Book Rec of the Day 11/15-11/26/2008

(I swear my New Year's resolution is going to be not getting behind on these. Alas, real-life kicks my ass sometimes and these things just don't take priority.)

PRIZE WINNER
“Grips right up to the stunning jaw-dropper of an ending.”—Publishers Weekly

This winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction reads like a novel. History professor Boyle tells the story of Dr. Ossian Sweet, the grandson of a slave, who moves his family from the ghetto to a nicer, all-white neighborhood. One night a threatening mob storms Sweet’s house and somebody shoots, killing a white man. The story becomes a riveting courtroom drama, with the NAACP and Clarence Darrow, fresh from the Scopes trial, arriving to defend Dr. Sweet.

ARC OF JUSTICE: A SAGA OF RACE, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND MURDER IN THE JAZZ AGE, by Kevin Boyle (Henry Holt, 2004)

SERIOUS FICTION

As faded former beauty Alison, feverish with hepatitis C, and struggling with drugs and worse life choices, trudges up a hill, she is looking backward at her life: her friendship with Veronica, who died of AIDS; other people she knew; and the exotic locales where she and other spoiled brats took drugs, ate pâté, and utterly failed to be touched by the world around them. With her startling metaphors and fierce, ugly poeticism, it’s not warm and fuzzy, but “Gaitskill’s implacable refusal of sentimentality is her great strength” (Washington Post Book World).

VERONICA: A NOVEL, by Mary Gaitskill (Pantheon, 2005)

LIFE AND TIMES
A writer for Food & Wine magazine, McCoy calls Robert Parker “the most powerful critic in any field, period.” Parker was a lawyer who, in his spare time, put out a little newsletter called The Wine Advocate, which gained a devoted following. He began rating wines on a 100-point scale, a score that can now make or break a wine. McCoy’s excellent book is not only a biography of Parker but the story of the rise of the American wine industry.

THE EMPEROR OF WINE: THE RISE OF ROBERT M. PARKER, JR., AND THE REIGN OF AMERICAN TASTE, by Elin McCoy (Harper Perennial, 2006

KILLER FICTION
Is that the odor of brimstone in the air? And the outline of a cloven hoof burned into the floor? Yes, and next to it, a well-known art critic is found dead, burned, and in the locked attic of a Long Island mansion. It appears that the Devil himself has been here. FBI Special Agent Pendergast returns with NYPD officers Vincent D’Agosta and Laura Hayward to track down the truth. D’Agosta and Pendergast make great foils for each other, and Pendergast’s romantic feelings for Hayward add richness to this fast-paced, riveting thriller.

BRIMSTONE, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Warner Books, 2005)

BOOK LOVER’S BIO

Edmund Wilson was probably the most influential literary critic of his time. He was friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, and many other literary lions. He slept with Edna St. Vincent Millay; he married Mary McCarthy and three other women and was faithful to none. He was a drunk, and many people considered him arrogant and self-centered. In this fair and thorough examination of Wilson, Dabney records all this scandal and much more, but in the end, one might agree with his fourth wife, who said, “When I read his work I forgive him all his sins.”

EDMUND WILSON: A LIFE IN LITERATURE, by Lewis M. Dabney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)

COSI FAN TUTTE

A young Mozart, no longer a child prodigy and not yet the master, meets the music copyist Fridolin Weber and her four enchanting daughters. He falls first for Aloysia. And then there are Josefa, Sophie, and Constanze, each one with her unique charms. Cowell, once an opera singer herself, does a beautiful job of realizing this 18th-century world of musicians and townsfolk and girls eager to marry. The story is told through the memories of a later, older Sophie, and it’s absolutely delightful.

MARRYING MOZART, by Stephanie Cowell (Penguin, 2004)

MOOD INDIGO

They were riveted denim pants, tough clothing to get working stiffs through the day without their seams splitting (and there’s more to the story of how Levi Strauss “invented” blue jeans). Now they’re worn by the working class and the shopping class alike. Sullivan gives jeans the works, from the nature of indigo dyes to the look of denim on Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. An absorbing examination of one of the quintessential American products.

JEANS: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF AN AMERICAN ICON, by James Sullivan (Gotham, 2006)

LITTLE BIG TOWN

Middle River, New Hampshire, looks like the perfect small town, but locals believe it was the inspiration for Grace Metalious’s scandalous novel Peyton Place. Annie Barnes, who left Middle River to become a famous author, returns to look into some suspicious matters surrounding her mother’s death. The townspeople believe that she is investigating them, digging up dirt for another Peyton Place. It’s a great premise to start from, and Delinsky knows how to develop the mystery, suspense, and romance to make it a first-rate, enjoyable read.

LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE: A NOVEL, by Barbara Delinsky (Scribner, 2005)

IN THE SPIRIT

At the turn of the 20th century, there was a fascination with the occult; and then, as now, the subject was controversial. Renowned psychologist and philosopher William James thought a scientific look at the supernatural would help sift the fraudulent from the genuine. The resulting studies are a fascinating look at the shadowy places where the material and the spiritual meet. Blum’s approach is even-handed and objective, and she has a very real talent for writing captivating narrative.

GHOST HUNTERS: WILLIAM JAMES AND THE SEARCH FOR SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF LIFE AFTER DEATH, by Deborah Blum (Penguin, 2006)

CRITICS RAVE
Precocious and motherless Blue Van Meer travels with her itinerant professor father until they settle in Stockton, North Carolina, for her senior year. There she falls in with a group of students who orbit around magnetic teacher Hannah Schneider. Complications ensue and a coming-of-age story becomes an intricately plotted murder mystery. Special Topics is a spectacular first novel, “a wry send-up of most of the Western canon and, most importantly, a sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity.” (Publishers Weekly)

SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS, by Marisha Pessl (Viking, 2006)

UNITING NATIONS

Author of The Rise and Fall of Great Powers and Preparing for the Twenty-first Century, Paul Kennedy is well suited to write a history and study of the UN. The organization’s first 60 years have not been the triumphant march of peace and progress we might have hoped for, but Kennedy argues that the UN has created an “international civil society” and has become an increasingly indispensable organization on the world stage. A book of more than passing interest to anyone interested in the world’s future.

THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS, by Paul Kennedy (Random House, 2006)

IN OLD ISTANBUL

“[Readers will] be lofted by the paradoxical lightness and gaiety of the writing, by the wonderfully winding talk perpetually about to turn a corner, and by the stubborn humanity in the characters’ maneuvers to survive. It is a humanity whose lies and silences emerge as endearing and oddly bracing individual truths.”—Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review

The Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist has produced a rich mystery involving a miniaturist who lies dead at the bottom of a well in 16th-century Istanbul. A historical saga full of delicious detail.

MY NAME IS RED, by Orhan Pamuk; translated from the Turkish by Erdag Göknar (Vintage, 2002)