What I've Been Reading Lately, Part II: Nonfiction

As happy as I've been with my fiction reading choices of late, I've been equally satisfied with what I've been reading on the nonfiction side. Here are the last few I've read, plus a look ahead at some to come.

The most recent nonfiction book I read was Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard. I've been eagerly awaiting a new book from this writer, and I was not disappointed. Millard's first book was The River of Doubt, about what had to have been history's most poorly planned trip -- a harrowing journey by Teddy Roosevelt and his son Kermit down an uncharted tributary of the Amazon after he lost the presidential election in 1912.

Her new book tells the story of James A. Garfield, our twentieth president and the last of "the log cabin presidents," who -- to the surprise of many -- was elected in 1881. Just a few months after his election, a deranged office-seeker shot him in the back. The book focuses on the drama of what hap­pened subsequently, as a team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. Even Alexander Graham Bell got in the game, as he attempted to invent an instrument that could locate a bullet in a body.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times named it one of the top ten books of 2011, calling it a staggering tale of "lunacy... and medical malfeasance. " Another reviewer described it as "first-rate history, political intrigue, and a true-crime story all rolled into one."

The nonfiction book I read before that was Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness, by Alexandra Fuller. In Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (she definitely wins the award for best titles and covers), Fuller wrote about growing up in then-Rhodesia-now-Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia. Her newest book revisits that same time period, but this time through the perspective of her parents, Nicola and Tim, and she interviews her them about their personal history.

Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972 she moved with her family to a farm in Rhodesia. After that country’s civil war in 1981, the Fullers moved first to Malawi, then to Zambia. Currently she lives in Wyoming (the setting for her nonfiction book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, also a wonderfully moving book). I loved Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight -- but I loved Cocktail Hour even more! I highly recommend them both; read in any order.

The nonfiction book before that was the latest from the marvelous storyteller Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. The book tells the story of William Dodd, a mild-mannered professor from Chicago, who became America's ambassador to Germany in 1933, when Hitler came to power. Dodd moved to Berlin with his wife, son, and recently divorced daughter, willing to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt. Violence, censorship, and over-the-top behavior soon opened their eyes to the true threat Hitler posed, and Dodd tried to sound the alarm back home. Both Dodd and his daughter were avid journal-keepers and letter-writers, giving Larson a trove of eyewitness accounts to draw on.

One last nonfiction book I read that I'll mention just briefly: The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Kim Barker. Barker, one of the Middle East's longest serving correspondents, captures the absurdities and tragedies of life in a war zone in a voice that is candid, self-deprecating, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times recently named it one of her picks for 2011. Interestingly, Barker has a Portland connection, with family living in the area.

What's next on my nonfiction reading list?? Hmmm, I'll have to see what my mood is like after the holidays. Some of the options on the table are Van Gogh: The Life,  A World on Fire, Steve Jobs, and 1491. Given the frenetic pace of the past few weeks, I might have to find something a little lighter to dip into first.

The nonfiction book I am most looking forward to being published in 2012 is unquestionably Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by local writer Cheryl Strayed. I've already started reading an advanced copy of this book, and I can tell you that it's the real deal. Given how frenetic and stressed my life has been of late, and my herky-jerky opportunities for reading, I decided to put the book away until after the holidays so I can return to it at a time when I can truly savor every word. Have you ever done that? Tucked away a jewel of a book to read, and on those more-challenging days with long dark nights you flash upon the gem that awaits you and it makes you smile? That's how I feel about reading Cheryl's book. I'm also happy to share with you that you will be able to purchase signed and/or personalized copies of Cheryl's book through our website when the book publishes in March.

Erik Larson Gives Us Another Winner

I've been on a particularly lucky reading streak lately -- great book after great book after great book, with no clunkers. Most recently I read a memoir, The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, and a novel, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett; both were over-the-top terrific. I wasn't sure my luck would continue, but it sure did! Last night I finished reading Erik Larson's newest book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, and I stayed up WAY too late finishing it because I just couldn't stop so close to the end.

Not that it should be surprising that an author can make Berlin under Hitler and the Nazis interesting reading. But what was surprising was that at well past midnight I found myself reading the end notes to the book, thinking "Sally, just stop reading and go to sleep, it's just end-notes, for goodness sake!" It's a rare writer who can make even the end-notes to a book compelling enough to keep one's eyes open in the wee hours.

Larson employs a great technique in telling the story of Berlin in the lead-up to WWII by telling the story of America's ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and his flamboyant, flirtatious daughter, Martha. A mild-mannered professor of history from Chicago, Dodd moved to Berlin with his wife, son, and daughter as Hitler and his band of sadists and psychopaths rose to power.

Dodd's wife and son receive scant attention in the book (mostly because Dodd and Martha left a much greater written record of their thoughts and activities). His daughter Martha, newly separated from her husband, initially found the young men of the Third Reich handsome and exciting, and she threw herself into Berlin's social scene, having affairs and partying. But as proof of the evil intentions of the Nazis became increasingly obvious, she became repulsed, and Dodd became increasingly alarmed and tried to get the American government to step in, or at least speak up. But he is unsuccessful. Although he eventually recognized the dysfunction of the regime and behaved courageously, he was unable to persuade his countrymen to take action until it was too late, and war became inevitable.

Persecution of the Jews increased, as Hitler stripped them of basic rights and economic viability, and random sadistic violence reigned, culminating in the events of June 30, 1934 -- the Night of the Long Knives -- when Hitler ordered a political purge that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of his critics and rivals, many of them friends and acquaintances of the Dodds.

In the end matter to the book, Larson writes about how deeply his research into Nazi Germany affected him: "What I did not realize as I ventured into those dark days of Hitler's rule was how much the darkness would infiltrate my own soul. I generally pride myself on possessing a journalist's remove, the ability to mourn tragedy and at the same time appreciate its narrative power, but living among the Nazis day in, day out proved for me a uniquely trying experience" -- to the point that he had to keep one of his main reference books on Hitler face down on his desk so he wouldn't be forced to start each day with "those hate-filled eyes and slack cheeks and that fragment of Brillo that passed for a mustache" that had become so repulsive to him.

You also have to enjoy a writer who in his acknowledgements thanks his three daughters for "their increasingly astute critiques of my manner of dress" and his wife and "secret weapon" for her margin notes, "complete with crying faces and trailing lines of zzzzzz's...."

I recently read the novel Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada (who makes a cameo appearance in Larson's book), which is also set in Nazi Berlin and is based on true events. It was so horrifying -- and also un-put-down-able -- that I wasn't sure I was ready for another book on this bloody, sadistic, sorrowful period in our world history. But Larson is a extraordinarily good writer and story teller, and once I started I couldn't stop.

Larson is also the author of The Devil in the White City (about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a serial killer), Thunderstruck (about the invention of the wireless and the chase for one of Britain's most famous criminals), and Isaac's Storm (about the deadly hurricane off the Gulf Coast in 1900), among other books. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language and culture. He received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. He has been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and for Time Magazine and has written articles for The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and other publications. He and his wife and fashion-conscious daughters live in Seattle, where he owns an old British sports car named Mrs. Peel.

Sarah Vowell's Take on Hawaii

Fans of Sarah Vowell and her "nerd civics lessons" can rejoice in today's publication of her latest book: Unfamiliar Fishes (Riverhead Books), in which Vowell  tells the the story of Hawaii’s Americanization – from the first American immigrants in 1820 to the annexation of Hawaii in 1898. New England missionaries started arriving in 1820 to Christianize the local "heathen," worrying natives that they might "pray them all to death."  Some might question whether this was an improvement over existing conditions.

In her characteristic wry combination of erudition and humor, Vowell tells the story of our fiftieth state, the birthplace of our current president. And just because I think it helps to have Sarah Vowell's voice in your head when you read her books, here's a video clip of her telling Hawaii's story through plate lunches. Yes, you heard me: plate lunches.

Wow. I Just Finished a Terrific Book

Several years ago I plucked a nonfiction book off the shelves at my local independent bookstore, and a blurb on the back cover said something to the effect of  "Every American should read this book and read it today." So I did. (Yes, I really am just that impressionable.) The book was The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler, and it opened my eyes to an aspect of our culture that I hadn't given much thought to before. (Although now, with the financial wherewithal of a co-owner of a small independent bookstore, it's much more familiar to me now.)

I think the novel The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, with it's draw-back-the-curtain look at the life of African American maids in the South has resonated with people for a similar reason. It's a view into a part of our culture and history that they might not have thought about before.

The book I just finished reading, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, should also have that advice on its back cover, that every American should read this book and read it today, as it gives us an eye-opening in-depth view into the lives of the almost six million black citizens who migrated north and west from the South between 1915 and 1970. It's not always easy to read their stories -- the cruelties and harm they suffered are unthinkable -- but it's important. "By the time the Great Migration was over," the author writes, "few Americans had not been touched by it."

Most of us have read at least a story or two about foreign immigrants coming to this country -- what drove them to leave (potato famine, war, cruelty and abuse, lack of opportunity or freedom, etc), the courage it took for them to leave their homes and families to move some place unfamiliar with different rules and customs and cultures and in some cases languages, and the challenges and discrimination they faced in their newly adopted homes. But how many of us have read about the African Americans in our own country, who basically lived out similar stories?

The Warmth of Other Suns is a fascinating story, beautifully told by Isabel Wilkerson, Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University and herself the offspring of two who migrated out of the South. She is also the winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing while she was the Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times -- the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.Wilkerson's organizational structure is genius: She tells the individual stories of three people -- a woman who left Mississippi in the '30s to move to Chicago, a man who left Florida in the '40s to move to New York City, and a man who left Louisiana in the '50s to move to California -- to tell the larger (and previously mostly untold) story of The Great Migration.

"I wanted to convey the intimate stories of people who had dared to make the crossing," the author says. She conducted preliminary interviews with more than two hundred people to find the three subjects whose stories she would tell in depth. She then interviewed her primary and secondary subject for "dozens, if not hundreds of hours," interviewing witnesses, cohorts and family members, wading through dozens of scholarly works of the times, reading newspaper accounts dating back to 1900, and researching census, military, railroad, school, state, and municipal records, all to confirm or clarify what she learned in the interviews. She even reenacted all or part of each subject's migration route.

This book has been selling strongly at the store -- in part because almost everyone who buys a copy and starts reading it comes back to buy at least one more to give away to a friend or relative. I wrote about this book in December as part of our 24 Days of Books blog (you'll also find a short video of the author with that post), but I had only read snippets of it at that time. Now that I have finished the entire book I can say, wholeheartedly, everyone should read this book. Today. David Levering Lewis, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, calls it "an American masterpiece" and "a stupendous literary success." I couldn't agree more. The book was recently named a finalist for this year's National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction, and The New York Times named it one of the top five nonfiction books of 2010. If you haven't gathered by now, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is phenomenal -- with the added bonus of a gorgeous cover, a beautiful font, and quality paper. Just a delightful reading experience all the way around.

Chat with the Author of Unbroken

Another one of our bestselling nonfiction books of 2010 (and still going strong) is Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption,  by Laura Hillenbrand (who also wrote Seabiscuit). Now you can participate in on online discussion of the book with the author and other readers through a book-club-meets-social-media experiment that NPR is hosting.

NPR will be facilitating discussions of the book on Facebook and Twitter and at NPR.org through the month of February, culminating in an online chat with the author near the end of the month. You can find more details about the Unbroken discussion here. Everyone I have spoken to who has read the book raves about it, and the bit that I have read tell me it's a definite page-turner.

Paperback of Henrietta Lacks Soon!

One of the top-selling nonfiction books at Broadway Books in 2010 was, not too surprisingly, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. We've written about this book a ton already on this blog, so I won't go on and on about the book here. Better yet, I'll just offer you two little nuggets: First, the paperback version of this book goes on sale in early March; call or email us if you want to reserve a copy (or a few, since the book makes such a great gift and would be an ideal book club book). Second, here's a video of Rebecca talking about why you might want to read this book. And really, nobody says it better than the author, right?

Day 23: On the High Seas

Welcome to Day 23 in our 24 Days of Books! Christmas is two days away, and we're feeling oceanic. Let's start by talking about Simon Winchester's new book, Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories. As you can tell from the subtitle, the book covers much ground (ok, water, actually) and offers many exciting tales from the S-shaped body of water that covers 33 million square miles.

Winchester calls the book a "biography" of the ocean, borrowing an organizational device from Shakespeare's As You Like It in which Shakespeare presents the seven ages of man. Winchester tells the story of the Atlantic ocean from its geologic origins to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, delving into early explorers such as the Vikings and Christopher Columbus and modern-day events such as oil spills, and even looks toward the likely future of the ocean.

Winchester is the author of several very popular books, including The Professor and the Madman and his most recent, The Man Who Loved China. Once again, his writing and storytelling in his latest book is top-notch, earning my highest praise of "unputdownable." Just start out reading the introduction and you'll know what I mean. (And the end papers are terrific!)

Here's what The Oregonian had to say about the book.

As long as we're talking about the ocean, I must give a shout-out to one of my favorite books of the year, The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey, a beautiful piece of narrative nonfiction. Here's a little bit I wrote about the book earlier in the year.

One last book, sticking with the oceanic theme, is by Geoffrey Wolff: The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum. Slocum grew up in coastal Nova Scotia under the thumb of a strict father. At the age of 16, he escaped to the sea. In 1895 he set sail -- by himself -- in the small sloop "Spray." More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that would not be replicated for another quarter century. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made Slocum famous. A decade later, he set off alone once more and was lost at sea. Wolff intentionally kept this biography on the shorter side (240 pages, versus the massive tomes of many of the other biographies out now) because he wants to encourage people to read Slocum's original narrative in conjunction with this bio. Here's the NYT's take on the book, with a review by a fabulous writer in his own right, Nathaniel Philbrick.

I've always been particularly fascinated by and, frankly, a bit in love with, our planet's oceans. These are all three great reads for anyone in a similar boat (ha ha).

More Honors for Rebecca Skloot

I don't think there's a scientific or literary organization around that hasn't paid homage to Rebecca Skloot and her wonderful and amazing book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. And now The Washington Post has named Rebecca one of the Five Surprising Leaders of 2010. Way to go, Rebecca!

Here's an interview with Rebecca by Tasha Cotter for The Rumpus. And yeah yeah she was born in Illinois, but she grew up right here in Portland.

If you're still shopping for the perfect gift for the reader in your life, you can't go wrong with this engrossing book.

Day 12: Two First Couples, Two Generations

Day 12 in our 24 Days of Books looks at two books about two presidential marriages in two different eras: First Family: Abigail & John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis and Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley.

Both marriages played out in the spotlight, with the burden of challenges both personal and political. Both marriages featured intelligent, opinionated first ladies who each served as a true partner to the president, although the earlier in a less public way.

Joseph Ellis is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Founding Brothers and American Sphinx. His newest book is part biography, part political history, and part love story. The book tells the full story of their relationship in the context of America's creation as a people and as a nation, bringing human scale to the telling of great events.

John and Abigal met in 1759, when John was 24 and Abigail not quite 15. They soon began a passionate correspondence that resulted in their marriage five years later -- but the correspondence continued. During their marriage, they were separated nearly as much as they were together, which led to voluminous correspondence -- some 1200+ letters.Despite her lack of formal education, Abigail was a true partner in John's life, with reading habits and a level of opinion and intellectual engagement that would have been "downright scandalous" if she had been raised in Virginia, rather than in Massachusetts.

In this day of emailing and texting -- instant communication across countless miles -- it's hard to imagine a relationship that plays out in large part through printed correspondence that could take weeks or even months to reach its destination.

Almost 150 years later came another political marriage of intellectual equals: that of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt.

Hazel Rowley's book tells the story of the Roosevelt marriage, and in particular its "evolution from a conventional Victorian family into the bold and radical partnership that made Eleanor and Franklin go down in history as one of the most inspiring couples of all time." According to Rowley, their marriage was not a "gracious facade" while each went about their own lives but rather a supportive and daring partnership consciously created in pursuit of their own ambitions and needs.

Eleanor and Franklin were married in 1905, and Franklin took office in 1933, at the height of the depression and six weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in Germany. The book chronicles the Roosevelt marriage from its beginning through 1962, the year Eleanor died (Franklin died in 1945) and clearly shows just how magnetic both Franklin and Eleanor were as personalities. Eleanor was certainly more of a politcal player in her own right than Abigail Adams was, yet they both played strong roles as first wives.

In an article in last Saturday's Oregonian, Jeff Baker wrote of his interview (via email) with Rowley.

Rowley, who currently lives in New York City, was born in London and educated in England and Australia. She has written three previous biographies: Christina Stead: A Biography, Richard Wright: The Life and Times, and Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. She wrote her PhD thesis on Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism and interviewed Beauvoir in her Montparnasse apartment in 1976.

 How did she come to write about these people, and now about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt? Rowley addresses the question on her website: "Some people wonder what my books have in common. An Australian woman, an African-American man, the most notorious French couple in the twentieth century, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt? For those who have read all four, the thread is clear. They were courageous people, who all, in some way, felt 'outsiders' in society. Above all, they were passionate people who cared about the world and felt angry about its injustices. It is no coincidence that they were born around the turn of the century, within a few years of each other. They came of age at a time of revolutionary change and hope. They were all progressives. And then the Cold War descended on them, like a thick fog. I see parallels with my own lifetime. I came of age in the late 60s and 70s, a time of revolutionary change and hope. And then came the fog."

"My books are all, in their different ways, voyages of discovery. I write books to learn, to stretch my horizons. These voyages of mine are full of risk and passion. But each time they leave me inspired and enriched. And I hope to do the same for my readers."

Cleopatra and Mark Twain at Broadway Books Together!

 Well, not in person, of course, but in the form of Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff and The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol 1, by the man himself. I'm ecstatic to report that we now have copies of both of these books back in the store in lovely tall stacks, just a-waiting your arrival! These are two of the hottest-ticket items this holiday season and are bound to disappear again very soon, so don't drag your heels. The reviews on both are through the roof. More on that to come in the 24 Days of Books.......

Day 8: Unbroken, A Dual Story of Resilience

Welcome to Day 8 in our 24 Days of Books! In 2001, Laura Hillenbrand wrote the smash hit, Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Now, almost a decade later, she has another potential smash hit on her hands with another book about redemption and a stunningly fast runner. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a cunning and incorrigible delinquent who as a teen developed a talent for running (often to avoid getting caught) that took him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Sadly, WWII interrupted his running career. He became an airman, but in May 1943 his B24 bomber jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He spent almost seven weeks in a fragile raft, drifting thousands of miles in the middle of the ocean with two (and then one) other survivors, surrounded by sharks and enemy aircraft. Zamperini survived that ordeal, only to be captured by the Japanese and spend two years suffering assaults, humiliation, and physical abuse in a Japanese concentration camp.

Hillenbrand learned about Zamperini while researching her book on Seabiscuit [his coach often said that the only runner who could beat him was Seabiscuit]. In writing her new book, Hillenbrand interviewed Zamperini, now 93, more than 75 times. She read his diaries, letters, and unpublished memoirs; interviewed his friends and family, former Airmen and Japanese veterans, and former Olympians; and pored through forgotten papers in archives. Zamperini wondered why all of their conversations took place over the phone. It was only after reading an article about her that he learned that she suffers from severe debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome.

After the stunning success of Seabiscuit, Hillenbrand suffered a relapse of the syndrome that has ruled her life for more than two decades, since she was 19 years old. From 2007 through the summer of 2009, she never left her house; for some of those months, she never left her room. Despite that burden she has managed to write yet another thoroughly researched, gripping, cinematic true story about triumph and resilience. When Zamperini learned of her condition he sent her one of his Purple Hearts, saying she deserved it more than him.

Unbroken is sure to be one of the biggest sellers this holiday season. Her first book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and led to a smash motion picture; Unbroken is likely headed down a similar path. It's a great read -- a real page-turner -- regardless of the backstory of the author, but that story does make her accomplishment all the more impressive.

Day 4: An All-Bryson Day

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Bill Bryson's books. Today I'm going to cheat a little bit and mention three different books for Day 4 of Broadway Books' 24 Days of Books. But it's all Bryson, so I don't think it's cheating too much. And any one -- or all of them! -- would make great holiday gifts.

The first book I'll talk about is At Home: A Short History of Private Life. This book is Bryson along the lines of A Short History of Nearly Everything and Mother Tongue, rather than the Bryson of the often-hysterical-always-amusing memoirs like A Walk in the Woods, The Lost Continent, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

In his newest book, Bryson walks from room to room in his family Victorian parsonage in England and uses each as a launching pad to talk about, well, just about anything that interests him: hygiene, fashion, cuisine, architecture, drinking, nutrition, the Eiffel Tower, the telephone, insect bites, furniture, plumbing -- you get my drift. Bryson is known for his inquisitiveness and his fondness for research. In fact, he was recently spotted in our very own Central Library doing just that! This book is a perfect showcase for his work, written in his customarily engaging and entertaining prose style.

When you're finished reading this book you'll know that Thomas Jefferson was responsible for introducing the french fry to the American palate (damn him, I say!), and that Benjamin Franklin was partial to taking "air baths," in which he would bask naked in front of an open upstairs window. "This can't have got him any cleaner, but it seems to have done him no harm and it must have at least given the neighbors something to talk about." And you will have a greater understanding of the complex geometry and engineering involved in building a functional staircase.

Bryson is also responsible for another recently published book, Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society, which he edited. In honor of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary -- having been established on "a damp weeknight" in London in 1660 as a "Colledge for Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning" -- Bryson solicited essays from a collective of science writers on what we know today and what we're still looking for.

The book opens with an introduction by Bryson, followed by an essay by novelist Margaret Atwood on the mad scientists of literature and film. And then the book gets a bit more serious, including James Gleick tracing the birth of modern science, Richard Dawkins writing on the world-changing legacy of Darwin and evolutionary science, Neal Stephenson writing on the strange feud between Newton and Leibniz, Richard Holmes writing on man's first success at flight, Henry Petroski writing on engineering, and Martin Rees (president of the Royal Society from December 2005 to December 2010) looking forward to the future of science in the twenty-first century and beyond. In all, the book offers twenty-two essays. It's lusciously produced, with creamy pages and lots of photographs and illustrations.

Finally, the third in my Bryson picks for the holidays is the special illustrated edition of A Short History of Nearly Everything. Originally published (sans illustrations) in 2003, and in a hardcover illustrated edition in 2005, the illustrated version has just been published in paperback. The book covers physics, astronomy,biology, chemistry, geology -- pretty much everything, like the title says. Only now it comes with full-color artwork and photos -- both contemporary and historical. The Seattle Times said this about Bryson's book: "A highly readable mix of historical anecdotes, gee-whiz facts, adept summarization, and gleeful recounts of the eccentricities of great scientists. It moves so fast that it's science on a toboggan."

Anyone with an inquisitive nature and a fondness for facts presented with wit and eloquence would likely be thrilled to get one of these books.

NYT Picks Top Ten of 2010

Yesterday The New York Times presented its choices for the top ten books of 2010, five fiction, five nonfiction (the article will appear in the print edition of the NYT on December 12th). I can't imagine winnowing a whole year down to ten books, and I'm sure the process involved heated discussions and perhaps even a fisticuff or two. And now that the newspaper has presented its list, what surely will follow will be billions (ok, maybe dozens) of comments along the lines of "how could you possibly have picked/omitted that book?" Personally, I agree with some of the choices, disagree with a couple, and -- mostly -- find myself with an increasingly large stack of want-to-reads. Here's the list; what do you think?

FICTION

• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
• The New Yorker Stories, Ann Beattie
• Room, Emma Donoghue
• Selected Stories, William Trevor
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

NONFICTION

• Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, Jennifer Homans
• Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson

One last note about this list: several of these books were already becoming increasingly hard to get; now that they've hit the NYT top ten list they are likely to become even more scarce, so if you're thinking about one or more for a holiday gift, call or come see us soon!

Day Two: The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson, is a beautiful piece of narrative nonfiction that tells the story of a mass relocation that, over time, would come to dwarf the California Gold Rush of the 1850s with its one hundred thousand participants and the Dust Bowl migration of some three hundred thousand people in the 1930s.

Wilkerson uses the stories of three individuals -- Ida Mae Brandon Gladney in 1937, George Swanson Starling in 1945, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster in 1953, who left Chicasaw County Mississippi, Wildwood, Florida, and Monroe, Louisiana, respectively -- to chronicle the great untold story of the migration of black citizens from the South to northern and western cities in search of a better life. This pilgramage began during WWI and did not end until the 1970s and would set in motion changes throughout the country that would take nearly a lifetime to play out -- impacting music, cuisine, religion, culture, city structures, and more.

During the Great Migration, the author's parents journeyed from Georgia and from southern Virginia to Washington, DC, where Wilkerson was born and reared. She is the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and the first African American to win for individual reporting. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University.

The people in this movement left the South because "they were all stuck in a caste system as hard and unyielding as the red Georgia clay."

"The would cross into alien lands with fast new ways of speaking and carrying oneself and with hard-to-figure rules and laws....The places they went were big, frightening, and already crowded -- New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and smaller, equally foreign cities -- Syracuse, Oakland, Milwaukee, Newark, Gary."

These migrants did not "cross the turnstile of customs at Ellis Island. They were already citizens. But where they came from, they were not treated as such." When the Great Migration began, 10% of black Americans lived outside of the South; by the 1970s, almost half did.

This is a gorgeously written story of a fascinating and little-told story in American history, and it's selling like hotcakes. And I'm not alone in thinking this is a great book: Janet Maslin of the New York Times picked it as one of her top ten books of 2010. If you're thinking about giving this as a gift this year you probably don't want to wait too long to come get a copy, or two -- I'm thinking you might want one for yourself as well!

Here is a video clip (8 minutes) of the author being interviewed on PBS.

Skloot Picks Up Another Major Prize!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the marvelous book by Portland-raised writer Rebecca Skloot, has received yet another accolade (on top of this week's announcement by Publishers Weekly that the book is one of the ten best books 2010): the book has won the UK-based Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

The £25 000 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, in its second year, is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. It brings together the worlds of medicine and literature, appealing to literature lovers and science enthusiasts.


The trust was established in 1936 under the terms of Sir Henry Wellcome's will, with the trustees charged with using the profits of the company to support research "for the benefit of mankind." "We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and medicine-related art....We are independent of both political and commercial interests."

Clive Anderson, chair of the five-person judging panel, had this to say about Rebecca's book: "This is an engaging account of the life of Henrietta Lacks who died in Baltimore nearly 60 years ago and the immortal life of her cancer cells, which continue to replicate in research laboratories around the world to this day. There are several stories to be told: the changing attitudes and ethics of the medical profession; the economics of healthcare; and the successes and slip ups of modern scientific methods. In addition, the book reveals the human story of Henrietta Lacks' family, who the author got to know in the course of her extensive research. A worthy winner of a prize designed to honour fine writing on a medical theme."

Clare Matterson, Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust added: "It's wonderful that the prize has been awarded to a book that was such a labour of love for its author.  Rebecca Skloot's work absolutely meets the objective of this prize.  It has something of everything - a compelling science story, an emotional personal story and intriguing ethical dilemmas - and all woven together and written with great style."

We've written TONS about this book previously (here's just one link), so we won't go on and on about it again. Suffice it say that we're thrilled and very happy for Rebecca (although we still think the book should have been a finalist for a National Book Award).

One of the shortlisted books for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize is a novel that I've been wanting to read: So Much for That, by Lionel Shriver (who is a woman, in case you were wondering). Her novel was just shortlisted for a National Book Award. You can read about the other books on the shortlist by clicking on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize link above.

Congratulations, Rebecca!

Video Preview of Sex at Dawn

This video is a little on the lengthy side, and I'm not sure anyone really cares that Thom Hartmann spoke at a conference in Barcelona, but it's an interesting intro to the book we'll be discussing at the store tonight. Christopher Ryan, author with Cacilda Jetha of the recently published book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (HarperCollins), will be joining us at 7 pm tonight to read from his book and discuss it with the audience. You can read a bit more about the book here. Please come join us!

How About Sex at Dawn?

We hope you can join us Wednesday night at 7 to hear one of the authors of a controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society.  Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, by researchers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, debunks almost everything we think we know about sex. On Wednesday, Christopher Ryan will join us to talk about this new book.
 

In the book, the authors show how our promiscuous past haunts our current struggles regarding monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. Some of the themes they explore include:

• why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many;
• why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens;
• why many middle-aged men risk everything for an affair;
• why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and
• what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality

Ryan and Jethá show that our ancestors lived in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, often overlooked evidence from anthropology, archeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature sexual monogamy really is. They expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity. 

Here's what some of the reviewers have said about this book:

“Sex At Dawn is the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948.” (Dan Savage, author of the internationally syndicated sex-advice column “Savage Love” and The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family)

 

"By examining the prehistoric origins of human sexual behavior the authors are able to expose the fallacies and weaknesses of standard theories proposed by most experts. This is a provocative, entertaining, and pioneering book. I learned a lot from it and recommend it highly.”(Andrew Weil, M.D., world famous integrative health expert and author of several books on health and wellness) 

And in her review in Newsweek, Kate Daily calls the prose "funny, witty, and light -- it makes the 400-plus pages of genetic and anthropological interpretation fly by." She also says that the book is "a scandal in the best sense, one that will have you reading the best parts aloud and reassessing your ideas about humanity's basic urges well after the book is done."  

 
Here is some background on the authors (shamelessly cribbed from their website), who reside together in Barcelona: Christopher received a BA in English and American literature in 1984 and an MA and Ph.D. in psychology from Saybrook University in San Francisco twenty years later. He spent the intervening decades traveling around the world, living in unexpected places working at very odd jobs (e.g., gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real-estate in New York’s Diamond District, helping Spanish physicians publish their research). Somewhere along the way, he decided to pursue doctoral studies in psychology. Drawing upon his multi-cultural experience, Christopher’s research focused on trying to distinguish the human from the cultural. His doctoral dissertation analyzes the prehistoric roots of human sexuality, and was guided by the world-renowned psychologist, Stanley Krippner. He blogs regularly for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

Cacilda Jethá has an Indian face, a European education, and an African soul. She was born in Mozambique to a family that had immigrated two generations earlier from Goa, India. As a child, she fled civil war to Portugal, where she received most of her education and medical training before returning to Mozambique in the late 1980s. A young physician determined to help heal her country, Cacilda spent seven years as the only physician serving some 50,000 people in a vast rural district in the north of the country. While there, Cacilda also conducted research (funded by the World Health Organization) on the sexual behavior of rural Mozambicans in order to help design more effective AIDS prevention efforts.

After almost a decade in Mozambique, Cacilda returned to Portugal, where she completed her medical residency training in both psychiatry (at the prestigious Hospital de Julio de Matos in Lisbon) and occupational medicine.

This is bound to be a wildly fascinating discussion, so we sure hope you can join us! Come early for the best seats!
 

One of My Favs of the Year So Far

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, by Susan Casey, is one of my favorite kinds of books and one of the best nonfiction books I've read this year. Although Casey uses Laird Hamilton and the other extreme surfers to frame the story, she talks about a whole lot more than just surfing -- and when I say "just surfing," I'm talking about "just surfing" on HUGE waves.

But she also spends time talking with wave scientists, and with the people at Lloyd's of London who insure most of the global shipping fleet and thus are obviously very interested in waves, and with marine salvage experts, who work to save foundering ships from disaster. One of the most interesting stories she tells is about the large denuded areas in Lituya Bay, in Alaska, which geologists puzzled over for years: "But as the story of its past came into focus and Nature gave some forthright demonstrations of what it was up to, the culprit became clear: giant waves, the largest ever witnessed on earth." Over the years, huge waves drove through the bay, but in 1958, as Casey says, the ocean "went postal," and a 1740-foot wave ripped through the Lituya Bay.

The prose in the book is excellent, well-research and wrapped in personal stories -- her style reminds me of a mash-up of Bill Bryson (Think A Short History of Nearly Everything) and Mary Roach and Jon Krakauer. And the photographs are truly stunning.

Here is a brief clip of the author and Laird Hamilton talking about the book and about the lure of the giant waves. If you let me I'll just go on and on and on about this book, so I'd best stop now. Suffice it to say, I highly recommend it!

Chernow's Bio of George Washington is Here!

You might have to wait a few years between books for Ron Chernow's biographies, but it is certainly worth the wait -- both in terms of quantity and quality.

His first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (800+ pages) was published in 1990 and won the National Book Award for nonfiction. The book traced the history of four generations of the J.P. Morgan financial empire. In 1998 Chernow published his biography of John D. Rockefeller, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (also 800+ pages). The book reflected Chernow's continued interest in financial history. Titan was selected by Time magazine and The New York Times as one of the year's ten best books.

In 2004, Chernow published his 832-page biography, Alexander Hamilton, which won the inaugural George Washington Book Prize for early American history. The George Washington Book Prize is sponsored by a partnership of three institutions devoted to furthering scholarship on America’s founding era: Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington's Mount Vernon. The $50,000 prize is the nation’s largest literary award for early American history, and one of the largest prizes of any kind.

And what an interesting twist of fate that was, because now, six years later, Chernow has produced another doorstopping master work, this time a richly nuanced portrait of the very same George Washington, clocking in at about 900 pages. Washington: A Life, published by The Penguin Press, just went on sale yesterday. I wonder if he'll win the George Washington prize for Washington too?

The author's stated goal in writing this latest historical portrait is to present a cradle-to-grave narrative that will create a fresh portrait of Washington that will make him "real, credible, and charismatic in the same way that he was perceived by his contemporaries." "The upshot, I hope, will be that readers, instead of having a frosty respect for Washington, will experience a visceral appreciation of this foremost American who scaled the highest peak of political greatness."

Ron Chernow calls Washington “the most famously elusive figure in American history, a remote, enigmatic personage more revered than truly loved.” Despite Washington's elusivity, Chernow definitely found something to write about: Chernow’s is the longest single-volume biography of Washington ever published. I love thoughtful, meaty biographies -- I can't wait to dig into this one!

You can listen to a brief review of this new book on NPR's "All Things Considered" by clicking on this link.

In the video below, Chernow takes us on a walking tour of George Washington related sites in New York City.

Follett and Woodward Books Here Now

Two other big books go on sale today, one a historical novel and one an examination of Obama's decision making regarding the war in Afghanistan, the campaign in Pakistan, and the world-wide fight against terrorism.

Obama's War, by journalist Bob Woodward, draws on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes, and hundreds of hours of interviews with key players (mostly men, of course) to tell the story of how Obama and his administration tackled critical decisions on the war. Secret debates, White House strategy sessions, and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president help to paint an intimate and sweeping portrait of the young president as commander in chief.

Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett, is the first book of The Century Trilogy. In his magnificent new historical epic (and I emphasize the word epic -- this first volume is close to a thousand pages), Follett (author of World Without End and The Pillars of the Earth) follows the fates of five interrelated families -- American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh -- as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage. Future volumes in the trilogy will follow subsequent generations of the same families as they travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth centruy.