Best Books 1999
by Eric Bryant, Barbara Hoffert, Rebecca Miller, Nathan Ward, & Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 1/1/2000
Since its inception in 1985, LJ's Best Books list has aimed to provide an end-of-the-year overview of the most interesting and important books the year had to offer. The list has averaged 30 to 35 titles, but this year -- as befits the end of the millennium -- it totals a grand 55. The Book Review editors found a wide range of books they were eager to share and noted some intriguing pairings: John Keegan's and Niall Ferguson's divergent studies of World War II, for instance, and novels by relative newcomers Diane Leslie and Frederick Reuss that look at the world from a child's cockeyed yet haunted perspective. With the rest of the list, these books represent a treat for every dedicated reader.
| Best Genre Fiction of 1999 LJ's fourth annual list, chosen by columnists Rex Klett (mystery), Jackie Cassada (sf), and Kristin Ramsdell (romance) Mystery Corpi, Lucha. Black Widow's Wardrobe. Arte Publico. ISBN 1-55885-288-3. pap. $12.95. Harper, Karen. The Poyson Garden. Delacorte. ISBN 0-385-33283-1. $21.95. Jones, Stan. White Sky, Black Ice. Soho, dist. by Farrar. ISBN 1-56947-152-5. $22. Wishnia, K.J.A. Soft Money. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94501-6. $23.95. Science Fiction Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Shadow. Tor. ISBN 0-312-86860-X. $24.95. Herbert, Brian & Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Atreides. Spectra: Bantam. ISBN 0-553-11061-6. $27.50. Riley, Judith Merkle. The Master of All Desires. Viking. ISBN 0-670-88450-2. $25.95. Stephenson, Neal. Cryptonomicon. Avon. ISBN 0-380-97346-4. $29.50. Romance Farrell, Marjorie. Red, Red Rose. Topaz: NAL. ISBN 0-451-40817-9. pap. $6.50. Ivory, Judith. The Proposition. Avon. ISBN 0-380-80260-0. pap. $6.50. Phillips, Susan Elizabeth. Lady Be Good. Avon. ISBN 0-380-79448-9. pap. $6.99. Putney, Mary Jo. The Wild Child. Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-43315-7. $19.95. |
Albers, Patricia. Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti. Potter, dist. by Crown. ISBN 0-609-60069-9. $30.
Looking beyond Modotti's liaisons and life as a photographer in Mexico, Albers takes her subject off the pedestal created by Edward Weston's ethereal photographs. In this accessible work -- the first comprehensive biography -- Albers sees the very human Modotti as a passionate artist, inexhaustible political organizer, and modern woman set on finding fulfillment. (LJ 4/15/99)
Angier, Natalie. Woman: An Intimate Geography. Houghton. ISBN 0-395-69130-3. $25.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Angier has prompted a lot of type with this funny and insightful mapping of women's history through our beastly, complicated bodies -- from our popular breasts to our slippery DNA. This keen-eyed, provocative study challenges some of the mythology asserted by evolutionary science to date. (LJ 2/1/99)
Anthology of African & Indian Ocean Photography. Revue Noire, dist. by D.A.P. ISBN 2-909571-49-1. $85.
Neither canonizing narrative history nor simplistic promotion, this hefty tome rightly takes the name anthology to describe its scattered but brilliant content. The 500 pictures -- many of them never-before-seen revelations -- date from the 1860s to the present and represent more than 160 photographers. Not the final word on the subject but a stunning first exposure. (LJ 12/99)
Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Viking. ISBN 0-670-80889-X. $34.95.
Connecting the coasts by rail was one of the great achievements of 19th-century America. To tell the story of this epic, Bain knits together excellent storytelling and exhaustive research in a rich contextual tale of vision, ambition, and, ultimately, political and personal corruption. (LJ 10/1/99)
Belfer, Lauren. City of Light. Dial: Random. ISBN 0-385-33401-X. $24.95.
In "the city of light" -- Buffalo at the turn of the century -- headmistress Louisa Barrett walks a tightrope between her ideals and the demands of the wealthy class she serves. Through her we get a panoramic view of the city's classes -- but we're also drawn into Louisa's struggles. What's remarkable about this grand, thundering novel is its ease in balancing the social and the personal. (LJ 5/1/99)
Busch, Frederick. The Night Inspector. Harmony: Crown. ISBN 0-609-60235-7. $23.
Busch's darkly imaginative historical novel re-creates 1867 New York City, whose seamy underbelly reflects the physical and psychological scars of the Civil War. Among its citizens are a hideously disfigured veteran and customs inspector M -- a famous writer down on his luck -- who are drawn into a plot to rescue black children from the slave trade. (LJ 2/15/99)
Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. Viking. ISBN 0-670-88731-5. $23.95.
Middle-aged professor David Lurie shuffles numbly through the shifting landscape of postapartheid South Africa. After he gets fired for sleeping with one of his students -- and refusing to express remorse -- Lurie finds shelter with his grown daughter and is exposed to a social reality that threatens more than his own sense of security. Winner of the Booker Prize, Coetzee's eighth novel employs spare, compelling prose to explore subtly the stuttering steps one man takes in a new world. (LJ 12/99)
Courtois, Stephane & others. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard Univ. ISBN 0-674-07608-7. $37.50.
Courtois, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), leads the efforts of major scholars associated with the CNRS, who drew on recently opened Soviet archives to track the atrocities of communism worldwide over the last century. Concluding that communism's death toll stands at 85 to 100 million, they wonder forcefully why such "class genocide" is excused more easily than the Nazis' "race genocide." This book burned a hole in the French Left when it was published -- and also hit the best sellers lists. Not easy reading, but a seminal document. (LJ 11/1/99)
Covington, Dennis & Vicki Covington. Cleaving: The Story of a Marriage. North Point: Farrar. ISBN 0-86547-548-2. $22.
Adultery. Abortion. Alcoholism. Reading the Covingtons' painfully honest narrative of their tumultuous 20-year marriage is a bit like slowing down to look at a car wreck -- gruesomely compelling. Yet this is not your typical dysfunctional family memoir; it is also a moving quest for spiritual redemption. (LJ 5/1/99)
Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-100369-6. $28.
In his breathtaking Descartes's Error, Damasio linked emotion and feeling to reason. Now he links them to consciousness itself, showing that "consciousness begins as the feeling of what happens" when we see a dazzling shaft of sunlight or feel its heat on our skin. Damasio dazzles us, too, writing with an authority backed by years of research yet so lucidly that we feel it is child's play. (LJ 9/1/99)
Dean, Cornelia. Against the Tide: The Battle for the American Coast. Columbia Univ. ISBN 0-231-08418-8. $24.95.
New York Times science writer Dean's thoughtful and eloquent plea to save America's beaches from overdevelopment and erosion is destined to be a classic of environmental writing. (LJ 5/15/99)
de Baecque, Antoine & Serge Toubiana. Truffaut. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40089-3. $30.
Who doesn't love Truffaut's films? The director of classics like Jules and Jim was clear-eyed in his probing of human folly but always had a light touch. So do the authors of this biography, an entertaining look at the man and his art that also offers a capsule history of French cinema in the last half of this century. (LJ 5/15/99)
Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04686-9. $29.95.
Dower's magisterial narrative eloquently tells the story of the postwar occupation of Japan by departing from the usual practice of making the story part of General MacArthur's biography and instead focusing on the citizens. With historical sweep and cultural nuance, and using numerous personal stories of survival, loss, and rededication, he follows the astonishing social transformation of a people. (LJ 4/1/99)
Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Basic Bks: Perseus. ISBN 0-465-05711-X. $30.
Ferguson's controversial reexamination of The Great War -- which drew some harsh criticism in Britain as revisionist history -- forces the reader to take a fresh look at that now mythologized event. Organized around themes such as public financing, the press response, and "why men fought," this is not a history of the war (see Keegan, below, for that) but a provocation to rethink its causes and effects. (LJ 3/15/99)
Friedman, Lawrence J. Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson. Scribner. ISBN 0-684-19525-9. $35.
A voice of hope amidst the pathologists of psychoanalysis, Erikson was committed to describing people's minds in a healthy state. In this complex, nicely rendered biography, Friedman draws a fine portrait of Erikson's enthusiasm (which caused tension with the Vienna school) and uncertainty (which stemmed from his sense of displacement). Ultimately, he describes a time of rapid change in mind science and an influential man in search of both himself and a way to help others. (LJ 6/15/99)
Gass, William H. Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40312-4. $25.
Gass offers so much more than the subtitle to this gem might imply. The pages are filled with seamlessly intertwined biographical insights, textual analysis, commentary on the elusive art of translation, and fresh and vibrant new renderings of many of Rainer Maria Rilke's key works. A fitting tribute to one of the 20th century's greatest poets and everything literary criticism should be. (LJ 8/99)
Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04688-5. $27.95.
These days, physicists are bubbling over with talk of strings -- tiny, vibrating loops of matter, seen as the building blocks of nature, that may serve to unite the divergent theories of quantum mechanics and relativity. For the rest of us, wunderkind Columbia professor Greene provides just the sort of nervy, imaginative metaphors that make understanding snap into place. (LJ 2/15/99)
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. Pantheon. ISBN 0-679-44265-0. $35.
Some experts argue that mothers learn to love their children, others that they are genetically programmed to do so. Refreshingly, anthropologist Hrdy charts a middle course, showing (not surprisingly) that things aren't so simple. She makes her points by drawing on decades of fieldwork, presented in a clear and lively fashion. (LJ 10/15/99)
Jamison, Kay Redfield. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40145-8. $26.
Jamison -- herself a manic-depressive who has attempted suicide and now a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine -- brings a special urgency to this study. The personal and the professional blend seamlessly here, allowing Jamison to illuminate the darkest recesses of the human mind. The result is forthright, moving, and impressively unsensational. (LJ 10/1/99)
Kalpakian, Laura. The Delinquent Virgin. Graywolf. ISBN 1-55597-295-0. pap. $14.
Set mostly in the rural American West, these nine incredible pieces show just how powerful short stories can be. In each, Kalpakian gives daily life a surprising but honest turn as she quietly critiques small-town norms. Her characters (e.g., a priest who must chase down statues repeatedly taken from a Nativity scene) reverberate with integrity, intelligence, and heart. (LJ 11/1/99)
Keegan, John. The First World War. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40052-4. $35.
Esteemed military historian Keegan places the disastrous and still puzzling events of 1914-18 into a superb narrative. He is especially good at explaining the most befuddling part -- the war's beginning, which he relates not with tired, powder-keg metaphors but with fresh analysis showing that, among other things, the reticence of European diplomats to use the telephone instead of traditional letters and cables allowed events to speed out of control. (LJ 4/15/99)
Kohler, Sheila. Cracks. Zoland. ISBN 1-58195-008-X. $21.
When a group of middle-aged women reunite at a boarding school deep in South Africa, their minds are on one girl no longer with them -- Fiamma, the haughty outsider. Clearly, something horrible happened to Fiamma implicating these women, and in prose at once hard-edged and lyrical, South African -- born Kohler teases out the solution to this mystery. The book's brevity belies its extraordinary power. (LJ 11/1/99)
Korda, Michael. Another Life: A Memoir of Other People. Random. ISBN 0-679-45659-7. $26.95.
Korda's fascinating "memoir of other people" follows his own upward-moving tour of the publishing world. Rising from lowly young Pocket Books editor to the top job at Simon & Schuster, he encounters vivid writers, editors, agents, hacks, flacks, mentors, and rivals such as Max Schuster, Swifty Lazar, Robert Gottlieb, and Harold Robbins. (LJ 5/1/99)
Kurlansky, Mark. The Basque History of the World. Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1349-1. $25.
The author of Cod, one of last year's quirkiest and most enjoyable entries, returns with a slightly less meandering but equally entertaining history of the Basques. Kurlansky brings a novelist's storytelling talents, a journalist's eye for the salient fact, and an unapologetic admiration of his subject to an episodic narrative of Europe's oldest surviving culture. (LJ 10/1/99)
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-3776-8. $59.95.
Once dismissed as sentimental fluff, British art of the latter 19th century has recently gained both academic status and enthusiastic public support. For serious students, Lambourne's thoughtful essays provide more than simplistic history without devolving into jargon. For the casual browser, the book presents an unexpectedly diverse range of achievments in beautiful reproductions. (LJ 12/99)
Leslie, Diane. Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-85695-6. $23.
Eloise meets 1950s Hollywood in this charming yet bittersweet autobiographical first novel. Enduring self-centered, neglectful showbiz parents and a string of nannies, Fleur de Leigh ("the de is silent") captures the reader's heart with her humor, resilience, and moral honesty. (LJ 2/15/99)
Lowman, Margaret D. Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology. Yale Univ. ISBN 0-300-07818-8. $27.50.
In this engaging mix of science and autobiography, botanist Lowman recalls her pioneering research in the forest canopies of Australia, Africa, Belize, and the United States. She also details her struggle to be a good wife and mother in light of her Australian in-laws' disapproval of her career. A wonderful look at the rigors of fieldwork -- from a woman's perspective. (LJ 5/15/99)
McMurtry, Larry. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-85496-1. $21.
When McMurtry (of Lonesome Dove fame) was coming up in Archer County, TX, books other than the Bible were as scarce as company. In this roundabout and finely written memoir, McMurtry approaches the topic of storytelling (using German literary critic Benjamin as a springboard) by telling his own. (LJ 10/1/99)
Maraniss, David. When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-84418-4. $26.
Clinton biographer Maraniss's rich, resonant, and grown-up biography of Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi is full of the kind of surprises good research can yield (e.g., his New York butcher father had work and play stenciled philosophically on his hands). The book transcends the sports world, much as its iconic subject eventually did. (LJ 8/99)
Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Beyond. Random. ISBN 0-679-44739-3. $25.
The thief in question and offbeat genesis for New Yorker writer Orlean's book is ever-quotable eccentric John Laroche, whose craving for the rare orchid eventually lands him and three Indian accomplices in a Florida courtroom -- and allows Orlean to write her appreciative and lyrically funny profile of obsession and Florida. (LJ 1/99)
Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. Farrar. ISBN 0-374-11974-0. $25.
As a child, Pham fled Vietnam with his family and settled in California. Here he recounts his return -- by bicycle, as he wheels up the West Coast, boards a plane, and finds himself at the airport in Saigon, cursing out the "nitwits in flip-flops" who wrecked his bike. Clearly, this is no sentimental journey; Pham's is a soul divided. He's a contentious guide, but the journey is heartrending and invaluable. (LJ 10/1/99)
Phillips, Susan A. Wallbangin': Graffiti and Gangs in L.A. Univ. of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-66771-5. $73; pap. ISBN 0-226-66772-3. $25.
In this complex examination of a variety of graffiti in the Los Angeles environs and the social context that allows it to flouish, anthropologist Phillips avoids the confines of academic style. She also avoids searching for easy explanations, pandering to neither her subjects nor her readers. Ultimately, Phillips delivers a thoughtful, historically grounded study of a culture that seldom garners such respect. (LJ 6/1/99)
Pipher, Mary. Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders. Riverhead: Putnam. ISBN 1-57322-129-5. $24.95.
Through case studies of patients and acquaintances, psychologist Pipher examines the trials of aging in contemporary America -- for all those involved. These miniature biographies, told with respect and empathy, reveal not only a complicated reality but diverse possibilities as we all age. (LJ 3/1/99)
Proctor, Robert N. The Nazi War on Cancer. Princeton Univ. ISBN 0-691-00196-0. $29.95.
Discovering that forward-looking health restrictions (about smoking, asbestos, radiation, and diet) were mixed in with the monstrous policies of Nazi-era German medicine, Proctor investigates without sensationalizing. His first-rate history restores complexity and a squeamishly recognizable contemporary element to our often cartoonish picture of that time. An excellent work of scholarship that is also well told. (LJ 4/15/99)
Proulx, Annie. Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Scribner. ISBN 0-684-85221-7. $25.
This marvelous collection proves that Proulx's Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News was no one-shot deal. Set in Wyoming, the 11 stories "feature down-on-their-luck ranchers, cowboys, and working men who watch helplessly as the modern world leaves them behind." (LJ 5/1/99)
Reuss, Frederick. Henry of Atlantic City. MacMurray & Beck. ISBN 1-878448-89-7. $22.
Six-year-old Henry is a neglected child growing up in an Atlantic City hotel and casino. Obsessed with the ancient Gnostics, he imagines himself a saint in fifth-century Byzantium. The contrast between Henry's spiritual idealism and the tawdry reality of his world makes reading this very original novel a moving experience. (LJ 7/99)
Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The Final Years. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04748-2. $30.
Completing his celebrated five-volume study, Reynolds traces a dark change in Hemingway's later personality, while correcting the old wisdom that the writer was unable to work in his autumn years -- which freshens the tragedy of his 1961 suicide. Barring further unpublished Papa novels, this may be the definitive biography of a troubled master. (LJ 5/1/99)
Rinaldi, Nicholas. The Jukebox Queen of Malta. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-85612-3. $25.
Although influenced by Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Rinaldi's World War II novel stands on its own unique merits. Fantastical with a touch of dark humor, it's both a moving love story and a gripping portrait of a tiny island under siege. (LJ 5/1/99)
Rufin, Jean-Christophe. The Abyssinian. Norton. ISBN 0-393-04716-4. $25.95.
In 18th-century Cairo, the French consul is ordered to make contact with far-off Abyssinia. The mission falls to a young French doctor who is in love with the consul's daughter. Gravely and gracefully written, with good characterization and a strong sense of time and place, this Prix Goncourt winner looks seriously at cultural differences and the way some people rise above them. But it's fun, too. (LJ 7/99)
Rybczynski, Witold. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century. Scribner. ISBN 0-684-82463-9. $28.
Having written incisive and original books on architecture and art and even a social history of the weekend, Rybczynski has found his ideal biographical match in this marvelous life of the noted landscape architect and reformer whose accomplishments include New York's Central and Prospect parks. Clearly, Olmsted thought at least as much about the interaction of art and society as Rybczynski himself. (LJ 5/15/99)
Schama, Simon. Rembrandt's Eyes. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40256-X. $50.
Schama's baroque writing style may be controversial, but here he delivers something undeniably stunning. As much a study of the times as a biography, this richly rendered book builds detail upon detail -- just like a painting. Schama escapes the dreariness of much art historical writing and with forceful, vigorous prose makes us really look at the paintings. (LJ 10/15/99)
Schmidt, Michael. Lives of the Poets. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40624-7. $35.
In this bounding survey of poetry in English, Schmidt (a poet, translator, publisher, and director of the writing school at Manchester Metropolitan University) enthuses about more than 250 poets whose work dates from the 14th century to 1998. More than a critical essay, this friendly and accessible history embodies the life of poetry and conveys its changeable, subjective beauty. (LJ 9/1/99)
Shacochis, Bob. The Immaculate Invasion: A War Story with No War in It. Viking. ISBN 0-670-86304-1. $27.95.
With the flair of a novelist (see his Swimming in the Volcano), Shacochis offers a firsthand account of the 1994 liberation of Haiti, when a U.S. military juggernaut at last returned Aristide to power. The book travels through a background of echoes: of voodou rhythms and 18th-century slave rebellions, the Duvaliers, CIA operatives, and the writings of Graham Greene. A masterpiece of high journalism. (LJ 1/99)
Sobel, Dava. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1343-2. $27.
Like Sobel's best-selling Longtitude, this is a compelling and gracefully written science history, retelling the familiar story of Galileo's battle with the Roman Catholic Church through the letters of his daughter, a cloistered nun. What results is a new view of the scientist. (LJ 10/1/99)
Spragg, Mark. Where Rivers Change Direction. Univ. of Utah. ISBN 0-87480-617-8. $21.95.
Spragg's first book is about growing up on the country's oldest dude ranch -- and much more. A rare accomplishment in "sense of place" literature, this deftly evokes life in the wide-open of Wyoming's Continental Divide. In each of these 14 essays, his direct, spacious, tangible prose vibrates with the fragile crisis and joy of a man face to face with nature and himself. (LJ 10/15/99)
Stewart, James B. Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away with Murder. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-85484-8. $25.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stewart, noted for Den of Thieves, elevates the story of a peripatetic doctor who leaves behind a trail of dead patients beyond the true-crime genre. This compelling look at one bad seed becomes an indictment of an industry that ignores and even covers up the errors of its own. (LJ 9/15/99)
Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. Random. ISBN 0-375-50166-5. $34.95.
Last year's popular life of John D. Rockefeller signaled that the time was right for a new look at his omnipotent Gilded Age contemporary, J.P. Morgan. Situated ably between his worshippers and his debunkers, Strouse separates fact from Morgan myth and finds beneath the imperious public persona the flesh-and-blood man who was more powerful in his time than Bill Gates. (LJ 3/15/99)
Szpilman, Wladyslaw. The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945. Picador: St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-24415-0. $23.
Szpilman's memoir of life in the Warsaw ghetto is remarkable not only for the heroism of its protagonists but for the author's lack of bitterness, even optimism, in recounting the events. Written and published in a short run in Poland soon after the war, this first translation maintains a freshness of experience lacking in many later, more ruminative Holocaust memoirs. (LJ 8/99)
Thurman, Judith. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-58872-X. $30.
Colette has always delighted us, but have we really known her? We certainly do now, with Thurman's exhaustively detailed, exquisitely handled new work, which takes us from Colette's innocent girlhood through several rambunctious marriages and affairs to the heart of a great writer. Colette and her world come alive here. (LJ 10/1/99)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Afri-ca Report. Grove Dictionaries. 5 vols. ISBN 1-56159-245-5. $250 with CD-ROM.
Presented to President Nelson Mandela in October 1998, these 2,759 pages are part testimony, part background history, and part commission findings from the historic hearings on the apartheid era. In the interest of national healing, hundreds told their terrible stories, which are cited here in their entirety, along with the confessions of former perpetrators whose unspeakable abuses were absolved on condition of full disclosure. This tremendous national act of will and forgiveness makes for both chilling and inspiring reading. A landmark event. (LJ 6/15/99)
Waters, Sarah. Tipping the Velvet. Riverhead: Putnam. ISBN 1-57322-136-8. $25.95.
When Nancy Astley falls for Kitty Butler, a cross-dressing cabaret singer, she has no idea just how far she'll go from her roots shucking oysters in a seaside resort in Kent. Waters's rowdy debut novel strikes out for a woman finding her independence in turn-of-the-century England, while painting a colorful portrait of the time. (LJ 3/15/99)
Watson, Steven. Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism. Random. ISBN 0-679-44139-5. $35.
It may seem a bit much to credit one operatic extravaganza for America's embrace of Modernism, but Watson makes a compelling argument without overstating his case. Even more importantly, he makes the complex production and the amazing cast of participants and supporters come alive in compulsively readable prose that will engage any reader. (LJ 1/99)
Weiner, Jonathan. Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44435-1. $27.50.
Armed with only a few test tubes, a light bulb, and 100 fruit flies, physicist-turned-biologist Seymour Bezmour revolutionized molecular biology. Weiner's fascinating book recounts how Bezmour's beautifully simple experiments revealed the genetic origins of human behavior. (LJ 5/15/99)
Welsome, Eileen. The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. Delacorte. ISBN 0-385-31402-7. $26.95.
Expanding on her Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series, Welsome's shocking expose reveals that during the Cold War Americans were injected with plutonium without their knowledge in secret government experiments to see if radiation caused cancer. This is superb investigative journalism. (LJ 9/15/99)
Zbarksy, Ilya & Samuel Hutchinson. Lenin's Embalmers. Harvill. ISBN 1-86046-515-3. $20.
This nearly perfect little book is a work of lucid compression that tells the entire history of the former Soviet state from its hushed center -- the Red Square mausoleum where Zbarsky and his father, Boris, maintained Lenin's mummified corpse from 1924 through the 1950s, when Stalin's paranoid purges finally reached them. A unique first-person history from the era of Bolshevist gangs to today's fad of mummified Russian mobsters.
