Non Fiction in September 2003…

Coming in September 2003… debut thrillers from Berry and Spiegelman compete with works from veterans Palahniuk and Perry. Nonfiction features an especially large cast of well-knowns, from Salzman and Kidder to Didion and Sheehy. And don't forget the Dalai Lama.

BANNER, Lois W.
Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 544p. ISBN 0-679-45435-7. $30.
Taking advantage of hundreds of letters only recently opened to scholars, Banner untangles the intellectual and erotic ties that bound Mead and her Barnard professor Benedict.

BASCOMB, Neal.
Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City.
Doubleday. Sept. 2003. 336p. ISBN 0-385-50660-0. $26.
Architects William Van Alen and Craig Severance duke it out in 1920s Manhattan, competing to build the best skyscrapers (which included the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings).

CURTIS, Gregory.
Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 288p. ISBN 0-375-41523-8. $24.
Poor Venus. Dug up in 1820s Melos, fought over by Greeks and Turks, and then kidnapped by the French and installed in the Louvre. Here's her story, told by a former editor of Texas Monthly.

DIDION, Joan.
Where I Was From.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 240p. ISBN 0-679-43332-5. $23.
Didion's American saga, from the birth of an ancestor in 1760s Virginia to her mother's death in 2001.

DI ROBILANT, Andrea.
A Venetian Affair.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 304p. ISBN 0-375-41181-X. $24.
Di Robilant reconstructs a sizzling affair between prominent Venetian statesman Andrea Memmo—one of his ancestors—and a half-English girl named Giustiniana. He even throws in some letters found at the family palazzo. With an eight-city author tour.

DUNCAN, Dayton & Ken Burns.
Horatio's Drive: American's First Road Trip.
Knopf. Jul. 2003. 192p. ISBN 0-375-41536-X. $24.95.
Moved up from September, this companion to a PBS special takes us on Horatio Jackson's cross-country tour in 1903, when there were only 150 miles of paved roads.

FUSSELL, Paul.
The Boys' Crusade.
Modern Library. Sept. 2003. 192p. ISBN 0-679-64088-6. $19.95.
World War II from the perspective of U.S. infantrymen—with Fussell stressing how young they were.

HIS Holiness the Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler, M.D.
The Art of Happiness at Work.
Riverhead: Putnam. Sept. 2003. 192p. ISBN 1-57322-261-5. $24.95.
The Dalai Lama updates The Art of Happiness, which has sold over a million copies.

HUMES, Edward.
School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School.
Harcourt. Sept. 2003. 352p. ISBN 0-15-100703-9. $25.
Back to school with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Humes, who spent a year at Whitney High in Encinitas, CA. There he found kids stressed out not by drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll but grades.

KIDDER, Tracy.
Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Random. Sept. 2003. 320p. ISBN 0-375-50616-0. $25.95.
Kidder profiles American doctor/anthropologist Paul Farmer, who has dedicated his life to helping poorest Haitians.

KINGSTON, Maxine Hong.
The Fifth Book of Peace.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 416p. ISBN 0-679-44075-5. $26.
Lost in a fire that engulfed Kingston's house on the day she buried her father, The Fourth Book of Peace was a novel about Vietnam. Here Kingston explains how she recovered by helping Vietnam vets tell their stories.

KRAKAUER, Jon.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.
Doubleday. Jul. 2003. 320p. ISBN 0-385-50951-0. $26.
lrg. prnt. ISBN 0-375-43221-3. $28.
Audio: abridged. Random Audio. ISBN 0-7393-0657-X. $25.95.
CD: abridged. Random Audio. ISBN 0-7393-0656-1. $29.95.
Krakauer encounters violent fundamentalists in the heartland. Another book just bumped to July.

LANGER, Elinor.
A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America.
Metropolitan: Holt. Sept. 2003. 416p. ISBN 0-8050-5098-1. $26.
Focusing on the 1988 beating death of Ethiopian Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, OR, Langer tells the story of neo-Nazism in America.

OLSON, Lynne & Stanley Cloud.
A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 448p. ISBN 0-375-41197-6. $27.50.
Few people know about the Kosciuszko Squadron, Polish pilots who fought with the Allies in World War II. The authors of The Murrow Boys profile five flyers.

O'REILLY, Bill.
Who's Looking Out for You.
Broadway. Sept. 2003. 224p. ISBN 0-7679-1379-5. $24.95.
lrg. prnt. ISBN 0-375-43218-3. $26.95.
Audio: unabridged. Random Audio. ISBN 0-7393-0648-0. $25.95.
CD: unabridged. Random Audio. ISBN 0-7393-0649-9. $29.95.
O'Reilly stays mad.

PETROSKI, Henry.
Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 320p. ISBN 1-4000-4050-7. $25.
An engineer extraordinaire on the creative effort of designing the simplest things, from paperclips to paper cups.

SALZMAN, Mark.
True Notebooks.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 352p. ISBN 0-375-41308-1. $24.
The author of Iron & Silk will surely do wonders with this story of teaching writing at a juvenile correctional facility. With a 15-city author tour.

SHAH, Saira.
Storyteller's Daughter.
Knopf. Sept. 2003. 256p. ISBN 0-375-41531-9. $25.
The British-born daughter of an Afghan aristocrat, Shah covered the Afghan-Soviet war and hid beneath a burqa to risk filming the celebrated documentary Beneath the Veil. Her memoir will be launched by a seven-city author tour.

SHEEHY, Gail.
Middletown, America.
Random. Sept. 2003. 256p. ISBN 0-375-50862-7. $24.95.
How Middleton, NJ, copes after September 11, when it lost 50 residents, from Wall Street dads to Port Authority cops.

WEINGARTEN, Kaethe.
Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day.
Dutton. Sept. 2003. 336p. ISBN 0-525-94742-6. $24.95.
From a Harvard psychiatrist.