Booklist articles from October 2007

Booklist archives from October 2007

Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights. By Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. Oct. 2007. 240p. Random, $24.95 (9781400062867). 323.4. Until she died in 2007, Ivins kept a promise she made to Texas...

Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me about Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me about Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success. By Chris Matthews. Oct. 2007. 220p. Random, $24.95 (9781400065288). 324.70973. After 40 years of covering and questioning powerful...

Betrayal.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Betrayal. By John Lescroart. Jan. 2008.400p. Dutton, $26.95 (9780525950394). Crime Fiction. Lescroart is giving John Grisham a run for the legal-thriller sweepstakes with his Dismas Hardy series. In his latest outing, San Francisco defense...

The Deportees and Other Stories.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Deportees and Other Stories. By Roddy Doyle. Jan. 2008. 242p. Viking, $24.95 (978067001845 I). General Fiction. Doyle, a former Booker Prize winner best known for his Barrytown trilogy of novels (The Commitments, 1987; The Snapper,...

Diary of a Bad Year.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Diary of a Bad Year. By J. M. Ceetzee. Jan. 2008. 227p.Viking, $24.95 (9780670018758). General Fiction. Critics have speculated that novelist Elizabeth Costello, the protagonist in the Coetzee novel bearing her name, and a character who...

Last Call.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Last Call. By James Grippando. Jan. 2008. 304p. HarperColiins, $24.95 (9780060831165). Crime Fiction. After the recent tautly constructed stand-alone thriller Lying with Strangers (2007), veteran lawyer turned author Grippando returns with...

Life Class.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Life Class. By Pat Barker. Jan. 2008. 256p. Doubleday, $23.95 (9780385524353). General Fiction. Barker secured a high literary and popular reputation as the author of the well-regarded Regeneration trilogy of novels (Regeneration, 1991;...

Blue Heaven.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Blue Heaven. By C. J. Box. Jan. 2008. 352p. St. Martin's/Minotaur, $24.95 (0-312-36570-5). Crime Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Taking a break from his terrific Joe Pickett series (Free Fire, 2007), Box offers a stand-alone thriller...

People of the Book.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * People of the Book. By Geraldine Brooks. Jan. 2008. 372p.Viking, $25.95 (9780670018215). General Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With an ingenuity equal to that standing behind her Pultizer Prize--winning March (2005), which was a...

Stone Cold.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Stone Cold. By David Baldacci. Nov. 2007. 388p. Grand Central, $26.99 (0-446-57739-1). Crime Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's difficult to decide how seriously to take a thriller about a conspiracy theorist named Oliver Stone....

The Venetian Betrayal.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * The Venetian Betrayal. By Steve Berry. Dec. 2007. 464p. Ballantine, $25.95 (0-345-48577-7). Crime Fiction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cotton Malone, who retired from the U.S. State Department to take up the presumably less dangerous life...

Mister B. Gone.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Mister B. Gone. By Clive Barker. Oct. 2007. 248p. Harper, $24.95 (9780060182984). Horror Fiction. Jakabok Botch, aka Mister B., constantly interrupts the telling of his life story to suggest, advise, cajole, plead, beg, bargain with,...

Watchman.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Watchman. By Ian Rankino Dec. 2007. 256p. Little, Brown, $24.99 (0-316-00913-X). Crime Fiction. Recently, some books Rankin first published in the UK as Jack Harvey have been reprinted (Bleeding Hearts, 2008; Blood Hunt, 2006; Witch Hunt,...

Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Forces Became the World's Greatest Fighting Unit.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Beyond Hell and Back: How America's Special Operations Forces Became the World's Greatest Fighting Unit. By Dwight Jon Zimmerman and John g. Gresham. Oct. 2007. 320p. illus. St. Martin's, $25.95 (0-312-36387-7). 356. Two highly qualified...

Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs. By Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre. Oct. 2007. 272p. Forge, $24.95 (0-7653-1082-1). 303.48. From a noted physicist and science fiction author (Benford) and a noted...

Blue Rage, Black Redemption.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Blue Rage, Black Redemption. By Stanley Tookie Williams. Nov. 2007.400p. illus. Damamli, $24.99 (1-4165-4449-6). 364.152. Williams, executed in 2005 after serving 24 years in San Quentin for murder linked to gang activity, traces his...

Freedom from Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Freedom from Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction. By David Sandalow. Oct. 2007. 250p. McGraw-Hill, $26.95 (0-07-148906-1). 346.046. According to energy scholar Sandalow, the fundamental problem with...

Nobody Likes a Quitter (and Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab): The Loaded Life of an Outlaw Booze Writer.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Nobody Likes a Quitter (and Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab): The Loaded Life of an Outlaw Booze Writer. By Dan Dunn. Oct. 2007. 256p. Thunder's Mouth, paper, $14.99 (1-56858-366-4). 362.292092. This offering from "rockstar booze writer" Dunn...

Rachel in the World: A Family's Journey from Grief.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Rachel in the World: A Family's Journey from Grief. By Jane Bernstein. 2007. 236p. illus. Univ. of Illinois, $24.95 (9780252032530). 362.3092. Bernstein follows her earlier memoir, Loving Rachel (1988), with an account of the challenges of...

Book groups.(The Manley Arts)
October 1, 2007... Shortly after I made the metamorphosis from librarian to city manager, I realized that the thing I was going to miss the most was the ambience of books. City Hall resonated with energy and intensity, but it didn't have so much as a reading room...

Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy. By Gwyneth Cravens. Oct. 2007. 464p. illus. Knopf, $27.95 (0-307-26656-7). 333.792. As global warming becomes front-page news and the search for sustainable noncarbon energy...

The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger. By Jonathan Schell. Nov.2007.224p. Holt/Metropolitan, $24 (0-8050-8129-1).355.02. Twenty-five years ago, Schell wrote of the potential for a nuclear holocaust in The Fate of the Earth....

The Roman Triumph.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Roman Triumph. By Mary Beard. Oct. 2007. 421 p. illus. Harvard/Belknap, $29.95 (0-674-02613-6). 394. The most coveted honor for Romans was the ceremony called the triumph, whose status as Rome's premier extravaganza is reflected in the...

The Star Machine.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Star Machine. By Jeanine Basinger. Oct. 2007. 592p. illus. Knopf, $35 (1-4000-4130-9). 384. "Movie stars are fascinating, but I didn't want to write about them," Basinger says. The title indicates what she does want to write about--a...

Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq. By William R. Polk. 2007. 304p. HarperCollins, $23.95 (9780061236198). 355.02. Distinguished scholar and diplomat Polk has...

What We Say Goes.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... What We Say Goes. By Noam Chomsky. Oct. 2007. 240p. Holt, paper, $15 (0-8050-8671-4). 327.73009. The sixth published collection of conversations between scholar-activist Chomsky and journalist David Barsamian, this book addresses political...

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. By Orlando Figes. Oct. 2007. 784p. Holt/Metropolitan, $35 (0-8050-7461-9). 306.850947. A notable historian of the Russian Revolution (A People's Tragedy, 1997), Figes addresses the fate of...

The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office.(chief executive officer)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office. By David Novak and John Boswell. Oct. 2007. 304p. Crown, $25.95 (0-307-39369-0). 647.95. It is an autobiography similar to many other CEOs'...

The Future of Management.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Future of Management. By Gary Hamel and Bill Breen. Oct. 2007. 288p. Harvard Business School, $26.95 (1-4221-0250-5). 658. Hamel, an academic, with coauthor Breen, aims to help readers become twenty-first-century management pioneers who...

Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today ... and They're Just Getting Started.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today... and They're Just Getting Started. By J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman. Oct. 2007. 320p. Collins, $24.95 (0-06-112898-8). 303.3. The authors, experts in social trends...

A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... A Life Decoded: My Genome, My Life. By J. Craig Venter. Oct. 2007. 400p. Viking, $25.95 (9780670063581). 599.93. Venter attracted enormous media attention in the 1990s for audaciously creating a privately financed company to compete with...

Down to Earth with Helen Dillon: Advice and Inspiration from One of the World's Great Gardeners.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Down to Earth with Helen Dillon: Advice and Inspiration from One of the World's Great Gardeners. By Helen Dillon. Nov. 2007. 208p. illus. Timber, $29.95 (9780881928594). 635.9. Mistakes? She's made a few. There was the garish, oversize...

The Elements of Organic Gardening: Highgrove, Clarence House, Birkhall.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Elements of Organic Gardening: Highgrove, Clarence House, Birkhall. By the Prince of Wales and Stephanie Donaldson. Oct. 2007. 176p. illus. Kales, $39.95 (0-9670076-9-0). 631.5. Sadly, the term organic gardening often conjures up images...

Cooking.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Cooking. By James Peterson. Oct. 2007. 560p. illus. Ten Speed, $40 (9781580087896). 641.5. Peterson applies an analytical, yet very practical, approach to the oft-misunderstood everyday art and craft of cooking, and the result is this...

Desserts by the Yard: From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills: Recipes from the Sweetest Life Ever.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Desserts by the Yard: From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills; Recipes from the Sweetest Life Ever. By Sherry Yard. Nov. 2007. 416p. illus. Houghton, $35.95 (0-618-51522-4). 641.8. Brooklyn-born pastry chef Yard started out humbly at McDonald's,...

The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Art for Every Kitchen.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Art for Every Kitchen. By Michael Ruhlman. Nov. 2007. 256p. Scribner, $24 (0-7432-9978-7). 641.5. This indispensable compendium of cooking information for both professional and amateur cooks...

Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back. By Ann Vileisis. Oct. 2007. 318p. Island, $26.95 (9781597261449). 641.59. Today's Americans know virtually nothing about where their food...

Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef's Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef's Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal. By Gillian Clark. Oct. 2007. 288p. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (0-312-36693-0). 641.5092. Stressed by her busy life, Clark often found...

Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis. By Ed Sikov. Nov. 2007. 496p. illus. Holt, $30 (0-8050-7548-8). 791.43. Sikov is clearly a fan. Indeed, his brittle, witty prose recalls Davis' prickly persona. Yet in writing about Davis, he avoids...

Nureyev: The Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Nureyev: The Life. By Julle Kavanagh. Oct. 2007. 800p. illus. Pantheon, $37.50 (0-375-40513-5). 792.8. Nureyev--smolderingly sensual, tauntingly androgynous--spontaneously defected from the USSR in 1961 in Paris. By the end of the...

John Romita ... and All That Jazz!(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... John Romita... and All That Jazz! By Roy Thomas and Jim Amash. 2007. 192p. illus. TwoMorrows, $44.95 (9781893905764); paper, $29.95 (9781893905757). 741.5. Romita was an anonymous journeyman drawing romance stories for the competition...

Songs without Words: The Photographs & Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Songs without Words: The Photographs and Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy. By Leah Bendavid-Val. 2007. 240p. illus. National Geographic, $35 (9781426201738). 779.092. Tolstoy was married to the immortal Count Leo Tolstoy for 48 years....

Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects. By Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton. Oct. 2007. 320p. illus. Clarkson Potter, $60 (9780307346476). 745.097. This collection of elegant photographs and well-composed prose pays...

The Best American Sports Writing, 2007.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Best American Sports Writing, 2007. Ed. by David Maraniss and Glenn Stout. Oct. 2007.400p. Houghton, $28 (0-618-75115-7). 796. Maraniss is the Pulitzer-winning author of two of the most memorable sports biographies ever written: When...

Undertaker's Son: Life Lessons from a Coach.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Undertaker's Son: Life Lessons from a Coach. By Richard Phelps and Jack Colwell. Oct. 2007. 240p. Lyons, $24.95 (9781599212098). 796.323. Digger Phelps was an undertaker's son and an indifferent student; after college, he was headed to...

Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer. By John Foot. Oct. 2007. 624p. Nation, paper, $17.99 (1-56858-368-0). 796.334. Among the many soccer-crazed nations of the world, Italy may be the most maniacal. Its fans live...

After the Bell: Contemporary American Prose about School.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... After the Bell: Contemporary American Prose about School. Ed. by Maggie Anderson and David Hassler. 2007. 200p. Univ. of Iowa, paper, $17.50 (1-58729603-9). 810.803557. These 62 personal essays--some as short as a paragraph, none longer...

Don't You Remember?(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Don't You Remember? By George Ella Lyon. 2007. 216p. EvaMedia/Motes, paper, $17 (0-9778745-6-7). 809. This is a gorgeous and deeply unsettling book. When she was five years old, Lyon, now known primarily as a fine children's book writer,...

Frankenstein: A Cultural History.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Frankenstein: A Cultural History. By Susan Tyler Hitchcock. Oct. 2007. 352p. illus. Norton, $25.95 (9780393061444). 823. Children throughout the world draw and playact Frankenstein's monster long before they can read Mary Shelley's novel or...

I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison. Ed. by Wally Lamb. 2007. 272p. HarperCollins, $25.95 (9780061369223). 810.8. Lamb follows his earlier collection of essays written by incarcerated women in his highly...

A Walk through My Garden.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... A Walk through My Garden. Ed. by Whitney Scott. Oct. 2007. 160p. Outrider, paper, $18.95 (0-9712903-3-4). 818. The natural world has been an inspiration for writers for centuries--Homer's dark sea, Wordsworth's daffodils, Thoreau's pond....

American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. by David S. Shields. Oct. 2007. 992p. Library of America, $40 (9781931082907). 811. This is something of a miracle: a massive collection of the earliest American English verse...

Backwards Days.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Backwards Days. By Stuart Dischell. Oct. 2007.80p. Penguin, paper, $16 (9780143112556). 811. It's hard to tell whether Dischell is a comic poet with a serious side or a serious poet with a comic side. In terms of percentages, he leans...

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems, 2004-2006.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems, 2004-2006. By Adrienne Rich. Oct. 2007. 112p. Norton, $23.95 (9780393065657). 811. For all the awards that trail Rich's name--the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to...

Windcatcher: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2006.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Windcatcher: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2006. By Breyten Breytenbach. Nov. 2007. 192p. Harcourt, $23 (9780151015320). 821. In poetry and essays, including True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1985), Afrikaner poet Breytenbach has...

After the Fall: Poems Old and New.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... After the Fall: Poems Old and New. By Edward Field. Oct. 2007. 216p. Univ. of Pittsburgh, paper, $14 (9780822959809). 811. The last of the old poems in Field's latest selection is "Sorry, I Never Slept with Allen Ginsberg." It's as grand a...

Gulf Music.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Gulf Music. By Robert Pinsky. Nov. 2007. 96p. Farrar, $22 (0-374-16749-4). 811. In the ravishing title poem in his first collection since Jersey Rain (2000), Pinsky--three-time poet laureate of the U.S.--creates a zydeco beat as he...

Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels among the Youth of the Middle East.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels among the Youth of the Middle East. By Jared Cohen. Oct. 2007. 304p. Gotham, $26 (9781592403240). 915.604. An intrepid solo traveler, Cohen journeyed to Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in 2004...

Vanishing America: In Pursuit of our Elusive Landscapes.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Vanishing America: In Pursuit of our Elusive Landscapes. By James Conaway. Oct. 2007. 320p. Shoemaker & Hoard, $24.95 (1-59376-128-7). 917.3. Preservation magazine editor Conaway has crafted essays both poignant and combative as he details...

America's Second Revolution: How George Washington Defeated Patrick Henry and Saved the Nation.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... America's Second Revolution: How George Washington Defeated Patrick Henry and Saved the Nation. By Harlow Giles Unger. 2007. 288p. Wiley, $27.95 (9780470107515). 973.3. As this excellent account of the years following the American...

Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches. By John W. Dean. Sept. 2007. 317p. Viking, $25.95 (9780670018208). 973.931. Dean continues concerns expressed in his two earlier works,...

Circling Home.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Circling Home. By John Lane. Nov. 2007. 206p. Univ. of Georgia, $24.95 (9780820330402). 975.7. Taking the adage "think globally, act locally" to heart, naturalist, professor, and poet Lane marked his newly constructed sustainable home on a...

Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics. By Sarah Gristwood. Nov. 2007. 352p. Penguin, $27.95 (9780670018284). 942.05. It is an old story, but it is retold here with particular style and insight. The story is that of the great Tudor...

Forge of Empires: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made, 1861-1871.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Forge of Empires: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and the World They Made, 1861-1871. By Michael Knox Beran. Oct. 2007. 464p. Free Press, $30 (0-7432-7069-X). 909.81. The years between 1861 and 1871 were tumultuous for three nations destined...

The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History through DNA.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History through DNA. By Edward Ball. Nov. 2007. 288p. illus. Simon & Schuster, $25 (0-7432-6658-7). 929. The author of Slaves in the Family (1998), Ball reinvestigates his slave-owning forebears,...

In the Bunker with Hitler.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... In the Bunker with Hitler. By Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven. Nov. 2007. 224p. Pegasus, $24 (9781933648392). 943.087. As a young captain, von Loringhoven was assigned as aide-de-camp to two German army chiefs of staff in July 1944. Thus, he...

The Quiet Hero: The Untold Medal of Honor Story of George E. Wahlen at the Battle for Iwo Jima.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Quiet Hero: The Untold Medal of Honor Story of George E. Wahlen at the Battle for Iwo Jima. By Gray W. Toyn. Oct. 2007. 240p. illus. American Legacy, paper, $14.95 (9780976154785). 940.54. The subject of this book deserves the title,...

Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President. By Vicente Fox and Rob Allyn. Oct. 2007. 355p. Viking, $27.95 (9780670018390). 972.08. Fox's presidency of Mexico is historically significant for ending that country's...

The Russian Civil War.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Russian Civil War. By Evan Mawdsley. Oct. 2007. 400p. illus. Pegasus, $26.95 (9781933648156). 947.084. A fundamental question about the Russian Civil War of 1917-20 is not why the Bolsheviks won, but why they took three years to do it....

Young Stalin.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Young Stalin. By Simon Sebag Montefiore. Oct. 2007. 480p. Knopf, $35 (1-4000-4465-0). 947.084. As historian Montefiore demonstrated in his account of Stalin's entourage (Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 2003), proximity to the dictator...

Are There Closets in Heaven?(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Are There Closets in Heaven? By Carol Curoe and Robert Curoe. Oct. 2007. 190p. Syren, paper, $14.95 (9780929636795). 291.566. Iowa farmer Robert Curoe recalls the very date, September 18, 1990, when he learned his daughter was gay. "I had...

Arguing the Just War in Islam.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Arguing the Just War in Islam. By John Kelsay. Nov. 2007. 253p. Harvard, $24.95 (0-674-02639-X). 297.5. The tide suggests a dry rehearsal of legal and diplomatic documents, but this is actually an engrossing review of the relationship of...

Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation between a Mormon and an Evangelical.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation between a Mormon and an Evangelical. By Robert L. Millet and Gregory C. V. Johnson. Nov. 2007. 224p. Monkfish, paper, $14.95 (9780976684367). 280. Some Evangelical pastors attack Mormons for...

Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith. By Christoph Cardinal Schonborn. Ed. by Huberl Philip Weber. Tr. by Henry Taylor. Nov. 2007. 200p. Ignatius, $19.95 (9781586172121). 213. The cardinal archbishop of Vienna raised...

Do You Believe?(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Do You Believe? By Antonio Monda. Tr. by Ann Goldstein. Nov. 2007. 192p. Vintage, paper, $12.95 (9780307280589). 200.92. The premise here is simple and straightforward. Cultural critic Monda asked some of the big names in popular culture...

American Crescent: A Muslim Cleric on the Power of His Faith, the Struggle against Prejudice, and the Future of Islam and America.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * American Crescent: A Muslim Cleric on the Power of His Faith, the Struggle against Prejudice, and the Future of Islam and America. By Imam Hassan Qazwini. Oct. 2007. 304p. Random, $25.95 (1-4000-6454-6). 297.8. The head of the Islamic...

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. By John Gray. Oct. 2007. 320p. Farrar, $25 (0-374-10598-7). 321. The violence of faith," philosopher Gray warns his readers, "looks set to shape the coming century." Himself a...

Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First. By Alister McGrath. Oct. 2007. 544p. illus. HarperOne, $29.95 (0-06-082213-9). 280. McGrath can spot the peril in a...

A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them. Ed. by Jeffrey K. Salkin. Nov. 2007. 250p. Jewish Lights, $24.99 (1-58023-340-6). 296. This book contains short essays by nearly 100 American Jews, including...

The Faith between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Faith between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God. By Peter Bebergal and Scott Korb. Nov. 2007. 256p. Bloornsbury, $24.95 (1-59691-143-3). 261.2. This faith-centered dual memoir offers a refreshingly benign antidote...

Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. By D. Michael Lindsay. Oct. 2007. 400p. Oxford, $24.95 (0-19-532666-0). 277.3. When C. Wright Mills published The Power Elite in 1956, he largely ignored religion....

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... * Crazy for God: How I Helped Found the Religious Right and Ruin America. By Frank Schaeffer. Oct. 2007.416p. illus. Carroll & Graf, $25.99 (0-7867-1891-9). 269. The son of missionary parents, raised in the 1950s in the Swiss Christian...

Fallen Angels.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Fallen Angels. By Harold Bloom and Mark Podwal. Oct. 2007. 80p. illus. Yale, $16 (9780300123487). 202. Angels are everywhere: novels, movies, T-shirts, mugs, calendars, postcards, jewelry, sunglasses--and literary and religious critic Bloom...

The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus' Birth.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus' Birth. By Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Oct. 2007. 240p. HarperOne, $22.95 (9780061430701). 263. The companion to Borg and Crossan's Last Week (2006) shares its...