trilogy is as gripping as Armageddon's Children (2006) and The Elves of Cintra (2007)....

Home.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Home. By Marilynne Robinson. Sept. 2008. 336p. Farrar, $25 (9780374299101). General Fiction. Robinson's Gilead (2004), a contemplative novel in the voice of septuagenarian Reverend John Ames, enthralled readers and earned a...

The Laughter of Dead King.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Laughter of Dead Kings. By Elizabeth Peters. Sept. 2008. 336p. Morrow, $25.95 (97800612.46241). Crime Fiction. Heavy-hitter Peters (named Grand Master by both Mystery Writers of America and the Anthony Awards and recipient of...

The Mercedes Coffin.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Mercedes Coffin. By Faye Kellerman. Aug. 2008. 384p. Morrow, $25.95 (9780061227332). Crime Fiction. Part of the fun of reading Kellerman's early Decker-Lazarus mysteries is the infusion of Jewish tradition in the mix. In recent...

Moscow Rules.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Moscow Rules. By Daniel Silva. July 2008. 433p. Putnam, $26.95 (9780399155017). Crime Fiction. The title, as Silva explains in an author's note, is taken from John le Car re's trailblazing Smiley's People and refers to the actual...

Riven.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Riven. By Jerry B. Jenkins. July 2008. 350p. Tyndale, $24.99 (9781414309040). General Fiction. YOU would never expect the paths of Brady Darby and Thomas Carey to cross. The teenage Brady is an outsider from the wrong side of the...

The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II. By Jeff Shaara. June 2008. 528p. Ballantine, $28 (9780345461421). General Fiction. This is the second volume of Shaara's planned trilogy of novels dealing with America's role in World War II...

The Garden of Evil.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * The Garden of Evil. By David Hewson, July 2008. 480p. Delacorte, $24 (9780385339575). Crime Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hewson's latest Nic Costa thriller opens with a shocker that will have series fans reeling, just as...

Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production. By Jonathan Kern. June 2008. 368p. Univ. of Chicago, paper, $20 (9780226431789). 070.4. Stories have been told eons longer than they have been written, and we...

Wife in the North.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Wife in the North. By Judith O'Reilly. July 2008. 336p. PublicAffairs, $21.95 (9781586486396). 070.92. When O'Reilly relocates to please her husband, she abandons London for a cottage in need of rebuilding in Northumberland, and...

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says about You.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Snoop: What Your Stuff Says about You. By Sam Gosling. June 2008. 288p. Basic, $25 (9780465027811). 155.9. Gosling, a psychology professor, shows us how the bits and pieces of our everyday lives can reveal more than we ever...

Debunked!(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Debunked! By Richard Roeper. 2008. 256p. Chicago Review, $19.95 (9781556527074). 364.10973. Newspaper columnist and TV movie reviewer Roeper takes on a variety of widely believed myths about pop culture, politics, sports,...

Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist. By Sharman Apt Russell. July 2008. 256p. Basic, $25 (9780465005178). 211. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Russell has written discerning and poetic books about butterflies, flowers, and...

Keeping Mr. Murphy at Bay.(The Manley Arts)(Murphy's Law)
June 1, 2008... As a librarian, I have spent a great deal of time searching for the meaning of life in books. In the course of my search, I have read all of Plato, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy. These great authors taught me much, but they never revealed to me the...

Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block. By Judith Matloff. June 2008. 304p. Random, $25 (9781400065264). 307.76. After 20 years living an exciting but nomadic life in the foreign press corps, Matloff feels the tug of...

If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy--from the Revolution to the War of 1812.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy--from the Revolution to the War of 1812. By George C. Daughan. June 2008. 576p. illus. Basic, $30 (9780465016075). 359.00973. Improvised at the outset of the Revolution and neglected...

The Insanity Offense: How America Fails the Seriously Mentally Ill and Endangers Its Citizens, and What We Must Do to Stop It.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Insanity Offense: How America Fails the Seriously Mentally Ill and Endangers Its Citizens, and What We Must Do to Stop It. By E. Fuller Torrey. June 2008. 288p. Norton, $24.95 (9780393066586). 362.196. Research...

Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the Twentieth Century and How They Shaped Modern America.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the Twentieth Century and How They Shaped Modern America. By Michael A. Cohen. July 2008. 576p. Walker, paper, $16.99 (9780802716972). 324.97309. An...

Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die. By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Ed. by Sheila O'Connor-Ambrose. June 2008. 185p. ISI, $25 (9781933859620). 306.8. Based on some of the last lectures historian Fox-Genovese (1941-2007) delivered,...

The Monster of Florence.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Monster of Florence. By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. June 2008.317p. Grand Central, $25.99 (9780446581196). 363.152. Italian journalist Spezi, source of much of the ooky background info Preston incorporated into his and...

Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Out of Mao's Shadow: Stories from the Struggle for China's Soul. By Philip P. Pan. June 2008. 352p. Simon & Schuster, $28 (9781416537052). 306.20951. How is the world's most populous and emerging global power managing to...

Petite Anglaise.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Petite Anglaise. By Catherine Sanderson. June 2008. 304p. Spiegel & Grau, $24.95 (9780385522809). 305.82. Sanderson joins the growing list of bloggers whose writing has been adapted from the computer screen to the page. In her...

The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Making of AfricaTown, USA. By Natalie S. Robertson. June 2008. 272p. illus. Praeger, $44.95 (9780275994914). 306.3. On the eve of the Civil War, the Clotilda was one of the last slave ships to...

How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * How Does it Feel to Be a Problem? By Moustafa Bayoumi. Aug. 2008. 300p. Penguin, $24.95 (9781594201769). 305.892. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] English professor and Arab American Bayoumi wondered how younger generations of Arab...

In His Sights: A True Story of Love and Obsession.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... In His Sights: A True Story of Love and Obsession. By Kate Brennan. Aug. 2008. 288p. HarperCollins, $24.95 (9780061451607). 364.15. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1991, freelance writer Brennan met a charming, handsome, well-to-do...

What We Could Have Done with the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... What We Could Have Done with the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq. By Rob Simpson. July 2008. 128p. Hyperion, paper, $9.95 (9781401323080). 336.3. When the cost of the war in Iraq reached $1...

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue between What We Buy and Who We Are.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Buying In: The Secret Dialogue between What We Buy and Who We Are. By Rob Walker. June 2008. 320p. Random, $25 (9781400063918). 658.8. New York Times columnist and author (Letters from New Orleans, 2005) Walker makes no pretense at...

Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World. By Pete Blackshaw. July 2008. 208p. Doubleday/Currency, $21.95 (9780385522724). 658.8. Blackshaw, a...

Smart Women Don't Retire--They Break Free.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Smart Women Don't Retire--They Break Free. By Gail Rentsch. June 2008. 272p. Springboard, $24.99 (9780446580915). 646.7. Rentsch, a founding member of the Transition Network (a national community of women over 50 considering...

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. By Stewart D. Friedman. June 2008. 272p. Harvard, $25.95 (9781422103289). 658.4. Friedman, a former academic and leadership consultant, presents "Total Leadership," his...

The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat. By Eric Roston. July 2008. 304p. Walker, $25.99 (9780802715579). 577.144. Carbon atoms lead active lives, as Roston's investigation into their...

Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife. By Marie Winn. 2008. 336p. illus. Farrar, $25 (9780374120115). 591.75. Winn, who made the red-tailed hawk Pale Male the most famous resident of New York's Central Park...

Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple).(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple). By Jeffrey Kluger. June 2008. 352p. Hyperion, $25.95 (9781401303013). 501. Yes, simplexity is a new word--a whole new theory, in fact. In...

A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All. By Luke Dempsey. Aug. 2008. 256p. Bloomsbury, $24.99 (9781596913554). 598.072. It starts as an innocent experiment, something undertaken just out of curiosity....

The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. By Maury Klein. June 2008. 560p. Bloomsbury, $29.95 (9781596914124). 609.73. A wide-ranging account of the formation of the American electricity...

Room by Room: Kitchens; Your House Made Simple.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Room by Room: Kitchens; Your House Made Simple. By Lillian Hayes Martin. June 2008. 240p. illus. Sterling, paper, $14.95 (9781402728938). 643.3. Interior designer and first-time author Martin goes above and beyond the normal...

The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It. By Robert Zimmerman. June 2008. 320p. illus. Princeton, $29.95 (9780691132976). 629.435. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scientists...

Vet Confidential: An Insider's Guide to Protecting Your Pet's Health.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Vet Confidential: An Insider's Guide to Protecting Your Pet's Health. By Louise Murray. June 2008. 256p. Ballantine, $25 (9780345503206). 636.089. Organization is key to this domestic animal guide for obtaining and understanding...

Walking Ollie; or, Winning the Love of a Difficult Dog.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Walking Ollie; or, Winning the Love of a Difficult Dog. By Stephen Foster. July 2008. 192p. Penguin, paper, $14 (9780399534294). 636.7530929. Reveling in his own curmudgeonly nature, Foster, whose writing credits include both...

Video Games and Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Video Games and Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control. By Hilarie Cash and Kim McDaniel. June 2008. 191 p. Issues, paper, $18 (9781930461055). 649. Obsession with video games has risen to the level of addiction worthy of possible...

Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life. By Nell Steinberg. June 2008. 288p. Dutton, $24.95 (9780525950653). 616.86. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Steinberg, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose world-weary observations are laced with...

The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the Hype about Your Health.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the Hype about Your Health. By Robert J. Davis. June 2008. 256p. illus. Univ. of California, $21.95 (9780520249189). 613. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A ward-winning medical journalist Davis has...

Avant Gardeners: 50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Avant Gardeners: 50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape. By Tim Richardson. June 2008. 352p. illus. Thames & Hudson, $60 (9780500513934). 712.6. Landscape architecture is a surprising field these days, much like the art...

The Complete Herb Book.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Complete Herb Book. By Jekka McVicar. June 2008. 304p. illus. Firefly, paper, $29.95 (9781554073658). 635. As vibrantly practical as it is visually stunning, McVicar's encyclopedic guide to approximately 150 of the most...

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol. By Iain Gately. July 2008.560p. illus. Gotham, $30 (9781592403035). 641.2. Following his earlier treatise on tobacco, historian Gately focuses on another of humanity's consuming passions:...

The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner. By Jay Rayner. June 2008. 288p. Holt, $25 (9780805086690). 641. Rayner lives out every foodie's fantasy: to dine in the world's best restaurants, wolfing down master...

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Making Comics; Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Making Comics; Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond. By Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. June 2008. 304p. illus. First Second, paper, $29.95 (9781596431317). 741.5. The passion for comics is surging...

The Full Burn: On the Set, at the Bar, behind the Wheel, and over the Edge with Hollywood Stuntmen.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Full Burn: On the Set, at the Bar, behind the Wheel, and over the Edge with Hollywood Stuntmen. By Kevin Conley. July 2008. 224p. illus. Bloomsbury, $24.99 (9781596910232). 791.43. All of the pieces in former New Yorker editor...

Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory. By Mickey Rapkin. June 2008. 288p. illus. Gotham, $26 (9781592403769). 782.5. Designating unaccompanied singing, a cappella literally means "like the chapel," appropriately...

Ceramic Bead Jewelry: 30 Fired & Inspired Projects.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Ceramic Bead Jewelry: 30 Fired & Inspired Projects. By Jennifer Heynen. June 2008. 128p. illus. Sterling/Lark, $24.95 (9781600591426). 745.59. Practicality is the theme here; instead of, for example, advocating the purchase of an...

A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL. By Stefan Fatsis. July 2008. 340p. Penguin, $25.95 (9781594201783). 070.44. Fatsis, who took up competitive Scrabble for Word Freak (2001),...

Kick the Balls: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Kick the Balls: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey. By Alan Black. June 2008. 304p. Hudson Street, $23.95 (9781594630477). 796.334. The everybody-plays, everybody's-a-winner approach to youth soccer has been criticized before but not,...

Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Rome, 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World. By David Maraniss. July 2008.496p. illus. Simon & Schuster, $26 (9781416534075). 796.48. While many Summer Olympic Games have left their mark on our collective memory--Berlin 1932...

Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports. By Michael Sokolove. June 2008. 292p. Simon & Schuster, $25 (9780743297554). 796.083. Roughly a month before the publication of this book, a...

The Black Death: A Personal History.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Black Death: A Personal History. By John Hatcher. June 2008. 330p. Da Capo, $27.50 (9780306815713). 823.92. This depiction of an English village desolated by the plague of 1349 combines fiction and fact. Hatcher, a Cambridge...

Epilogue.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Epilogue. By Anne Roiphe. Aug. 2008. 224p. HarperCollins, $24.95 (9780061254628). 813. Setting aside the inevitable comparisons to Joan Didion's memoir on the same subject, Roiphe's brave foray into the devastation that is...

What Would Kinky Do?(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... What Would Kinky Do? By Kinky Friedman. July 2008. 288p. St. Martin's, $23.95 (9780312331597). 814. Since having seemingly killed off his alter ego, Kinky Friedman, the curmudgeonly singer turned curmudgeonly crime solver of 17...

Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America. By Charles Leerhsen. June 2008. 352p. illus. Simon & Schuster, $26 (9780743291774). 636.1. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It is difficult for the...

The Second Blush.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Second Blush. By Molly Peacock. June 2008.80p. Norton, $23.95 (9780393066517).811. Poems that rhyme, what joy. Homey poems about an unexpected late marriage to the calm man a shy boy from the past became, what bliss. Sweet...

They Lift Their Wings to Cry.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... They Lift Their Wings to Cry. By Brooks Haxton. June 2008.80p. Knopf, $25 (9780307268457). 811. You could place Haxton in the Billy Collins school of poetry. His poems read readily, they are funny, smart, and so much more, as their...

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. By Gavin Menzies. June 2008. 384p. Morrow, $26.95 (9780061492174). 945. In his earlier book, 1421: The Fear China Discovered America (2002),...

Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska. By Seth Kantner. June 2008. 256p. illus. Milkweed, $28 (9781571313010). 813. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Kantner's gripping first book, the novel Ordinary Wolves (2004), embodied a...

The Wishing Year: An Experiment in Desire.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * The Wishing Year: An Experiment in Desire. By Noelle Oxenhandler. July 2008. 282p. Random, $24 (9781400064854). 818. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Are wishes mere child's play, or "does a wish have power?" Finding herself alone and...

Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs. By Buddy Levy. June 2008. 448p. Bantam, $27.50 (9780553805383). 972. The saga of Cortes, Montezuma, and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire has...

Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion. By Walter Nugent. June 2008. 416p. illus. Knopf, $28.95 (9781400042920). 970.01. Addressing the U.S.' territorial expansion, historian Nugent, a fluid narrator, explores the...

The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story. By Julia Reed. June 2008. 208p. Ecco, $23.95 (9780061136641). 917.63. Reed, respected journalist, contributing editor to Vague and Newsweek, and celebrator of all things southern,...

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam. By David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann. June 2008. 240p. illus. Random, $26 (9781400066537). 956.94. In the last century, Arab peoples have frequently fared poorly under...

Lancaster against York: The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Lancaster against York: The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain. By Trevor Royle. July 2008. 368p. Palgrave, $29.95 (9781403966728). 942.04. The period in English history known as the Wars of the Roses is one of...

The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. By Michael Meyer. June 2008. 336p. Walker, $25.99 (9780802716521). 951. One of the wonders and terrors of freewheeling capitalism is its...

The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community. By Edna Fernandes. July 2008. 256p. Skyhorse, $24.95 (9781602392670). 954. Two thousand years ago, a little-known group of Jews settled in...

Leningrad: State of Siege.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Leningrad: State of Siege. By Michael Jones. July 2008. 352p. illus. Basic, $27.95 (9780465011537). 940.5421721. In the annals of World War II, the German siege of Leningrad was a ghastly episode, consigning an uncertain number of...

The Line upon a Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793-1815.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Line upon a Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793-1815. By Noel Mostert. July 2008.800p. Norton, $35 (9780393066531). 940.2. For 22 years, the Napoleonic Wars ravaged Europe, toppled thrones, reshaped empires, and determined the...

My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... My Guantanamo: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. By Mahvish Rukhsana Khan. June 2008. 320p. PublicAffairs, $25.95 (9781586484989). 973.931. Khan, the daughter of Afghan immigrants and a recent law-school graduate, began...

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... * A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq. By Fernando Baez. Tr. by Alfred MacAdam. Aug. 2008. 320p.Atlas, $25 (9781934633014). 900. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Each destroyed book is...