Non-Fiction: Clean, Green & Lean by Walter Crinnion

In my lifetime, I have seen diets come and go. You have too. Some of them, when they went, were unlamented. In the 1990s, for example, there was a time when certain diet gurus recommended the avoidance of carbohydrates to such an extreme extent, the health of his followers was at risk. (Bacon? Sure: eat bacon. But go easy on the whole wheat bread.)

The constant to many of these diets is simple: eat to lose weight and keep it off. Whatever the cost might be -- to your health or the environment -- will only be collateral damage and is a price that can be paid.

So it was refreshing to encounter Clean, Green & Lean (Wiley), a diet and lifestyle book written by a leading naturopathic physician. It’s a book that promises to help you lose weight in a healthful way while at the same time helping to save the planet: a combination that’s right for this moment and author Crinnion seems the correct person to bring the message. From the introduction:

But there’s more to this than how great you’ll look and feel. Sure, you'll lose weight without being hungry or increasing the amount of exercise you do. Sure, you'll be healthier, slimmer, and more energetic than you've been in years. But you'll also be helping to save the planet. If you're cleaner and greener, the world will be cleaner and greener.

If there’s a down-side it's that there is a lot of work to do but -- hey! -- no pain, no gain, right? I can’t imagine that Crinnion’s approach to weight loss through toxin attacks won’t lead him to the bestseller list almost immediately. This is the diet book of the moment. The good news? It’s good for you and the planet. May the toxin-fighting begin!

Non-Fiction: Becoming Normal by Mark Edick

If the concepts of recovery and fitting in and being normal do not resonate for you, chances are Becoming Normal (Central Recovery Press) is not a book that needs to be added to your shelves. The audience for this book is quite specific, but it’s also large and mostly under-serviced. The central theme in this personal memoir is learning how to regain your life and re-find your way after addiction. It is, in a way, beyond recovery, which is actually the very first steps.

Becoming Normal is a self-portrait of someone successfully and simply working their program day by day. The beauty comes in the poignant way Edick relates his recovery: one day at a time.

For me, normal once meant drinking and drugging. Mood- and mind-altering substances, including alcohol, brought me to my knees. My addiction had many manifestations, but a single common thread. Its power lay in what I thought of myself, what I thought others thought of me, and my reaction to what I was thinking. This is my story -- how I went from being a drunk to being someone who chooses not to drink. My story is about my old idea of normal and how, through recovery, I was able to define and re-create my new understanding of what I believe normal is.

There is a certain peaceful clarity in Edick’s voice. Those who struggle with the issues covered here might find comfort in Edick’s calm and simple telling of his personal struggle.

New This Week: The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves by Andrew Potter

No matter what you make of Andrew Potter’s path to bring us back to reality, it’s an interesting journey. A philosophical one, in many ways. On a par with the paths of thought taken by the (thus far) better known Alain de Botton, who is, after all, one of our best known contemporary philosophers. Though he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, that isn’t what Potter calls himself, but that does not change facts. Read his work and you’ll see: this is an artful, gymnastic mind and he takes on some of our biggest contemporary foibles in a book that manages to be both sweeping and intricate at the same time. From the introduction to The Authenticity Hoax (Harper/McClelland & Stewart):

The quasi-biblical jargon of authenticity, with its language of separation and distance, of lost unity, wholeness, and harmony, is so much a part of our moral shorthand that we don't always notice that we've slipped into what is essentially a religious way of thinking....the search for the authentic is positioned as the most pressing quest of our age.... My central claim in this book is that authenticity is none of these things. Instead, I argue that the whole authenticity project that has occupied us moderns for the past two hundred and fifty years os a hoax. It has never delivered on its promise and it never will.

The author argues that the quest for authenticity in our lives is nothing more than yet another form of status seeking: ecotourism, performance art, the cults of Oprah and Obama and more.

Potter weaves elements of history, philosophy and pop culture together in a book that will leave an impression even if it doesn’t necessarily show us the path. Is Andrew Potter one of the great thinkers of our age? He may well be: this is great stuff.

New This Week: If It Takes A Village, Build One by Malaak Compton-Rock

One of the most refreshing things about celebrity humanitarian Malaak Compton-Rock’s If It Takes A Village, Build One (Broadway) is its accessibility. Part memoir, part guide, Compton-Rock takes Hillary Clinton’s village analogy to heart and runs with it, creating a work that is inspiring in its warmth and simplicity. If you ever thought you wanted step-by-step instructions on how to make a difference, If It Takes A Village, Build One is the book for you.

If Compton-Rock’s name and face are familiar, there are good reasons. In 2008, she was one of the judges on Oprah’s Big Give and she is the (often mentioned, always respected) wife of actor/comedian Chris Rock. Most recently, Compton-Rock founded The Angelrock Project, promoting volunteerism, sustainable change and social responsibility.

The Angelrock Project includes valuable information on how to volunteer, advice on making monetary or in-kind donations, links to life-changing service organizations, recommends wonderful products that you can purchase to sustain third-world artisans, and suggests corporations who donate a percentage of proceeds to worthy non-profit organizations.

If It Takes A Village, Build One feels like Compton-Rock very comfortably walking that walk.

Biography: Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll by Robert Hofler

Seventies Hollywood excess is perfectly rendered in Party Animals (Da Capo), Robert Hofler’s latest foray into the seamier side of Tinseltown.

Hofler is a senior editor at Variety and the author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson as well as Variety’s The Movie That Changed My Life. As a writer and reporter, Hofler knows his beat well. If there was ever any doubt, there isn’t after reading Party Animals, where he delivers a front row look at the crazy life that surrounded producer Allan Carr (1937-1999).

Carr was best known for some great films and some awful ones, as well as stellar parties and for producing the Oscars remembered as the worst ever (Carr was banned from future Oscar attendance after this fiasco).

The movies most associated with him include Grease, Tommy, La Cage aux Folles as well as the Village People musical some people attribute with the death of disco: Can’t Stop the Music.

Hofler’s account begins at the end: with filmmaker Brett Ratner (Red Dragon, Rush Hour) purchasing the recently deceased Carr’s infamous Benedict Canyon home for 3.6 million dollars in 1999.

From there we’re spun back into the 1970s, where Carr is beginning to make a huge impression as a host and producer. Hofler takes us through these two huge aspects of Carr’s life with raw abandon: lavish partiesand productions display a life lived beyond the edge. If you enjoy tales from inside Hollywood, you’ll like Party Animals, even if you never knew much about Carr.

New This Week: Momover: The New Mom’s Guide to Getting it Back Together by Dana Wood

Now, clearly, Momover: The New Mom’s Guide to Getting it Back Together (Adams) is not a book for everyone. In fact, if it’s not for you, you already know and have moved on to the next item. Fair enough.

But new moms are a small and predictable demographic. Especially today’s sensibly chic older moms -- Momover’s target audience -- who, once they’ve delivered their bundle of joy, leave the hospital feeling like Ripley after each and every one of those Alien movies.

Momover is part personal memoir, part motivational seminar and part common sense handbook for all of those scattered questions a new mom might have. Momover could be a lame book -- in fact, I was expecting that it would be -- but in addition to being a mom, author Wood is a talented, experienced journalist with a bright voice and a clear eye. “I’m not a doctor, a personal trainer, a makeup artist, or a life coach,” Wood writes. “Instead, I’m an insanely curious journalist who just happened to have a baby late in life and was thrown for a mental, physical, and spiritual loop. Mix those two elements together ... and you get Momover, the go-to tool I wish I’d had tucked away in the hospital bag when I delivered.”

Wood approaches both the physical and emotional aspects of new momness and leaves readers with a strong postpartum guide through a time many women report to be the most confusing and rewarding of their lives.

Biography: Stephanie Meyer: The Unauthorized Biography of the Creator of the Twilight Saga by Marc Shapiro

In 2006, the Twilight phenomenon began. A previously minor sub-genre of the vampire novel, the vampire romance, suddenly became big among teenage girls. The Harry Potter saga was coming to an end -- the final volume was published in 2007, only a few months later -- and there was room for something new.

The author, a Mormon housewife and mother of three, was suddenly being compared to J.K. Rowling. Well, they’re both women who wrote something that appealed to millions of young people and their parents, although I doubt if Twilight will ever be winning any prizes for children’s literature as Harry Potter did, and if there were separate covers for adult and teen editions, I haven’t seen them yet. I suppose they have that in common.

But many folk have Meyer to thank for the fact that they are now able to sell books in the YA fantasy genre, as long as there are vampires or werewolves in them. As a matter of fact, I'm one of them.

I confess that when this book first arrived for me to review, I hadn’t read any of the Twilight novels, mainly because they’re always out. However, I felt that I shouldn’t be reviewing a book to which I had no background, and as a teacher-librarian, I really ought to be reading what the kids were loving so much. I went to Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, where I found the books in the YA section, right next to Foz Meadows’ new novel Solace And Grief which was facing out. Lucky Foz Meadows!

I read the first book and started on the second. It was easy reading as I had expected, because one of our ESL students read it in a weekend and her reading level at the time was about Grade 3. Other readers of the same level made their way through the entire saga without much trouble.

I found the novel pretty slow-moving, with nothing much happening till about three-quarters of the way through the book, but it certainly told me something about kids’ reading habits that I had never known after all these years of observing their reading: they will be patient if they are hooked early on. (Or maybe what I found slow, they found romantic?) I wasn’t hooked, alas, but I have no problem with anything that gets my students not only reading, but being excited about reading. And they are excited -- the girls, anyway. I have seen them sitting curled up on steps and under trees in the schoolyard, noses deep in the adventures of Bella and Edward, and lending personal copies to friends.

Besides, I think I may be able to “sell” Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights to students who have finished and enjoyed this series. The hero of Jane Eyre is even called Edward! (Edward Rochester, that is.) He has a Deep Dark Secret, a tragic past and a good woman who wants to help him.

Author Marc Shapiro has been thorough in his research. Possibly there’s nothing here that a fan doesn’t already know from the Internet, where he seems to have done a large chunk of his research, but I was certainly enlightened. I found out that the Twilight author was named by a father who wanted a Stephen and got a Stephanie, except he added “ie” to “Stephen” instead. I learned that she got the idea from a dream and that she picked the name of the town off the Internet by looking for the wettest place in the US (and isn’t it wonderful that now writers just need to go on-line to check out these things in a few minutes instead of spending hours in the library?). There was a list of music she played while she was writing and the information that Wuthering Heights became suddenly popular again after she recommended it to her fans. There was a good deal of information about the making of the films so far. And fans will be pleased to know that Stephenie Meyer has lots of ideas for more novels.

I actually ended up finishing the biography before I read the novels and quite enjoyed it; it saved me a massive trawl through the Internet. I do wonder where this story can go now. It is already more or less out of date, because the information went right up till the end of 2009, but things had already changed from some of what was said in the book. Perhaps it might have been better to wait a year or two to see how the phenomenon pans out and find out what the author is writing next and how her own life is turning out. A woman in her 30s is really too young to be the subject of a biography. Unlike J.K. Rowling, she hasn’t had a particularly interesting life. She grew up, went to university, got married and had children. Eventually, she had an idea for a novel that did brilliantly. End of story. Apart from discussion of the phenomenon and what happened when the film was being made, there wasn’t much to say.

It reminds me of when Alice Pung was speaking at a Centre for Youth Literature evening in Melbourne. She had written a book, Unpolished Gem, about her upbringing in Melbourne’s west, and it had been doing very well. Someone asked her, “Will the next book be a novel?”

“It will have to be,” she said. “I’m only twenty-five!”

Art & Culture: How to Defeat Your Own Clone by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson

One of the things I like best about being January Magazine’s art and culture editor is keeping my ear to the ground for emerging trends. For example, in the late 1990s, we were seeing a lot of books that sounded as though the authors had written them with their hands on their hips (if such a feat were physically possible). A decade on and we are seeing a new but somewhat similar trend: books that sound as though the authors had written them with their tongues firmly wedged in their cheeks.

While the difference between those things might seem subtle, it’s actually not really. Hands on hips books were laughing at themselves and the world at large while the tongue in cheek ones are a flight of fancy told in a way that makes them sound plausible, or even likely. Except that they’re not.

A good example of that is How to Defeat Your Own Clone (Bantam) by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson, a book based on the premise that you will require special skills to survive the biotech revolution. Except it’s funny. Only it’s kind of not.

Written by a couple of actual and for-real bioengineers, How to Defeat Your Own Clone is fascinating reading. Even when they play it for laughs, a message is being brought home. Here is what your future may look like, they seem to be saying at times and though the tone is often playful, they manage to pack a wallop of a message into this very slender paperback volume. As Kurpinski has said, “While many books have already been published on cloning and genetic manipulation, half seem to be textbooks and the other half are science fiction novels. The problem is that the former are generally unwieldy or boring for the average reader, while the latter have little or no scientific value or basis.”

How to Defeat Your Own Clone fills that gap handily, adding just enough silly to make us stop and think.

Non-Fiction: Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell

In 2003, a group of highly skilled Italian thieves broke into an airtight and crack proof vault in Antwerp, Belgium. It’s estimated that they got away with close to half a billion dollars in diamonds, gold and other precious and valuable loot. Estimated, that is, because none of the haul was ever recovered.

From one end to the other, Flawless (Union Square) is a remarkable story. First of all it was Antwerp, where of all the cities in the world, they take their diamonds -- and diamond protection -- pretty darn seriously. And second (though there is so much more) it’s told by a fantastically qualified duo: Harvard law school graduate and diamond expert Scott Andrew Selby and author and journalist Greg Campbell. Campbell not so coincidentally wrote the fantastic Blood Diamonds, later made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

The resulting book is breathtaking. Most fiction is nowhere near this exciting. This is a book I predict you’ll be hearing a lot about in the months to come.

A neat bonus: you won’t get the full impact here online, but Flawless sports a fantastic -- even flawless -- cover. Even if you don’t buy this book, trundle off to your favorite booksellers just to have an up close and personal look. It’s really gorgeous: and does justice to a book you won’t soon forget.

Biography: Tupac Shakur: The Life of an American Icon by Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred Johnson

While the death of Tupac Shakur may not have a universal “Where were you when you heard the news?” sort of reverberation, for some people it was as intense a moment as the death of Elvis, JFK or Michael Jackson might have been for others. That is to say that a great many people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 13, 1996 when they heard the news that Tupac Amaru Shakur had been killed by an unknown assailant in Las Vegas.

Fourteen years on, there are those who argue that Shakur was bigger dead than he would have been alive. Five posthumous albums and eight top ten Billboard singles -- not to mention some faintly weird tribute albums -- after his death cemented his position as one of the most important voices in contemporary urban music. To me, sometimes it still seems impossible to think that that voice has been stilled forever.

Though authors Tayannah Lee McQuillar and Fred Johnson have the right creds and background for this to be an astonishingly good book about Shakur’s life, somehow Tupac Shakur: The Life of An American Icon (Da Capo) falls short. McQuillar is the author of When Rap Music Had a Conscience and Fred L. Johnson is Associate Professor of History at Michigan’s Hope College. In some regards, this seems like a dream team for a book not only about Tupac Shakur, but on the impact his life -- and death -- have had on the type of music the artist made and on his various communities. But that isn’t this book. Instead we have what is a, for the most part, stiff and ponderous retelling of the life and death of Tupac Shakur. His significance is commented upon, but most often this is seeded within passages of McQuillar and Johnson’s irritatingly careful prose. The result is a book that, while informative and well enough researched, never lifts us beyond the place we have been lifted. While Tupac Shakur: The Life of An American Icon is certainly far beyond your standard unauthorized celebrity bio, it’s impossible not to feel that it could have been so much more.

Non-Fiction: I See Rude People by Amy Alkon

Hannibal Lecter would have loved Amy Alkon. Actually, upon consideration, they might have adored each other. Where Thomas Harris’ notorious fictional Hannibal the Cannibal only ate the rude, Alkon stands up to them with the sort of glorious panache that sometimes makes you want to stand and cheer.

I See Rude People (McGraw Hill) is a kind of post-modern Miss Manners or rather, as the subtitle tells us, “One woman’s battle to beat some manners into impolite society.”

This is a seriously great book. Alkon is smart and savvy and funny as hell. And though, given the opportunity (and it’s her book, so she’s given lots) she plays for the laughs, there are times when she comes perilously close to describing the ways in which our society is breaking down.

If it isn’t fear of bodily injury that keeps people from speaking up, it’s probably fear of verbal confrontation, or maybe they’re just not that practiced at it. I’m a syndicated advice columnist with somewhat controversial views, so I regularly get mail from readers that opens with something like “Dear Bitch.”

There’s a clean, forthright and completely unexpected charm in I See Rude People. Everyone should read it for their mental health. And though it’s well written and excruciatingly funny, I suspect not everyone will laugh.

Non-Fiction: The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

The story will not be completely unfamiliar to you: you’ve heard versions of it before.

A family of some wealth and relative western privilege chuck it all -- or, at least, a bunch of it -- in order to make their lives more meaningful by giving back. The big difference in the Salwen family’s story is dad, Kevin: a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal for close to two decades. Salwen Senior knows when he’s looking at a story and knows what to do with it when he is. That’s not to take anything away from the considerations and sacrifices the Salwens have, as a family, made. Rather it’s intended to underline a significant difference between this and other somewhat similar tales: this one is well and concisely told. Here we feel the mood as the Salwen’s, unknowingly, prepare for their adventure:

As we drove from activity to activity, the TV in the back seat kept the kids entertained -- and our family from connecting. At dinner, conversations began to center on to-do lists instead of meaningful dialogue. Our sense of togetherness was beginning to erode. I can't pinpoint the moment it happened because, after all, erosion is so much harder to recognize than earthquake damage.

You see? Absolutely terrific stuff. There are many of these moments in The Power of Half (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Moments of recognition and transformation. And what begins as what Salwen calls erosion leads to change. Magnificent change. They sold their large home in Atlanta -- the one they had thought was the house of their dreams -- and gave half the money to charity. Which charities -- and how, as a family, the Salwens chose them -- make up the bulk of The Power of Half. And the subtext is key, as well: it’s a journey of giving and, long before the final page is turned, you feel the power that taking these steps together has brought to this family. It’s a thought-provoking book. One that makes you realize that very few of us ever really do enough.

Non-Fiction: The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr by Ken Gormley

Sometimes while reading author and professor Ken Gormley’s look at the Clinton/Starr scandals of the 1990s, I just wanted to take a shower. The Death of American Virtue (Crown) promises to be the “final word on the Clinton/Starr struggle” and while one might hope that could be true, I doubt it.

While The Death of American Virtue promises all sorts of new material, one just gets the feeling of more of the same. And, sure: many of the nuances might be new but, in the big picture, while you read you just get the feeling that you’ve been down this road before.

This is the part of this piece where I should clue you in to what “Clinton vs. Starr” was, just in case you missed it but, to be honest, I just don’t have the heart. So many miles have been covered since then, so many bridges built and burnt. How is any of this even relevant anymore? Suffice to say that, if you have to ask about it, you are unlikely to be terribly interested in this rather long-winded book. And if you do find yourself riveted or incensed once more, think again. So many miles, so much distance, a whole different page in our brand new world.

New in Paperback: Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

A bestseller in hardcover in 2009, Temple Grandin’s Animals Make Us Human (Mariner) examines our relationship with the creatures in our lives. Not just what they do for us (that’s been done quite a lot) but how we can give our animals the best possible life. Along the way we learn a great deal about them... and us.

Grandin’s deep knowledge of her subject and direct prose combine to make compelling reading. You leave Animals Make Us Human with a better knowledge of the animals in your life than you had going in, with lots of terrific anecdotes along the way.

Grandin is also the author of the autism memoir Thinking in Pictures and the bestseller Animals in Translation. With her trademark elegant simplicity, Grandin takes a species-by-species approach to companion animals. Dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, chickens and other poultry, wildlife and zoos: each get their own chapters and their own look at what each species requires from the humans in their lives when they are in captivity. Not food and water needs but rather, as the author puts it, to have a good mental life. The first line in Animals Make Us Human states it quite perfectly: “What does an animal need to have a good life?” Answering that question with Grandin is an adventure in learning. She knows so much and shares it all so well.

“Everyone who is responsible for animals,” Grandin writes, “farmers, ranchers, zookeepers, and pet owners -- needs a set of simple, reliable, guidelines for creating good mental welfare that can be applied to any animal in any situation...”

Here they are.

Non-Fiction: The Locavore Way: Discover and Enjoy the Pleasures of Locally Grown Food by Amy Cotler

So many people are talking about green issues these days, alternative lifestyles have gotten to be mainstream. Long gone are the days when a hostess could plunk a steak down in front of dinner guests without first asking about food preferences and considering the social and moral implications of such an act. In the West, we are critically concerned with the consequences of our actions and while, in broad strokes, that’s a good thing, on a micro level, it can get a little cloying. And you’ve encountered those books. Self-righteous finger-pointers waggling correctively at us while we choke on the meat fiber that would otherwise have been enjoyed.

Amy Cotler’s The Locavore Way (Storey Publishing) isn’t that book. Quite the opposite, in fact. Cotler brings the uninitiated joyously into the fold, while taking those already moving towards a slower food lifestyle more deeply into a world she is comfortable with: both to travel in and to share. She explains herself and her mission succinctly, then shows us how to get to where she’d like us to go: to a place where fresh food is simply cooked and joyously shared. She makes this sound like an attainable place. She makes it sound like Nirvana:

Imagine a healthy landscape, dotted with small farms raising food without ravaging the land, water and air, promoting better-nourished communities and local economies, and creating less dependence of the fossil fuels needed to transport food from afar.

As idyllic as she makes it sound, in subsequent pages she demonstrates that this is more than a distant vision. For many people, it’s a growing reality. With stories, profiles, recipes and tips, Cotler engages us with possibilities and ideas.

Here, from a slender book filled with great real-world examples of how to bring local and organic into your life, a list that breaks things down to its most essential components (something this author does very well):

Why Bother?
10 Reasons to Eat Locally Produced Food:

1. For the sheer pleasure of it.
2. To connect.
3. For the health and safety of your family and yourself.
4. For the health of our planet.
5. To boost the local economy, community and region.
6. For an open, working landscape.
7. To maintain biodiversity.
8. To support our neighboring farms and farmers.
9. To prepare our culinary heritage.
10. To give us a just choice.

Biography: Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson Wright

Clarrisa Dickson Wright is one half of British television’s Two Fat Ladies cooking team. When her autobiography was first published in the UK in 2007, it was met with wide acclaim. It’s not hard to see why.

The first official U.S. edition becomes available this month from Overlook Press and it’s a surprisingly complete book. In a way, Spilling the Beans has everything: fame, celebrity, addiction, heartbreak... and, of course, food. Lots and lots of food.

The only reason I can think of that it’s taken this long for Spilling the Beans to get to this side of the water is the very real possibility that a lot of people in the U.S. have never heard of Two Fat Ladies, or at least, had not until 2008 when the series that ended in 1998 after the death of Dickson Wright’s cooking partner, Jennifer Paterson, was released here.

Spilling the Beans recounts some of that time but the Fat Ladies years are only a small part of Dickson Wright’s journey to date. At its core, Spilling the Beans is a story of redemption. About the little rich girl -- Dickson Wright, of course -- with an abusive, alcoholic father. She grows to be a brilliant young woman (and ends up being the youngest woman in the UK ever called to the bar), a dilettante (she ends up partying away a significant fortune), her recovery through AA, then traveling the English countryside in the sidecar of a motorcycle with the late Paterson.

This is a well told, joyous memoir that, for me, is all about finding your way back. Even those largely unfamiliar with Dickson Wright will enjoy her humor and wit.

Art & Culture: Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books edited by Trevor J. Adams and Stephen Patrick Clare

Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books (Nimbus Publishing) is like a blueprint for what provinces, states, regions and even countries should be doing for their literature. In straightforward fashion and in easily accessible language, it rounds up the 100 greatest books of Canada’s huge and literarily formidable Atlantic region. Full stop. Then it bundles them all together under a bright, shiny cover, giving a couple of pages and a full color representation to each of the chosen 100 along with a breezy write-up and -- voila! -- a literary map for anyone who would like to hit all of the regional highlights.

Editors Trevor J. Adams and Stephen Patrick Clare asked local readers and reviewers for their selections and, in the end, compiled the list based on this input as well as their own considerable expertise. From the introduction:

We relied on invaluable input from hundreds of people, but ultimately, we take sole responsibility (or blame) for these rankings. You won’t agree with all our decisions. That is fine. In fact, that is ideal -- good books should spark debate and discussion, they should raise questions and challenge preconceptions.

As though to deliver on this promise of discussion-sparking choices, Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief takes the number one position. While MacLeod’s 1999 debut novel truly is a wonderful book, putting it in the number one spot would have taken some courage. There is, after all, a rich literary heritage to mine from the Atlantic provinces. To prove the point, the top ten of Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books almost looks like a list of Canada’s greatest books, depending, of course, on where you stand and how your tastes run. It’s certainly a great reading list for anyone:

1. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
3. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
4. The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler
5. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
6. Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan
7. Random Passage by Bernice Morgan
8. The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod
9. Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
10. Rockbound by Frank Parker Day

New Tomorrow: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir

It is interesting to me -- yet not at all salient -- that the author photo of Alison Weir included in The Lady in the Tower (M&S/Ballantine) shows the accomplished British author looking not unlike the painting detail of her subject that graces the cover of her latest book. In these particular images, both Weir and Boleyn look attractive and mysterious and both wear just the trace of a Mona Lisa smile. As things turned out, the second wife of England’s Henry VIII had a lot less to smile about than does Weir, who has written a string of bestselling books -- both fiction and non-fiction -- that have captivated world wide audiences and shed light in dimly lit corners of some of history’s best known moments.

The Lady in the Tower is the first non-fiction exploration of the final days of Anne Boleyn whose demise may well have altered Britain’s religious make-up forever. Boleyn was charged with high treason and died not longer after, still protesting her innocence. This is an area of history that has fascinated Weir, and she has spent so much time researching various ultimately related works that is seems possible that she has made herself one of the world’s leading experts of the wives of Henry VIII. She is the author of two bestselling novels, Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth. Her historical biographies include Mistress of the Monarchy, Queen Isabella, Henry VIII, The Life of Elizabeth I and The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Unsurprisingly -- considering the expertise she brings to this era -- Weir comes up with some details others have either missed or construed in different ways, including Boleyn’s innocence of the charges she was executed for and what might have motivated Thomas Cromwell to construct such an intricate case against the doomed queen.

As always, Weir writes compellingly and well. She manages to give the impression of great scholarship while maintaining an interesting and accessible tone. The Lady in the Tower is another very good book for this impressive writer’s résumé.

Best of 2009: Non-Fiction

The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal (McClelland & Stewart/Harmony) 291 pages
If half the things Dutch-born biologist and bestselling authors Frans de Waal posits in The Age of Empathy is true, it might just break your heart, even while it lifts it up. The world-renowned primatologist argues that, like all animals and despite societal evidence to the contrary, humans are wired for empathy. de Waal takes it all a step further, saying that, with a new American president and a new agenda, “Greed is out, empathy is in.” Whether or not you buy what de Waal is selling, The Age of Empathy is a thoughtful and even joyous book. “The emphasis is on what unites a society,” de Waal writes in his preface, “what makes it worth living in, rather than what material wealth we can extract from it.” I want to live in the world in which de Waal believes. Read this book and you will, too. -- Linda L. Richards

Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon by Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt (Haus Publishing) 257 pages
“I’ve nearly died three times in my life -- which is funny in an ironic way, since I was once accused of never taking any risks.” This first line of Along the River that Flows Uphill sets the tone completely. We understand, just from that, that we’re about to embark on an adventure. The other thing that we understand is that we’re in the hands of a storyteller or, as it turns out, a couple of them. In 2005, the authors were commissioned to write an article for Geographical, the magazine of the London-based Royal Geographical Society. Their assignment was to travel the length of the Casiquiare River in Venezuela, the river that joins the Amazon and the Orinoco by apparently flowing uphill. One can see, however, where the material the pair were assembling might have overflowed from the article they’d been assigned. The book the two produced is both enjoyable and informative: and so much beyond the travelogue one might expect. It is creative non-fiction. It is literature. It is history. It is geography. It is adventure. And it is cracking good fun. -- Aaron Blanton

An American Trilogy by Steven M. Wise (Da Capo) 304 pages
I think it’s possible that the publication date of Steve M. Wise’s latest book was unfortunate. The best laid plans. An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery & Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River was published about a week before the strain of influenza most popularly known as swine flu started getting a lot of ballyhoo from CNN and other experts in the art of the sensational. That is to say that the book was published at a time when even staunch animal activists weren’t feeling especially compassionate about the fate of pigs. And, really that’s a shame because, once again, Wise has written a trenchant and important book. Wise is a lawyer who has taught at Harvard, Lewis and Clark and other places. He is president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights. And he cares very deeply about both human and animal rights, as he demonstrated in several previous books, including Though the Heavens May Fall and Rattling the Cage. In An American Trilogy Wise trains his sharp eye on Tar Heel, North Carolina, home of the largest slaughterhouse in the world, once the site of atrocities to African American slaves and before that home to indigenous Americans. At times, An American Trilogy is a difficult book to read. There are some things here a lot of people don’t really want to know. In the book’s prologue, Wise explains that he was deeply affected by the material that moved him to write the book. That passion shows up on every page, as he tells us, “In this book, I do not recite the atrocities we perpetuate on pigs. Instead, I discuss why we think it’s okay to inflict them. And that discussion will bring us to the study of history.” In that study, Wise examines why Americans accept the type of cruelty he shows us in Bladen County, North Carolina. More: he connects it with cruelty to native Americans as well as African American slaves. He does all of this with the style and grace that always marks his work. An American Trilogy is a remarkable book. -- Monica Stark

Annie’s Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg (Hyperion) 401 pages
The say everyone has a story. Not everyone has the talent to tell that story well. Fewer still have the skill and experience to tell it both well and properly. Editor and journalist Steve Luxenberg has all that stuff and in Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into A Family Secret he invites us into the hidden places in his own family history. It really is a great journey. “The secret emerged without warning or provocation, on an ordinary April afternoon in 1995,” Luxenberg writes in his prologue. “Secrets, I’ve discovered, have a way of working themselves free of their keepers.” Those first lines hint at the magic that Luxenberg will weave with his tale, a story as compelling as anything found in fiction. After Luxenberg has written his mother’s obituary describing her as an only child, he discovered she’d had a sister who had been institutionalized. And not, as one might expect, when they were small children, but when the sisters were in their early 20s. Annie’s Ghosts is a meticulous reporter’s journey to put all the pieces in their proper place. But it is with a storyteller’s panache that he leaves us breathless while he spins his tale. -- Sienna Powers

Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller (Nan A. Talese) 592 pages
Ayn rhymes with “mine,” and that about sums up everything you need to know about the author and this wonderful biography of her. Though a few Rand bios have appeared before, Heller went farther and dug deeper to create Ayn Rand and the World She Made, specifically into long-closed Russian archives. (Rand was a nice Russian Jewish girl before she became a global phenomenon.) Through her girlhood poverty, to her early work as a Hollywood screenwriter, to her first novel, Anthem, then the ones that made her name forever -- The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged -- Ayn Rand and the World She Made deconstructs the author as never before, laying bare her writing process, her abominable extra-marital love life, which ended her own marriage and another, and the struggle to keep control of Objectivism, the philosophy that gives her books their scaffolding. Love or hate her, there’s no denying that Ayn Rand was a force of nature, and this book is like reading an amazingly detailed account of the storm. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown by Jennifer Scanlon (Oxford University Press) 288 pages
Bad Girls Go Everywhere is not quite the sexy tell-all of author and journalist Helen Gurley Brown’s life that the cover might hint at, but in some ways, it is a great deal more. Author Jennifer Scanlon is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, an award-winning teacher and scholar as well as the author of books with titles like Significant Contemporary American Feminists and The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader. In some ways this authorship -- as well as Scanlon’s academia-informed approach to the former Cosmo editor’s life -- makes Bad Girls Go Everywhere the definitive work on Gurley Brown. One can not imagine anyone exceeding it. Even though the book lacks the puerile tone and surface facts of biographies written with a more popular readership in mind, Bad Girls Go Everywhere is a very interesting book. Even without the author’s obvious passion and knowledge of her subject, Gurley Brown’s life provides plenty of fuel for a well-stuffed biography. Most surprising of all -- at least, for this reader -- was the fact that, despite her reputation as a tough-as-nails professional women who never ate enough, Gurley Brown emerges Scanlon’s portraiture as a second wave feminist. Someone whose contributions to the women’s movement and to her gender’s real-world emancipation are perhaps too great to calculate. Other books on 87-year-old Helen Gurley Brown’s life may well emerge over the years, but I imagine Bad Girls Go Everywhere will remain the definitive record of a remarkable journalist’s life. -- Aaron Blanton

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) 336 pages
Until reading New York Times writer Timothy Egan’s latest work, I had never even heard of the Great Fire of 1910, which consumed 3 million acres of Pacific Northwest timberlands (an area slightly smaller than Connecticut) in only two days, and killed more than 80 people. But the drama and humanity Egan brings to that history make it hard to forget. The best-recognized players here are recently retired U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and his friend and sparring partner, Yale-educated forester Gifford Pinchot, who together created the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and fought to strengthen its authority after Egan’s “big burn.” And the villains are embodied in U.S. Senator Weldon Heyburn, an Idaho Republican who “stood in the way of nearly all Roosevelt’s progressive initiatives,” and who sought to defund and destroy the Forest Service and turn all of the forests it managed back to industrial use. However, the real heroes in The Big Burn have to be the Forest Service rangers who, outmanned and outgunned at every turn, nonetheless fought valiantly to stop a disastrous blaze that had been wind-whipped and stampeded across acreage grown dry after months of sunny summer. While thousands of residents fled the danger zone, racing away on trains that threatened to tumble from charred and wrecked trestles, the rangers found help from prisoners released for the onerous duty of firefighting and a segregated U.S. Army unit that, against tremendous odds, managed to save one town and safely evacuate another. Although the final chapter of this book is a bit too reportorial, not quite matching the pace of what precedes it, Egan (best known until now for his 2006 book, The Worst Hard Time) shows that he has mastered the fine art of fetching new color and life even from history that never lacked for vividness. The Big Burn is nothing if not a scorcher. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Eiffel’s Tower: And the World’s Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count by Jill Jonnes (Viking) 368 pages
One French critic called it “an inartistic ... scaffolding of crossbars and angled iron” with a “hideously unfinished” appearance. Another denounced it as an “odious column of bolted metal.” Hard as it is to believe, the 1,000-foot Eiffel Tower -- built as the centerpiece of Paris’ 1889 Exposition Universelle -- was considerably less appreciated at the time of its raising than it is nowadays. In her entertaining new history, Eiffel’s Tower, Jill Jonnes recounts the myriad difficulties that engineer Gustave Eiffel encountered in finishing his monumental erection. But she also offers a three-ring circus of contemporaneous characters. Prominent among those is Buffalo Bill Cody, who brought his Wild West Show -- complete with stampeding Indians and sharpshooter Annie Oakley -- to the Paris world’s fair at the start of what would be a highly profitable European tour. Appearing here, too, is bad-boy newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr., who lorded over what had been his father’s New York Herald, while also establishing a Paris edition of that broadsheet, which promoted the ’89 expo -- and eventually became part of today’s International Herald Tribune. Further animating this volume’s narrative are artists (including the tortured Vincent van Gogh and the mercurial James McNeill Whistler), and inventor extraordinaire Thomas Edison, who delighted Parisian dignitaries with his new talking phonographs. Jonnes notes here, as well, that the Paris fair was important in educating the French about their colonial empire’s foreign acquisitions. Quoting from one newspaper account, she writes that “Fairgoers were lured by the ‘smell of Oriental spices and north African couscous, the sound of Senegalese tom-toms, Polynesian flutes and Annamite [Vietnamese] gongs, the sight of Moslem minarets and Cambodian temples. In the bazaars of the large Algerian and Tunisian pavilions craftsmen fashioned jewelry, finely tooled leather and brightly colored tapestries.’” Amid such exotic enticements, it’s a wonder that anyone found time to scale Eiffel’s tower -- then the tallest manmade structure in the world. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names by Andrew Scott (Harbour Publishing) 661 pages
Though The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names has a very tight focus and thus would be of interest to only a narrow band of January Magazine’s readership, it is an absolutely splendid -- perfect? -- example of what a book like this one should look like and how it should be. The book celebrates the 100th anniversary of a landmark work by one Captain John T. Walbran called British Columbia Coast Names. Andrew Scott’s new book takes Walbran’s seminal work and expands upon it... exhaustively. “We navigate the world with names,” Scott writes in his introduction. “Names familiarize the world, make it intelligible to us, help us live in it.” And, as Scott also points out -- in words and deed -- the names that places are given are often a key to their history and so, in entry after entry, we cover the nooks and crannies of Canada’s southwestern coast and get to know it in a much more intimate way. Scott is a journalist, photographer, editor and the author of several books on the history of British Columbia. -- Linda L. Richards

Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine (Villard) 224 pages
One of the things that’s struck me about the green movement: it can be a little dour. And, actually, I get it. Really, I do. There’s a lot of serious stuff going on, after all. Climates changing. Polar icecaps melting. Food supplies dwindling. It’s all enough to put you in a really bad mood. As a result, a lot of Earth save-related stuff is strident. Unsmiling. You get the feeling you better put up or shut up: the planet is not going to save itself. If you’re not going to do something about it, you’d better stand aside or get trampled in the angry green parade. Farewell, My Subaru isn’t like that. The first hint, of course, is that title. A perfect title, when you think about it. A little bit romantic. A little bit evocative (the whole fossil fuel thing). Certainly a little bit fun. The title hints at all the things this book is and means and accomplishes. But it’s not an idle reference either. In fact, you meet the late, lamented Subaru at the very beginning of the book. The car is dying. And it’s not dying well. Author Fine watches it happen while wondering how much he actually cares. The opening lines of Farewell, My Subaru: “As I watched my Subaru Legacy slide backward toward my new ranch’s studio outbuilding, the thought crossed my mind that if it kept going -- and I didn’t see why it wouldn’t -- at least I would be using less gasoline.” NPR contributor Fine’s print work has appeared in The Washington Post, Wired and Salon. His voice is gentle, his humor sharp, his message clear. Farewell, My Subaru is an easy, enjoyable read. And that’s a good thing, because this is a book that everyone needs to read. -- Lincoln Cho

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (Penguin) 288 pages
When I heard Novella Carpenter call chickens “the urban farming gateway animal” on a local radio show, I cringed. I’d about had it with the twee artisanal food revolution here in Oakland, California. And now this person with the strange name had not only created a farm in an area of the city I wouldn’t drive through, she’d written a book about it. I bought Farm City with a sneer in my canning, confit-making heart, expecting my disgust with all the moneyed folks slumming it for cheap real estate and restaurant-level cookery to be validated. Instead I was charmed. Novella Carpenter is fiercely dedicated to farming her plot, a formerly vacant lot in what locals call “Ghostown.” Further, she is vehement in her defense of Oakland’s poorest, whom she lives among. People are free to pick her greens; she teaches the local children rabbit husbandry. Her pig-raising adventures will make you laugh aloud; the shrine to a young gangster’s death will make you weep. Along with her steadfast boyfriend, Bill, Carpenter raises chickens, turkeys, a couple pigs, rabbits, and enough vegetables to feed half her impoverished neighborhood. Written with humor, sweetness, and honesty, Farm City stands transcends the foodie genre. It’s just a plain terrific book. -- Diane Leach

The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser (Smithsonian) 272 pages
Art lovers and Bostonians know the significance of St. Patrick’s Day, 1990. That was the evening two men dressed as police officers talked their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and emerged 90 minutes later with art that is estimated to be worth over $600 million in today’s market. Stolen were Rembrandt’s only known seascape, Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and 12 other masterpieces by artists such as Vermeer and Degas. In his book The Gardner Heist, Ulrich Boser picks up the trail left by the thieves, interviewing the police assigned to the investigation, federal officials, and more than a few shady underworld types to try and find out what happened to the stolen art. Boser categorically rejects the “Dr. No” theory, espoused by many, that the theft was commissioned by a rich art collector wanting to hoard the works for himself. Instead, Boser believes that the heist was perpetrated by Boston-area gangsters and makes a credible circumstantial case in support of his theory. Still, the treasures remain missing, as evidenced by the empty frames still on the walls of the Gardner Museum. -- Stephen Miller

The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger (Da Capo) 400 pages
Harlow Giles Unger is one of those authors with the talent and skill -- not to mention passion -- to breathe life into history. You don’t have to read very far in his 16th book, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, to understand this. In The Last Founding Father, Unger builds a case for the importance of a vastly overlooked and underrated figure, America’s fifth President, James Monroe. Unger delivers his material on a wave of adventure and a compelling sense of importance. You won’t ever see the early history of America in quite the same way. -- Aaron Blanton

Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley (Twelve) 272 pages
Despite the fact he died in 2008, William F. Buckley, Jr. became the subject of two memoirs in 2009. The first and more prominently reviewed book was this one by his son Christopher Buckley, who is best known for satirical novels set in Washington, as well as for not necessarily espousing the conservatism of his famous family. Losing Mum and Pup is young Buckley’s story of the 11 month period of time between the death of his mother, the dowager socialite Patricia Buckley, and the force of nature that was WFB. In this affectionate but by no means artificially sweetened remembrance, Christopher Buckley shows many sides of his parents that are notably cringe-worthy: Patricia’s outright lies about her connections to British royalty and her family’s upbringing; William’s habit of urinating in public (and out the door of a moving limousine, to boot), and the fact that Christopher’s upbringing was largely subcontracted by his globe-trotting parents to servants. However, despite the occasional whiff of dirty laundry being aired, “Christo” as he was called by his father, manages to send his parents on a fond and moving farewell, noting that they were flawed but loving and highly entertaining. -- Stephen Miller

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen (Henry Holt) 363 pages
It wasn’t until I sat down to read Harriet Reisen’s biography of Louisa May Alcott that I realized, A/ How little I had known about this writer and B/ How deeply interesting her story might be. Because, when you think about it, it only stands to reason that her journey through life will have been an interesting one or, at least, that an author as well loved as Alcott has been in the 140 years since Little Women was published would merit at least one really great book about her life. Then I got more deeply into the book and my jaw dropped: there was so much more to Alcott than I could ever have imagined. Like a lot of people, I suspect, I really just had no idea. Here Reisen shows us Alcott the pulp fiction author (!), the poet and playwright. Alcott the actress, the activist, the Civil War nurse. Alcott the drug user who, as a teenager had crushed on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, who walked with the young Alcott on Walden Pond. Reisen, known more for her screenwork than for other types of writing, wrote and produced a documentary on Alcott that premiered on PBS during December. This is a remarkable book. -- Adrian Marks

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss (Penguin Press) 384 pages
Clarence King was a famous 19th-century geologist and mountaineer, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and the man who exposed the notorious (and, really, incredible) Great Diamond Hoax of 1872. Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1842, a confidante of the privileged, a friend of onetime presidential aide and future U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, and a bestselling author to boot -- “the best and the brightest of his generation,” as Hay pronounced -- King also led a secret life. For 13 years, while his real name was featured in newspapers and rode the lips of government officials in need of scientific expertise, the unmarried King engaged in a parallel existence as “James Todd,” a supposedly light-skinned black Pullman porter with a much younger common-law spouse, Ada Copeland, the daughter of former Georgia slaves, and a home and family in Brooklyn, New York. Feeling confined by the upper-class life into which he’d been born, King first studied and toured, and then daringly leapt the border between white and African America -- but never told his closest friends, or even his aged mother, what he’d done. Only after his death in 1901 were the facts of his double life revealed, thanks to a court case brought against his dubious estate by his black wife. Author Sandweiss, a Princeton University history professor, uses the story of Clarence King and Ada Copeland to explore the bigotry, economic disparities and racial “passing” pervasive in post-Civil War America, and raise the question of whether even King -- for all of his intelligence -- could admit “the paradoxes of his life.” She presents here a haunting tale, made all the more intriguing by a mystery raised in its later pages: Who was responsible for maintaining the payments on Ada King’s residence even after husband Clarence/James died? In other words, who knew about his secret life before the newspapers made it a sensation? -- J. Kingston Pierce

Right Place, Right Time: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement by Richard Brookhiser (Basic Books) 272 pages
William F. Buckley’s protégé at the National Review, Richard Brookhiser, produced his own remembrance of Buckley in Right Place, Right Time: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley. Jr. and the Conservative Movement. While Brookhiser lacks Christopher Buckley’s wit (not to mention a checklist of possible grievances), it’s Brookhiser’s book that comes off as more of a score-settling work. Hired by National Review at age 22 (his first piece appeared at age 15), Brookhiser was informed by Buckley that he would be the successor editor-in-chief upon the latter’s retirement. That promise was broken several years later, leading to Brookhiser’s decision to leave National Review’s full-time staff and begin work as a freelance writer (he has gone on to write a magnificent series of short historical works on subjects such as Alexander Hamilton and the Adams family dynasty). Brookhiser is smart enough to realize that things worked out for the best, but the sting of rejection by one’s mentor still clouds what is otherwise an interesting look inside the premier publication of American conservatism. The two Buckley books published in 2009 should serve as appetizer to the main course currently being prepared -- a full length biography of Buckley coming from New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus. -- Stephen Miller

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small (McLelland & Stewart/W.W. Norton) 336 pages
David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir is fantastic. As good or better than the most celebrated graphic novels that it has been compared to. Stitches is all the more compelling because it is not a novel at all. Rather, it is a graphic telling of author and illustrator David Small’s early life. This is David through the Looking Glass as seen by David Lynch or perhaps Tim Burton, a dark and often disturbing graphic glimpse at a childhood that many of us might have thought was best left alone. Small takes us through the dark corridors of growing up in Detroit in the 1950s, the son of a radiologist father whose constant x-raying ultimately gives the boy cancer. And things go downhill from there. Stitches is a huge distance from the work Small is best known for. He has illustrated over 40 children’s books and won the most prestigious awards available to him in the process. It’s not hard to see why: Small is hugely talented and his understanding of visual storytelling is complete. -- David Middleton

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 480 pages
A horrible, brave, compelling and some ways awful book. And a brilliant one. You want to stop reading. You can’t look away. The topic has been covered before and it’s been covered well. But Tears in the Darkness is an expertly wrought passion play. One part history, one part journalistic retelling, one part literary non-fiction, Tears in the Darkness is likely the best (or worst, depending upon perspective) account of the Bataan Death March of 1942 when more than 76,000 troops under American control laid down their arms. “The single largest defeat in American military history,” the authors tell us. “The sick, starving, and bedraggled prisoners of war were rounded up by their Japanese captors and made to walk 66 miles to a railhead for the trip to prison camp, a baneful walk under a broiling sun that turned into one of the most notorious treks in the annals of war, the Bataan Death March.” -- Aaron Blanton

We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill (Ballantine) 480 pages
When a biography is very good and is also big and muscular, it’s common to compare the book to a novel. And what makes such a comparison valid? Certainly not -- or hopefully not -- a strong element of fabrication. Rather, how the book impacts the reader draws compare. A very good biography -- well researched, written with passion and competence, on a subject worthy of close examination -- will sweep the reader away. Take him or her to the special place in the imagination that good books inhabit. The characters -- or in the case of biography, the subject -- seem emotionally to leap off the page. They become real. If, in fact, this is what is necessary for a biography to be crooned over as novel-like, then We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals will be. Author Gillian Gill is that rarest of combinations: an academic who knows just how to spin a tale. She demonstrated same with earlier biographies of Florence Nightingale, Agatha Christie and Mary Baker Eddy. In We Too she tells the story of one history’s most important and complicated royal couples: Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort, Albert. Gill reveals a relationship much more complex than has popularly been thought. A passionate marriage, but one fraught with power struggles as well as a family trying to find its way through the confounding corridors of a life lived on center stage. -- Linda L. Richards

Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?) by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (Da Capo) 264 pages
Exactly what does Einstein’s famous equation mean? How does time work? Are time and space the same thing? And how about mass and energy? What would happen if we could travel at the speed of light? If you have ever tried to find out the answers to these questions but thought the explanation would either put you in a boredom-induced comma or cause irreversible brain damage due to overly deep thinking, then you need to read Why Does E=mc2? Written by a couple of brainiacs with the propper creds to perhaps even outwit Albert, the book explains in simple, but not patronizing language, the whys and whatnots of particle physics and why it is -- or should be -- important to all of us. Can I even begin to explain a portion of some of the theories and scientific principles covered in this book? Not a chance. But if you read Why Does E=mc2? it’ll all be deciphered for you in nice, elegant, and often humorous prose. -- David Middleton

Where Underpants Come From by Joe Bennett (Overlook Press) 252 pages
New Zealand-based educator, journalist and travel writer, Joe Bennett, explores the intricate path a five-pack of underwear take from the cotton fields of China to his own suburban supermarket. It’s a humorous journey in some ways, and Bennett is a very good and often funny writer. But it also becomes a very interesting a comment on how much the West has come to depend on the East. It also inevitably raises some ethical questions about why, first of all, underwear should be required to make such a perilous journey in the first place and why, when they do, they’re much, much less expensive than if they were made across town. Every aspect of the book is riveting: the back country travel Bennett does in China in search of the roots of his underpants; his visits to various factories and, most importantly in many ways, his exploration in and observations of the new China, how it works and how we all fit together. Frightening, funny and fiercely interesting. -- Adrian Marks

Holiday Gift Guide: The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncy

Issues of climate have been in the news a lot in the last few weeks, sometimes for better reasons than others. We’ve never spent quite this much time thinking about where all of this is leading. For a lot of people, the realities of global warming are difficult to accept because, if we acknowledge that the Earth is melting, then what? Where do we go from there?

While there is no shortage of books on the topic, few are both as informational and lucid as The Climate Challenge (New Society Publishers), energy maverick Guy Dauncy’s take on the topic.

Dauncy (Stormy Weather, Enough Blood Shed) is an author, speaker and futurist who attacks his topic with passion, knowledge and a surprising amount of humor.

Dauncy tackles the of topic climate change at the source: with a brief history of Man on Earth. Historic photos show blast furnaces in the forest and charcoal burner’s huts. Then we are told -- in-depth but in an entirely clear way -- about various gases and black carbon. In short: before he gets to the solution, Duancy carefully looks at the problem, A sort of “how did I get here” moment that will explain the seriousness of the situation to all but the most skeptical of watchers.

While the problem is well explained, most of the book is given over to solutions. “What then must we do?” he asks before going on to answer his own question. The answers are clear, if not always easy, but Duancy does a memorable job of getting us off the couch and into the field. As Duancy says at the beginning of Chapter 86: “Scramble! This is serious.”

Holiday Gift Guide: Planet Ape by Desmond Morris with Steve Parker

If you wanted to commission the penultimate book on apes, the name Desmond Morris would come up. Many books and paintings and years ago, zoologist, ethnologist, artist and brilliant thinker wrote The Naked Ape. It was 1967 and it shocked the world by writing about man in the same way one would write about animals. It was a ground-breaking work, an international bestseller and it led to a 1973 film of the same title as well as wide-spread reconsideration of the way we think about humans and animals and the little that can separate them.

In the time between, Morris has written about many things, including dogs, horses, cats, babies and other things. Many of those books have been bestselling. But none could compare with that first all-important bestseller and more than 40 years later, and with Morris now into his 80s, he’s come back to some of the ground he covered in The Naked Ape, with Planet Ape (Firefly Books). This time out, though, it’s the hairy apes that have focus: the naked ones get the (justifiable) blame.

This is a fantastic book. One can not imagine a better one on this topic. It is gorgeous enough to sit on a coffee table, yet informative enough for the reference section of a library. Wonderful photos illustrate page upon page of facts and thoughts and ideas. And in the true tradition of a book by Morris, you not only learn about the subject at hand, you are also pushed to think independently about what all these facts might mean. The information is shared in a thoughtful, intelligent way and, without even realizing it, we end up learning as much about ourselves as we do about the apes Morris obviously has a very real affection for.

A portion of the profits generated by Planet Ape are earmarked for charities who are working to conserve the apes Morris and co-author Parker deliver to us so vividly. Once you’ve experienced Planet Ape, you’ll understand just how important that is.

Holiday Gift Guide: Jack Kennedy: The Illustrated Life of a President

Is there anything we don’t already know about JFK? I doubt it. Yet year after year, authors find new angles with which to tantalize us about the man, his family, and his legacy. This year’s entry is Jack Kennedy: The Illustrated Life of a President (Chronicle Books), which relates the late president’s story in cogent prose, but the real prize here is the facsimile of personal memorabilia and documents. Postcards, holiday cards, personal latters, diary pages, drafts of key speeches, JFK’s Navy ID card, handwritten notes for Profiles in Courage, and much more. This treasure trove is shows us JFK in a whole new way, letting the evidence of his charmed, cursed life stand for itself, with no explanation or embellishment. The book also features photographs of other artifacts, as well as the iconic images of the subject’s life, from childhood to Dallas. It also includes a look at what happened after the assassination: how LBJ assumed the role of President, how he carried on JFK’s efforts, Bobby’s and Jackie’s and Teddy’s lives, and even the lives of John and Caroline. Though there’s no shortage of Kennedy books, this special addition to that library is something to be seen and cherished.

Holiday Gift Guide: Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy

On the one hand, it might seem counterintuitive to offer Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Haymarket Books) as a gift idea. Yet these thoughts on the very nature of democracy are a powerful gift, indeed. And what better time to read Booker Award-winning author Arundhati Roy’s examination of India’s crumbling democracy?

While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By “democracy” I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration, I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

So is there life after democracy?

In this series of themed essays, Roy explores the questions and political challenges probably most important to India today: the marginalization of religious and ethnic minorities and the neo-liberal economic reforms that Roy argues are turning India into a police state.

“The idea of extermination is in the air. And people believe that faced with extermination they have the right to fight back. Perhaps they’ve been listening to the grasshoppers.”

The author of The God of Small Things, Roy writes with a rare and confident beauty. Passion rings through every line, passion and the belief that the things she’s writing about here are important, they need to be said. I think that’s true. In many ways, it’s true not just for India but the world.

Non-Fiction: The Green Chain by Mark Leiren-Young

Regular readers of January Magazine may already know that I’m a major fan of journalist/author-turned-filmmaker Mark Leiren-Young. I’ve been reading Leiren-Young in our mutual hometown alternate weekly, The Georgia Straight, for... well, for a real long time and he is just all the things a journalist of his ilk should be (sez me). He is smart and worldly, but not in an irritating, tweed-and-elbow-patches über-literati kinda way. His world view is sophisticated, certainly, but you imagine he wears soft clothes and that he knows how to laugh and -- more importantly, perhaps -- he knows how to make his readers laugh, as evidenced by his win of the 2008 Stephen Leacock award for his debut book-length work, Never Shoot A Stampede Queen.

It turns out that, while Leiren-Young was hatching Never Shoot A Stampede Queen, he was also working on a film (if you want to call writing, producing and starring in working, and I think you might) that has since been released into wild success. Since its debut in 2007, The Green Chain has been a sweetheart on the international film festival circuit and, when you consider, how could it not? The Green Chain takes seven fictional tree killers and has them explain why they love trees. It’s fictional and it’s fun, yet it tells the story -- from both sides, now -- exceptionally well.

In the book of the same title, The Green Chain: Nothing Is Ever Clear Cut (Heritage House) , Leiren-Young takes the idea on the road, in a way: asking 22 people who might have opinions on such things “How do you feel about trees?” The resulting book is, in many ways, surprising. Leiren-Young himself observes that when he began these interviews -- with noted thinkers, writers, activists, doers -- he imagined that he would come away depressed. But, he notes, “most of the interviewees were surprisingly optimistic. They think the solutions are out there, and now that we’re living in the age of Al Gore and green is the new black, our society might be willing to embrace the solutions. Or at least attempt them.”

Leiren-Young’s journey of discovery is inspiring. And I’m not the first to note that it’s lovely and refreshing to encounter someone who sees both forest and trees.

Holiday Gift Guide: 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker

When she was in her early 30s, Cami Walker was living the dream. A young bride, she was doing a job she liked, living in a city she loved and she could see where all of this was leading. She thought. What began as a few pesky symptoms gradually worsened until she began a series of tests that led to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

Fast forward two years. Walker was constantly in pain, depressed, suffering from insomnia and battling an addiction to prescription painkillers. She tried everything to help her cope with the incurable disease. Finally, in desperation, she called a South African medicine woman of her acquaintance, hoping for comfort. What she got instead was the advice that would change her life:

“Cami, I think you need to stop thinking about yourself.”

For a few seconds, I’m shocked silent. I imagine Mbali on the other end of the phone, sitting near her unique altar, her silver hair and bronze skin reflecting in the soft light of her apartment. She’s probably wearing one of the beautiful, colorful necklaces she makes and smiling at my stunned reaction.

“Thinking about myself?” I howl. I start in on her about what a wreck I am, what a wreck my body is, telling her I don’t have room to think about anything except myself right now.

“I know, that’s the problem,” she says. “If you spend all of your time and energy focusing on your pain, you’re feeding the disease. You’re making it worse by putting all of your attention there.”

In the same conversation, Mbali prescribes the thing that will ultimately change not only Walker’s life, but many others. The thing that will come to form the very heart of 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life (Da Capo) and along with it begin a movement that has fans comparing it to the secret of The Secret.

In this season of giving, 29 Gifts cuts to the very heart of the thing: giving to enrich and share rather than receive. If it doesn’t change your life, it will at least make you think.

Review: And Then There’s This by Bill Wasik

Today in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Caroline Cummins reviews And Then There’s This by Bill Wasik. Says Cummins:

Bill Wasik may be the smartest guy in the room, but that doesn't mean he’s bright. A senior editor at Harper’s magazine, Wasik is the latest to shove his way into the crowded room of brave-new-media-world soothsayers, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Internet pundits Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) and Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) as well as such here’s-how-the-world-really-works types as Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) and the Freakonomics guys (Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt).

What these authors -- all male, mostly white, and generally middle-aged -- share is the Secret of the Scam: I will reveal the hidden mysteries of the universe to you, but only if you buy my book first.

The full review is here.

Review: The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

Today in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, senior editor J. Kingston Pierce reviews The Big Burn by Timothy Egan. Says Pierce:

Americans, especially those of us living in the West, take our public lands for granted. They’ve always been places to appreciate from afar, or places to escape to and reinvigorate ourselves. But what would’ve happened had those public reserves -- those horizon-gobbling wilderness refuges and national forests -- not been saved for us to appreciate? That was a very real possibility back in the summer of 1910, when the largest and most destructive fire in U.S. history steamrollered through the timbered vastness of northeastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana. The “big burn,” as New York Times reporter Timothy Egan calls it in his new book, consumed 3 million acres (an area slightly smaller than Connecticut) in only two days, and killed more than 80 people. It was an environmental disaster. Yet Egan argues that it was also responsible for saving the U.S. Forest Service and turning the conservation movement into a nationwide cause.

The full review is here.