Book Rec of the Day 5/31-6/7/2008

“Montville . . . can boast of having published the best Ruth biography to date. . . . [A]n engaging, entertaining, and eminently readable biography.”—Library Journal

Using newly discovered material, Montville is able to fill out our appreciation of one of America’s greatest sports legends, Babe Ruth. From the poverty-stricken early days in Baltimore up through his amazing record-breaking career in New York, and including stories of the fast life he was leading when he wasn’t playing ball, Montville covers it all with energy and enthusiasm worthy of his high-powered subject.

THE BIG BAM: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BABE RUTH, by Leigh Montville (Doubleday, 2006)

The Kitchen Sisters have a great thing going: a unifying—and universal—theme (food), wonderful radio personalities, and a talent for getting people to talk. Their stories end up being not so much about food as about how people bring food to the table: how this most elemental aspect of our survival and social life takes place among cab drivers, political refugees, hoboes—real people, not celebrity chefs. Three CDs accompany this lively text and capture the music and ambient sound that is an integral part of the Kitchen Sisters.

HIDDEN KITCHENS: STORIES, RECIPES, AND MORE FROM NPR’S THE KITCHEN SISTERS, by Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson (Rodale Press and Audio Renaissance, 2005)

“My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment.” So begin the adventures of the courtesan Fiammetta and her servant, friend, and pimp, Bucino Teodoldo, a dwarf with a gift for narrative. Escaping Rome, the two refugees arrive in the opulent renaissance city-state of Venice with only the clothes on their backs and some swallowed jewels. The story wends its way through La Serenissima’s political, religious, and, of course, sexual labyrinths.

IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN, by Sarah Dunant (Random House, 2006)

IN A NUTSHELL

In 1935, a Viennese publisher asked Ernst Gombrich, who had just received his doctorate in art and would later become a renowned art historian, to write a history of the world for young readers. Gombrich penned his Little History of the World in six weeks. It was a great success and was eventually translated into 17 languages. Finally, we have an English version with revisions and a new chapter added by Gombrich at the end of his life. This beautifully produced Yale edition includes 41 delightful woodcuts and nine maps.

A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, by E. H. Gombrich (1936; Yale University Press, 2005)

NOT ABOUT FARMERS

“A well-crafted and funny tale of two generations and two cultures colliding. Ms. Lewycka knows how a family works and she knows how a tractor works, which puts her in a different league entirely.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Two Ukrainian sisters and their tractor-loving father live in England. Vera, a capitalist, and Nadezhda, a socialist, are estranged, but they are forced to set aside their differences to save their father from a big-breasted, blonde gold-digger from the old country. The intrigues unfold in comic splendor in this delightful first novel that is not without some tragic moments as well.

A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN, by Marina Lewycka (Penguin, 2006)

ENERGY CRISIS

Jeff Goodell traveled from West Virginia to China and places in between to document the one energy alternative that always seems to be there—coal, a fossil fuel that contributes greatly to global warming, pollutes our air, and is a threat to our health. With all the problems it causes, coal is not the cheap source of energy many corporate CEOs and politicians would have you believe.

BIG COAL: THE DIRTY SECRET BEHIND AMERICA’S ENERGY FUTURE, by Jeff Goodell (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

“Oh, my pounding heart, the jackets, it made my scrotum tingle just to touch them,” the homicide detective turned antiquarian bookdealer declares of some early Winnie the Pooh editions in this, the fifth of John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway novels. For book lovers this is irresistible detective fiction. Besides rare editions in a juvenile-literature collection, there are bodies galore, cunning plot twists, and a side trip to the horse races with the kind of particulars that would gain the approval of the most meticulous Dick Francis fan.

THE BOOKWOMAN’S LAST FLING: A CLIFF JANEWAY NOVEL, by John Dunning (Scribner, 2006)

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Having set the world straight on the subjects of geology, oranges, the Swiss army, and several other subjects, McPhee here turns his attention to the movement of freight from one place to another. McPhee travels all over the map as he investigates 18-wheelers, Illinois River barges, a mile-long coal train, and numerous other means of transport and places like UPS sorting facilities. Throughout, McPhee’s clear and engaging prose carries one along as surely and reliably as the ships, trucks, and trains he rode to research this book.

UNCOMMON CARRIERS, by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)