New Book Reviews 03242014

8/12/2019 New Book Reviews 03242014

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New Book Review3/24/2014

1. Cultural Identity in Americaa. National Geographic Learning Readerb. [The National Geographic Learning Reader] will help develop a clearer understanding of

the world around through engaging content. The fifteen articles gathered in this single-themed reader offer an exceptionally direct entree to issues surrounding identity and

culture in the 21st-century United States. As the National Geographic Society's writers

and photographers investigate the physical and cultural characteristics of specific

locations throughout the country, they put faces on forces of assimilation,

diversification, and make the multifarious realities of globalization palpable, concrete.

2. Craving for Ecstasy and Natural Highsa. Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirthb. This book reflects the extensive scientific and clinical expertise of the authors and is

compelling reading for anyone interested in addictive behaviors. It is one of the rare

books that from page one immediately engrosses, educates and broadens yourperspective.

3. The Silent Language of Leaders: How body language can helpor hurthow you leada. Carol Kinsey Gomanb. In The Silent Language of Leaders, Goman explains that personal space, physical

gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye contact communicate louder than words

and, thus, can be used strategically to help leaders manage, motivate, lead global teams,

and communicate clearly in the digital age. [] will show readers how to take advantage

of the most underused skills in the leadership toolkitnonverbal skillsto improve

their credibility and stay ahead of the curve.

4. Soul Food : The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine One plate at a timea. Adrian Millerb. Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the

soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish-

-such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks"--Miller uncovers how it

got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.

5. The Trip to Echo SpringOn Writers and Drinkinga. Olivia Laingb. In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol

through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest

Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.

6. Ill take you there Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the march up freedoms highwaya. Greg Kotb. This is the untold story of living legend Mavis Stapleslead singer of the Staple Singers

and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. Now in her seventies,

Mavis has been a fixture in the music world for decades. One of the most enduring

artists of popular music, she and her family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to


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transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the

Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more

than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a sound track to

the civil rights movementinspiring Martin Luther King Jr. himself

7. Christ the Lord out of Egypta. Anne Riceb. A novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the Gospels and on the

most respected New Testament scholarship. The books power derives from the passion

its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the

presence, and the words of Jesus who tells the story.

8. 12 Years A Slavea. Solomon Northupb. This is the true story of Solomon Northup, who was born and raised as a freeman in

New York. He lived the American dream, with a house and a loving family - a wife and

two kids. Then one day he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the deep

south. These are the true accounts of his twelve hard years as a slave - many believe this

memoir is even more graphic and disturbing than the film. His extraordinary journey

proves the resiliency of hope and the human spirit despite the most grueling and

formidable of circumstances.

9. Yemen Divided: The Story of a Filed State in South Arabiaa. Noel Brehonyb. South Yemen has come to be seen as a potential Al-Qaeda stronghold and at the heart

of a separatist movement threatening to rip apart southern Arabia. How has this

country of forbidding mountains and arid deserts gone from British colony to

communist state and then to 'terrorist base' in just half a century? In Yemen Divided,

author and Middle East expert Noel Brehony tells for the first time the comprehensive

history of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). He explains the power

politics that came to form a communist republic a few hundred miles from the holiest

site in Islam, and the process and conflicts that led to Yemeni unification in 1990. The

impact of PDRY is still felt today as unrest continues to escalate across the south.

10.Gang Leader for a day: A Rogue Sociologist takes to the streetsa. Sudhir Venkateshb. When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building

in one of Chicagos most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people

willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors

with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would

befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded

inside the projects under JTs protection.

11.The Campus Trilogy: Changing Places; Small World; Nice Worka. David Lodge


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b. In Changing Places, we meet Philip Swallow, British lecturer in English at the Universityof Rummidge, and the flamboyant American Morris Zapp of Euphoric State University,

who participate in a professorial exchange program at the close of the tumultuous

sixties. Ten years later in Small World, older but not noticeably wiser, they are let loose

on the international conference circuit-along with a memorable and somewhat

oversexed cast of dozens. And in Nice Work, the leftist feminist Dr. Robyn Penrose at

Rummidge University is assigned to shadow the director of a local engineering firm,

sparking a collision of ideologies and lifestyles that seems unlikely to foster anything

other than mutual antipathy.

12.American Exceptionalism: An Experiment in Historya. Charles Murrayb. InAmerican Exceptionalism: An Experiment in History, Charles Murray describes how

Americas geography, ideology, politics, and daily life set the new nation apart from

Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. He then discusses the ways that exceptionalism

changed during Americas evolution over the course of the 20th century. Which changes

are gains to be applauded? Which are losses to be mourned? Answering these questions

is the essential first step in discovering what you want for Americas future.

13.Library of America Series: Bernard Malamud Novels and Stories of the 1960sa. Malamud Bernardb. Through his distinctive fusion of modernist daring and traditional storytelling, Bernard

Malamud became one of postwar Americas most important writers. The second

volume of the Library of Americas Malamud edition brings together three novels of the

1960s:A New Life(1961), a satiric campus novel set in the Pacific Northwest (based on

the authors experiences at Oregon State), in which native New Yorker Seymour Levin

finds himself confronted not only with a new landscape but with erotic intrigue,

university politics, and an appointment that isnt quite what he had expected it to be.

The Fixer(1966) is the gripping saga of a Jew imprisoned in prerevolutionary Russia after

being falsely accused of the ritual murder of a twelve-year-old boy. The novel-instories

Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969) follows the comic misadventures, sexual and

otherwise, of a failed American painter in Italy.

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New Book Reviews 03242014