Book Recs of the Day 3/31-4/13/08

GIVE ME HISTORY

Among the many amazing stories of discoveries and inventions during Napoleon’s roughly 15 years of conquest, the story of the Rosetta Stone still stands out and remains relevant. During the campaigns in Egypt, scholars were engaged to study the thousands of artifacts that were unearthed, and Jean-François Champollion was the best. The moody, flamboyant emperor and the obsessive, persevering linguist are the fulcrum in a colorful history of mummies, incest, desert heat, and sexual practices across the centuries.

THE LINGUIST AND THE EMPEROR: NAPOLEON AND CHAMPOLLION’S QUEST TO DECIPHER THE ROSETTA STONE, by Daniel Meyerson (Ballantine Books, 2004)

“An eye-popping book.”—The Los Angeles Times

From a meteor crater in Australia’s outback to a beach full of nudists near Landes, France, to the Chernobyl region of Ukraine, Yann Arthus-Bertrand took his camera and, from hovering helicopters, snapped some of the most strikingly beautiful photographs of recent times. Yet this coffee table book is one whose purpose extends beyond being merely pretty: It shows what people have been doing to their environment, and the text discusses the worrying implications.

EARTH FROM ABOVE, by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Harry N. Abrams, 2005)

“Deverell’s lean mean style gives off sparks.”—Publishers Weekly

Arthur Beauchamp, retired criminal lawyer, is called away from his new life of leisure to defend a former client, Nick “the Owl” Faloon, who has been charged with an unlikely and sensational murder. Meanwhile, his wife, Margaret Blake, an environmental activist, is perched in a tree to protest logging activity, and she won’t come down. Deverell delivers another clever, witty, fast-paced courtroom thriller, destined to become a classic.

APRIL FOOL, by William Deverell (McClelland & Stewart, 2005)

WEIRD FACTS

Karl Shaw, collector of the weird (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists, Carroll & Graf, 1998; Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty, Broadway, 2001), has done it again, with yet another wildly entertaining volume of the truly kooky practices of wackos throughout history: Liberace, Beethoven, Florence Nightingale, Howard Hughes, and many others. They’re all here, with their convoluted compulsions, bizarre beliefs, and hilarious habits exposed. The true heir of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Shaw never seems to run out of material, and we hope he never does.

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF ODDBALLS AND ECCENTRICS, by Karl Shaw (Carroll & Graf, 2000)

JANE AUSTEN LIVES

The comedy of manners is alive and well. Throw three generations of WASPs (the Hills) together in a fading Victorian house, along with a graduate student writing a thesis on WASPs. Whip it all up with gentle sarcasm and long, meandering sentences with explosive comic payloads, and you have The Hills at Home, an impressive debut novel.

THE HILLS AT HOME, by Nancy Clark (Pantheon, 2003)

OUR MINDS

Jamison’s subject is interesting enough—the positive side of manic depression in creative expression—but the experience she brings to bear on the subject is possibly even more interesting. She is a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), a MacArthur Fellow (2001), and a victim of and expert on bipolar disorder. Exuberance flings open a window on the passionate and extraordinary in life, literature, and science. The result is exquisitely alive and beautifully written.

EXUBERANCE: THE PASSION FOR LIFE, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Knopf, 2004)

Glass follows her dazzling 2002 National Book Award winner, Three Junes, with this contemporary story of Greenie, a young mother and talented pastry chef in New York City, whose confections come to the attention of the governor of New Mexico. When he invites her to work for him, she takes the opportunity, though it means leaving her psychoanalyst husband behind with his rather considerable personal problems and failing practice. The Whole World Over is a rich and complex study of the causes and consequences of love.

THE WHOLE WORLD OVER, by Julia Glass (Pantheon, 2006)

FOR BOOK LOVERS

Curator of rare books at Harvard’s Widener Library, Battles takes us on a tour of libraries throughout history, showing their relationships with power, ideas, and social flux. Ultimately, says Battles, all libraries come to an end, either through the demise of the technologies on which they depend or, more often, to make way for a new ideological focus. Elegantly told and quietly dramatic.

LIBRARY: AN UNQUIET HISTORY, by Matthew Battles (W. W. Norton, 2004)

OUR TIMES

The case of Digna Ochoa, a Mexican human-rights lawyer found dead in 2001, was only one piece of an enormous puzzle that continues to unfold. Author Diebel, who headed the Toronto Star’s Latin American bureau for seven years, has bravely and meticulously researched the high-profile case: the shady, even criminal role of the Mexican government in quelling dissent; their subsequent “investigation,” amounting to a cover-up of their probable role in her murder (which they deemed a suicide); and the frustration of those who worked with and loved Ochoa.

BETRAYED: THE ASSASSINATION OF DIGNA OCHOA, by Linda Diebel (Carroll & Graf, 2006)

READ ME

In Life Before Death (Scribner, 1997), Frucht’s main character was a woman about to die. Polly, on the other hand, has already died, while giving birth to her seventh child, Tip. Frucht specializes in the intense, grateful sensuality that comes of living on the cusp of life—about to leave it or, as here, having left it; yet the lyricism is earthy and sharp rather than warm and fuzzy.

POLLY’S GHOST: A NOVEL, by Abby Frucht (Scribner, 2002)

MEMOIR

Perhaps best known for his baseball coverage in The New Yorker, with a storytelling bent that can make people who are completely indifferent to the sport love to read about it, Angell turns to a memoir with his elegant, ironic, witty brand of civility intact. Sparkling with literary anecdotes (his mother, Katherine, divorced Angell’s father and married E. B. “Andy” White), fishing stories, paeans to the open road, and martini-infused sophistication, Angell is a wonderful companion, gentleman, and raconteur.

LET ME FINISH, by Roger Angell (Harcourt, 2006)

POETRY

The former U.S. poet laureate, our national treasure, continues to weave his spell. It’s hard to describe poetry, but for those who love Collins, his trademark voice is here: humorous and serious, direct and sidelong, wry and earnest, accessible and polished. For those who have not discovered him, this is as good a place to start as any; you can always go back to earlier volumes.

THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY AND OTHER POEMS, by Billy Collins (Random House, 2005)

LIVE BETTER

Septuagenarian Chris Crowley, a former litigator, and internist Henry Lodge deliver their irresistibly upbeat philosophy just in time for baby boomers who want the golden years to be truly golden. Mixing accessible science and convincing personal testimony, the authors give an easy-to-follow blueprint for healthful, zestful longevity: keeping the body vital, even turning back the clock, and, equally important, exercising the mind and satisfying the need for social connection. The medical community and a legion of enthusiastic readers made this book a deserving bestseller.

YOUNGER NEXT YEAR: A GUIDE TO LIVING LIKE 50 UNTIL YOU’RE 80 AND BEYOND, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D. (Workman Publishing, 2004)

TRUE CRIME
New York Times journalist Eichenwald has a nose for a story, and this one is a doozy. Mark Whitacre, a top executive at Archer Daniels Midland, offered himself up as an FBI informer in a 1990s investigation into price fixing. Whitacre turned out to be a flamboyant, twisted individual who was trying to cover his own immense embezzlement and corruption even as he revealed the supersize putrefaction that infected the not-so-jolly green giant. A runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, The Informant is a mesmerizing piece of investigative reporting.

THE INFORMANT: A TRUE STORY, by Kurt Eichenwald (Broadway, 2001)