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2005 Book Reviews
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April 2005
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SIDDHARTHA, by Hermann Hesse; translated by Sherab Chodzin Kohn (1922; Shambhala Publications, 2002). Siddhartha is a young man who has it all: a prominent family, good looks, intelligence, charisma. Yet he feels spiritually empty. On a quest to find meaning, Siddhartha tries rigorous asceticism, complete surrender to physical pleasures, religious piety, but none of them make him the man he wants to become. Hermann Hesse’s story of the hero on a spiritual mission challenges readers to find their own way to enlightenment.
PRIME OBSESSION: BERNHARD RIEMANN AND THE GREATEST UNSOLVED PROBLEM IN MATHEMATICS, by John Derbyshire (Joseph Henry Press, 2003). Prime numbers, you’ll remember from math class, are numbers that can be evenly divided only by themselves and the number 1. Bernhard Riemann, a shy 32-year-old mathematician, wondered if there was a pattern to the primes. He first presented this question to the Berlin Academy in 1859, almost 150 years ago, but to this day no one has come up with the equation that would predict the pattern of the primes. John Derbyshire tells the story of Riemann, a man who was hopelessly awkward with people but dazzling with numbers, and the puzzle of the Riemann Hypothesis, which continues to excite (and elude) mathematicians.
THE HIKING COMPANION, by Michael W. Robbins (Storey Books, 2003). Some hikers think every outing should be a marathon in which you try to rack up the most mileage in the shortest amount of time. For Michael W. Robbins, however, it’s the experience on the trail that counts. In The Hiking Companion, Robbins helps novice and veteran hikers get the most out of each hike by offering no-nonsense advice on hiking and backpacking in all kinds of terrain and in all kinds of weather. He lays out the essential gear the hiker will need (especially, good shoes), explains how to use a map and a compass, and how to deal with any emergencies that may arise, so that every excursion will be a wonderful adventure—not a miserable ordeal.
FAKING IT, by Jennifer Crusie (St. Martin’s Press, 2003). Jennifer Crusie brings a new dimension to madcap fiction. Her plots are so complicated, her characters so far over the top, her dialogue so clever, that readers clamor for her books as if they were 12-year-olds waiting for the next Harry Potter installment. The stars of this romantic caper are Matilda (“Tilda”) Goodnight, an art forger, and Davy Dempsey, a sexy con man. Tilda plans to go straight (as soon as she finishes her last forgery). Davy is trying to get back a pile of cash he stole and then lost. The story is way too complicated to summarize here; suffice it to say that Tilda and Davy spend 352 pages trying to dodge hit men, stay out of jail, and keep their distance from Tilda’s screwball relatives.
FAST WOMEN, by Jennifer Crusie (St. Martin’s Press, 2002). Fresh from her divorce, Nell Dysart takes a job as office manager at a detective agency where everything from decor to corporate culture is stuck in the 1950s. The agency’s senior partner, Gabe McKenna, doesn’t want the place updated, but he soon finds that Nell is hard to resist.
AFTERGLOW: A LAST CONVERSATION WITH PAULINE KAEL, by Francis Davis (Da Capo Press, 2002). It is not going too far to say that the most influential American film critic of the 20th century was Pauline Kael. From 1968 to 1991, her pull-no-punches reviews appeared in The New Yorker, delighting—and infuriating—directors, stars, and fans. Now Kael’s longtime friend, Francis Davis, gives us three lengthy conversations he had with the maestra before she died. This is Kael in true form. She likes the first half of Boogie Nights. She dismisses Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut as “ludicrous from the word go,” and scolds Steven Spielberg for his “terribly wrongheaded” casting in Schindler’s List. Finally, she still regrets letting the editors at The New Yorker talk her out of reviewing Deep Throat.
ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN, by Elizabeth von Arnim (1898; Virago Modern Classics, 2000). Elizabeth von Arnim based this novel on her own experiences with restoring a derelict garden at her country estate. The fictional Elizabeth of the story loves the garden as a place where she can get away from her husband, “the man of wrath,” as she calls him, and take a break from the demands of her young daughters. Page after page, she celebrates the cycle of the seasons and the pleasure she experiences as each new flower, tree, and shrub bursts into bloom. One of our favorite sections of the book describes the arrival of an inexperienced gardener who, to Elizabeth’s surprise, learns his job very quickly.
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THE LAST DAYS OF THE JERUSALEM OF LITHUANIA: CHRONICLES FROM THE VILNA GHETTO AND THE CAMPS 1939-1944, by Herman Kruk; edited by Benjamin Harshav; translated by Barbara Harshav (Yale University Press, 2002). For many years, Vilna was the glory of Eastern European Judaism, a center of culture and scholarship so revered that Jews referred to the city as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” All that changed, of course, when the Nazis swarmed over Lithuania. For five years, Herman Kruk was the meticulous chronicler of life and death in the Vilna Ghetto. Miraculously, his diaries survived, and an edition appeared in 1961. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more Kruk writings have surfaced, all of which have been included in this vastly expanded edition.
MEMOIRS, by David Rockefeller (Random House, 2002). Say the name Rockefeller and people automatically see dollar signs. Certainly, David Rockefeller has demonstrated the financial acuity that is legendary in his clan (he was responsible, as CEO, for modernizing Chase Bank, turning it into one of the world’s banking dynamos). But the Rockefellers have always been interested in more than money, so in this very absorbing autobiography, David Rockefeller tells of his encounters with Sigmund Freud, Pablo Picasso, Fiorello La Guardia, the last Shah of Iran, Henry Kissinger, plus a host of American presidents, Latin American dictators, and Middle Eastern sheiks. A remarkable life, remarkably well chronicled.
DARK END OF THE STREET, by Ace Atkins (William Morrow, 2002). Ace Atkins’s thrillers are different. While many thriller authors these days lean heavily on the gruesome and the grisly, Atkins prefers witty scenarios, interesting characters, and wild, action-filled subplots that teeter on the edge of chaos without ever falling over the brink. Atkins’s hero is Nick Travers, a former professional football player who is now a teacher of blues history at Tulane University. The story gets moving when a friend asks Travers to track down her brother, a once famous blues singer, who has been missing for 25 years. Before you can say “Muddy Waters,” Travers is up to his neck in Dixie mobsters, smarmy politicians, white supremacists, and an Elvis impersonator who moonlights as a hit man.
CROSSROAD BLUES, by Ace Atkins (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). One of Travers’s colleagues has disappeared while hunting for missing recordings of the legendary blues singer-guitarist Robert Johnson. Naturally, Travers goes after him, and he finds himself surrounded by a bevy of picturesque Mississippi Delta sociopaths.
THE RIVAL QUEENS: A NOVEL OF ARTIFICE, GUNPOWDER AND MURDER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON, by Fidelis Morgan (William Morrow, 2002). Anastasia, Lady Ashby de la Zouche, Countess of Clapham, works as a gossip columnist for the London Trumpet. But journalism is too tame for this ex-mistress of King Charles II, and sure enough, she and her maid, fellow columnist Alpiew, are soon hip deep in murders, political corruption, an unlawful marriage, and a notorious escape from the Tower of London. Novelist Fidelis Morgan packs her story with thrills and enlivens the scenes with comic encounters with such historical figures as Colley Cibber, an actor who “improves” the work of a third-rate Elizabethan playwright named Shakespeare, and a dirty old man named Samuel Pepys who keeps pestering Anastasia to read his diary. Huge fun!
THE CANTERBURY TALES, by Geoffrey Chaucer; translated by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003). Nevill Coghill’s translation of The Canterbury Tales has never been surpassed. He captures the liveliness of Chaucer’s verse, the vivacity of his characters, and the naughty comedy that has delighted readers for 600 years. And unlike most other classics, the Tales come in bite-size portions: You can read any of them in an hour or less. While we urge you to start out with the “Prologue,” once that’s over, feel free to skip around among the stories. This book is a window into a vanished world; on the other hand, what it says about human nature is as true today as it was in the 14th century.
THE LOST WORLD, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1912; Tor Books, 2000). Long before Michael Crichton dreamed up Jurassic Park, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) imagined a plateau, high above the Amazon rain forest, where dinosaurs survived. A Professor Challenger says he’s found the place, but the scientific community denounces him as a charlatan. To prove his point, Challenger organizes an expedition that includes his rival, Professor Summerlee; a celebrated big-game hunter, John Roxton; and a fearless young journalist, Edward Malone (who also acts as the narrator of the story). Equal parts adventure, mind-numbing terror, and some pretty funny academic bickering, The Lost World is a great yarn.
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SNOBBERY: THE AMERICAN VERSION, by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin, 2002). If the essay makes a comeback, it will be largely through the talents of Joseph Epstein, one of the wittiest wordmeisters America has produced in decades. Snobbery is his collection of essays on everybody’s favorite vice: the desire to feel superior to somebody else. Epstein begins with a confession of his own snobbery, which took root during his childhood and flourished during his years in high school. Then he goes on to deflate name-droppers, parents who flaunt the accomplishments of their children, and the “virtucrats” who insist that their point of view is not only right but morally superior to everyone else’s opinion.
THE SEA-HAWK, by Rafael Sabatini (1915; W. W. Norton, 2002). Sir Oliver Tressilian, a gentleman from Cornwall, is in big trouble. He has been falsely accused of murder. The woman he loves, Lady Rosamund, has rejected him. And his half-brother has arranged for Oliver to be sold into slavery in North Africa. Yet, like any self-respecting hero, Oliver scrambles out of his seemingly hopeless situation. He escapes from slavery to become a Barbary pirate and sets out on a quest to avenge himself on his half-brother and win back Rosamund. An action-packed page-turner from the undisputed master of swashbuckler fiction. By the way, the plot of the novel has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the Errol Flynn movie of the same name.
CAPTAIN BLOOD, by Rafael Sabatini (1922; A Common Reader Edition, 1998). Peter Blood, a physician, is convicted of treason and sent to the West Indies as a slave. But Blood escapes, becomes captain of a band of pirates, and makes a new career for himself looting Spanish treasure ships.
MARY TODD LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY, by Jean H. Baker (W. W. Norton, 1989). Mary Todd Lincoln never won the high regard of the American public that her martyred husband enjoyed. A life filled with trauma, in which she lost virtually everyone who was dear to her, left her emotionally fragile. Even today, she is regarded as at best frivolous, at worst a madwoman. Jean H. Baker worked with previously unused letters and other documents to provide an elegant, even-handed account of Mary Lincoln’s life. This biography is especially rich in telling anecdotes about the Todd and Lincoln families, and Baker’s insights into Mary Lincoln’s character go a long way to rehabilitating the First Lady’s reputation.
TWELFTH NIGHT, by William Shakespeare (1602; Washington Square Press, 1993). All of Shakespeare’s comedies are love stories, and in Twelfth Night we get two: Duke Orsino is the saddest wretch in the kingdom because the Lady Olivia, in perpetual mourning for her dead brother, will not even consider accepting a suitor; Viola has a crush on Orsino, but he doesn’t look at her twice because she has disguised herself as a boy. To lighten the mood, Shakespeare gives us the drunk and disorderly Sir Toby Belch, the clownish pranks of Feste and Maria, and the comical killjoy Malvolio, a man so uptight, he’s just begging to be the victim of a practical joke. On top of a rollicking story, Shakespeare also includes some lovely poetry, beginning with his opening line: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
THE HADASSAH JEWISH HOLIDAY COOKBOOK: TRADITIONAL RECIPES FROM THE CONTEMPORARY KOSHER KITCHEN, edited by Joan Schwartz Michel (Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 2003). Individual chapters of Hadassah have published cookbooks, but this is the first international cookbook with recipes from members in Israel and across the United States. The book’s arrangement begins with the Sabbath, then follows the Jewish calendar. Cooks will find classic recipes for chicken soup, blintzes, and latkes, as well as contemporary takes on traditional recipes, such as Pistachio Chicken with Honey-Mustard Sauce. There is a good balance between Ashkenazi and Sephardic dishes, and in addition, well-known Jewish food writers Joan Nathan, Claudia Roden, and Steven Raichlen have contributed interesting essays on Jewish cuisine.
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MIRACLES AT THE JESUS OAK: HISTORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN REFORMATION EUROPE, by Craig E. Harline (Doubleday, 2003). A desperate mother who had stopped producing breast milk made a pilgrimage to a shrine. As she prayed, her breasts became full again; her child’s life was saved. The happy woman declared it a miracle, but the cautious priests and bishop were reluctant to arrive at the same conclusion. Craig E. Harline found this story, and many more like it, in a forgotten manuscript in the library of a Belgian monastery. In Miracles at the Jesus Oak, he looks at the faith of ordinary Catholics who were deeply attached to shrines and sacred images, and the reluctance of Church officials, stung by the faultfinding of Protestant critics, to declare anything miraculous.
A BISHOP’S TALE: MATHIAS HOVIUS AMONG HIS FLOCK IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FLANDERS, by Craig E. Harline and Eddy Put (Yale University Press, 2002). Harline and Put’s discovery of Archbishop Mathias Hovius’s daybook, kept from 1596 to 1620, gives readers an in-depth look at day-to-day life for clerics and peasants, saints and sinners nearly 400 years ago.
CICERO: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROME’S GREATEST POLITICIAN, by Anthony Everitt (Random House, 2002). Traditionally, authors focus on Cicero’s literary output, but Anthony Everitt focuses on the noble Roman’s personal and political life. Cicero’s great passion was the Roman republic. Alas, his timing was terrible: Julius Caesar, itching to become emperor, was on the rise. When Caesar was assassinated, Cicero appeared week after week in the Roman Forum, urging his fellow citizens not to let Mark Antony and Octavian steal the country from under them. In the end, Antony and Octavian won, and Cicero lost his head (literally). By giving us a personal portrait of Cicero, Everitt also shows us the day-to-day world of ancient Rome at its most decisive moment.
SELECTED WORKS, by Marcus Tullius Cicero; translated and with an introduction by Michael Grant (Viking Press, 1960). A fine anthology that showcases the best of Cicero’s writings and speeches, including a denunciation of Mark Antony.
FAREWELL, MY QUEEN, by Chantal Thomas; translated by Moishe Black (George Braziller, 2003. In France, where Chantal Thomas’s novel was first published, Farewell, My Queen won the Prix Femina. Now that it has been translated into English, we hope this novel will garner a lot of attention on our side of the pond. Thomas’s fictional heroine, Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, has one job in Marie Antoinette’s household: Every night, she reads the queen to sleep. This is all prologue to the main event of the novel—the fall of the Bastille and the chaos that follows. We see the revolution through the eyes of Laborde, a woman who always liked a good story and is now caught up, herself, in gripping, frightening events.
SAVAGE REPRISALS: BLEAK HOUSE, MADAME BOVARY, BUDDENBROOKS, by Peter Gay (W. W. Norton, 2002). Would-be writers are often encouraged to “write what you know.” In Savage Reprisals, Peter Gay spotlights three famous authors who wrote about what really ticked them off. In the aftermath of a bungled lawsuit, Charles Dickens wrote Bleak House to vent his frustration with the sluggish English legal system. Gustave Flaubert lampooned France’s unimaginative middle class (and perhaps the French law that banned divorce and so drove miserable wives and husbands into adultery) in Madame Bovary. In Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann mocked his respectable father, skewered capitalism, and tried to exorcise his own homoerotic urges.
NOBLE OBSESSION, by Charles Slack (Hyperion, 2002). Readers who enjoyed Dava Sobel’s Longitude will welcome Charles Slack’s Noble Obsession, the story of Charles Goodyear, the amateur inventor with no business sense who discovered a way to stabilize rubber, paving the way for its practical uses. Goodyear was a single-minded but hapless Connecticut Yankee. His slapdash, mad-scientist approach to experimentation alienated investors, while his fixation on his quest drove his family deeper and deeper into poverty and often landed Goodyear himself in debtor’s prison. Once he finally perfected his process, a dastardly New York swindler tried to steal Goodyear’s invention. Fortunately, Daniel Webster himself championed Goodyear and the court supported the inventor’s claim. But the story doesn’t end there.
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SHIKAR, by Jack Warner (Forge, 2003). Readers who couldn’t tear themselves away from Jaws, Peter Benchley’s classic thriller about a man-eating shark, are sure to love Shikar, Jack Warner’s thriller about a man-eating Bengal tiger that escapes from a zoo and raises hell across rural Georgia. Colonel James Graham, a retired tiger hunter, is called on to track down the monster. Graham is a fantastic character—cool, confident, and respectful of the wild creatures he hunts. Almost as interesting is a young boy from the backwoods who develops a bond with both the tiger and Graham. Add to this terrific stalking episodes and you have an action novel that is a home run.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY, by Graham Greene (1940; Penguin, 2003). The idea for this novel emerged from Graham Greene’s visit to Mexico in the 1930s to report on the revolutionary government’s persecution of the Catholic Church. The story follows a priest who is on the run from government forces. As a drunk and a philanderer, he is an unlikely martyr. Yet as he makes his way across Mexico, the devout villagers he encounters see him not as a sinner but as a man ordained to bring them God’s grace. Thanks to the faith of the peasants, the priest recovers his own faith and even becomes a bit heroic.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER, by Graham Greene (1948; Penguin, 1999). Scobie, a deputy police commissioner in West Africa, is in a terrible mess. His wife is having a breakdown. He is having an affair with a young widow. And he has fallen deeply into debt. Every attempt to sort out his life only makes it spin more wildly out of control, so he begins to contemplate suicide.
A LEGEND IN THE MAKING: THE NEW YORK YANKEES IN 1939, by Richard J. Tofel (Ivan R. Dee, 2002). Generally speaking, if an author identifies a particular year in the title of a sports book, he is referring to a championship season. And yes, in 1939 the New York Yankees won their fourth straight World Series, but the year was remarkable for the “Bronx Bombers” in other ways, as well. It was the year Lou Gehrig bid a heart-wrenching farewell to his teammates and his fans. And it was the year young Joe DiMaggio began his rise to superstardom. Richard J. Tofel takes readers month by month through the season, and he also puts the Yankees’ story in a wider context, from the casual contempt for Italian and black ballplayers to such history-making events as the Nazi invasion of Poland.
CHAOS THEORY TAMED, by Garnett P. Williams (Joseph Henry Press, 1997). Remember when Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park tried to pick up Laura Dern by explaining chaos theory to her? Well, he didn’t get the girl, and the audience didn’t get the explanation. That’s not the case in this lucid, clear-cut book. Garnett P. Williams’s down-to-earth style helps ordinary folks understand the premises behind chaos theory and its practical uses—from the performance of the stock market to long-term predictions of the weather. And since Williams assumes that his readers have had no training in higher math or physics, even those of us who are “dumb in science” will be able to understand why chaos theory is important in our day-to-day lives.
WHAT THE BUTLER SAW: TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF THE SERVANT PROBLEM, by E. S. Turner (1962; Penguin, 2003). There was a time when a man or a woman could go from the cradle to the grave without ever having washed a dish, brewed a cup of tea, or picked up a single article of soiled clothing off the floor. In this eye-opening book, E. S. Turner draws on memoirs, period documents, and even works of literature to describe the lives of servants and the people they served. Here are stories of status, drudgery, seductions, loving relationships, subtle insubordination, and even cases that come damn close to class warfare.