How we decide

153.83 L

John Turner, deputy sheriff of a small town near Memphis, confronts trouble in the persons of the sheriff's long-lost son, who arrives in what appears to be a stolen car, and old friend Eldon Brown, who is a suspect in a murder he does not know if he committed.

A reliable wife

Set in rural Wisconsin in 1909, Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting.

The devil's company

Liss, David. (2009). The Devil's company. New York: Random House.

Fundamentalist politics

Sharlet, Jeff. (2008). The family : the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power. NY : HarperCollins.

Stone's fall

Kirkus: A learned, witty and splendidly entertaining descent into the demimondes of international espionage, arms dealing, financial hanky-panky and other favorite pastimes of those without conscience.

Hippies saved physics

Perennial classic

Book-a-Day calendar praises this Defoe book.

World without us

Weisman, Alan. (2007). The world without us. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press

France discovered

Shakespeare wrote for money

A tale of the American Revolution

Kirkus: A crackling good epic, both comic and bawdy

Nathan Englander

Louisiana rambles

Forgotten men?

Shlaes (a visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a syndicated columnist at Bloomberg) reviews the history of the Great Depression in the United States, arguing that its duration stemmed in large part from too much federal intervention in the economy, rather than too little. In seeking to help the "forgotten man" man of Democratic political advertising, she argues, the Roosevelt administration made a scapegoat of another "forgotten man," the American businessman.

Bullshit.

1781-1997

Que farei quando tudo arde?

Good people do evil things

GN owns, not HW or PN.

Lifton is perhaps best known as the author of “Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima,” published in 1967, which received a National Book Award.

During the Korean War, Lifton served as a psychiatrist in the Air Force, where his duties included interviewing returning American P.O.W.’s subjected to psychological manipulation by their captors — what the Chinese called “thought reform” and the United States denounced as “brainwashing.” Discharged in 1954, he undertook his first research project in Hong Kong, where he interviewed Chinese refugees who had undergone Maoist mind conditioning in Communist prisons. All his subsequent research was devoted to “trying to make use of my background as a clinician to identify psychological experiences of people caught up in historical storms.” He has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of “psychic numbing,” the way some people can be oblivious to the sufferings of others. This, Lifton says, facilitates the commission and acceptance of atrocities. At bottom, “Witness to an Extreme Century” is a book about scholarship and activism, and the links between the two.

Financier of the American Revolution

A quirky quest, indeed

Sprawling novel of China

Planet Arctic

GW's maps

Schecter, Barnet.  (2010). George Washington's America: a biography through his maps. NY: Walker &Co.

Colon (Anatomy)

Malden, Carla. (2011). Afterimage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed Life. Globe Pequot Pr 2011.


Kirkus Reviews
A searing account of how the author coped with her husband's year-long struggle with colon cancer and his untimely death. Emotionally raw from start to finish, the story makes for admittedly difficult reading. What saves it from sinking into pure melodrama are its fleeting moments of humor and the fact that it also celebrates a rare and profound love that transcended death. A brutally candid memoir of the "all-consuming and profoundly uncomplicated" power of grief.

Forgotten garden

Booklist: All the pieces don't quite mesh, but it's a satisfying read overall, just the thing for readers who like multigenerational sagas with a touch of mystery.

A history of erotic encounters

Bernstein, Richard. (2009). The East, the West, and sex. New York: Knopf.

Kirkus: An investigation of the Western male's age-old attraction to Asian women. In an effort to be fair and nonjudgmental, Bernstein offers feminist viewpoints as well.A diligent scholar pursues a subject given to theories of exploitation and dehumanization, but intriguing any way you look at it.

Stuart, Julia. (2008). The matchmaker of Perigord.New York: Harper.



Kirkus: First-time novelist Stuart would have benefited from more editing, but she does manage to richly evoke the fecund sights and smells of rural France. A slightly verbose, yet still delightful, excursion to a kinder, gentler place.

Novelist of Life in Nazi-Run Europe

Found this by pure chance. fascinating.

As sure as the sun

Work

The pleasures and sorrows of work / Alain de Botton. 

Story of Edgar Sawtelle

A tale reminiscent of "Hamlet" that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.

Age of abundance

Lindsey, Brink. (2007). The age of abundance: how prosperity transformed America's politics and culture. NY: Collins.   306.342 L

Kirkus Reviews

Americans have become libertarian and don't even know it, declares the research head of the (libertarian) Cato Institute.

A thoughtful attempt to explain—and claim—the broad center in the middle of our political squabbling.

Love and humor

A novel bookstore

Cossé, Laurence. (2010). A novel bookstore (translated from the French by Alison Anderson). NY : Europa Editions.

Looking through NEW books to select those that should be made 28-day books, I found this one; its cover reminded me of Elegance of the Hedgehog (which I left as NEW, out of sentiment).

Kirkus: The book's real strength is its romances—of both the bookish and human varieties. In attention to matters of the heart the story is redeemed, delivering a touché where its original thrust misses the mark. A literary idyll preselected for bookworms and bibliophiles.

Booklist Reviews: Wry, sly, and coyly seditious, Cossé's piquant satire is a subtly wrought manifesto against blatant consumer manipulation and media malfeasance.

Superorganism

Sarah's Key

Holocaust fiction set in France.

Memorial Day

Sheeler, Jim. (2008). Final salute: a story of unfinished lives. New York: Penguin Press.

Beauty and terror of science

Homes, Robert. (2009). The age of wonder : how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science. New York: Pantheon Books.

"The Age of Wonder" explores the earliest ideas of deep time and space, and the explorers of "dynamic science": an infinite, mysterious Nature waiting to be discovered. Three lives dominate the book: William Herschel, his sister Caroline, and Humphry Davy.

Dylan + Mingus

Their friendship compromised by the belief systems of the racially charged 1970s, Dylan Ebdus and Mungus Rude share a series of misadventures based on their mutual obsession with comic book heroes.

Mixed reviews.

British spies

Conant, Jennet. (2008). The irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British spy ring in wartime Washington. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Conant tells the story of young writer Roald Dahl who is assigned by His Majesty's Government to Washington, D.C. as a diplomat to gather intelligence about America's isolationist circles. In the course of his "spying," he meets or works closely with David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and the great spymaster William Stephenson (aka Intrepid).

Conant has written a series of books of historical interest: I've read her Tuxedo Park, and her most recent work is about Julia and Paul Child, A covert affair.

Terror

Booklist: The leads are witty, and the prose is elegant. But readers should prepare to wallow in the book and take it slowly.

Kirkus:  Adding political and financial corruption to uncover, manipulators to expose and a war with Mexico to prevent might make the plot seem too complex, but no loose end is left untied, and only one or two insignificant anachronisms should trouble the most sophisticated reader. An intriguing literary mystery mixing fact and fiction.

Go figure.

Resurrection men

Rankin, Ian. (2003). Resurrection men : an Inspector Rebus novel. Boston : Little, Brown.

Berkeley bohemia

Ed Herny; Shelley Rideout; Katie Wadell. (2008). Berkeley bohemia: artists and visionaries of the early 20th century. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith.

Senso

Film by Visconti.

The hummingbird's daughter

Urrea, Luis Alberto. (2005). The hummingbird's daughter.New York: Little, Brown.

Success: self-education and the pursuit of passion

Bach, James Marcus. (2009). Secrets of a buccaneer-scholar : how self-education and the pursuit of passion can lead to a lifetime of success . New York: Scribner.

In pale battalions

Goddard, Robert. (1988).  In pale battalions. London ; New York : Bantam Press.

The end of my addiction

Ameisen, Olivier. (2009). The end of my addiction. New York: Sarah Crichton Books/FS&G.


What if there were a cure for addiction--a medication that eradicates the need for a fix? This is the story of Olivier Ameisen, a brilliant physician and cardiologist who developed a profound addiction to alcohol. He broke bones with no memory of falling and nearly lost his kidneys. He gave up his flourishing practice and invested himself in Alcoholics Anonymous and, later, rehab. Nothing worked. So he took his treatment into his own hands.

Silver City

Kirkus: An impressively nuanced reminder not only of the terrible toll of Chinese history, but of how fiction can illuminate it with portraits of individuals caught in its currents.

Found it by serendipity; was looking for John Sayles's eponymous film.

Redbreast

Kirkus: it's well worth sticking with the story; both the hero and the villain are as compelling as the portrayal of Norwegians doing whatever it takes to survive the war and then paying the price.