Xpress Reviews—First Look at New Books

-- Library Journal, 5/20/2008 9:32:00 AM

The week of May 20, 2008

Fiction | Nonfiction

Fiction

Crandall, Susan. Pitch Black. Forever: Grand Central. Jun. 2008. c.386p. ISBN 978-0-446-17856-3. pap. $6.99. Romantic Suspense
Verdict: Small-town prejudice against big-city outsiders and the poisonous power of gossip are the twin focuses of this cleverly plotted, gripping tale that, while more puzzler than thriller, will keep the pages turning until the end. A pair of honest, tenacious protagonists, a teenager who earns your love and respect, and a healthy dollop of down-home Southern charm round out this well-paced, satisfying read.
Background: Leaving Philadelphia for a quieter and less problematic life as the editor of the local newspaper in Buckeye, TN, investigative journalist Madison Wade and her adopted 14-year-old son, Ethan, have their hopes dashed when a camping trip ends in murder and Ethan winds up the prime suspect. Unfortunately, the investigation also threatens Maddie’s budding relationship with Sheriff Gabe Wyatt, as he has no alternative but to consider all options as he searches for a truth that is much closer to home than anyone expects. RITA® Award winner Crandall (A Kiss in Winter) lives in Noblesville, IN.—Kristin Ramsdell, California State Univ., East Bay

Pekearo, Nicholas. The Wolfman. Tor. May 2008. 288p. ISBN 978-0-7653-20261. $23.95. HORROR
Verdict: What the editor’s note calls "a raucous metal attitude" comes across here as a sloppy and uneven style; minor characters’ deeply held prejudices evaporate when the plot calls for it, and the setting is clearly a New Yorker’s stereotyped idea of a small Southern town. Demand may be driven by the unfortunate shooting death of the author in 1997 while on duty as an auxiliary NYPD officer in Greenwich Village. Purchase only to meet demand.
Background: The protagonist of this debut novel, Marlowe Higgins, is a vigilante werewolf. The beast within him must kill once a month, but he has managed to direct this instinct toward the slaughter of those he deems deserving of death. When a serial killer comes to town, Marlowe is confident in the wolf’s ability to track the killer down, but when the town police officer is murdered instead, he must determine what went wrong and how to stop it from happening again.—Karl G. Siewert, Tulsa City-Cty. Lib., OK

Roby, Kimberla Lawson. One in a Million. Morrow. Jun. 2008. c.192p. ISBN 978-0-06-144295-7. $19.95. F
Verdict: Full of predictable situations and characters, Roby’s latest bittersweet tale addresses marital relations, family issues, religion, and infidelity. There is even a guest appearance by Rev. Curtis Black (Casting the First Stone; Sin No More). A quick read recommended for popular fiction and African American fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/08.]
Background: Kennedi thinks she has a pretty good life: a great job as a human resource specialist, a loving and supportive husband, and, now, the $50 million jackpot in the Mega Millions lottery. But her husband drops his own big news first—he confesses his love for another woman whom he’s been seeing for two years, and he wants out of their marriage. He moves out before she can give him the news about her winnings. Kennedi is devastated but makes divorce preparations with her lawyer and hires an accountant to handle her finances. But once Blake hears of Kennedi’s good fortune, he goes after it with full force.—Carol Johnson, Cleveland P.L.

Shem, Samuel. The Spirit of the Place. Kent State Univ., dist. by BookMasters. Jun. 2008. c.344p. ISBN 978-0-87338-942-6. $28.95. F
Verdict: A nice, light read for a summer afternoon, this is a story about why coming home is never quite what you expect.
Background: Thirty years ago, Shem wrote The House of God, considered one of the 20th century's best medical novels. His new novel revolves around a middle-aged doctor, Orville Rose, who has spent the better part of his adult life running away from his family and hometown. After traveling the world with Doctors Without Borders and having a passionate love affair with an Italian yoga instructor, Orville is forced to return to his hometown of Columbia, NY, by the death of his mother. Once in Columbia, Orville is confronted by a town that never seems to change, with a childhood nemesis, a potential new love affair, and the taunting ghost of his mother. Through Orville’s eyes, the reader sees the juxtaposition between fast food and the gym-based fitness craze, the past and the present, health and illness, and the living and the dead that help Orville to understand finally his place in life and his small town.—Deborah Hicks, Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Nonfiction

Attwood, Sarah (text) & Jonathon Powell (illus.). Making Sense of Sex: A Forthright Guide to Puberty, Sex and Relationships for People with Asperger's Syndrome. Jessica Kingsley. Jun. 2008. c.320p. illus. index. ISBN 978-1-84310-374-5. pap. $19.95. PSYCH
Verdict: This guide, with its clear, practical writing; diagrams; and table of sexual terms in their common, scientific, slang, and euphemistic forms, would be a huge help to any teen with AS as well as to his/her loved ones and caretakers. It can be read alone, but it can also—and ideally—inspire discussion between those with AS and the adults in their life. Strongly recommended for academic and public libraries with autism collections.
Background: The author, whose husband, Tony Attwood, wrote The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, is uniquely suited to pen this work—she grew up with a sister who has Asperger’s syndrome (AS) and was a sexuality educator in Australia for 15 years. Here, she wisely discusses sexuality within a wider swath of social issues, from conversational skills and friendship to bullying, healthy lifestyle, personal hygiene, dating, sexual practices and health, birth control, and pregnancy. Attwood has a clear handle on the AS mentality: e.g., in discussing personal hygiene (often not a priority among teens with AS), she not only explains the hows but she also goes into the whys of its importance.—Elizabeth Safford, Nevins Memorial Lib., Methuen, MA

Friedman, John S. Out of the Blue: A History of Lightning: Science, Superstition, and Amazing Stories of Survival. Delacorte. May 2008. c.304p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-385-34115-8. $24. SCI
Verdict: This excellent study for a general lay audience is recommended for all popular science collections.
Background: Friedman, a journalist and documentary film producer, gathers the stories of lightning strike survivors, many of whom are religious and see a divine purpose in their survival. Survivors often have mysterious, long-lasting symptoms that confuse doctors, but the author adds that an organization of lightning strike survivors now exists and that medical science is advancing research on their injuries and treatment. Friedman also summarizes lightning mythology and folklore and recounts the history of lightning science, beginning with Ben Franklin’s experiments. But only a few scientists today study lightning, and they still find some aspects of the phenomenon puzzling. Friedman devotes much of his book to detailing a 2003 helicopter rescue of a mountaineering party struck by lightning atop a Wyoming mountain, a strike that killed one climber and severely injured several others.—Jeffrey Beall, Univ. of Colorado at Denver & Health Sciences Ctr.

Lang Lang with David Ritz. Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story. Spiegel & Grau. Jul. 2008. c.256p. ISBN 978-0-385-52456-8. $24.95. MUSIC
Verdict: This memoir of a Chinese-born musical prodigy is recommended for all collections. Readers will look forward to an account of the next 25 years of Lang Lang's achievements with great anticipation. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/08.]
Background: At 25, Lang Lang—the internationally renowned concert pianist who has near rock-star status in his homeland of China—has already lived a remarkable life. Driven by a tyrannical and obsessive father and a culture that emphasizes parental self-sacrifice and competitive ranking, this child of Beijing's slums quickly rose through the ranks of young, talented pianists to become number one in China. His international reputation finally rocketed to fame at age 17 after he substituted for André Watts at the Ravinia Festival in 1999. He moved to Philadelphia to attend the Curtis Institute, where Gary Graffman, Daniel Barenboim, and other mentors nurtured his talent as a musician and introduced him to Shakespeare and other delights of the liberally educated mind. Lang Lang has recently traveled to Africa as a UNICEF ambassador and has lent support to environmental organizations in China.—Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA

Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Pantheon. May 2008. c.272p. index. ISBN 978-0-375-42404-5. $24.95. SCI
Verdict: As Mlodinow observes, the human brain is much more wired for organizing nature than for comprehending chaos, so with his prose he takes readers, one step at a time, into the realm of purely random events by using concrete and familiar examples. The odds favor that anybody, from a smart high school student to a motivated general reader or intermediate college student, will learn something useful from this book.
Background: The house always wins because the house understands the laws of probability better than its clients. Mlodinow’s book won’t help gamblers beat the odds—after all, the odds always ultimately prevail—but at least it will help them understand why. Mlodinow, a collaborator with Stephen Hawking on A Briefer History of Time, uses a case study approach to illustrate some of the basic mathematical laws of randomness without equations. From Pascal’s triangle, the Bell curve, and Bayesian analysis to Galton’s coefficient of correlation, the tools for understanding the subject can be simple but profoundly counterintuitive.—Gregg Sapp, SUNY at Albany Sci. Lib.

Ogden, Gina. The Return of Desire: A Guide to Rediscovering Your Sexual Passion. Trumpeter: Shambhala, dist. by Random. Jul. 2008. c.224p. index. ISBN 978-1-59030-364-1. pap. $14.95. PSYCH
Verdict: Though a bit lackluster, this book is orderly and coherent, and Ogden’s inclusion of several interesting anecdotes from her practice, along with the compelling subject matter, will ensure its audience. Because few books address the topic of female sexuality so directly, this could be a useful addition to large public libraries with comprehensive self-help collections.
Background: Ogden combines her decades of experience as a marriage and family therapist, a sex therapist, an author (The Heart and Soul of Sex), and a teacher (Inst. for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality) in her seventh book on female sexuality. Like many self-help experts, she mixes spirituality into her approach, addressing the complexities of sexual desire from the broadest perspective. Drawing on a nationwide survey she herself conducted as well as some of the field’s latest research, she deals specifically with such topics as postpartum sexuality, monogamy, homosexuality, bisexuality, masturbation, and abuse and trauma.—Fran Mentch, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.

Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. Scribner. May 2008. c.896p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-7432-4302-5. $35. POL SCI
Verdict: Perlstein, whose research rests largely on secondary works and the contemporary press, overreaches in his thesis and overwrites, and this results in a book that is less successful than his Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Optional for public and academic libraries.
Background: Nixonland was a word coined by John Kenneth Galbraith when he was a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson in Stevenson’s unsuccessful run against Eisenhower in 1956. (Nixon was Ike’s running mate.) Galbraith meant to sum up what he saw as a grasping, scaremongering political style, as personified by Nixon. Journalist and independent scholar Perlstein borrows the word as an organizing device as he traces a political culture that matured in the 1960s and remains with us today, whereby "two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans." But Perlstein’s focus is 1966 to 1972, when he portrays a fissuring of the country in accounts of four biennial elections as well as concurrent phenomena such as the rise of the Black Panthers, the Vietnam War, Kent State, Watts, and Watergate. Nixon, who "dripped cynicism from every pore," was a haunted outsider, his ambition rooted in his own experience of alienation, his political success in an ability to capitalize on the alienation felt by others.—Bob Nardini, Nashville, TN

Ramondetta, Lois M., M.D. & Deborah Rose Sills. The Light Within: The Extraordinary Friendship of a Doctor and Patient Brought Together by Cancer. Morrow. Jun. 2008. 250p. ISBN 978-0-06-135941-5. $24.95. HEALTH
Verdict: As with most dialogs, this conversation between a terminal cancer patient and a gynecologic oncologist who become close friends is uneven, with one participant, ultimately, more compelling, more eloquent, more sympathetic than the other. Nonetheless, though there are no 11th-hour reprieves here, this trial by fire in the cancer wars is a valuable addition to patient health collections.
Background: Professor of religion Sills meets oncologist Ramondetta during Sills’s stay at Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1998, where she is about to be diagnosed with a recurrence of Stage III ovarian cancer. Following extensive chemotherapy and, eventually, a bone marrow transplant, Sills returns to her family and home in California, yet she and Ramondetta, married with a young daughter, share a deep-seated interest in spirituality and the relationship between the health-care provider and the terminal patient and to what they refer to as "the art of dying." At one point, they decide to coauthor a book on the subject, which, basically, is the book we are reading. At times Ramondetta’s personal life seems more of a soap opera than we might prefer, but we get to know these women very well so we accept those melodramatic moments as part of that process. Sills is older, possibly wiser, but someone we are genuinely sorry to see go.—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Soros, George. The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. PublicAffairs: Perseus. May 2008. 624p. ISBN 978-1-58648-683-9. $22.95. BUS
Verdict: Soros’s arguments for reflexivity as "the new paradigm" are somewhat convoluted, so readers will need to tease out the salient points. Nevertheless, his insights on financial matters are thought-provoking and will have wide media circulation. Therefore, his new book should be in most academic and larger public libraries.
Background: Pioneer of hedge funds and prominent investor Soros uses the current mortgage-backed securities crisis to support his theory of reflexivity (i.e., that investors don’t simply reflect the market but can change it) in which he believes markets can move to dangerous extremes through what amounts to self-fulfilling feedback loops. He devotes the first half of the book to restating his ideas on reflexivity, which he introduced in The Alchemy of Finance over 20 years ago. He argues that prevailing economic theory does not account for extreme market moves because markets are made up of individuals and the changing behaviors of many individuals cannot be modeled accurately. In the book’s second half, he turns to the present mortgage-backed securities crisis, noting that it arose because of the self-fulfilling nature of lenders lending more readily owing to rising home prices, and home prices rising due to the availability of easy lending. Beyond the housing bubble, Soros says a larger credit bubble has been forming since about 1980 with the United States running deficits against the rest of the world. He sees great dangers in both situations and calls for increased regulation of the financial markets.—Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA