(source: Library Journal, 15/07/2009)
Communications
Morrell, Jessica Page. Thanks, but This Isn’t for Us: A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected. Tarcher: Penguin. Aug. 2009. c.320p. ISBN 978-1-58542-721-5. pap. $16.95. COMM
Morrell (writing, Evergreen State Coll.; The Writer’s I Ching) takes us through the school of hard knocks faced by writers who are struggling to get published. Without removing the creativity from creative writing, Morrell convincingly portrays the craft of writing for publication as no accident of fate by revealing the “trade secrets” of the publishing industry through the eyes of that all-important gatekeeper, the editor. Having seen too many writers making the same mistakes, Morrell examines what makes a book publishable and what makes a story suck. She goes over dozens of common writing mistakes—from character, to plot, to dialog—and helps the would-be author find the ways in which to fine-tune a manuscript to avoid another rejection letter. VERDICT From beginning to end, whether novel, short story, or memoir, each element of a narrative is reviewed, with each chapter ending with quick tips to improve one’s writing. This is one to add to any library shelf—it won’t gather dust there.—Ann Schade, Sun Prairie, WI
Zinsser, William. Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher. Harper: HarperCollins. 2009. c.196p. ISBN 978-0-06-172902-7. $22.99. COMM
Influential writing mentor William Zinsser (On Writing Well) here briefly recounts his prolific and varied career and its many unusual work environments. Zinsser’s characteristic good humor and conversational tone are present as he describes his numerous changes of job description and employers, all while he pursued the same underlying vocation of communicating—and teaching others to communicate—via the written word. From the New York Herald Tribune to Yale to offices outfitted with fire pole exits, Zinsser demonstrates that good writing does not depend on one’s surroundings. He also encourages his readers and students to pursue their passions wherever they may lead, presenting his own interesting career as proof of this wisdom. VERDICT The best parts of this book are Zinsser’s nuggets of writing advice; the memoir portions, especially in passages listing names and places from the author’s past, are less successful than other memoirs such as Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life or Stephen King’s On Writing. Although some general readers may be interested, this book is recommended mainly for students of writing.—Stacey Rae Brownlie, Lititz P.L., PA
Economics
Ad Nauseum: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture. Farrar. Jul. 2009. c.336p. ed. by Carrie McLaren & Jason Torchinsky. illus. ISBN 978-0-86547-987-6. pap. $15. BUS
McLaren and Torchinsky (Stay Free! magazine) provide a loose collection of essays and interviews to critique various aspects of American consumer culture. Two of the more thought-provoking entries are Julie Scelfo’s (Newsweek) interview with NYU law professor Richard Sherwin on how television legal dramas shape expectations of jurors, and a debate between Sut Jhally (communications, Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst) and James Twichell (English & advertising, Univ. of Florida-Gainesville) about the relative merits and demerits of advertising. There are some interesting pieces from inside the world of advertising, such as one on how holidays like “National Denim Day” and “National Private Investigators’ Day” came to be, and others related to how magazine media kits try to attract ad revenue. VERDICT Readers familiar with Stay Free! magazine will recognize that, while some notable original essays are included in this book, many of them, as well as fake advertisements, are reprints of material freely available on Stay Free!’s web site (www.stayfreemagazine.org). The book will appeal to readers with an ironic sense of humor or a general suspicion of consumerism as well as those who enjoy keeping track of popular culture.—Elizabeth L. Winter, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta
The Capitalist’s Bible: The Essential Guide to Free Markets—and Why They Matter to You. Harper: HarperCollins. Sept. 2009. c.320p. ed. by Gretchen Morgenson. illus. index. ISBN 978-0-06-156098-9. pap. $16.99. ECON
Morgenson, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has produced a timely and informative primer. Alluding to the current economic recession, she stresses that “getting wise to the ways of world financial markets…has never been more crucial than it is right now.” To help educate readers to that end, she provides a thorough overview of capitalism—its essential tenets, names of chief theorists, historical background, as well as describing its mechanisms and institutions. Not only chronicling capitalist success stories like the explosive growth of the American middle class, she also examines capitalist disasters such as the Great Depression, evaluating the legacies of both growth and failure in an evenhanded way. She also performs the exemplary task of dissecting the advanced economic jargon, explaining how its application impacts people’s lives. She rightly claims the “21st century has seen capitalism become the dominant economic system worldwide.” Nowhere is this evolution more apparent than in modern-day Russia or China. Unfortunately her choice in presenting a selection of profiles of various countries in the chapter “Capitalism Around the World” seems both arbitrary and perfunctory, offering minimal critical insight on how capitalism has transformed these countries. Yet this remains a minor shortcoming. VERDICT Morgenson’s book is essential for all who want to improve their capitalism literacy.—Richard Drezen, Brooklyn, NY
Kilborn, Peter T. Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America’s Rootless Professional Class. Times Bks: Holt. Jul. 2009. c.272p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-8050-8308-8. $26. BUS
Kilborn offers an analysis of the lives of “relos”—individuals who move up in their careers by moving around, both within the United States and internationally. The author is a longtime correspondent for the New York Times and it shows; the book reads quickly but is still thought-provoking, and moves logically from an extended example of a relo family, through chapters on the cities where relos settle (including Alpharetta, GA, and Plano, TX); the companies for which they work; the communities they form (or don’t); the houses they buy and sell; and the impact of their moving around upon their family life. Kilborn’s tone is largely reportorial; he opts to focus mainly on the economic and professional repercussions of rootlessness rather than on its social impact (an earlier book to which he contributed, Class Matters, included a bit more editorializing). VERDICT This book might have benefited from a more synthesizing conclusion, but overall it is a solid, business-centric read that will appeal to fans of Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City? or Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort. Recommended for interested general readers and business students.—Sarah Statz Cords, The Reader’s Advisor Online
Murray, David Kord. Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others. Gotham: Penguin Group (USA). Sept. 2009. c.304p. ISBN 978-1-592-40478-0. $26. BUS
Half of this book is an unremarkable self-help program for creativity. On the premise that creativity results from the combination of existing materials, Murray advocates “borrowing” successful ideas and giving them new applications. He offers a six-step creativity program with such insights as the need to define a problem before you solve it and the admonition to eliminate weak points while enhancing strong points. As the six steps progress Murray provides inspirational anecdotes about various luminaries (Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, etc.), which occasionally support the point at hand. The second half of this book is a paean by the author, a former aerospace engineer, to his self-proclaimed brilliance. Through various flashbacks to his childhood and later, he attempts to build himself up into a mythic figure who has overcome all the odds and who breaks all the rules, producing one innovative triumph after another; a character very familiar to motivational speaking. VERDICT There are simply better-written, catchier, more motivational self-help books out there. There is also a legal danger for the unwary reader who gets too excited about “borrowing” successful ideas from others. Not recommended.—Robert Perret, Univ. of Idaho, Moscow
Stewart, Matthew. The Management Myth: Management Consulting: Past, Present, and Largely Bogus. Norton. Jul. 2009. c.304p. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-393-06553-4. $27.95. BUS
Taking aim at the business management establishment, Oxford philosophy graduate Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic), after some years as a management consultant, sinks his teeth into everyone from the pioneers of management theory to the more recent management gurus (Peter Drucker, Tom Peters). He also critiques management education, asserting that a liberal arts degree is a more suitable preparation than an MBA. Alternating as he does between memoir and management theory, Stewart ends up with a disjointed and inconsistently meaningful work. He raises appropriate questions (e.g., about the validity of research from past management thinkers) and highlights serious problems in contemporary management (greedy and opportunistic consultants), but offers few solutions other than recommending a degree in philosophy. VERDICT While aspects of Stewart’s argument are certainly valid, a lot of the content here was already available in his June 2006 Atlantic Monthly article of the same name. Although Stewart has added some substantive information regarding the history of management, and quite a bit of seemingly melodramatic details from his brief consulting career, the results are not recommended.—Allen McGinley, Piscataway P.L., NJ
Political Science
Aid, Matthew M. The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency. Bloomsbury Pr., dist. by Macmillan. 2009. c.448p. index. ISBN 978-1-59691-515-2. $30. POL SCI
Electronic signals/communications intelligence (SIGINT) is a vital part of the information-gathering efforts of intelligence agencies. The National Security Agency (NSA) is the primary eavesdropping and code-breaking arm of the U.S. government. Aid goes over its operations during the crises of the 1950s and 1960s and the Vietnam War era, much of which was covered by James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace. But what is new and more important here is the evaluation of NSA activities since 2000. Using interviews with those in positions to know, the author discusses NSA’s troubled bureaucratic working relations with the CIA and FBI, how its product was used before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the massive domestic spying operation directed by the White House. VERDICT This book provides useful background for the current national security debate, with the author generally siding with the NSA as a misused agency that needs still more resources. With extensive endnotes; index and photos not seen. Suitable for general and advanced readers.—Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL
Graham, Bradley. By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. PublicAffairs: Perseus. Jul. 2009. c.816p. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-1-58648-421-7. $35. POL SCI
Donald Rumsfeld, the most powerful and arguably the most controversial secretary of defense in U.S. history and the only person to hold the position under two presidents (Gerald Ford and George W. Bush), gets a full assessment from Graham (Hit To Kill: The New Battle Over Shielding America from Missile Attack), longtime military affairs reporter for the Washington Post. Graham covers Rumsfeld’s life from childhood on, with the focus of course on his years in politics, from four terms as an Illinois Republican in Congress to his several positions under Ford, Nixon, and George W. Bush, and in private industry. The author conducted many interviews, including eight with Rumsfeld. His opinion? That Rumsefeld failed to expand the military to meet the challenges of the war in Iraq and that he neglected to plan effectively for postwar Iraq. Graham concludes that Rumsfeld will mostly be remembered for the American deaths in the Iraq war under his watch and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. But he does not see Rumsfeld as a war criminal, as in Michael Ratner’s The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld, nor as an appropriate fall guy. VERDICT This book would still have been thorough if slimmed down considerably. It will be of interest chiefly to policy wonks and academics.—Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Michel, Serge & Michel Beuret (text) & Paolo Woods (photogs.). China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa. Nation Bks. 2009. c.336p. tr. from French by Raymond Valley. photogs. bibliog. ISBN 978-1-56858-426-3. $26.95. INT AFFAIRS
A significant book that insightfully examines China’s role in Africa, China Safari reveals not only the complexities of Chinese immigration to Africa, but also the political rivalries that result from it. While much scholarship has focused on the economic and political context, European-based journalists Michel, Beuret, and Woods emphasize the day-to-day social and cultural interactions and relationships that are often excluded in such analyses of Chinese-African relations. Through in-depth interviews with Chinese sojourners and Africans, the book reveals Africa as the new “Wild West” frontier for China; Africa is experiencing exploitation of its resources in a way reminiscent of its colonial past. Paradoxically, as African countries such as Zimbabwe, Congo, and Sudan are willingly dependent on Chinese capital to sustain their economies, the Chinese laborers there face increasing anti-Chinese crimes—robbery, blackmail, and personal violence—particularly led by opposition political parties and civil society groups. VERDICT Recommended for all interested readers.—Allan Cho, Univ. of British Columbia Lib., Vancouver
Social Sciences
The Face in the Mirror: Writers Reflect on Their Dreams of Youth and the Reality of Age. Prometheus. Sept. 2009. c.300p. ed. by Victoria Zackheim. ISBN 978-1-59102-752-2. $25. SOC SCI
Zackheim (instructor, Univ. of California-Los Angeles Extension Writers’ Program; The Bone Weaver) has assembled essays from 20 authors who reflect on their advancing age and compare how they turned out with who they thought they would become when they were much younger. Among the relatively well-known essayists featured here are Malachy McCourt, Joyce Maynard, Alan Dershowitz, Beverly Donofrio, Eileen Goudge, and editor Zackheim; included are dual photos of each in youth and from the present. The authors reveal their highly personal, frank thoughts on their desire to achieve success, obstacles that hindered their life journey, their accomplishments and failures, the state of their families, how some ended up replicating their parents, and on meeting personal goals and living with unfulfilled dreams. A common thread is the writers’ expressions of a sense of completeness, of becoming whole, and of learning how to live within themselves and be comfortable with whom they have become. One of the more remarkable stories is Donofrio’s, sharing her life’s experiences as she became a teenage mother, then a convicted felon, and later a college student and a notable author, now living in a monastery in the Colorado mountains. VERDICT Aging boomers will likely relate to these sensitive, refreshingly honest musings that tackle universal questions about the choices faced in life and the critical self examination that comes with age. Recommended.—Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Forman-Brunell, Miriam. Babysitter: An American History. New York Univ. Aug. 2009. c.336p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-8147-2759-1. $29.95. SOC SCI
So that young couple thought they were just hiring the kid next door to “mind” their toddler for a couple of hours while they took in a movie! Who knew that babysitting—past and present—was so fraught with meaning. Forman-Brunell (history, Univ.of Missouri-Kansas City; Made to Play House: The Commercialization of American Girlhood), that’s who. In this well-documented, illustrated discussion of our culture’s perceptions of babysitters through the years, the author skillfully demonstrates how changing social mores and attitudes toward girls and women were responsible for the astonishing range of notions about babysitters, running the gamut from child-care provider to home wrecker. Despite her initial observation that she found little archival material on the history of babysitting, Forman-Brunell makes excellent use of the various babysitting handbooks published over the years, and, particularly, of the commercial novels (e.g., The Baby-Sitters Club series) and movies that came out, from domestic comedies to horror films reflecting parents’ (and babysitters’) worst nightmares. VERDICT The results of her admirable research are highly recommended for all interested readers.—Ellen Gilbert, Princeton, NJ
Laderman, Scott. Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory. Duke Univ. 2009. c.288p. index. ISBN 978-0-8223-4396-7. $79.95; pap. ISBN 978-0-8223-4414-8. $22.95. SOC SCI
Laderman (history, Univ. of Minnesota- Duluth) offers a fascinating view of the United States in Vietnam, using tourism to illustrate a contentious history that reveals much about the collective American identity and memory of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Laderman shows how travel literature, first directed at American soldiers (published by the Department of Defense) and thereafter at veterans and tourists, was written to favorably suit the American, and supposedly well-intentioned, perspective. Even the Lonely Planet guides fail to deviate from the accepted American recollection of events in Vietnam. For example, the War Remnant Museum in Ho Chi Mihn City illustrates how out of touch Americans may be with the Vietnamese reality. The museum focuses on the Vietnamese experience of the war; its exhibits have met with dismissal and hostility in American travel guides, illustrative of a contentious history that hits a raw nerve. VERDICT Thoroughly researched, Laderman’s book offers a different angle on the conflict through the lens of tourism and collective memory. Highly recommended.—Patti C. McCall, Albany Molecular Research Inc., NY
Meston, Cindy M. & David M. Buss. Why Women Have Sex: Sexual Motivation—from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between). Times Bks: Holt. Oct. 2009. c.320p. index. ISBN 978-0-8050-8834-2. $25. SOC SCI
What do women want? According to University of Texas at Austin psychology professors Meston (director, Sexual Psychophysiology Lab) and Buss (The Evolution of Desire), this is a perplexing question, particularly with respect to sex. In 11 chapters, they provide the answers generated by clinical research and survey responses from 1,006 women aged 18 through 86 in the United States, Canada, Germany, Belgium, France, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and China. Interspersing quotations from the survey with state-of-the-art research, Meston and Buss demonstrate the surprising span of relevant motivating factors. They conclude that women want sex for the following reasons: pleasure, emotional and spiritual connection, the thrill of conquest, a means of guarding a mate or trading up, a sense of adventure, health rewards, to fulfill a sense of duty or responsibility, to bolster body image, and desire for sexual punishment, cruelty, and violence. VERDICT This study will intrigue and inform students and readers of Havelock Ellis, William Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, and Alfred Kinsey.—Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. Viking. 2009. c.405p. ISBN 978-0-670-02107-9. $27.95. SOC SCI
Prize-winning author Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost) delivers an insightful glimpse into the compelling human interest stories behind five major disasters: the San Fransisco earthquake of 1906, the Halifax explosion of 1917, Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. But more than just the stories, she turns her attention to the larger subject of the sociology of disasters and the incredible community spirit that can arise amid disaster. In contrast to media portrayals of negative human behavior in times of distress, Solnit believes that humans have an intrinsic need to help each other and work together in communities forged by disaster. These surreal situations demonstrate how deeply most of us desire connection, participation, altruism, and purposefulness. Thus the startling joy in disasters. Solnit wonders if some of these ephemeral moments could be recaptured in our normal day-to-day routines, thus enhancing our sense of community. VERDICT Despite wandering into some murky what-ifs, this book offers a timely study in community during these uncertain times.—Holly S. Hebert, Rochester Coll., Rochester Hills, MI
Taylor, Candacy A. Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress. ILR: Cornell Univ. Jul. 2009. c.160p. photogs. bibliog. ISBN 978-0-8014-7440-8. pap. $19.95. SOC SCI
Photographer, cultural critic, and erstwhile waitress Taylor traveled through 43 U.S. cities collecting stories from career diner waitresses for this respectful, celebratory collection of oral histories and photographs. Nearly every page features a portrait or on-the-job action shot of one of Taylor’s 57 interviewees, and each chapter ends with several waitresses’ reflections—some funny, some poignant—on their lives, careers, and customers. In between, Taylor explores the history of diners, issues of power in the workplace, the daunting variety and volume of work, and how and why some women continue in this physically challenging, disrespected occupation for decades, with no thought of, let alone desire for, retirement. Many of these self-termed “lifers” do surprisingly well financially and have tremendous job satisfaction, thanks to years of developing the customer care techniques—and genuine affection for their regulars and workplaces—that result in plum shifts and good tips, and thanks also to the organizational skills and no-nonsense attitude that allow them to thrive in their niche. VERDICT Taylor offers these women, many in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, and perhaps the last of their kind, a well-deserved tribute. Recommended for all who love human interest stories or interesting characters.—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH
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