Table of Contents
Most Popular . . .
More . . .
Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Seeing Stars
Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).
The review journal assigns the star.
Spacing Out . . .
Overbooked is Myspacingout and Crimespacing out
New! Overbooked social site join the conversation with other readers
Overbooked is an affiliate of Book Sense. Support your local book store and help support Overbooked. Overbooked is nonprofit, but would prefer not to be in the red - only widely read. Just click on the Booksense link to order books.
Stellar All Stars
Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
The Zookeeper's Wife
by Diane Ackerman
The Dead Father's Club
by Matt Haig
Consumption
by Keith Patterson
Down River
by John Hart
The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Starred Reviews
Nonfiction Stars - 2005
April 2, 2008
Nonfiction Stars of 2005 - A selected list of titles.
This reading list is based on personal preferences. It reflects interests history, science, nature, travel, food, biography, memoirs and a few assorted odd topics. An emphasis is placed on nonfiction that reads like good fiction. Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
December
- Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood
Author: Booth, Martin
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312348177 Date: 2005
Kirkus
The last work of the internationally known, Booker-shortlisted writer is a memoir of growing up in 1950s Hong Kong.
Updated 10.11.05 - Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life
Author: Briggs, Julia
Publisher: Harcourt $ 30 ISBN: 0151011435 Date: 2005Kirkus
Updated 9.17.05 - Alexander the Great Journey to the End of the Earth
Author: Canor, Norman F.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 21.95 ISBN: 0060570121 Date: 2005Booklist
Updated 9.17.05 - Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge
Author: Fleming, Thomas
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060829621 Date: 2005PW
The defining moments of the Revolutionary War did not occur on the battlefield or diplomatic table, claims Fleming, but at Valley Forge where the Continental Army overwintered. This is the tale of how Americans endured and triumphed over nearly-impossible odds.
Suggested Reading: Valley Forge
Updated 8.15.05 - Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels
Author: Martinson, Deborah
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 27.95 ISBN: 1582433151 Date: 2006BooklistKirkus
Updated 11.14.05 - The Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality
Author: Slotkin, Richard
Publisher: Holt $ 35 ISBN: 0805041249 Date: 2005PWLJ
A National Book Award finalist examines the United States' turbulent history of ethnic assimilation and racial strife through the experiences of two
legendary World War I regiments. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 11.1.05 - Mencken: The American Iconclast
Author: Rodgers, Marion Elizabeth
Publisher: Oxford $ 35 ISBN: 0195072383 Date: 2005Kirkus
Drawing on research in more than 60 archives (including previously unseen private collections in the U.S. and in Germany), exclusive interviews with Mencken's friends and his love letters, this is a meticulous portrait of one of the most original and complicated men in American letters.
Updated 9.26.05 - Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Author: Vitebsky, Piers
Publisher: Hougrton $ 28 ISBN: 0618211888 Date: 2005KirkusBooklist
The Reindeer People is a vivid and moving testimony to a Siberian native people's endurance and humor at the ecological limits of human existence. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 10.11.05 - Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
Author: Wallace, David Foster
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316156116 Date: 2005Kirkus
This brilliant and hilarious new collection of essays is offered by the award-winning author of the bestselling Infinite Jest.
Updated 9.26.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
November
- Shakespeare: The Biography
Author: Ackroyd, Peter
Publisher: Nan Talese $ 30 ISBN: 0385511396 Date: 2005BooklistLJ
With his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Peter Ackroyd has long been recognized as today's foremost practitioner of the literary biography. Now, in Shakespeare: The Biography, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 8.24.05 - Brooklyn Is: Southeast of the Island, Travel Notes
Author: Agee, James
Publisher: Fordham Univ $ 16.95 ISBN: 0823224929 Date: 2005Booklist
Propulsive, lyrical, jazzy, and tender, its pitch-perfect descriptions endure even as Brooklyn changes; Agee's essay--originally written in 1939 but published in 1968--is a New York classic.
Updated 9.23.05 - Come Back to Afghanistan
Author: Akbar, Said Hyder
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582345201 Date: 2005KirkusLJ
Building on two acclaimed radio documentaries aired on "This American Life," this intimate and riveting chronicle is delivered by an extraordinarily courageous Afghan-American teenager coming of age in post 9/11 Afghanistan.
Suggested Reading: Afghanistan Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 11.23.05 - Give Your Heart to the Hawk: A Tribute to the Mountain Men
Author: Blevins, Win
Publisher: Forge $ 14.95 ISBN: 0765314355 Date: 2005Kirkus
For over thirty years, from the time of Lewis and Clark into the 1840s, the mountain men explored the Great American West. As trappers in a hostile, trackless land, their exploits opened the gates of the mountains for the wagon trains of pioneers who followed them. In Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Win Blevins presents a poetic tribute to these dauntless "first Westerners" and their incredible adventures. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 9.26.05 - Thin Ice : Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains
Author: Bowen, Mark
Publisher: Holt $ 30 ISBN: 0805064435 Date: 2005KirkusLJ
Updated10.11.05 - Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man
Author: Carretta, Vincent
Publisher: Univ of Georgia $ 29.95 ISBN: 0820325716 Date: 2005Booklist
This definitive biography tells the story of the former slave Olaudah Equiano (1745?-97), who in his day was the English-speaking world's most renowned person of African descent. Equiano's greatest legacy is his classic 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vass, the African. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 9.23.05 - The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine
Author: Collins, Paul
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582345023 Date: 2005Kirkus
The author of Sixpence House travels the globe piecing together the missing body and soul of one of America's most enigmatic founding fathers: Thomas Paine.
Suggested Reading: 1776
Updated 7.25.05 - The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939
Author: Evans, Richard
Publisher: Penguin $ 34.95 ISBN: 1594200742 Date: 2005KirkusPW
In this definitive account, Evans shows how the Nazis attempted to penetrate and reorder every aspect of German society, encountering many kinds and degrees of resistance along the way, but gradually winning the acceptance of the German people in the long run.
Suggested Reading: Nazis
Updated 7.25.05 - The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscelany
Author: Gibson, Graeme (edt)
Publisher: Talese $ 29.95 ISBN: 0385514832 Date: 2005Kirkus
This unprecedented and enchanting treasure trove of paintings, drawings, poems, essays, and scientific observations beautifully captures the interest and emotions birds evoke.
Suggested Reading: For the Birds
Updated 9.17.05 - Under the Bridge
Author: Godfrey, Rebecca
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743210913 Date: 2005Kirkus
By twists and turns, this work examines a crime of passionate excess, in which middle-class teenage girls obsessed with film idols and hip-hop culture turn on one of their own with tragic results.
Suggested Reading: True Crime
Updated 7.7.05 - Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Lewis Stevenson
Author: Harman, Claire
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0066209846 Date: 2005Kirkus
The life of Robert Louis Stevenson is a gripping adventurous story: his travels, his illness, his struggles to become a writer, his relationships with his volatile American wife and stepfamily, and his friendships and quarrels.
Suggested Reading: Authors - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - Now Playing at the Valenica: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Essays on Movies
Author: Hunter, Stephen
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 16 ISBN: 0743261259 Date: 2005Kirkus
Originally penned for "The Washington Post," Hunter's Pulitzer Prize-winning essays on the movies are gathered for this collection, organized by genre, that pays homage to the lost art of filmmaking--when movies were meant to be fun.
Updated 9.17.05 - The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism
Author: Johnson, Haynes
Publisher: Harcourt $ 26 ISBN: 0151010625 Date: 2005PW
Compelling narrative history, insightful political commentary, and intimate personal remembrance combine to make The Age of Anxiety a vitally important look at Senator Joseph McCarthy and his 1950s anti-Communist crusade.
Suggested Reading: Terrorism | McCarthyism
Updated 7.25.05 - Teacher Man: A Memoir
Author: McCourt, Frank
Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 0743243773 Date: 2005KirkusPW
Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize -- winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Then came Tis, his glorious account of his early years in New York. Now, here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 9.17.05 - Illict: How Smugglers, Traffickers, Copycats and Thieves Have Made the New Global Economy Their Own
Author: Naim, Moises
Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385513925 Date: 2005PW
From pirated movies to weapons of mass destruction, from human organs to endangered species, drugs, or stolen art, Illicit reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard--and so necessary--to contain them.
Suggested Reading: True Crime
Updated 8.15.05 - Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom
Author: Pearson, Roger
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 35 ISBN: 1582346305 Date: 2005Booklist
Updated 9.17.05 - The King
Author: Piaaza, Jim
Publisher: Black Dog $ 75 ISBN: 1579124623 Date: 2005PW
From his beginnings in a shotgun shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, to his untimely death at Graceland, Elvis's life story is stunningly revealed in detail in words and hundreds of pictures on a scale that dwarfs anything previously published. The leather-like binding studded with rhinestones and gold makes the volume even more collectible.
Suggested Reading: Elvis
Updated 10.11.05 - A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War, Russia, 1941-44
Author: Reese, Willy Peter
Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374139784 Date: 2005Booklist
Reese was 20 when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead. Bearing witness to--and participating in--the atrocities of World War II, he recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an illuminating perspective.
Updated 9.17.05 - Elia Kazan: A Biography
Author: Schickel, Richard
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0060195797 Date: 2005BooklistLJ
This electrifying biography by one of America's foremost film scholars combines social, political, and cultural history with a sharp critical evaluation of Kazan's protean career.
Suggested Reading: Authors - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 10.4.05 - Two Lives
Author: Seth, Vikram
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060599669 Date: 2005PWBooklistKirkusLJ
This captivating new book--the story of a century and of a love affair across a racial divide--from the author of A Suitable Boy is the memoir of the marriage of the author's great uncle and aunt.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 11.23.05 - No Applause: Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous
Author: Trav, S.D.
Publisher: Faber $ 25 ISBN: 0571211925 Date: 2005PWLJ
From 1881 to 1932, vaudeville was at the heart of show business in the United States. This volume explores the many ways in which vaudeville's story is the story of show business in America.
Updated 10.4.05 - Still Looking: Essays on American Art
Author: Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 40 ISBN: 1400044189 Date: 2005KirkusBooklistLJ
John Updike, moonlighting as art critic, now gathers together in this richly illustrated book 18 of his remarkable pieces, all dealing with American art.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 11.1.05 - Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul
Author: Weidensaul, Scott
Publisher: North Point $ 25 ISBN: 0865476888 Date: 2005PWLJBooklist
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Wild America, naturalist Scott Weidensaul retraces Roger Tory Peterson's and James Fisher's steps to tell the story of wild America today.
Suggested Reading: Nature Stars | All Stars
Updated 10.31.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
October
- America On the Brink: The Presidential Crisis of the Early Republic
Author: Ackerman, Bruce
Publisher: Belknap $ 29.95 ISBN: 0674018664 Date: 2005PW
Based on seven years of archival research, the book describes previously unknown aspects of the electoral college crisis of 1800, presenting a revised understanding of the early days of two great institutions that continue to have a major impact on American history: the plebiscitarian presidency and a Supreme Court that struggles to put the presidency's claims of a popular mandate into constitutional perspective. Through close studies of two Supreme Court cases, Ackerman shows how the court integrated Federalist and Republican themes into the living Constitution of the early republic. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 8.2.05 - Sharon and My Mother-in-law: Ramallah Diaries
Author: Amiry, Suad
Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375423796 Date: 2005Booklist
Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that Amiry kept to maintain her sanity in the Occupied Territories from 1981 to 2004, this series of vignettes describes the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Updated 9.17.05 - The City of Falling Angels
Author: Berendt, John
Publisher: Penguin $ 25.95 ISBN: 1594200580 Date: 2005KirkusLJ
The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns after a decade to offer, in his inimitable style, an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Venice
Updated 10.405 - Andrew Jackson: A Life and Times
Author: Brands, H.W.
Publisher: Doubleday $ 35 ISBN: 0385507380 Date: 2005PW
With the sweep, passion, and attention to detail that made The First American a resounding hit with readers and critics, Brands shapes a historical narrative of Andrew Jackson that's as fast-paced as the best fiction.
Updated 7.11.05 - Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Meditation
Author: Caton, Steven Charles
Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 26 ISBN: 0809027259 Date: 2005PW
A report like no other from the heart of the Arab Middle East. In 1979, Steven C. Caton went to a remote area of Yemen to do fieldwork on the famous oral poetry of its tribes. The recent hostage crisis in Iran made life perilous for a young American in the Middle East; worse, he was soon embroiled in a dangerous local conflict. Yemen Chronicle is Caton's touchingly candid acount of the extraordinary events that ensued. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 7.25.05 - Mao: The Unknown Story
Author: Chang, Jung & Jon Halliday
Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 0679422714 Date: 2005Booklist
An Asia scholar (Halliday) joins the bestselling author of Wild Swans to deliver a gripping and groundbreaking biography of Mao Tse-tung.
Updated 9.17.05 - Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Transforming American Lives, Minds and Bodies
Author: Critser, Greg
Publisher: Houghton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0618393137 Date: 2005LJBooklist
Greg Critser's brilliantly incisive Generation Rx moves the conversation about prescription drugs to where it hits home: our own bodies. The book encourages every American who has ever taken a prescription drug to look anew at what's in the medicine cabinet, and why.
Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.23.05 - Meville: His World and Work
Author: Delbanco, Andrew
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0375403140 Date: 2005KirkusLJBooklist
Delbanco traces Melville's growth from bawdy storyteller through the spiritual preoccupations building up to Moby-Dick, and the profound disillusionment of later works as he charts a life that left little evidence in its wake.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Authors - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Didion, Joan
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 140004314x Date: 2005PWBooklistLJ
"The author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and 11 other works chronicles the year following the death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, while the couple's only daughter, Quintana, lay unconscious in a nearby hospital suffering from pneumonia and septic shock."--"Publishers Weekly."
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
Author: Fick, Nathaniel C.
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618556133 Date: 2005Kirkus
A former captain of the U.S. Marine Corps First Reconnaissance Battalion unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but it is an ultimately inspiring account of mastering the art of war.
Suggested Reading List: Marines
Updated 7.7.05 - Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War
Author: Flood, Charles Bracelen
Publisher: FSG $ 27 ISBN: 0374166005 Date: 2005Booklist
Moving and elegantly written, Grant and Sherman is a historical page turner: a gripping portrait of two men, whose friendship, forged on the battlefield, would win the Civil War.
Suggested Reading: Sherman Stars
Updated 8.15.05 - Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches
Author: Fredston, Jill
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151012490 Date: 2005LJ
Avalanche expert Fredston stalks these so-called freaks of nature, forecasting where and when an avalanche will strike, deliberately triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts when tragedy strikes.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 10.3.05 - American Hostage
Author: Garen, Micah
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743276604 Date: 2005KirkusPW
The remarkable true story of love and war, of a journalist, Garen, held hostage in Iraq in 2003, and his partner and fiance, Carleton, who fought nonstop for his release.
Suggested Reading: Iraq
Updated 8.8.05 - Little History of the World
Author: Gombrich, E.H.
Publisher: Yale $ 25 ISBN: 0300108834 Date: 2005Kirkus
Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this book tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science.
Updated 8.8.05 - Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
Author: Gurlanick, Peter
Publisher: Little Brown $ 27.95 ISBN: 0316377945Date: 2005KirkusPWBooklist
The author of Careless Love and Last Train to Memphis returns with his most powerful book ever--a revealing portrait of one of America's greatest musical artists, Sam Cooke.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Music - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - I'm No Saint: A Nasty Memoir of Love and Leaving
Author: Hayt, Elizabeth
Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446531944 Date: 2005PW
It's Sex and the City for the post-marriage crowd in an eye-opening memoir of one woman's journey from wife and mother to sexy single.
Updated 7.18.05 - The Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir
Author: Helget, Nicole Lea
Publisher: Borealis $ 19.95 ISBN: 0873515439 Date: 2005Booklist
Unforgettable, sometimes hilarious images spill from a fierce and wondrous childhood into the pages of this memoir written by the winner of the 2004 "Speakeasy" Prize for Prose.
Suggested Reading: Memoirs
Updated 9.17.05 - Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Author: Hitchings, Henry
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 0374113025 Date: 2005Kirkus
Brilliantly entertaining and enlightening, this volume tells the story of Samuel Johnson's endeavor to create an authoritative English dictionary. Hitchings describes Johnson's adventure--his ambition and vision, his moments of despair, the mistakes he made along the way, and his ultimate triumph.
Updated 8.8.05 - A World On Fire: A Heretic, An Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen
Author: Jackson, Joe
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 0670034347 Date: 2005Booklist
This gripping account of a key tipping point in the history of science is set against the upheavals of a revolutionary age.
Updated 8.15.05 - The Physics of Superheros
Author: Kakalios, James
Publisher: Gotham $ 26 ISBN: 1592401465 Date: 2005PWLJ
Packed with more superheroes and superpowers than an Avengers-Justice League crossover, this title takes a lively look at the physics behind the superpowers of comic-book heroes.
Suggested Reading: Comics and Superheros
Updated 10.11.05 - Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma
Author: Kirscher, Marc & John Gerhart
Publisher: Yale $ 30 ISBN: 0300108656 Date: 2005Booklist
In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer has been that small genetic mutations accumulate over time to produce wondrous innovations such as eyes and wings. Drawing on cutting-edge research across the spectrum of modern biology, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart demonstrate how this stock answer is woefully inadequate. Rather they offer an original solution to the longstanding puzzle of how small random genetic change can be converted into complex, useful innovations. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Darwin & Naturalists
Updated 9.23.05 - Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcent Biology
Author: Kurzweil, Ray
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670033847 Date: 2005Kirkus
In his latest, thrilling foray into the future, a great inventor and futurist envisions an event--the "singularity"--in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that human bodies and brains will merge with machines.
Updated 7.7.05 - Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of Segregation in America
Author: Loween, James W.
Publisher: Free $ 29.95 ISBN: 156584887x Date: 2005PW
"Don't let the sun go down on you in this town" are words equated with the Jim Crow South, but in a sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, award-winning and bestselling historian Loewen demonstrates that strict racial exclusion was the whole country's norm for much of the 20th century.
Updated 7.25.05 - From Baghdad to Brooklyn: Growing Up Jewish-Arabic in Midcentury America
Author: Marshall, Jack
Publisher: Coffee House $ 16 ISBN: 1566891744 Date: 2005PW
Inspired by the posthumous discovery of letters written by his father but never mailed, Jack Marshall's memoir is both a moving story of a writer's artistic coming-of-age and a lush, lyrical recollection of a childhood spent in Brooklyn's Arabic-speaking Jewish community. Born in 1936 to an Iraqi father and Syrian mother who had immigrated to the United States, Marshall grew up in the hardworking Sephardic community-enveloped in an extended family that spoke little English, no Yiddish, and whose way of life owed more to their Middle Eastern homelands than to European Jewish traditions. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 7.18.05 - Rowing to Alaska: And Other True Stories
Author: McLennan, Wayne
Publisher: Granta $ 14 ISBN: 1862077878 Date: 2005Kirkus
Updated 9.26.05 - The Story of Chicago May
Author: O'Faolain, Nuala
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573223204 Date: 2005Kirkus
Suggested Reading: Women's History Stars
Updated 7.7.05 - The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq
Author: Packer, George
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374299633 Date: 2005Kirkus
Packer's intimate first-person narrative navigates his journey through the landscapes of America and Iraq while tracing his own evolving views, bringing to the page the full range of ideas and emotions stirred up by America's most controversial foreign-policy venture since Vietnam.
Suggested Reading: Iraq Stars
Updated 7.25.05 - Julia and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living
Author: Powell, Julia
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 031610969x Date: 2005LJ
Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens, and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life. So, she invents a deranged assignment: She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and will cook all 524 recipes . . . in the span of just one year.
Updated 10.3.05 - Two Birthdays in Baghdad: Finding the Heart of Iraq
Author: Prouse, Anna
Publisher: Compass $ 17 ISBN: 0929590201 Date: 2005LJ
Back in Italy after 14 months in wartime Iraq, this Italian journalist felt the international news coverage of bombs, rockets, and insurgency lacked the optimism she witnessed there every day, and writing an account of her own impressions became an effort to set the record straight. Trained as an emergency medical responder, Anna Prouse arrived in Baghdad in June 2003 to work at the Italian Red Cross Hospital, where she found the Iraqis she worked with to be full of aspirations for the future despite danger and provision shortages. She was subsequently hired to work in public affairs for the Coalition Provisional Authority inside the Green Zone (or the International Zone), where occupation authorities live and work. There in the foreign community, as elsewhere in Baghdad, she discovered a spirit of energy, dedication, and comradeship in the mission of rebuilding a devastated country. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Iraq Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - Spook
Author: Roach, Mary
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393059626 Date: 2005PW
In an attempt to find out what happens when people die, the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that there is an afterlife.
Suggested Reading: Afterlife
Updated 9.26.05 - Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
Author: Salbi, Zainab
Publisher: Gotham $ 26 ISBN: 1592401562 Date: 2005PW
The highly anticipated memoir from the daughter of Saddam Hussein's personal pilot is an unforgettable story of survival, strength, and one woman's struggle against tyranny.
Suggested Reading: Iraq Stars
Updated 7.18.05 - A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
Author: Shapiro, James
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060088737 Date: 2005KirkusBooklist
One of the most admired lecturers at Columbia University takes a single year of Shakespeare's life and interweaves history, biography, and literary criticism in a way that has never been done before.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 11.14.05 - Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
Author: Shenk, Joshua Wolf
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618551166 Date: 2005KirkusLJ
Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the 16th president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success.
Suggested Reading: Lincoln
Updated 8.24.05 - Now I Can Die in Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox
Author: Simmons, Bill
Publisher: ESPN $ 24.95 ISBN: 1933060050 Date: 2005Booklist
ESPN's beloved Sports Guy replays the years leading up to the Boston Red Sox historic championship season and says goodbye to a lifetime of suffering--at least for now.
Suggested Reading: Sports Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - The Planets
Author: Sobel, Dava
Publisher: Viking $24.95 ISBN: s Date: 2005LJ
From the bestselling author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter comes a stunningly illustrated love letter to our solar system.
Updated 8.24.05 - Untrodden Grapes
Author: Steadman, Ralph
Publisher: Harcourt $ 35 ISBN: 0151011672 Date: 2005PW
From Chile to California, South Africa to Alsace, Steadman has seen the best of the world's wine-producing regions. On a search for the unique and original, he brings the landscape and its people to life with pictures and prose.
Suggested Reading: Drink Up
Updated 10.11.05 - The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, And the Golden Age of Basketball
Author: Taylor, John
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 1400061148 Date: 2005KirkusBooklist
Journalist John Taylor offers a masterly and brilliantly written account of basketball's golden age, as viewed through its greatest rivalry: the one between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
Suggested Reading: Sports Nonfiction Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
Author: De Wall, Frans (F.B.M.)
Publisher: Riverhead $ 25.95 ISBN: 1573223123 Date: 2005KirkusPW
From a scientist and writer E.O. Wilson has called "the world authority on primate social behavior" comes a fascinating look at the most provocative aspects of human nature through our two closest cousins in the ape family.
Updated 8.8.05 - Buffalo Bill's America: The Life and Times of William Cody and the Wild West Show
Author: Warren, Louis S.
Publisher: Knopf $ 28.95 ISBN: 0375412166 Date: 2005Kirkus
Placing William Cody in the context of his times, Warren offers a rich and revealing biography and social history of an enduring American icon.
Updated 7.25.05 - Queen Isabella
Author: Weir, Alison
Publisher: Ballantine $ 27.95 ISBN: 0345453190 Date: 2005PW
The acclaimed historian and bestselling author of Eleanor of Aquitaine turns her expert eye on the dark reign of another notorious and charismatic medieval monarch, Queen Isabella of France.
Updated 9.23.05 - Not in Kansas Anymore: The Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America
Author: Wicker, Christine
Publisher: Harper San Franscisco $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060726784 Date: 2005Booklist
With her trademark humor and evenhanded skepticism, an award-winning and bestselling author leads readers on a firsthand expedition into America's burgeoning and bizarre magical community.
Updated 9.23.05 - A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
Author: Winchester, Simon
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060571993 Date: 2005PW
The international bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa takes an adventurous and informative look at earthquakes, focusing on the devastating San Francisco quake of 1906.
Updated 9.23.05 - Unreasonable Woman: True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas
Author: Wilson, Diane
Publisher: Chelsea Green $ 27.50 ISBN: 1931498881 Date: 2005LJ
Set in Seadrift, Texas, this book tells the gripping true story about one woman's heroic battle against Formosa Plastics, a giant chemical corporation poisoning her town, its sea life and its people.
Updated 9.17.05 - I, Wabenzi, A Souvenir
Author: Zabor, Rafi
Publisher: FSG $ 26 ISBN: 0865475830 Date: 2005Booklist
Some time ago, Zabor sat down to write a brief narrative of the year 1986. That was the year he set out across two continents in a used Mercedes--"Wabenzi" is the Swahili word for a member of the Mercedes-owning class--to buy a grave stone for his friend Mahmoud Rauf and to outrun the shadow of his own parents' recent death.
Updated 8.15.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
September
- First Families: Their Lives in the White House
Author: Angelo, Bonnie
Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060563567 Date: 2005Kirkus
Engaging and anecdotal, this follow-up to First Mothers takes readers inside the White House and into the lives of the presidents and their families, from George and Martha Washington to George and Laura Bush.
Updated 7.7.05 - My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations
Author: Berry, Mary Frances
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 1400040035 Date: 2005LJPWBooklist
Born into slavery, Callie House started the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Fund, Bounty and Pension Association, which sought African American pensions based on those offered Union Soldiers. Persecuted for her ideas, she was jailed by the U.S. government.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Women's History Stars
Updated 9.17.05 - History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe
Author: Bolt, Rodney
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1596910208 Date: 2005LJKirkus
Rodney Bolt's delightful life of Marlowe plays out a surprising solution to an enduring literary mystery, bringing the spirit of Shakespeare alive as we've never seen it before.
- Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 8.24.05 - Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev
Author: Dessaix, Robert
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard $ 24 ISBN: 1593760639 Date: 2005Kirkus
Together with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev was one of the leading novelists of Russia's Golden Age and the first Russian writer to capture a Western audience. No less sensational than his novels was his personal life. For forty years, until the day he died, he was passionately devoted to the diva Pauline Viardot, following her and her husband around Europe and even living with them amicably at times as part of their household. What, then, did Turgenev mean by "love," the word at the core of his life and work? Robert Dessaix has had his own forty-year relationship with Turgenev, first as a student of Russian in both Australia and Russia, then as a teacher, and now as what he calls a close friend. In Twilight of Love, Dessaix has come to see Turgenev's life and work as an expression of a turning point in the history of love-the moment the Romantic became rational, love unraveled into sentiment and erotic feelings, and eros became a mere commodity. In this truly remarkable work, Robert Dessaix has found the pulse that quickened Turgenev's age, but has failed in ours. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 5.25.05 - A Widow's Walk
Author: Fontana, Marian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743246241 Date: 2005KirkusPW
Fontana, president of the 9/11 Widows and Victim's Family Association, pens a moving, lyrical, and profoundly funny memoir of a year in the life of a firefighter wife widowed in the 9/11 attacks.
Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars
Updated 6.29.05 - Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth
Author: Hubner, John
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375508090 Date: 2005PW
This wrenching, but ultimately uplifting, look at one of the country's most crucial social issues--violent youth--takes readers inside the Giddings State School in Texas, the most aggressive and successful programs for violent young offenders.
Suggested Reading: True Crime
Updated 7.11.05 - Heroes, Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen: A History of Hero Worship
Author: Hughes-Hallett, Lucy
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 1400043999 Date: 2005PW
Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and culminating in 1930s Europe, this is a riveting and insightful exploration of the timeless need for heroes that still shapes political thought.
Updated 7.18.05 - The Interpreter
Author: Kaplan, Alice
Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 0743254244 Date: 2005LJ
An award-winning and critically acclaimed author tells a war story unlike any other in this riveting look at America's tragically failed attempt to uphold justice in liberated France at the end of World War II.
Updated 8.24.05 - My Detachment
Author: Kidder, Tracy
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375506152 Date: 2005Booklist
A Pulitzer-prize winning author writes for the first time about himself in an astonishingly honest, comic, and moving memoir of the Vietnam War.
Updated 7.11.05 - New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
Author: Lepore, Jill
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 1400040299 Date: 2005PWBooklist
From the award-winning author of The Name of War comes a gripping, illuminating account of an alleged 18th-century slave conspiracy to destroy New York City. Lepore explores the social and political climate of the 1730s and 1740s and examines the nature and tenor of the interactions between slaves and their masters.
Updated 6.20.05 - Burning Fence: A Western Memoir of Fatherhood
Author: Lesley, Craig
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312318464 Date: 2005PWBooklist
In Burning Fence, acclaimed novelist Craig Lesley turns his keen eye toward two difficult fathers and an alcohol-damaged Indian foster child, Craig's own "son," Wade. Abandoned by his shell-shocked father, Rudell, Craig grew up with his stepfather, Vern, a tough, controlling railroader. When events turned nasty, Craig, his mother, and his baby sister fled on the night train and arrived at an Indian reservation where his mother found work. Decades later, convinced he would be a better father than Rudell or Vern, Craig takes in the troubled Wade. But desperation over Wade's violent acts motivates Craig to seek out Rudell in remote Monument, Oregon. Craig hopes his father, a reclusive coyote trapper and poacher, will help raise his disturbed grandson. There Craig meets his colorful half-brother, Ormand, a would-be East Coast hit man, now "born again." Skillfully capturing the rural humor, rugged characters, and hardscrabble life of Eastern Oregon, Burning Fence presents a searing reflection on fatherhood and offers remarkable insight into the landscape of the Western heart. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Memoirs
Updated 8.15.05 - Female Chauvinist Pigs: Is Raunch Culture the New Women's Liberation?
Author: Levy, Ariel
Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 0743249895 Date: 2005PWBooklist
In this passionate report from the front lines, a "New York" magazine writer examines the enormous cultural impact of the newest wave of post-feminism.
Updated 8.15.05 - Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
Author: Meloy, Ellen
Publisher: Pantheon $26 ISBN: 0375422161 Date: 2005LJ
An inspired reflection on the bond between wild creatures and the human imagination, told as a chronicle of four seasons with a band of rare desert bighorn sheep. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 10.3.05 - Summer Doorways
Author: Merwin, W.S.
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard $ 22 ISBN: 1593760728 Date: 2005Kirkus
Updated 6.29.05 - Tender Bar: A Memoir
Author: Moehringer, J.R.
Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 1401300642 Date: 2005KirkusBooklistLJ
The author's vivid memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a grand old New York saloon that was sanctuary for all types of men--cops and poets, actors and lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums--is told with heart, drama, and exquisite comic timing.
Suggested Reading: Drink Up Stars | All Stars | Memoirs
Updated 9.17.05 - Mark Twain: A Life:
Author: Powers, Ron
Publisher: Free $ 35 ISBN: 0743248996 Date: 2005PWBooklistLJ
In the most important narrative biography of Samuel Langhorne Clemens in half a century, a Pulitzer-Prize winner brings to life the astonishing man behind one of America's most famous sons.
Suggested Reading: Twain | All Stars
Updated 8.24.05 - Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires
Author: Raab, Selwyn
Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312300948 Date: 2005PW
A noted "New York Times" journalist presents the history of the Mafia's infamous Five Families, the campaign to eradicate them, and the Mob's refusal to die.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 6.3.05 - Don't Get Too Comforatble: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems
Author: Rakoff, David
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385510365 Date: 2005Kirkus
Rakoff's collection of autobiographical essays, Fraud, established him as one of this country's funniest, most insightful writers. Now he journeys into the land of plenty that is contemporary North America.
Updated 6.9.05 - Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
Author: Randall, Lisa
Publisher: Ecco $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060531088 Date: 2005LJ
Tracking the arc of discovery from early 20th-century physics to today's particle physics and string theory, a Harvard physics professor leads readers on a fascinating journey into the idea that there may be an extra dimension--in fact another universe--just inches away.
Updated 9.17.05 - Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
Author: Rehak, Melanie
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151010412 Date: 2005Booklist
The brainchild of children's book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy Drew was brought to life by two women. In a century- spanning story Rehak traces their roles--and Nancy's--in forging the modern American woman.
Suggested Reading: Authors - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 8.15.05 - Hunger: An Unnatural History
Author: Russell, Sharman Apt
Publisher: Basic $ 23.95 ISBN: 0465071635 Date: 2005Booklist
Updated 9.17.05 - Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals
Author: Sapolsky, Robert M.
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743260155 Date: 2005KirkusPW
The human animal in all its fascinating quirks of nature is showcased in this thoughtful and entertaining essay collection from America's most beloved neurobiologist/primatologist. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 6.29.05 - Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
Author: Smiley, Jane
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 1400040590 Date: 2005KirkusPWBooklist
Smiley takes readers deep into the process of writing, sharing the secrets of her own habits and theories of creativity. She offers practical advice to aspiring authors and includes a reading list of novels she's read.
Updated 8.15.05 - Henry Adams and the Making of America
Author: Wills, Garry
Publisher: Houghton $ 30 ISBN: 0618134301 Date: 2005PW
Wills showcases Henry Adams's little-known but seminal study of the early United States and draws from it fresh insights on the paradoxes that roil America to this day.
Updated 7.18.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
August
- Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World
Author: Adkins, Roy
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 0670034487 Date: 2005LJPW
On the Battle of Trafalgar's 200th anniversary, Adkins offers a brutally vivid, gunport-level account of the British victory that changed the world.
Suggested Reading: Trafalgar
Updated 8.24.05 - A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 23 ISBN: 0805075402 Date: 2005KirkusPW
With shocking and vivid detail, the journal of a woman living through the Russian occupation of Berlin in 1945 tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject and describes the common experience of millions.
Suggested Reading: Berlin Stars | Women's History
Updated 6.9.05 - The Queen and the Spy: Elizabeth's Spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the Secret War for the Fate of England
Author: Budiansky, Stephan
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670034266 Date: 2005Booklist
In the taut narrative of a spy novel, Budiansky recounts how legendary spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary to Elizabeth I, invented the art and science of modern espionage--and in the process set Elizabethan England on the path to empire.
Updated 6.20.05 - Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting
Author: Fletcher, Nichola
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312340680 Date: 2005PWLJ
Updated 7.12.05 - Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
Author: Kaye, Harvey J.
Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 25 ISBN: 080908970x Date: 2005PW
Showing how Paine turned Americans into radicals, the author presents the nation's democratic story with wit, subtlety, and, above all, passion. Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
Updated 6.6.05 - Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment
Author: Leslie, Jacques
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374281726 Date: 2005Booklist
Taking the reader to the sites of controversial dams, Leslie shows why dams are at once the hope of developing nations and a blight on their people and landscape.
Updated 9.23.05 - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Author: Mann, Charles C.
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 140004006x Date: 2005LJPWBooklist
In this groundbreaking study, Mann shows how a new generation of anthropologists and archaeologists, using new research techniques, have come to the persuasive conclusion that more people lived in the Americas in 1491 than in Europe.
Updated 8.24.05 - Eudora Welty
Author: Marrs, Suzanne
Publisher: Harcourt $ 28 ISBN: 0151009147 Date: 2005BooklistPW
In this definitive account of the life of one of the finest writers of the 20th century, Marrs restores Eudora Welty's story to human proportions, tracing Welty's history from her roots in Jackson, Mississippi, to her rise to international stature.
Suggested Reading: Authors - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 6.20.05 - Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme
Author: Roberts, Chris
Publisher: Gotham $ 20 ISBN: 1592401309 Date: 2005PW
Revealing the seamy and quirky stories behind our favorite nursery rhymes, London librarian Chris Roberts traces the origins of the subtle phrases and antiquated references, unearthing religious hatred, political subversion, and sexual innuendo.
Suggested Reading: Rhymes
Updated 6.2.05 - Cliffs of Fall: A Life in Mountain Climbing Reexamined
Author: Roberts, David
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0743255186 Date: 2005PW
One of the world's best-known writers on mountaineering recounts the exhilarating highs and desperate lows of his climbing career and reconsiders the costs of this most perilous sport.
Suggested Reading: Sports Nonfiction Stars
Updated 7.11.05 - Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey
Author: Roorbach, Bill
Publisher: Dial $ 24 ISBN: 0385336543 Date: 2005LJ
Part nature, part science, part history, this remarkable mediation on country life--its beauty, its darkness, its deep and lasting pleasures--will take its place among the best works of narrative nonfiction published this year. Acclaimed author Bill Roorbach brings his singular literary gifts and generous spirit to a book that is funny, loving, and filled with wonder. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 7.12.05 - The History of Jews in the Modern World
Author: Sachar, Howard
Publisher: Knopf $ 40 ISBN: 0375414975 Date: 2005PWKirkusBooklist
The distinguished historian of the Jewish people, Howard M. Sachar, gives us a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of the achievements and traumas of the Jews over the last four hundred years. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 6.29.05 - Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do
Author: Tougias, Michael
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312334354 Date: 2005Booklist
Updated 7.11.05 - An Invisible Country
Author: Wackwitz, Stephen
Publisher: Paul Dry $ 24.95 ISBN: 1589880226 Date: 2005PW
Updated 6.3.05 - Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
Author: Wagner, Pamela Spiro and Carolyn Spiro
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312320647 Date: 2005PW
Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them. It is one of the most compelling histories of two such siblings in the canon of writing on mental illness. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Twins
Updated 5.16.05 - Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima
Author: Walker, Stephen
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060742844 Date: 2005KirkusPWBooklist
British filmmaker and documentary director Stephen Walker tells the story of the bombing of Hiroshima in a new and dramatic way: a minute-by-minute account told from multiple perspectives, including American soldiers, Los Alamos scientists, and Japanese survivors.
Suggested Reading: Atomic Age Stars | All Stars
Updated 5.25.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July
- The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Hoarding Dreams in Pakistan's Ancient Pleasure District
Author: Brown, Louise
Publisher: Fourth Estate $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060740426 Date: 2005KirkusBooklist
Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 5.20.05 - The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American to Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal
Author: Croke, Vicki
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375507833 Date: 2005PWBooklistLJ
"Boston Globe" columnist Croke reveals the true story of Ruth Harkness, a bohemian socialite and dress designer who in 1936 took over her dead husband's expedition into Tibet to capture the first live giant panda.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Tibet | Women's History
Updated 7.12.05 - Confessions of a Recovering Slut
Author: Gillespie, Hollis
Publisher: Regan $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060562072 Date: 2005Booklist
The hilarious sequel to Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, finds Hollis Gillespie pregnant and in a home of her own in a bad neighborhood. The neighborhood is fine for a single idiot with a bad habit of liking the wrong men but it becomes a nightmare for a new mother with nothing but cake pans to bulletproof the baby's room.
Updated 7.11.05 - Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq
Author: Goldfarb, Michael
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0786715154 Date: 2005Kirkus
In this moving tribute, journalist Goldfarb recounts the powerful relationship with this friend and translator Ahmad Shawkat, an Iraqi Kurd whose life's work was to promote freedom and who was ultimately murdered during the second Gulf War.
Suggested Reading: Iraq Stars
Updated 5.25.05 - The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad
Author: Horn, Stacy
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670034193 Date: 2005KirkusPWLJ
Following four cold cases from inception to resolution, Horn depicts the world of the victims and their murderers, along with the scientific advancements that don't always yield hoped for answers, and the harrowing politics and tangled history of the NYPD and its cold case unit.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars | All Stars
Updated 6.29.05 - The Breaking Point: Hemmingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles
Author: Koch, Stephen
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582432805 Date: 2005KirkusPW
Both a biographical portrait and history-in-miniature, The Breaking Point explores the time Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos shared in the Spanish Civil War, an ideological adventure that brought their literary rivalry to the breaking point.
Updated 3.25.05 - Finding George Orwell in Burmese Tea Shop: Travels in a Police State
Author: Larkin, Emma
Publisher: Gotham $ 22.95 ISBN: 1594200521 Date: 2005PW
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Burma
Updated 4.19.05 - Death and the Sun: A Matador's Season in the Heart of Spain
Author: Lewine, Edward
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 061826325x Date: 2005Booklist
Peril and tradition mingle in this account of a thrilling season on the bullfighting circuit in the company of Spain's most dashing and tormented matador, Francisco Rivera Ordoez. Lewine explores one of the world's most venerable subcultures, steeped in ancient ritual, archetypal machismo and the feverish attentions of the tabloid press.
Updated 7.11.05 - Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo
Author: Liebowitz, Daniel & Charlie Pearson
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393059030 Date: 2005LJ
Henry Morton Stanley undertook the greatest African expedition of the 19th century to rescue Emin Pasha, last lieutenant of the martyred General Gordon and governor of the southern Sudan. Instead of ten months, the trip took three years and cost the lives of thousands of people, as Stanley's column hacked its way across the last great, unexplored territory in Africa. Stanley's secret agenda was territorial expansion on the model of Leopold's Congo or the British East India Company.
Suggested Reading: Congo | Stanley and Livingston
Updated 6.9.05 - Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Robert M. Parker, Jr, and the Reign of American Taste
Author: McCoy, Elin
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060093684 Date: 2005LJ
The first book to chronicle the rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr., the world's most influential and controversial wine critic, who, over the last twenty-five years, has dominated the international wine world and embodied the triumph of American taste. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Drink Up
Updated 7.12.05 - The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair: A History of Fifty Years of Independence
Author: Meredith, Martin
Publisher: Public Affairs $ 35 ISBN: 1586482467 Date: 2005BooklistPW
An epic biography of postcolonial Africa illuminates its current devastating problems. What happened to this vast continent, so rich in resources and history, to bring it so close to destitution and despair in the span of two generations?
Updated 7.11.05 - The Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Author: Ostler, Nicholas
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0066210860 Date: 2005Booklist
Noted linguist Nicholas Ostler brings together the tales of the world's languages in all their glorious variety in this unusual and authoritative "natural history of languages," offering a unique perspective on civilization through the ages.
Updated 6.20.05 - Garbage Land: on the Secret Trail of Trash
Author: Royte, Elizabeth
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316738263 Date: 2005BooklistLJ
In the vein of Stiff, Nickel and Dimed, and Fast Food Nation, Garbage Land takes us behind the scenes and into the corners of our own lives, revealing the fantastic truth behind what we've taken for granted or never even thought about.- Royte's last book, The Tapir's Morning Bath, was a "New York Times Notable Book, praised widely for Royte's keen observations and narrative skill. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 7.12.05 - Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless
Author: Salerno, Steve
Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400054095 Date: 2005PW
A veteran investigative reporter presents the first serious expos of the self-help movement and the damage that it is doing to American society.
Updated 6.3.05 - A Cop's Life: True Stories from the Heart Behind the Badge
Author: Sutton, Randy
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312338961 Date: 2005PW
This collection of funny, charming, exciting, haunting stories about murder investigations, missing children, bungling burglars, car chases, lonely and desperate shut-ins, routine traffic stops, officers killed in the line of duty, and the life-changing events of 9/11 offers a broad and thoughtful look at the many facets of police life.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 5.16.05 - People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century
Author: Watts, Steven
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0375407359 Date: 2005LJPW
In this major new biography of one of the architects of modern America, Steven Watts shows readers an entrepreneur whose affordable car triggered the consumer revolution, but who, in his private life and public pronouncements, rejected consumerism.
Updated 6.29.05 - Breakfast with Tiffany: A Memoir
Author: Wintle, Ed
Publisher: Miramax $ 24.95 ISBN: 1401352243 Date: 2005Kirkus
Wintle was a successful, gay, urbane professional whose life, at 40, was very comfortable. After a desperate call from his sister, his street-wise 13-year-old niece Tiffany--a writhing ball of adolescent anger--comes to live with him. If he felt he needed a shot in the arm, what he got proved more like electroshock therapy.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 5.9.05 - 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land
Author: Wolff, Daniel
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582345090 Date: 2005Booklist
In this portrait of small-town America, Wolff presents the story of the town made famous by Bruce Springsteen's first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, which introduced the world to the fallen New Jersey seaside resort town that came to represent working-class American life.
Updated 6.20.05
December | November | October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
June
- Jubana! The Awkardly True and Dazzling Adventures of a Jewish Cubana Goddess
Author: Anders, Gigi
Publisher: Rayo $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060563699 Date: 2005Booklist
Jubana! is ultimately a bittersweet, quirky, feminine story of bicultural acceptance and fusion, written with warmth, vivacity, and finally layered with the thoughtful sensitivity of a woman who has kept herself, like a great piece of jewelry, pure and brilliant -- throughall that life throws at her. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 6.20.05 - American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting
Author: Biel, Steven
Publisher: Norton $ 21.95 ISBN: 039305912x Date: 2005Kirkus
With broad perspective, acute insight, and humor, Biel explores the strangely enduring life of America's most popular painting. Ever since it met the public eye in 1930, the work has elicited admiration, disgust, reverence, and ridicule, and it has been reproduced hundreds of thousands of times in every medium.
Updated 3.25.05 - Nasty: My Family and Other Glorious Varmints
Author: Doonan, Simon
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743267044 Date: 2005Kirkus
In his breakthrough memoir, Doonan revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric, loveably odd family he calls his own. The essays chronicle the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their endearingly dysfunctional glory.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 3.25.05 - The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention
Author: Deutscher, Guy
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 26 ISBN: 0805079076 Date: 2005Kirkus
Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, the author exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays.
Updated 3.25.05 - Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table
Author: Ellerbee, Linda
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399152687 Date: 2005Kirkus
The celebrated journalist, producer, and bestselling author takes readers on a remarkable culinary journey through "a life lived interestingly, if not especially intelligently."
Suggested Reading: Cooked Books | Travel Tales
Updated 2.8.05 - At Day's Close: Night in Times Past
Author: Ekrich, A. Roger
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393050890 Date: 2005Booklist
Beautifully illuminated by a color insert and with black-and-white illustrations throughout, this compelling narrative of night is panoramic in scope yet fashioned on an intimate scale and enriched by personal stories.
Updated 5.20.05 - The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison
Author: Emsley, John
Publisher: Oxford $ 30 ISBN: 0192805991 Date: 2005PW
The author offers a fascinating account of five of the most toxic elements--arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury, and thallium--describing their lethal chemical properties and highlighting their use in some of the most famous murder cases in history.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 4.19.05 - Over There
Author: Feuer, Alan
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582433275 Date: 2005Booklist
In this gin-soaked yet scrupulously honest look at a reporter in wartime, Feuer describes the international media swarm that preceeded the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the local opportunists and unscrupulous profiteers, to exhilarating and profound effect.
Suggested Reading: Iraq Stars
Updated 4.7.05 - True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa
Author: Finkel, Michael
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 006058047x Date: 2005PW
True Story is the remarkable account of the relationship between a man accused of killing his entire family, and of the "New York Times Magazine" writer he impersonated while on the run.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 3.21.05 - The Sky's the Limit: Passion and Property in Mahattan
Author: Gaines, Steven S.
Publisher: Little Brown $ 26.95 ISBN: 0316608513 Date: 2005PW
The bestselling author probes the secretive world of Manhattan luxury apartments, where real estate costs the most and matters even more. He tells the fascinating story of how boxes stacked on boxes came to be seen as the ultimate in status for the rich.
Updated 3.21.05 - Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fate As POWS in the Pacific, 1941-1945
Author: Glusman, John A.
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670034088 Date: 2005PW
The fierce, bloody battles of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines are legendary in the annals of World War II. In Conduct Under Fire, Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father and three fellow Navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942.
Updated 3.21.05 - Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian
Author: Goldsby, Robin
Publisher: Backbeat $ 22.95 ISBN: 0897308249 Date: 2005PW
This entertaining memoir provides a glimpse into the comedies, tragedies, andmundane miracles witnessed from the business perspective of a world-traveling lounge musician.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars | Music - Nonfiction Stars
Updated 3.21.05 - Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak
Author: Hatzfeld, Jean
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 0374280827 Date: 2005Kirkus
A veteran foreign correspondent reports on the results of his interviews with nine Hutus who helped to kill 50,000 out of their 59,000 Tutsi neighbors. This testimony of the Rwanda horror reconsiders the foundation of human morality and ethics.
Suggested Reading: Rwanda
Updated 3.25.05 - Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered how to Measure the Universe
Author: Johnson, George
Publisher: Norton $ 22.95 ISBN: 0393051285 Date: 2005LJBooklist
Radcliffe-educated Henrietta Swan Leavitt, fighting ill health and progressive deafness, stumbled upon a new law that allowed astronomers to use variable stars--those whose brightness rhythmically changes--as a cosmic yardstick. This is both a masterly account of how the universe is measured and the moving story of a neglected genius.
Suggested Reading: Women's History Stars
Updated 5.20.05 - George Washington: The Founding Father
Author: Johnson, Paul
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 19.95 ISBN: 006075365x Date: 2005Booklist
Washington is seen as one of the most important authors of the Constitution, in addition to his pivotal leadership of the Revolutionary War and a magisterial executive in the formative years of the new United States. He was a moderate man of few words, but when he spoke, he was worth hearing.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
Updated 6.9.05 - Woman from Hamburg: And Other True Stories
Author: Krall, Hanna
Publisher: Other $ 19 ISBN: 1590511360 Date: 2005Kirkus
In twelve nonfiction tales, Hanna Krall revelas how the lives of World War II survivors are shaped in surprising ways by the twists and turns of historical events. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 3.25.05 - To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession
Author: Koeppel, Dan
Publisher: Hudson $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594630011 Date: 2005LJ
From a well-known outdoors and nature writer comes a narrative that explores a lifelong obsession with competitive birding.
Suggested Reading: For the Birds | Nature Stars
Updated 5.18.05 - Against Depression
Author: Kramer, Peter D.
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670034053 Date: 2005PW
A decade ago, with his breakaway bestseller Listening to Prozac, Kramer revolutionized the way the public thinks about antidepressants and the culture in which they are so widely used. Now, he returns with a profound and original look at the condition those medications treat--depression.
Updated 3.21.05 - Oak: The Frame of Civilization
Author: Logan, William Bryant
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393047733 Date: 2005Kirkus
William Bryant Logan combines science, philosophy, spirituality, and history with a quirky curiosity about why the natural world works the way it does. In lively literary prose, he narrates the biography of the tree that since time immemorial has been a symbol of loyalty and strength, generosity and renewal. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.25.05 - What the Dormouse Said: The Untold Story of How the Sixties Counterculture and Antiwar Movement Influenced the Personal Computer Industry
Author: Markoff, John
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670033820 Date: 2005PWLJ
While there have been several written histories of the personal computer, a well-known technology writer has created the first ever to spotlight the unique political and cultural forces of the 1960s that gave rise to this revolutionary technology.
Updated 5.18.05 - 1776
Author: McCullough, David
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 32 ISBN: 0743226712 Date: 2005BooklistPWKirkusLJ
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Truman and John Adams, McCullough returns with the story of the Revolutionary War--a book certain to be another landmark in the literature of American history.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | 1776 Stars
Updated 4.5.05 - Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
Author: Meldrum, Andrew
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138964 Date: 2005Kirkus
American-born journalist Andrew Meldrum was seized and expelled from Zimbabwe in May 2003, forced to leave for writing "bad things" about President Robert Mugabe's regime. Here, Meldrum describes what it meant to live through this period of hope and tragedy, and how he was harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and tried.
Updated 3.25.05 - More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
Author: Pearl, Nancy
Publisher: 1570614350 $ 16.95 ISBN: 1570614350 Date: 2005LJ
This sprightly follow-up to Book Lust includes a quirky array of recommended titles in nearly 150 eclectic categories including: highly unusual storylines, humans falling in love with animals, memoirs about complex lives, and true tales from the frontlines of parenting.
Updated 4.19.05 - The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War
Author: Schooler, Lynn
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060523336 Date: 2005Kirkus
Naval history of the very first order offers a riveting account of the last confederate military force to lay down its arms.
Updated 4.19.05 - The History of the World in Six Glasses
Author: Standage, Tom
Publisher: Walker $ 25 ISBN: 0802714471 Date: 2005PW
Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. Six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.
Suggested Reading: Drink Up Stars
Updated 4.19.05 - I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
Author: Wrong, Michela
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060780924 Date: 2005Kirkus
Scarred by decades of conflict and occupation, the craggy African nation of Eritrea has weathered the world's longest-running guerrilla war. The way international power politics can play havoc with a country's destiny gives the story of Eritrea a resonance and a tragic dimension beyond imagining.
Updated 3.25.05
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
May
- Guitar: An American Life
Author: Brookes, Tim
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802117961 Date: 2005LJKirkus
When the author wasn't breathing over a guitar maker's shoulder, he was trying to unravel the symbolic associations a guitar holds for musicians and nonmusicians