The Illustrated Biographies of Lauren Redniss

Through eclectic primary sources, insatiable curiosity, and inventive illustrations, Lauren Redniss exquisitely captures the riveting experiences and consequences of her subjects’ lives in her biographies.

Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Dorothy Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies looks at the existence of a dancer, actress, teacher and general enthusiast who toured the world and met everyone from Charles Lindbergh to Caribbean dictators without missing a beat. The book’s ingenious scrapbooking renders Eaton both more familiar and monumental, perfectly grounding her spirited life within the context of a dizzying century.
Marie Curie’s improbable trajectory—which is the stuff of some potent Brontë-Alger cocktail—is brought to life in the stunning Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout. Born Maria Skłodowska in Poland, Curie was first a governess shunned by her motherland’s aristocrats, then the Sorbonne’s first female professor, and later the first person to win multiple Nobel Prizes. She worked (and bicycled!) happily alongside Pierre until his tragic carriage accident, then became the victim of a xenophobic witch-hunt.

Redniss really digs into the Curies’ far-reaching accomplishments. Yes, their discoveries brought about great advances in medicine, but also laid the foundation for the atomic bomb. The book’s cyanotypes have a haunting, dreamy vivacity that beautifully captures the Curies’ feverish, indomitable minds. Plus, they actually glow.

I highly recommend Redniss’s books to anyone looking for an intimate, inspired take on other people’s lives.

-Megan

Patron Review: Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Want to be healthy for the rest of your life? Want to weigh the same as you did in 9th grade (provided you were not obese then)? Want to avoid disease?

Granted, most people do not want the above, but for the few, who do yearn for health and an ideal weight, get thee to the library and take out Super Immunity, by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. Dr. Fuhrman is also the author of Eat to Live, which was updated in 2011. Both are worthy of your time.

Patients come to Dr. Fuhrman’s New Jersey office with allergies, viruses, cancer, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, well, every disease of modern America. And his advice is always the same: heath=nutrition/calories. Open his Eat to Live book and find the page with the picture of three stomachs. One has 400 calories of oil; the next has 400 calories of meat; the third has 400 calories of greens. The first stomach is about 1/50th filled. The second stomach is about 1/8th filled. The final stomach is completely filled.
You might get the point now. Filling our stomachs with greens, onions, mushrooms, berries, beans, and seeds, not only fills the stomach with low calories foods and satiates us, it supplies our bodies with the nutrients it needs to fight every disease under the sun.

Dr. Fuhrman’s prescription is to work up to a pound of raw vegetables, a pound of cooked vegetables, and a cup of beans daily. He calls the prescriptions of most other doctors “permission slips,” the better to keep doing what we have always done: live a disease prone lifestyle.

Today we learned that Senator Mark Kirk, a supposedly health-conscious person, suffered a stroke. Please do not end up as he has. Get Dr. Fuhrman’s books, go to his website, and live a healthy, disease-free life.

-Janice Gintzler
Acorn patron

The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown

The idea of baking bread from scratch had long fallen into the same category as Beyoncé’s abs circa 2004: enviable but intimidating. But The Tassajara Bread Book has gently eased me into the art of breadmaking, revealing its ease and joy.

Tassajara is a Zen monastery in central California, and this book was developed with simplicity in mind. The ingredients lists for most breads feature four to six basic items, and the directions are straightforward and sweetly whimsical. Does this sound a little austere, perhaps a tad precious? Worry not, as there are also recipes for unabashed delights like Butter Kuchen, Turkish Coffee Cake Cookie Bars, and Coffee Liquor Butter.

This book focuses on enjoying the process as it unfolds before you. Contrary to popular belief, bread is quite independent—it does not require full-time nurturing so much as a roll and a jab a few times throughout the day. And in the end, creating something so aromatic and delicious from nearly nothing is hugely satisfying. I’ll leave it to Mr. Brown to explain:

“Bread makes itself, by your kindness, with your help, with imagination streaming through you, with dough under hand, you are breadmaking itself, which is why breadmaking is so fulfilling and rewarding.”

-Megan

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog explores the inner lives of Renée, an outwardly inert concierge in a fancy Parisian apartment building, and 12-year-old Paloma, a precocious resident. At work, Renée lives up to the (apparent) stereotype of the philistine concierge, indulging in the French equivalents of Cheez Whiz-covered Doritos and In Touch Weekly. At home, Renée is an entirely different beast, one who devours opera and masticates on long passages of Husserl.

Paloma also has a double-life of the mind. Outwardly, she is the docile daughter of two well-meaning but superficial socialites. Inwardly, she is a cauldron of societal dissection, caustic barbs, and--yes, dear reader--suicide ideation. Much of the novel involves Renée and Paloma wittily discussing their ideas of the world and their isolated places in it until the lovely Kakuro moves into the building and unites the building’s misfits.

This novel succeeds in being philosophically rigorous, inspiring, and genuinely sweet. Highly recommended.

Please note: This title is available on Acorn's Touch Nooks, along with these titles. Call the Library to reserve yours!

-Megan

Science Fair Season by Judy Dutton

Lately, news regarding the state of American education has been decidedly less than rosy. While much of the rest of the world has adjusted to the realities of the twenty-first century with determination and brio, the United States has generally responded with what seems like bewildered complacency. As Bill Gates said, “When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I’m terrified for our workplace of tomorrow.”

Refreshingly, this book explores the stories behind the wildly impressive entries at the Intel Science Talent Search, a sort of American Idol for high school scientists. The entrants come from disparate backgrounds--small-town Texas, the Navajo Indian Reservation, affluent Connecticut, and a juvenile detention center. The projects are just as varied, and include a solar water heater fashioned from the radiator of a 1967 Pontiac, a nanotechnology discovery that led to even smaller and more powerful microchips, a methodology for predicting water tables on Mars which was later proven by NASA, training cockroaches to do the work of drug-sniffing dogs, and pioneering work on the worldwide collapse of bee colonies.

While some of the entrants were science fair veterans, most of them just encountered an interesting problem and then had supportive teachers to foster their curiosity and dedication. Dutton does a great job with the scientific and humanistic aspects of each story. I highly recommend this book to any adult or teen reader looking for an inspiring read.

-Megan

Talking It Over by Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes takes a go at the alchemy of a particular love triangle in this insightful, witty novel. Sturdy Stuart is an earnest, levelheaded banker (note that the book was published in 1992) and devoted husband to Gillian, a placid, somewhat inscrutable art restorer. Oliver, Stuart’s longtime friend, is a pedantic train wreck (think of an unholy Christopher Hitchens-Russell Brand alliance) whose untethered existence gives him plenty of time to systematically disrupt the happy couple.

Stuart, Gillian, and Oliver take turns narrating; so each character gets a chance to explain--and reveal varying degrees of delusion. This technique shows off Barnes’s deft understanding of human dynamics, as well as an unsentimental objectivity that makes for bracing realizations. Further, his elegantly adventurous facility with language rendered the book a remarkably good time. Highly recommended; and, so far, so is the sequel.

-Megan

Examined Lives by James Miller

In Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, James Miller plucks twelve revered philosophers from the Ivory Tower and places them under the biographer’s unsparing microscope. The findings? There is a blowhard (Socrates), a disgraced politico (Aristotle), a robotic goody two-shoes (Kant), a humorless hypocrite (Rousseau), a humble vagabond (Emerson), and a delicate dandy turned grunting madman (Nietzsche).

Miller skillfully places these men (sorry, no Hannah Arendts here) within their respective ideological and historical contexts, then supplies enough fizzy tidbits to keep it popping. The result is an uncommonly efficient educational experience that somehow has both depth and levity.

-Megan

Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi

This is a brave and disquieting account of actress Portia de Rossi's nearly lethal struggles with self-acceptance. Amanda Rogers was an intensely driven girl who changed her name, had a successful modeling career, attended Australia's most prestigious law school, and landed on a hit television series (Ally McBeal) by age twenty-four. She also suffered from an eating disorder and severely shaky self-esteem, and both went into overdrive when she faced the image-fixated scrutiny that comes with being a Hollywood ingénue.To further complicate matters, she was also a closeted lesbian who felt her career would instantly implode if her secret were revealed.

“Unflinching” has become such a hackneyed word in reviews, but it is the perfect way to describe de Rossi's book. She boldly and lucidly sifts through her psyche as it unravels, then as she painstakingly rebuilds her life. Her writing is insightful, very candid, and slyly humorous.

I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a better understanding of eating disorders or the particular challenges of being different.

-Megan

China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Wasserstrom has a difficult task, but he mostly succeeds in providing a solid overview of looming, booming China. The first two-thirds are admirably focused and succinct, guiding the reader from Confucius to the Cultural Revolution. He meanders during the latter part of the book, condensing complicated events into overly long sentences, then adding clumsy parentheses to boot. I suppose such problems are only inevitable when using fewer than 200 pages to cover an incredibly vast subject.

This book won’t help you differentiate the periods of the Jin Dynasty, but it will probably provide you with some needed answers on a rather daunting topic.

-Review by Megan

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Tom Rachman’s debut peels aways the glamour of a Roman locale and the glory of international journalism to reveal the static nuts and bolts of dysfunction.

A somewhat standard cast of characters (over-the-hill lush, icy/secretly vulnerable editrix, whip-smart singleton, bumbling naif, darling mensch, abrasive middle-aged dude with a suspiciously lovely younger girlfriend, etc.) comprise the staff of an unnamed English-language newspaper. Each chapter focuses on a different character that highlights their foibles, gripes, and merits. This structure proved appealing, especially since it managed to approximate action in that someone and their neuroses are always being introduced, then unceremoniously brushed aside to make room for the next. The prose is dialogue-heavy, which is all the better to show off Rachman’s deft, effervescent ear. Ultimately though, his facile observational style became mundane, and left this reader hoping for a character, plot, or idea to latch onto.

Although the book made a halfhearted attempt to describe the modest rise and sudden fall of a newspaper in the Internet Age, it has the emotional impact of a third-hand anecdote that allows one to be narrowly analytical and presumptuously accurate. Of course this dinky newspaper founded on the providential economic graces of the ‘50s will be unable to compete with technologically gluttonous conglomerates that provide instantaneous updates and the enterprising snark that is the domain of everybody with computer access! (Sheesh.)

To his credit, Rachman generally avoids sentimentalizing, so he must understand that his gift lies in buoyancy and earned sweetness. That makes me hopeful that his next outing will be like this one, but with a bit more ambition.

-Review by Megan

The City & The City By China Miéville

Miéville is one of the most highly-acclaimed fantasy writers working today, and, in fact, this novel was nominated for several prestigious fantasy/science fiction awards. And yet this is, ostensibly, a police procedural, and Miéville has stated that he was consciously working within the hard-boiled tradition typified by writers like Raymond Chandler. So has he totally abandoned fantasy or what?

Well, not entirely. Miéville has written a real crime novel, but he’s also mixed in some pretty weird stuff. The two titular cities are located in some vaguely-defined space on Europe’s Southeastern edge – somewhere near the Black Sea or the Balkans, perhaps. They are fictional cities, but, in most ways, they are not fantastic ones – they are, in fact, firmly grounded in the realities of crime and dirt and cell phones. However, these cities are neighbors – but not neighbors in any way that could ever really exist. The two cities, Beszel and Ul Qomo, are conjoined twins, occupying much of the same physical space. This block could be in Beszel, but the next block down might be in Ul Qomo. Some blocks might even be in both – which one you’re standing in depends on your perceptions, your ways of thinking. The separation between the cities is enforced by a mysterious, brutal organization known as Breach.

And, of course, the murder investigation at the center of this book spans both cities.

The concept behind this book would probably have been enough to keep me satisfied, but the writing’s also great, and Miéville throws in enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Not quite a masterpiece, but almost.

-Review by Eric

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis

Martin Amis’s new novel takes us to an Italian castle in 1970, where a bunch of collegiates convene to test out the tenets of the Sexual Revolution. The group consists of clever, feckless narrator Keith, his levelheaded girlfriend Lily, the mob-inducingly gorgeous Scheherazade, relentlessly amoral Gloria Beautyman, and Adriano—the showboating aristocrat who just happens to stand 4’10’’.

This is Martin Amis, so the magisterial turns of phrase and devastatingly acute observations keep the reader engaged, awed, humbled, and--finally--quiveringly envious. As always, Amis has plenty to say about a topic that few dare to touch. Nonetheless, plot is always a distant second to verbal pyrotechnics in Amis's world, and this proved to be something of an issue during the last sixty pages.

No, it’s not his best work, but it is still better than about ninety-nine per cent of everything I’ve read. Think of it as Jordan in '88: not his most illustrious season, but he could still throw down on anyone with haughty ease.

-Review by Megan