June 2005

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THE REPUBLIC, by Plato; translated by Desmond Lee (c. 380 B. C.; Penguin Classics, 2003). “What is justice?” Plato wondered. “Why should we be good?” With these questions the great Greek philosopher begins a wide-ranging discussion—led by his old teacher, Socrates—about the virtues men must possess if they want to live in a society that is just and good. In this ideal republic, philosophers rather than politicians would rule; the passions would be subject to reason; a proper education grounded in the truth would keep the citizens from being seduced by false ideas; and poets, because they tell stories that are not true, would be banned. Dipping into Plato’s Republic is as close as one can come to resurrecting the genius of ancient Athens.

LEAVING EARTH: SPACE STATIONS, RIVAL SUPERPOWERS, AND THE QUEST FOR INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL, by Robert Zimmerman (Joseph Henry Press, 2003). Americans tend to be smug about having won the space race. Robert Zimmerman reminds his readers that although the first man on the moon came from the United States, the first men living in space were Russians. Between 1971 and 1986, cosmonauts from the Soviet Union lived on six Salyut space stations; and let’s not forget that the Soviets had men living on the Mir space station for 14 years. It’s incredible, when you stop to think about it: The USSR, a country top-heavy with a sluggish bureaucracy, struck out on a daring, dangerous initiative while the supposedly dynamic USA’s plans for inhabited space stations sputtered and stalled. A real eye-opener.

THE DANTE CLUB, by Matthew Pearl (Random House, 2003). Matthew Pearl knows his Dante: In 1998, he won a prize from the Dante Society of America. Now, in his first novel, he spins an inspired historical thriller set in Boston just after the end of the Civil War when a band of literary lions—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes—team up to create an English translation of The Divine Comedy for the “ungloved masses” of America. Of course, not every Boston Brahmin is in favor of releasing “foreign poisons . . . under the disguise of literature.” And soon a murderer is stalking the Dante Club, killing off members in ghastly imitation of the punishments the damned suffer in the Inferno. A splendid debut!

IN PATAGONIA, by Bruce Chatwin (1977; Penguin, 2003). Bruce Chatwin was just a kid when he found a Patagonian giant sloth’s pelt in his grandmother’s house. From that moment, he became obsessed with the land on the far end of the globe. In 1976, he finally went on a six-month journey to Patagonia, meeting its rugged gauchos, Welsh immigrants, and Indian tribes of Tierra del Fuego, and listening to stories of the American outlaw Butch Cassidy, who built a cabin in this stark corner of the world. In Patagonia is Chatwin’s first book, the one that first showcased his style of writing—a distinctive mix of travelogue, history, autobiography, and a little fiction thrown in to keep the story moving.

MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, by Frederick Douglass (1855; Dover Publications, 1969). Ten years after he published an account of his life as a slave in Maryland and his escape to the North, Frederick Douglass revised and expanded his memoir. My Bondage and My Freedom is a more graphic account of his life as a slave, including the heartbreak of being taken away from his grandmother—his only family—and his near despair when he was handed over to a vicious “slave breaker” named Covey. The story goes on to describe his thrilling escape, his friendship with abolitionist firebrand William Lloyd Garrison, and his visit to Great Britain, where he had his first experience of being in a society free of many of the obvious trappings of racial prejudice. A magisterial autobiography that went far to establish Douglass as a preeminent voice for abolition.

PYGMALION, by George Bernard Shaw (1913; Penguin, 2003). Henry Higgins, an arrogant professor of phonetics, makes a bet with his friend, Colonel Pickering, that all it takes to pass off a Cockney flower seller as a duchess is to teach her how to speak properly. The object of this comic wager is Eliza Doolittle, a guttersnipe who turns out to be much more of a lady than Higgins bargained for. Most of us know this story through the enchanting Broadway musical My Fair Lady. Now read the original play, with the original ending.

CRAZE: GIN AND DEBAUCHERY IN AN AGE OF REASON, by Jessica Warner (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003). The gin and tonic is such a civilized drink, it is hard to imagine that in the 18th century, gin was the equivalent of heroin. In this vivid, sometimes gruesome social history, Jessica Warner recounts the pernicious effect the new liquor had on the English, especially on London’s working poor. Gin became such a craze that workers were often too drunk to work, soldiers too drunk to fight, mothers too drunk to care for their children. Yet the upper classes were not united against gin: Tax revenue from the booze was considerable, and landowners made tidy profits from selling grain to distillers. An unsettling but fascinating account of how a new distilled beverage shook up English society.

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RANGER’S TRAIL, by Elmer Kelton (Forge, 2002). Elmer Kelton has won the Spur Award for Western fiction seven times. This novel, Ranger’s Trail, could put him in the running again. The year is 1874; the place is Texas, where the animosities and bitterness of the Civil War are still percolating. Rusty Shannon, a retired Texas Ranger, is set to marry Josie Monahan. Before they can get to the altar, Josie is gunned down by the outlaw Bascom clan. (Josie’s death is a terrible mistake—the Bascoms were after her sister!) Rusty sets off after the trigger man, but grief has clouded his judgment: He’s chasing the wrong guy.

THE TIME IT NEVER RAINED, by Elmer Kelton (Forge, 1999). It is the early 1950s and Texas is suffering through a terrible drought. Rancher Charlie Flagg and his family try to tough out the dry spell with their own grit and initiative and without the interference of the federal government

LAIR OF THE LION, by Christine Feehan (Leisure Books, 2002). When a villainous nobleman imprisons her brother, Isabella Vernaducci ventures into the Alps to find the mysterious Don Nicolai, the one man she believes has the courage and power to win her brother’s freedom. Nicolai agrees to help, but on one condition: Isabella must marry him. Don Nicolai is a bit spooky, but he’s also drop-dead gorgeous, so Isabella consents to be his wife. Then the trouble starts. The men in Nicolai’s family have been cursed. Once they marry, they turn into a beast that rips out the heart of whomever they love. A seductive spin on the old Beauty and the Beast fairy tale.

HERZOG, by Saul Bellow (1964; Penguin, 2003). When his second wife announces that she wants a divorce, Moses E. Herzog is shattered. The situation doesn’t get any better when he learns that his wife’s lover is his best friend. So Herzog runs off to Martha’s Vineyard, where he tries to exorcise his demons by writing letters to friends, public officials, and famous philosophers—living and dead—none of which he ever gets around to mailing. Once he gets letter writing out of his system, Herzog decides to take action: He will kill his wife and her lover. But a series of almost comic mishaps keeps Herzog from becoming a murderer, so he returns to Massachusetts, “pretty well satisfied to be, [with:] no messages for anyone.”

THE DEAN’S DECEMBER, by Saul Bellow (Penguin, 1998). Bellow interweaves two stories, one set in Bucharest, the other in Chicago. Communist officials refuse to permit an American college dean and his Romanian-born wife to visit her dying mother in Romania. Back in Chicago, there is rioting in the streets after a murder on the dean’s college campus.

THE PORTABLE FAULKNER, by William Faulkner; edited by Malcolm Cowley (Penguin Classics, 2003). If you’ve always felt that William Faulkner’s novels were a bit daunting, you’ll appreciate this anthology. Malcolm Cowley, a literary critic and poet, has selected excerpts from Faulkner’s novels that give you a tantalizing taste of the man’s genius for setting and characterization, not to mention his exceptional prose. You’ll find the Dilsey episode from The Sound and the Fury, the Uncle Bud and the Three Madams incident from Sanctuary, a piece about Percy Grimm from Light in August, plus the complete text of Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” and his address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Dive in!

GREAT SHARK WRITINGS, by Valerie and Ron Taylor with Peter Goadby (Overlook Press, 2000). In a burst of inspiration, the Taylors have compiled an edge-of-your-seat anthology that features both fiction and nonfiction works about the scariest thing in the water: the shark. Here are excerpts on sharks by Peter Matthiessen, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ernest Hemingway, and the discoveries of scientists such as William Beebe, as well as shark legends from Polynesia and, of course, excerpts from the greatest shark story ever written, Peter Benchley’s Jaws. A word of advice: Do not take this book with you to the beach.

DON QUIJOTE, by Miguel de Cervantes; translated by Burton Raffe. l (1605, 1615; W. W. Norton, 1999)
This edition of Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece combines a fresh English translation of the seriocomic story with a minilibrary of support materials, including detailed annotations, a survey of Cervantes’s literary career, a discussion of Don Quijote in the context of other literary works of the same period, plus a flurry of scholarly essays on the novel as a whole or on individual episodes. At the center of all this scholarly activity, of course, is the Spaniard’s classic tale of Don Quijote, an elderly eccentric knight who, with his improbable squire, Sancho Panza, sets off to revive the age of chivalry.

STAR-SPANGLED MANNERS: IN WHICH MISS MANNERS DEFENDS AMERICAN ETIQUETTE (FOR A CHANGE), by Judith Martin (W. W. Norton, 2002). Miss Manners looks back longingly to the first days of the United States, when the Founding Fathers encouraged the development of an “etiquette of equality” among Americans. Alas! it never came to be. And so American manners are routinely derided around the globe as awful. Miss Manners concurs, but she continues to hold out hope that Americans can reform their social oafishness and set a standard for good behavior that the world will admire. Star-Spangled Manners is a departure for Miss Manners: She is still amusing, but this time she also gives her readers something to think about.

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LAFAYETTE, by Harlow Giles Unger (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). Rarely has one man played a vital role in two earth-shaking revolutions; the Marquis de Lafayette was such an individual. A French aristocrat who offered his services to the fledgling American Revolution, he became one of the most valuable commanders of the Continental Army, and George Washington’s “adopted son.” During the French Revolution, his fiery rhetoric gave the radicals the excuse they were waiting for to unleash a bloodbath (to which Lafayette’s wife nearly fell victim). Harlow Giles Unger gives us a vibrant, complex portrait of the man most of us know only as a name in history textbooks.

NOAH WEBSTER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AN AMERICAN PATRIOT, by Harlow Giles Unger. (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). You know Webster as the author of the dictionary. Unger introduces us to the dedicated schoolmaster, the champion of women’s rights, the ally of Washington and Adams, and the outspoken proponent of the Constitution.

OWNING MAHOWNY, by Gary Ross (Commonwealth Publishing, 2003). Dan Mahowny, the golden boy of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, was admired—even loved—by just about everybody who knew him. His superiors at the bank respected his work ethic; his customers loved his helpful, down-to-earth style; his friends thought he was fun to hang out with; his girlfriend considered him one of the sweetest guys she’d ever met. Yet it was this quintessential nice guy who pulled off the biggest bank fraud in Canadian history. Why? Danny had a gambling problem. He figured he could get out of his slump if he just had $10 million. Almost as incredible as Danny’s chutzpah is the response of the Canadian press and public to his crime: They hailed him as a folk hero.

HOLLYWOOD URBAN LEGENDS: THE TRUTH BEHIND ALL THOSE DELIGHTFULLY PERSISTENT MYTHS OF FILM, TELEVISION, AND MUSIC, by Richard Roeper (New Page Books, 2002). Did John Wayne dodge the draft? Was Humphrey Bogart the model for the Gerber baby? Did Cher have a rib removed to look thinner? Is there any truth to the story that Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich? Hollywood has been an especially fertile source for urban legends. Now Richard Roeper (cohost of Ebert & Roeper and the Movies) gets to the bottom of these tenacious Tinseltown legends and explains what they tell us about ourselves and our fascination with celebrities.

THE DEFECTION OF A. J. LEWINTER, by Robert Littell (1973; Overlook Press, 2003). A. J. Lewinter is a quirky American engineer who designs nose cones for ballistic missiles. When he defects to the Soviet Union, both the Russian and the American intelligence agencies suspect that they’re being conned. Robert Littell’s black comedy of the Cold War is rich with memorable characters: KGB agent Yefgeny Pogodin, who describes himself as “one-quarter Marxist, one-quarter humanist, and one-half bureaucrat,” and the American agent Leo Diamond, who when his mistress asks if he would still have made love with her if she had failed her security clearance answers, “Yes . . . but I wouldn’t have talked to you.” This is the Catch-22 of Cold War novels.

THE COMPANY, by Robert Littell (Overlook Press, 2002). Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, The Company is an epic novel of the CIA from 1955 to 1995. Littell introduces a handful of young men and women who have just been recruited for the agency, then follows them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Russian war in Afghanistan, and the Gulf War. One of these agents is a mole, but Littell doesn’t identify the traitor until the bitter end.

IT’S NOT OVER ’TIL IT’S OVER: THE STORIES BEHIND THE MOST MAGNIFICENT, HEART-RENDING SPORTS MIRACLES OF OUR TIME, by Al Silverman (Overlook Press, 2002). The 1971 Frazier-Ali fight; the sixth game of the 1975 Red Sox-Reds World Series; the Baltimore Colts vs. the New York Giants in 1958 (the only sudden death pro football championship game ever played); the 1999 Women’s World Cup soccer match between China and the United States; the USA vs. USSR in hockey at the 1980 Olympics. It’s electrifying moments like these that bring screaming fans to their feet. Veteran sportswriter Al Silverman showcases 13 miraculous 20th-century moments in sports, setting them in the context of their time and offering fresh insights through interviews with the players.

I AM THIRD: THE INSPIRATION FOR BRIAN’S SONG, by Gale Sayers with Al Silverman (1970; Penguin, 2001). Thanks to a made-for-TV movie, Gale Sayers’s account of his escape from an Omaha ghetto to become one of the National Football League’s greatest running backs has been overshadowed by his friendship with his Chicago Bears teammate Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer. To get a more balanced picture of Sayers’s life, read the book.

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BLUE SHOE, by Anne Lamott (Riverhead Books, 2002). Anne Lamott has won a loyal following thanks to her witty memoirs of life as a mother and a writer. Now she turns her hand to fiction, writing a poignant domestic comedy about a woman who is juggling a divorce, an aging mother, two very young children, and a romantic attraction to a happily married man. In classic Lamott style, the story is both humorous and heart-wrenching as Mattie Ryder, the heroine, tries to put her life in order. And it’s refreshing to find that Mattie’s emotional anchor is not a new man in her life, but rather, her kids.

LEAVING EARTH: SPACE STATIONS, RIVAL SUPERPOWERS, AND THE QUEST FOR INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL, by Robert Zimmerman (Joseph Henry Press, 2003). Americans tend to be smug about having won the space race. Robert Zimmerman reminds his readers that although the first man on the moon came from the United States, the first men living in space were Russians. Between 1971 and 1986, cosmonauts from the Soviet Union lived on six Salyut space stations; and let’s not forget that the Soviets had men living on the Mir space station for 14 years. It’s incredible, when you stop to think about it: The USSR, a country top-heavy with a sluggish bureaucracy, struck out on a daring, dangerous initiative while the supposedly dynamic USA’s plans for inhabited space stations sputtered and stalled. A real eye-opener.

THE LAST OF THE THORNTONS, by Horton Foote (Overlook Press, 2000). In his plays, Texas native Horton Foote returns again and again to the Lone Star State, particularly the town of Harrison, which is based on his real hometown, Wharton. In The Last of the Thorntons, Foote introduces Alberta Thornton, the last member of a clan that once was the biggest deal in Harrison. Alberta is dying, and before she goes, she wants to recall the glory days of the Thorntons, confront some of the less flattering aspects of her family history, and try to let go, at long last, of yearnings and ambitions that will now never be fulfilled. An honest, moving play from a true American master.

THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, TENDER MERCIES, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: THREE SCREENPLAYS, by Horton Foote (Grove Press, 1989). Just like the title says, this volume brings together Foote’s three finest screenplays.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, by J. K. Rowling; illustrations by Mary GrandPré (Scholastic, 2001). As of this writing, the Harry Potter series is up to five novels, but hardcore fans of J. K. Rowling tell us the third Harry book is the best. For twelve years, the notorious Sirius Black was imprisoned in the fortress of Azkaban. Black had killed thirteen people with a single curse, a crime so horrible that he was suspected of being in league with the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Now Black has escaped, and his guards think they know where he’s headed. They heard him saying in his sleep, “He’s at Hogwarts . . . he’s at Hogwarts.” And the “he” Sirius Black is out to get is none other than our friend Harry Potter.

FIVE POINTS: THE 19TH-CENTURY NEW YORK NEIGHBORHOOD THAT INVENTED TAP DANCE, STOLE ELECTIONS, AND BECAME THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS SLUM, by Tyler Anbinder (Plume Books, 2002). In the 19th century, the place that defined squalor and degradation was New York City’s Five Points section. It had everything: filth, violence, all manner of vice, gang warfare, and riots. And Five Points had one thing more—lots of political clubs. The neighborhood’s immigrant residents, the Irish especially, learned early that politics was the way to power. Five Points, the political machine that became better known as Tammany Hall, wrested power from New York’s old WASP elite, becoming the model for big-city politics across America. In this vivid history, Tyler Anbinder brings the nasty old neighborhood back to life.

A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE, by John Cowper Powys (1932; Overlook Press, 1996). John Cowper Powys had literature in his blood: He was a descendant of William Cowper and John Donne. Although his novels don’t get much attention anymore, this paperback edition (the first ever) of A Glastonbury Romance, his masterwork, may spark a Powys renaissance. The story is set in the English town to which, according to an ancient legend, Joseph of Arimathea took the Holy Grail. By weaving the present with the past, history with legend, the ordinary with the supernatural, Powys delivers a powerful modern epic.

THE VIRTUOSO, by Margriet de Moor; translated by Ina Rilke (Overlook Press, 2002). By training, Margriet de Moor is a musician. So it comes as no surprise that the primary setting for The Virtuoso is an opera house in 18th-century Naples. There a duchess, Carlotta, sits enraptured as she listens to the man she loves, Gasparo, sing. Doomed love affairs are commonplace in opera; what makes Carlotta and Gasparo’s situation singular is that Gasparo is a castrato. Between the opulence of 18th-century Naples and the sensuality of Carlotta and Gasparo, The Virtuoso is as captivating as a Mozart opera.

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THE GODS ARE THIRSTY, by Tanith Lee (Overlook Press, 1996). Tanith Lee’s story follows Camille Desmoulins, one of the French Revolution’s most prolific and influential pamphleteers. As a hero of the storming of the Bastille, an associate of Danton, and a protégé of Robespierre, Desmoulins is welcome everywhere in Paris. Through his eyes, the reader sees firsthand the Reign of Terror. The rampaging mobs in the streets and the endless procession of victims to the guillotine thrill Desmoulins. But marriage and the birth of a son have an unexpected effect on him: He begins to moderate his radical views. He even begins to speak of clemency for enemies of the Revolution. A vivid, even agitated account of Paris in the grip of madness.

RED UNICORN (Tor Books, 1998). , by Tanith Lee Tanith Lee is best known for her fantasy fiction. Red Unicorn is a tale of a jilted sorceress who finds her double in a parallel universe. And the double has murder on her mind.

GOOD TO GREAT: WHY SOME COMPANIES MAKE THE LEAP . . . AND OTHERS DON’T, by Jim Collins (HarperCollins, 2001). How does a good company become a great one? Challenged by this question, Jim Collins and his team of researchers studied 1,435 companies, looking for ones that had seen tremendous improvements over time. Eleven companies made the cut, among them Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo. What put these companies on the road to greatness? Not fads, such as total quality management, or cutting edge technology or a dynamic, high-profile CEO. What the great ones all had in common were a strong-willed leader, a corporate culture that rewarded discipline and entrepreneurship, and a product the company was passionate about.

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S LOS ANGELES, by Elizabeth Ward and Alain Silver (Overlook Press, 1997). In the more than 60 years since The Big Sleep was published, Los Angeles has sprawled in ways Raymond Chandler never could have imagined. Is there anything left of Chandler’s L.A.? You bet there is. Elizabeth Ward and Alain Silver have paired up excerpts from Chandler’s stories with photos of the locations Philip Marlowe knew. The Santa Monica Pier. Ventura Boulevard. The San Bernadino Freeway. Beverly Hills (“the best-policed four square miles in California”). Plus rows of cookie-cutter bungalows, dark alleys, shabby offices, and grim nightclubs. A book thick with atmosphere.

THE BIG SLEEP, by Philip Marlowe (1939; Vintage Books, 1992). Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe novel features a dying millionaire, blackmail, kidnapping, pornography, murder, and plenty of sexually charged prose.

LILY DALE: THE TRUE STORY OF THE TOWN THAT TALKS TO THE DEAD, by Christine Wicker (HarperSanFrancicso, 2003). Christine Wicker, religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News, got her strangest assignment when she was sent to Lily Dale, New York, a 124-year-old village where some 250 members of the American Spiritualism Movement commune with the dead. Wicker describes the mediums she meets and the hordes of visitors who come to Lily Dale hoping to hear a few words from a departed loved one, and maybe even get a little advice from the Other Side about a romance, a work situation, or a health problem. With wit and sympathy, Wicker paints a vivid portrait of this village and how it made her examine her own ideas about life, death, and the possibility of life beyond the grave.

FROM THE LISTENING HILLS, by Louis L’Amour (Bantam Books, 2003). Louis L’Amour’s family has brought out several books of stories that were unpublished at the time of his death in 1988. By now, you would think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, but the 12 stories in this volume are top notch. Here are westerns, crime stories, sports stories, and even World War II spy stories, most of them written in the 1930s and 1940s, when L’Amour was a prolific contributor to pulp magazines. Among our favorites, “Moran of the Tigers,” about a pro football player who tries to rally his team against gamblers who are corrupting the sport, and the title story, “From the Listening Hills,” about a wounded outlaw trying to hold off a posse of law men long enough to write a farewell letter to his son.