SirReadaLot.org

April 2006, Issue #84

Guide to This Issue

The Story of Allen Lane, the Founder of Penguin Books, Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market, Training Evaluation Made Simple, Cinderella, Investigate Everyday Mysteries with Forensic Science! A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man, The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s, Men, Action Films, and Contemporary Adventure Narratives, Warrior Women On-Screen, The Life of John Lennon, Promoting Health Promotion, Confessions of a Food Addict, Make Over Your Metabolism, Compassion and Courage in the Aftermath of Traumatic Loss, 21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness, Victorian London, The Meaning of First Democracy, Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977, Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens. Life in Bagdad in the 1990s, A Guide to Literary Patterns in the Bible, Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies, New Mystery by Cecelia Tishy, A Kiss Goodbye, Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds, Water Conservation Programs, CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, Design-Build Project Delivery, Negotiating Self-Determination, Diagnostic Parasitology for Veterinary Technicians,, Bricker's International Directory 2006, Mastering Healthcare Terminology, Worldwide Government Directory 2006, Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children, Tibetan Treasure Literature, Encyclopedia of the Undead, River of Gods: August 15, 2047 – Happy Birthday, India by Ian McDonald, In Our Hands: How to End Poverty and Restore the American Dream, Clearing the Bases: Juiced Players, Monster Salaries, Sham Records, and a Hall of Famer's Search for the Soul of Baseball

Biographies & Memoirs

Penguin Special: The Story of Allen Lane, the Founder of Penguin Books and the Man Who Changed Publishing Forever by Jeremy Lewis (Penguin Books) 

The founding of Penguin Books in 1935 revolutionized the publishing industry with the idea that great writing ought to be made available for the price of a pack of cigarettes. Penguin Special tells the story of Penguin and its founder, Allen Lane. In it, author Jeremy Lewis, who has spent much of his life in publishing, traces the changes the company wrought in cultural and political life in England and in the publishing industry worldwide.

A stocky, dapper Englishman who left school at the age of sixteen and went on to found Penguin Books, Allen Lane was one of the greatest publishers of the twentieth cen­tury and a major influence on the cultural and political life of post-war Britain. As told in Penguin Special, Lane was never a bookish man himself, but he was adept at sensing the spirit of the age and always ready to follow his hunches. For example, he risked prosecution for publishing James Joyce's Ulysses for the first time in England, and a quarter century later he appeared at the Old Bailey to defend Penguin's publication of the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Lane’s influence stretched beyond the world of pub­lishing: his pre-war Penguin Specials alerted the British public to the threat of Nazism and helped usher in a Labour government in 1945, and Penguin itself came to be seen as a benign monopoly, akin to the BBC. By the end of his career, publishing was changing too fast for his liking, and his last years were blighted by illness and a battle with his chief editor that climaxed when Lane set fire to the stock of a book he detested. A mischievous, quixotic, oddly endearing figure who loathed meetings and paperwork – one visitor was shocked to find an editorial meeting taking place in a rowboat and well lubricated with gin – Lane combined ruthlessness with affability, courage with moral cowardice, loyalty with unpredictability. Few publishers are remembered after their lifetimes: Allen Lane is a rare exception to the rule.

Hugely enjoyable to read and surprisingly riveting. – Independent (U.K.)

A masterly account of publishing in the twentieth century ... unlikely to be bettered. – New Statesman (U.K.)

As a rich and humorous history of twentieth-century reading habits, Penguin Special will not be surpassed. – Mail on Sunday (U.K.)

Invaluable and fascinating. – Nick Hornby, Time Out (London)
Hugely enjoyable . . . Jeremy Lewis’s biography is an extraordinarily vivid portrait of an extraordinary man. – The Sunday Telegraph (London)
The book is a triumph. His knowledge of the publishing world is unrivaled and this must be the best survey of the nuts-and-bolts of the industry ever devised. – The Sunday Mail (U.K.)

Rich with anecdote and suffused with Lane’s larger-than-life personality, Penguin Special touches on the entire twentieth century in its portrait of a man and a company that have changed the way the English-speaking world reads.

Business & Investing

Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst: A True Story of Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market by Daniel Reingold, with Jennifer Reingold (Collins) 

Here is the true story of a Wall Street player's transformation from a straight-arrow believer to a jaded cynic, who reveals how Wall Street's insider game is played.

Dan Reingold was a top Wall Street analyst for fourteen years and Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman's chief competitor in the red-hot sector of telecom. Reingold was part of the ‘Street’ and believed in it. But in this memoir written with Fast Company senior writer Jennifer Reingold, the author describes how his enthusiasm gave way to disgust as he learned how deeply corrupted Wall Street and much of corporate America had become during the roaring stock market bubble of the 1990s.

In Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst, Reingold recounts his introduction to the world of Wall Street leaks and secret deal-making; his experiences with corporate fraud; and Wall Street's penchant for lavish spending and multimillion-dollar pay packages. Reingold spars with arch rival Grubman; fends off intense pressures from Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs; and is wooed by Morgan Stanley's CEO, John Mack, and CSFB's über-banker Frank Quattrone. Reingold describes instances in which confidential deals are whispered days before their official announcement. He recalls the moment he learns that Bernie Ebbers's WorldCom was massively cooking its books. And he is shocked to have been an unwitting catalyst for a series of sexually explicit e-mails that would rock Wall Street; bring Grubman to his knees; and contribute to the stepping aside of Grubman's boss, Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill.

At the end of December 2005, Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio was indicted on 20 counts of insider trading. Now Nacchio will try to clear his name, just as Worldcom's Bernie Ebbers and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski attempted before him. As these and other once mighty CEOs are paraded in and out of the courts, some may believe that Wall Street has been cleaned up and is no longer a rigged insider's game. But Reingold believes otherwise. Reingold writes that "while the world finally saw justice served in the story of WorldCom, the jury is still out...on the telecom industry, which burned so brightly and sucked in so many people before it turned into the deepest of black holes. Moreover, the jury is also still out on the responsibility of the Wall Streeters who aided and abetted the rise of these companies and then simply got out of the way when they collapsed...And it's still out on the insider game that I was a key part of, a game that the average investor – and even many of the professionals – can never win."

The book ends with a series of policy recommendations to clean up the investing business. Reingold is currently Project Director for Telecom Finance at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia's Graduate School of Business.

It’s a terrific memoir. This honest and irreverent behind-the-scenes account of life on Wall Street is highly recommended. – Library Journal

A coming-of-age story in an age Wall Street would like to forget. In this riveting memoir, Reingold takes us for an exhilarating ride through the dark alleys of Wall Street and reminds us that in the world of finance one thing remains constant: Caveat Emptor, Buyer Beware! – David Faber, Anchor, CNBC TV

Every rocket needs fuel, but Dan Reingold shows us that much of what propelled the meteoric rise of the stock market in the late nineties was self-interested, sometimes even criminal, hot air. This book is a riveting and revealing account about the people and events that changed Wall Street and the telecommunications landscape forever. – Michael K. Powell, Former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

… The problems and conflicts he reveals remain acute today, even after recent reforms. Read this book before you rely on any investment advisor! – John C. Coffee, Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

This book captures the Shakespearean struggle of an all-star Wall Street analyst who strove to perform his role ethically, while pressured intensely to ‘play the game’ and promote the stocks of his firm's clients. Decades from now, economic historians will turn to Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst for a complete understanding of the nineties' stock market bubble. – Eric Hemel, former Co-Director of U.S. Equity Research, Merrill Lynch

Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst provides a front-row seat at one of the most dramatic – and ultimately tragic – periods in financial history. Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst is a gripping tale of the high-flying 90s, and features a cast of characters who all played a role in Reingold's stellar career. Reingold shares his experiences of jumping from Morgan Stanley, to Merrill Lynch, and finally to Credit Suisse First Boston. Some of Reingold's stories are outrageous, others hilarious, and many are simply absurd. But, together, they provide a sobering exposé of Wall Street: a jungle of greed and ego, a place brimming with conflicts and inside information, and a business absurdly out of touch with the Main Street it claims to serve. 

Business & Investing / Training

Telling Training's Story: Evaluation Made Simple, Credible, and Effective by Robert O. Brinkerhoff (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.)

What all trainers know in their gut – that training and development is valuable and worthwhile – is something that needs to be proven over and over to clients focused on bottom-line results. Hundreds of books and articles have been published about evaluating training, but most of the methods they describe are too elaborate, too complex, too costly, too difficult to explain – or worse, produce data nobody believes.

In contrast, Telling Training's Story offers a simple way of evaluating training's impact: The Success Case Method (SCM), written by Robert O. Brinkerhoff, EdD, Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University and a principal consultant with Advantage Performance Group. Filled with examples, illustrations, tools, and checklists, Telling Training's Story not only shares the power of the Success Case Method to evaluate training, it also offers practical step-by-step guidelines for increasing the ROI of future learning and performance initiatives. Although the SCM is rigorous enough to convince even the harshest skeptic, it's also easy to understand.

SCM has been proven robust enough to withstand scrutiny from both a research and a business perspective and will not choke real-world practitioners and their clients with cumbersome methods and arcane statistical gyrations. The SCM enables organizations to do much more than just measure and document the impact of training; it uncovers and pinpoints the factors that make or break training success.

Based on careful analysis of participants' first-person accounts of their experiences in a training initiative, SCM doesn't just measure the impact of training, but pinpoints the factors that make or break training success. The book first explains how the SCM works, and then lays out a five-step plan that shows how to perform an SCM evaluation. Later chapters elaborate on the SCM process, providing in-depth instructions and guidelines. There are also four case studies that show how SCM evaluations were performed by global organizations.

No messy statistics, no complicated formulae, no squishy metrics. Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method is a robust and elegant approach to delivering substantive and believable evaluation data about the measurable impact of training and HR interventions. – Marguerite Foxon, PhD, Principal Performance Technologist, Motorola

I like the approach that Brinkerhoff has used.... You, the reader will be able to adapt his solutions to your own. – Donald L. Kirkpatrick, PhD, author of Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels

The Success Case method is the most relevant and compelling way to put educational results in the right light, and reach the results you're after. – Louise Korver-Swanson, Senior Vice President, Executive Development, Bank of America

This book is a ‘must’ for anyone who is serious about learning solutions and the results they can produce. The Success Case Method is simple and practical while yielding compelling and reliable information on training results. – Dana Gaines Robinson, coauthor of Performance Consulting: Moving beyond Training and Strategic Business Partner: Aligning People Strategies with Business Goals

No matter how much trainers believe that their work is valuable, clients will always want solid, objective evidence that the training they're spending good money on is effective. Telling Training's Story provides the tools, allowing anyone to measure a training regime's effectiveness and prove it to customers. Filled with examples and checklists, Telling Training's Story levels the playing field by granting trainers the ability to prove what they know in their heart – training works. 

Children’s Books / Fairytales / All Ages

Cinderella illustrated by K. Y. Craft (SeaStar) 

Remember, if you stay one instant after the last stroke of midnight, your carriage will become a pumpkin… while you yourself will appear just as humble as you did before.

So goes the pronouncement of Cinderella’s fairy godmother as the ragged maiden, Cinderella, now magically transformed into a ravishing beauty, climbs into her magnificent coach and sets of for the prince’s ball. Telling after telling, age after age, this vision continues to thrill and enchant readers, for Cinderella has become a forever-loved story that will never grow old.

With her exquisite touch, Kinuko Craft, who has won more than one hundred graphic arts awards, including five gold medals for the Society of Illustrators, in Cinderella now brings a new warmth and depth to this kind girl who, though cruelly mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, wins the fair prince’s heart. Scenes are radiant and rich with astonishing detail. For all those who dream of fairy godmothers, lavish balls, and living happily ever after, Cinderella is a fantasy come true.

As lavish as Craft's (King Midas and the Golden Touch) previous works, this retold fairy tale abounds with ornamental detail. Inspired by the opulent styles of 17th- and 18th-century France, the paintings are confections of luxurious clothing, densely vegetated woods and regally appointed ballrooms. A number of the pictures are breathtaking. …The story … contains pleasing touches as well as a moral. For example, Cinderella and the prince first meet when Cinderella nurses a lame bluebird in the forest; this same bluebird later becomes the fairy godmother. When the glass slipper fits Cinderella, the prince says, "How I knew that day in the woods that you were indeed special, but I should have fully recognized that heart whether clothed in rags or regalia." While this is not the most childlike version of Cinderella, it may be among the most sumptuous. – Publishers Weekly

Craft retains some of Perrault's formality and many of his story elements in this sumptuous rendition of the oft-told tale. An introductory note points to sources that include The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book, Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book, and the Grimms' "Aschenputtel," in which a bird grants the wish. …A consummate artist, Craft … controls the pace with one-page compositions (faced with bordered, illuminated text) interspersed with wordless double spreads at climactic moments. – Wendy Lukehart, School Library Journal

This brilliant edition of Cinderella is a timeless story sure to become the favorite of a generation. Readers young and old will be enchanted by the vision and mastery of Craft's luminous paintings, embellished with extraordinary borders and ornamentation. Rich with radiant color and astonishing detail, Cinderella is a dream come true for anyone who has ever believed in living happily ever after.
 

Children’s Books / Science / Ages 8 and up

Action Books Detective Tool Kit: Investigate Everyday Mysteries with Forensic Science! by Chris Oxlade (Action Books Series: Running Press Kids) 

Action Books Detective Tool Kit contains the tools young investigators need to solve household mysteries, including training exercises and real detective tools.

Capitalizing on the public's fascination with forensic investigative techniques, this activity kit provides kids with the materials to solve household mysteries. With the detective tool kit, children can use fingerprints to determine who drank that last glass of orange juice, or work with hair samples to figure out if someone's been snooping in their secret hiding place. They can gather evidence and track down the 'culprits'.

Using the science of forensics, they discover how to find and interpret seemingly ordinary clues around them. For example, they can uncover fibers with a magnifying glass, collect hair samples, and analyze fingerprints in their own ‘lab’ at home. The kit includes a 32-page illustrated full-color book, innovative facial identification kit, fingerprint pad, ink stamp, brush and powder, clue containers, evidence bags, labels, chromatography paper for ink analysis, and magnifying glass.

In the Action Books Detective Tool Kit readers find out about the most important parts of forensic science, including fingerprinting, DNA fingerprinting, forensic chemistry, ballistics, forensic art, and forensic psychology. The things young readers need are listed at the start of each activity. Children are encouraged to follow the steps carefully and ask an adult for help if they are unsure of what to do.

The Action Books Detective Tool Kit lets children play the part of a forensic detective at home. An excellent hands-on entertainment and learning activity for active children.

Entertainment / Humor / Health, Mind & Body / Self-help

A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man by Frank Vincent & Steven Priggé, foreword by James Gandolfini (Berkley Books)
”Oh, Godfather, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do…”
(Slap)
“You can act like a man!”

Don Corleone said it best, and truer words where never spoken. But these days, it's harder than ever to know how to act like a real man. We’re not talking about the touchy-feely, ultra sensitive, emotion-sharing, not-afraid-to-cry version of manhood of talk shows. We’re talking about the tough, smart, confident, charming, classy, all-around good fella who upholds the true ideal of what is knows as a 'man’s man.'

Now, renowned actor and man's man Frank Vincent – famed for his unforgettable tough-guy roles in such classic films as Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and HBO's The Sopranos – in A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man shows how any man can be all that he can be in love, work, play, and life. With the help of co-author, Steven Priggé, he delivers advice on practically everything, including:

• Getting the best women by being the best man.
• Dressing like a champ.
• Winning big money and big respect in Las Vegas.
• Choosing the right song to set the right mood.
• Knowing how to eat – and cook – like a man.
• Movies that men will always love.
• Selecting, smoking, and savoring a great cigar.  

A man's man, according to actor Vincent, is "a jack of all trades, but also a master of all," who drinks only imported beer (that is, when he can't round up a fine scotch, a gin martini with three olives, or a glass of wine), wears cologne, owns a ‘tailored to perfection’ tuxedo and can afford to own only designer clothes. With one glance at the cover, most readers will be able to divine the majority of Vincent's guidelines, but there are a few surprises: recipes for lentil soup, the divination of a Fire & Ice rose and a brief passage on the virtues of monogamy…– Publishers Weekly
Frank Vincent's a stand-up guy. Now, sit down and read! – James Gandolfini
Old school sexy...Frank Vincent's a Renaissance man! – Debi Mazar
As an actor Frank Vincent always leaves an impression. This book is guaranteed to have the same effect. – Ray Liotta
Disgustingly charismatic. Horrifyingly macho. Read it as soon as possible! – Rosie Perez

If you want to learn how to be a man's man, you gotta learn from a man's man. And that man is Frank Vincent, now starring in A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man.

Entertainment / Movies / Literature & Criticism

The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s: Lawrence of Arabia, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and The Hill by Anna E. Claydon, with a preface by John Beynon (The Edwin Mellin Press) 

Anna Claydon, Lecturer in Media and Communication, Depart­ment of Media and Communication (Centre for Mass Communications Research), University of Leicester, presents her second book and part of Mellen’s Studies in the History and Criticism of Film series, The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s.

Claydon’s central thesis is that representations of masculinity are the core of the ‘imagining’ of Britishness and a constant theme in British cinema. According to the book, it follows that the concepts used to analyze and theorize masculinities can be fruitfully applied to cinema.

Clayton laments the fact that "British men in Hollywood films are either represented as upper class twits or the rough diamond with a heart of gold" and asserts that "the problem with much recent mainstream British cinema, in its bid to make money in the American market, is that these models are little challenged and frequently reinforced.” She then backtracks to the 1960s, in many ways the cultural watershed decade of the 20th century, in that it witnessed a wealth of social and cultural changes that still shape our lives today, to demonstrate that the period was hugely instrumental in challenging existing masculine norms, resulting in new ‘decentered’ and ‘less ensnared’ articulations of masculinity, the immediate ancestors of the plurality of masculinities evident all around us today. Central to this process, she says, was the role of mid-1960s cinema in opening up to scrutiny the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions forever inherent within masculinity. She refers to Arthur Marwick's mapping of the ‘long Sixties’, stretching over three phases, from 1958 to 1974, and culminating in the ‘cultural revolution’ associated with the so-called ‘High Sixties’ and forever associated with such enduring images as Flower Power, Carnaby Street and Swinging London.

The four films Clayton examines in The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s belong to the seminal central phase of the Sixties, stretching from 1962 to 1966, and represent the four modes of British film production of the period, namely the independent production (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962); the big prestige picture (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962); the small-scale investment (The Hill, 1965); and the B-movie (The Projected Man, 1966). In each film the male protagonist is a failing icon of masculinism. Peter O'Toole's remarkable performance demonstrated, as Clayton observes, that "masculinity is more than a series of soldiering stereotypes". She employs Arthur Brittan's term ‘masculinism’ to good effect and concludes that "the rendering of men in British film is not driven by a concept of masculinity-in-crisis, but rather of identities challenging explicit changes in the role of masculinism.

Claydon structures the study so that a development of characterization, subjectivity, adjectivity and masculinity follows through each chapter. She asks questions in The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s which arise from examining not only how masculinity is represented in British film but also how it is talked about. She seeks to advance a kind of cohesion of methodologies for British cinema in its analyses of its own subjects. Her first hypothesis, concerning British cinema studies, is that the constraints of the methodologies of socio-historical analysis placed upon the field are a reflection of British culture's preoccupation with history and society, or, more precisely, the place of the individual in history. She takes issue with this self-delimitation because it alienates potential interest in the national cinema, making the films and their critics appear self-absorbed in what is another issue in its own right, Britishness. If British cinema is to be comprehended upon the same level as other films which are the staple of Film Studies, as a field of its own, then, she argues, the boundaries of what is analyzed, and how it is analyzed, must be crossed.

Claydon’s second hypothesis, relating to the question of how else we might talk about masculinity other than to describe it as being in a state of ‘crisis’, is that the male protagonists within the films, each representative of differing masculinities, are set apart from society and decentered in their relation to the world, rather than from their gendered and psycho-sexual identities, as the ‘crisis’ in masculinity argument maintains. At the root of this idea is a concern with the way in which the terminology of a ‘crisis’ in masculinity has been misused and warped.

In Chapters One and Two, Claydon discusses the precedents already established within British cinema studies, work on masculinity which has shaped the concept of British film studies as the study of cultural artifacts and modern masculinity as existing in a state of ‘crisis’ shaped by feminism.

In Chapter Three, specifically written about a B-movie so that the twin issues of quality and content within an example of British pulp cinema can be taken in hand, she analyzes the psychoanalytical structures which inform the characters' actions and opened out the textual aspects of the films which assert its status as a b-movie on the brink of the ‘swinging sixties’ able to take risks with the representation of sexuality and identity.

Chapter Four also employs psychoanalysis significantly in analyzing the characterization of the ‘angry young man’. Typically discussed in terms of the anti-feminist ‘crisis of masculinity’, Claydon examines the protagonist and his relations with other characters within the framework of his frustration as a post-war discontent towards the anachronistic masculinist establishment. The second theoretical and textual influence upon this chapter is a discussion of the narrative of the film through the theories of Gerard Genette and Gilles Deleuze and an analysis of how the protagonist's identity is, in part, created within the atemporal narration of the film.

In Chapter Five, the analysis of the masculinity within the masculine institution magnifies the institutionalization of masculinism as a system of power. Key to this chapter are the theories of Foucault and Nietzsche alongside a discussion of how sadism informs the manifestation of the technologies of power. The specificity of the film's representation of rebellious but conventional masculinities is situated in the contextual comprehension of the film as a post-imperial and post-National service text in which the textual iteration is the anachronistic framework upon which the army is built and against which post-colonial identities must rebel.

The final chapter, Chapter Six, takes the theoretical propositions of the previous chapter a stage further by moving the sadism or sadomasochism from the film's villain to its hero but its central foci are first, the representation of the mythography rather than biography of TE Lawrence and second, the configuration of Lawrence as a doubled Other within the film's narrative (sadomasochist, homosexual, Lawrence and yet also not Lawrence), a representation of which is only possible with the changes in censorship of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Throughout all of the chapters within The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s Claydon uses contextual information drawn from original and secondary sources alongside the textual evidence in order to establish the parameters within which the films were viewed on their release. This is in part because unlike many American films, which are well known and have been analyzed solely as film texts, the films analyzed here are not established as texts. Even Lawrence of Arabia, which has received the most previous analysis, has principally been discussed within the context of production and textual comparison (to Seven Pillars of Wisdom). Claydon maintains throughout that the socio-cultural research into British film is a necessary part of British film studies and she has used it herself; but what she shows is that the analysis of the films as texts must and can surpass the depth of any contextual investigation.

The future of the decentered masculinities of the sixties British cinema can be seen in abundance in the representation of masculinity in contemporary British cinema, from the brothers in both East is East and Bhaji on the Beach to the gangsters of films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Richie, 1999) Even a film such as Bridget Jones' Diary with its cads and nice-guys, presents these stereotypical ideals as failing icons of masculinism. Ultimately, the contemporary, postmodern, British cinema suggests, not only do all men exist in a position of dejection but also many women, the Bridget Joneses who were only ever pseudo-feminists. Thus, the crisis within masculinism has created not only a struggle for masculinities' identifications with the world but also a questioning of feminism, which we can see articulated through the sad concept of post-feminism.

One of the undoubted strengths of The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s is the author's skillful deployment of multiple methodologies to theorize film – psychoanalytical, narratological, historical, as well as more conventional, representation-based approaches. Importantly, Claydon’s analyses of each of the four films arises from, and is fully grounded in, the filmic texts themselves. She presents herself as working at the “intersection between students of film history; those of psycho-analytical film theory; and those of film text”. Claydon's volume is laudable because it places masculinities at the forefront examining the four films, brings together in a fruitful congruence a range of ways of ‘reading’ films, places the spotlight on the iconic 1960s, restates the centrality of film to that seminal decade, and opens up and indicates further useful lines of investigation.

The thought-provoking The Representation of Masculinity in British Cinema of the 1960s will become recommended reading not only in Film Studies but also in Media, Cultural and Communication Studies, in the Humanities, as well as in the Social Sciences. Claydon's book will undoubtedly assist students in the task of seeing film through the lens of masculinity. In demonstrating how masculinities were articulated in British cinema at a particular time, the mid-1960s, she raises important wider issues about how to make sense of and talk about films in general, British films in particular. 

Entertainment / Movies / Social Science / Popular Culture

Action Figures: Men, Action Films, and Contemporary Adventure Narratives by Mark Gallagher (Palgrave MacMillan) 

What accounts for the massive global popularity of action films and adventure literature? How do men and women respond to iconic screen stars such as Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve McQueen, and Charlton Heston?

Action genres have been Hollywood's most profitable global exports for most of its history, their male heroes the subject of much fascination and derision. Bestselling literary thrillers, from The Hunt for Red October to Into Thin Air, have also contributed markedly to popular understandings of male activity. Action films manifestly appeal to viewers through their huge production budgets, dynamic editing, and sophisticated special effects. They also intersect crucially with material concerns such as gender and race relations, violence, and global politics. Action Figures, written by Mark Gallagher, who has taught courses in film history and theory, film genres, and 20th-century literature at Oberlin College, the University of Oregon, the University of Missouri, Georgia State University, and Oklahoma State University, takes stock of action narratives' many appeals and recognizes how contemporary crises of gender identity manifest themselves in popular commercial texts.

To interrogate them in original ways, this work combines textual analysis with consideration of popular texts' historical, cultural, and industrial situations.

Gallagher in Action Figures says his work is heavily indebted to early-1990s works such as Susan Jeffords's Hard Bodies and Yvonne Tasker's Spectacular Bodies, both of which compellingly analyze action films and their cultural situation. Jeffords's 1994 book surveys models of masculinity in the action genre as well as in successful comedies and dramas of the same period, and identifies in early-1990s films a tendency to define heroic masculinity through fathering. Gallagher traces related lineages of heroic masculinity through the late 1990s, interrogating not only the increasing prevalence of paternal heroes across the decade but also the genre's correspondingly melodramatic situation. Similarly, he draws upon Tasker's 1993 book, which examines dynamics of gender, race, and class in the action films of the 1980s and early 1990s, and situates these categories in relation to patterns of genre evolution and hybridity.

With Tasker's volume as a point of reference, Gallagher considers how transformations in film genre, and surround­ing cultural discourses in the United States and abroad, have produced the contemporary male action hero. Jeffords's and Tasker's works provide the critical foundation for the study of masculinity in the contemporary Hollywood action film. Action Figures, in comparison, links the contemporary action genre to a number of earlier U.S. films, to popular literature of the 1980s and 1990s, and to popular Hong Kong films of the same era. Gallagher examines popular literature and non-U.S. films' engagement with Hollywood's models of active masculinity, an interplay that lends the U.S. action genre continued legitimacy.

Action Figures' organization is partly chronological and partly dialectical. First, it assesses the cultural situation in which the contemporary U.S. action hero is located, then it examines that figure's many compelling facets. Following that Gallagher turns to the contemporary action hero's origins, then to his corollaries in print fiction. He looks finally at an alternative to the U.S. action hero, a figure who provides quite literal comic relief from his Hollywood counterparts. Though he engages with a range of texts produced since the 1960s, he begins with contem­porary nonfiction texts to demonstrate the ways discourses of action and adventure shape our understanding of specific events in historical reality. Chapter 1, "Armchair Thrills and the New Adventurer," deals with a recent popular manifestation of the continued cultural appetite for action narratives. This chapter examines the outpouring in the late 1990s of nonfiction-adventure literature, looking at a number of texts that became best-sellers not only because of their chilling narratives of real-life tragedy, but also because of their fealty to conventions of popular fiction and film.

Contemporary U.S. action films constitute the lingua franca of global film audiences, and the structure of Action Figures pro­ceeds from this basic understanding. In chapter 2, " ‘I Married Rambo’: Action, Spectacle, and Melodrama," a case study of True Lies (1994) exemplifies the genre's redefinition of masculinity according to social pressures related to gender in the late twentieth century. To demonstrate the importance of genre with regard to the cinematic representation of masculinity, the book examines the increasing presence of melodrama – a genre or mode associated with women and femininity – in the male-oriented action film. Through melodrama, action films offer both male and female viewers access to a rigidly codified narrative world. The action genre's slowly growing interest in female representation suggests that only conditions of ritualized behavior and personal style exclude women from the connotatively masculine world of action – the world of military and government installations, high technology, lethal weaponry, and pyrotechnic spectacle. (See the review immediately following this one for a review of The Modern Amazons.)

Chapter 3, "Omega Men: Late 1960s and Early 1970s Action Heroes," moves back historically to a period crucial to an understanding of the contemporary action hero and his milieu because the films of this period develop models for that hero. Vietnam-era films recurrently depict conflicted but conventionally ‘tough’ male heroes during a period of severe challenges to many pillars of traditional Western masculinity. The U.S. military's problematic experience in Vietnam raised questions about the utility of prevailing notions of military engagement, home-front opposition to the war resulted in unprecedented acts of political dissent aimed at the male-dominated government and institutions, and the feminist movement called attention to grave gender imbalances in the workplace and in the domestic sphere. Vietnam-era action heroes' generic descendants in film – the proficient, muscular heroes of the 1980s and 1990s – bear few of their predecessors' scars. However, the legacies of feminism and the Vietnam War are apparent in the literary blockbusters of the same period, albeit through exaggeration and omission. Chapter 4, "Airport Fiction: The Men of Mass-Market Literature," follows the audiences of the earlier films into midlife and to a different venue – that of the popular novels of Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler – through which aging men's attitudes are represented and validated. Despite the well-reported consolidation among the film and publishing industries since the 1980s, contemporary critical work on popular film has only sparingly addressed its literary offshoots. A thorough cultural analysis of contemporary masculinity requires attention to literary as well as cinematic texts, particularly given filmmakers' reliance on name recognition of popular novels to lure audiences into theaters.

Chapter 5, "Restaging Heroic Masculinity: Jackie Chan and the Hong Kong Action Film" returns to films but looks to an alternative to Hollywood's generic and industrial frameworks. In the early 1990s, Hollywood studios began borrowing narratives of Hong Kong action films, their visual styles, and performers and directors such as Chan, Jet Li, and John Woo. Chan's Hong Kong-produced films, popular throughout Asia, made him the world's most popular action star long before his late-1990s Hollywood successes. Chan's persona suggests ways active male identity can be formed through a combination of physical dexterity, comic self-effacement, and a perceptible ‘naturalness’ or ordinariness. In addition, the racial dynamics of Chan's Hong Kong films – particularly the enactment of both comedy and masochism on the nonwhite male body – provide a telling counterpoint to the economy of race representation in U.S. action films. Gallagher approaches Chan and his films through analysis of film comedy, masochistic subversion, and carnivalesque pleasure. With their mixtures of comedy and masochistic spectacle, Chan's films unsettle paradigms of active male identity. These films raise questions about bodily spectacle, kinesthetic pleasures, and generic blends of action and comedy in both U.S. and Asian cinemas.

Throughout the last few decades, U.S. culture has produced a rich body of film and literature venerating, lampooning, and interrogating active manhood, invigorating the category of masculinity for readers, viewers, and scholars. As Gallagher concludes, “the images of active masculinity, and the apparent threats to that masculinity, continue to inspire media spectacle, careful analysis, and sometimes, relieving comedy.” Through Action Figures, Gallagher contributes to the productive analysis of cinematic masculinity and the action genre now flourishing in film studies. 

Entertainment / Movies / Television / Sociology / Popular Culture

The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen by Dominique Mainon & James Ursini (Limelight Editions) 

A pop-culture first from cover to cover, The Modern Amazons celebrates some of Hollywood's most memorable women on film and television for the past five decades.

From Barbarella to Barb Wire, The Modern Amazons, by Dominique Mainon, writer-researcher and producer for an independent film company, and James Ursini, author of more than twenty books on film history, traces the public's seemingly insatiable fascination with the warrior-woman archetype in film and on television.

The Modern Amazons brings readers today's warrior woman on-screen, citing her often complex transformation from traditional roles of passivity or ‘screaming victim’ to ‘vicious avenger and warrior’. The book examines the cautious beginnings of new roles for women in the late fifties, the rapid development of female action leads during the burgeoning second-wave feminist movement in the late sixties and seventies, and the present-day onslaught of female action characters now leaping from page to screen.

Readers see how the ‘fur bikinis and jungle love’ of Raquel Welch, who was launched to international sex-symbol status in the prehistoric adventure fantasy One Million Years BC, and Pam Grier, the first African-American woman to play a warrior woman within the action movie genre (Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby), would set the stage for Jessica Alba of Dark Angel, Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil, Jennifer Garner from Alias, and Uma Thurman from the Kill Bill series and The Avengers, to name a few.

Complete with an extensive filmography of more than 150 titles, The Modern Amazons also features the warrior women of fantasy including Grace Jones as Zula in Conan the Destroyer, superheroes including Wonder Woman and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, sci-fi warrior Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien, super-sleuths and spies such as Charlie's Angels, gothic warriors including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the ‘girl power’ of comics, cartoons, and video games such as the Powerpuff Girls. In addition, the book highlights Hong Kong warriors such as Angela Mao (Enter the Dragon) and Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and sexploitation films including the Ilsa trilogy.

The Modern Amazons is organized into chapters that group women warriors into sub-genres, e.g., classic Amazons like Xena Warrior Princess and the women of the Conan films; superheroes and their archenemies such as Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Catwoman; revenge films such as the Kill Bill movies; sexploitation and blaxploitation films such as Coffy and the Ilsa trilogy; Hong Kong cinema and warriors like Angela Mao, Cynthia Rothrock, and Zhang Ziyi; sci-fi warriors including Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Star Wars; supersleuths and spies like the Avengers and Charlie's Angels; and gothic warriors such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kate Beckinsale in Underworld and Van Helsing.

The Modern Amazons also relates a brief background on warrior women in history, myth, and literature, chronicling the effects of male fantasy and societal values on their portrayal in film and on television, and their overall portrayal in Hollywood. Revenge and loss of father, Oedipal conflicts, sisterhood – just a few of the themes that underlie warrior-women movies – are also discussed. Special features include topics such as the "Weapons of Warrior Women," "Final Notes: Occupational Hazards of Superheroines," and the representation of women as felines ("The Feline Woman") and as snakes in myths and history ("Woman and the Serpent"). The Modern Amazons is illustrated with over 100 photos of these popular-culture icons in action, and includes articles and sidebars about themes, trends, weapons, style, and trivia, as well as a complete filmography of more than 150 titles.

They're the ‘butt-kicking babes’ who have dominated televisions and movie screens for the past five decades, and now their stories are told in the definitive collection, The Modern Amazons. The book powerfully commands readers from the beginning, with a sleek, modern wraparound cover depicting generations of warriors. With hundreds of stunning photographs and entertaining vignettes from classic, cult, and little-known films, Mainon and Ursini offer a book of both sheer fun and keen insight that puts this growing trend in sociological perspective. The book also informs the previously reviewed Action Figures. (See the immediately preceding review in this issue.) 

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs

We All Want to Change the World: The Life of John Lennon by John Wyse Jackson (Haus Books) 

I am not in the group of people who think that because all our dreams didn't come true in the Sixties everything we said or did was invalid. No, there isn't any peace in the world despite our efforts, but I still believe the hippie peace-and-love thing was worthwhile. If somebody stands up and smiles and then gets smacked in the face, that doesn't invalidate the smile. It existed. – John Lennon

We All Want to Change the World is a new biography focusing on John Lennon’s Irish roots and how they influenced him. The book was written by John Wyse Jackson, an Irishman, writer, and aficionado of James Joyce.
John Lennon (1940-80) was the founder of the most successful pop/rock group of all time, the Beatles. Convinced of his genius from an early age, he explored his own complex, witty personality in his songs, drawing on drugs, meditation and psychotherapy for insights into his art. Two books published in his twenties (John Lennon in His Own Write 1964, A Spaniard in the Works 1965) reveal his surrealist talent as a writer – evident also in the lyrics of the Beatles.

Lennon’s career was transformed in 1969 when he married Yoko Ono and joining forces with her. As the Beatles broke up, the extraordinary couple became familiar figures in the international protest movement as they became public ‘clowns for peace’. "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded during a ‘bed-in’ which they staged in a Montreal hotel in 1969.

Lennon's groundbreaking solo work during the 1970s would be overshadowed by the success of the 1971 ‘Imagine’ – one song on the album "How Do You Sleep?" contained a veiled attack on Paul McCartney. Its title song became an anthem after Lennon was shot by a mentally disturbed fan, Mark Chapman, in New York December 8, 1980 as he and Ono were entering their New York apartment block.

Jackson's biography is published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Lennon's death. Touching for the first time on how Lennon’s Irish background influenced his music, philosophy and attitude toward life and politics, We All Want to Change the World travels to the heart of the ‘little child inside the man’. 

Health, Mind & Body / Administration & Practice / Public Health

Health Promotion in Practice edited by Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin & Joan Arnold, with a foreword by Lawrence W. Green (Jossey-Bass) 

Striking the right balance between theory, evidence-based guidelines, and the practical experience and wisdom of practitioners is the challenge of every generation of health workers, but that balance has become more challenging with the proliferation of theories, evidence, and varied circumstances of practice. Health promotion adds additional challenges, with its subject matter involving the complexities of human behavior, above and beyond the complexities of human biology.

Into the breach comes Health Promotion in Practice, a practice-driven guide to promoting the health of individuals, families, communities, and groups. It offers basic information about the concepts and methods of social and behavioral sciences relevant to the identification and the solution of public health problems. Health Promotion in Practice translates theories of health promotion into a step-by-step clinical approach for engaging with clients. The book covers the theoretical frameworks of health promotion, clinical approaches to the eleven healthy behaviors – eating well, physical activity, sexual health, oral health, smoking cessation, substance safety, injury prevention, violence prevention, disaster preparedness, organizational wellness, and enhancing development – as well as critical factors shaping the present and the future of the field. Written by the leading practitioners and researchers in the field of health promotion, and edited by Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin, associate professor at Columbia University, Teachers College, and senior member, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, New York, and Joan Arnold, professor of nursing, The College of New Rochelle School of Nursing, New York, Health Promotion in Practice is intended to serve as both a text and a reference.

Gorin and Arnold focused their health promotion matrix in the first edition on clinical practice, ac­knowledging the greater complexities presented by the social, cultural, and eco­nomic forces affecting health in the broader community. But they related clinical practice to that broader reality with their placement of clinical practice within an ecological framework of community influences. With this second edition they have stretched their courage and challenged their readers to stretch beyond the clinical to organizational wellness, with a stronger emphasis on health management, policy, and community disaster pre­paredness. Health Promotion in Practice links clinical practice with the social ecology of health be­havior, emphasizing cultural competence and the broader contexts of economic and even global influences.

The four chapters in Part One, "Health, Health Promotion, and the Health Care Professional," describe the theoretical frameworks on which the work rests. Chapter One, "Images of Health," begins that description by presenting various con­structions of health, such as health as a balanced state, health as goodness of fit, health as transcendence, and health as power. Such images represent the clustering of views on health and provide a framework to explain the dynamics of client change.

"Models of Health Promotion," Chapter Two, explores contemporary theo­retical approaches to health promotion. It integrates the images of health with models of health promotion, from the macro level, such as the social ecology model, to the micro level, including the health belief model. It highlights the moral underpinnings for these varied models of health promotion, as well as the cross-cutting constructs of empowerment and cultural competence

In Chapter Three, "Contexts for Health Promotion," the myriad political and economic forces influencing health promotion are detailed. With the expanding influence of international bodies like the World Health Organization, global legislation and policy mandates are changing the purview of national health promotion. States are playing a larger role in the maintenance of health for their citizens and in the protection of the most vulnerable. "Agents for Health Promotion," Chapter Four, describes who the current health care professionals are and the principles of practice that unify them across disciplines.

Part Two of Health Promotion in Practice, "Practice Frameworks for Health Promotion," is organized around clinical approaches specific to eleven healthy behaviors: eating well, physical activity, sexual health, oral health, smoking cessation, substance safety injury prevention, violence prevention, disaster preparedness, organizational wellness, and enhancing development. The introduction to each chapter establishes the importance of the area and provides an evidence-based literature review. The chapter then moves on to suggest clinical interventions. Each chapter concludes with practice-related resources for engaging with clients in a dialogue about health promotion.

Chapter Five, "Eating Well," describes the role food plays in daily life, especially given the increased attention to obesity as a national health concern. Unlike behaviors such as smoking, eating is not something that clients can just stop doing. In changing eating behaviors, the health care professional must recognize that clients ingest food, not nutrients.

Chapter Six, "Physical Activity," explores activity as a major contributor to risk reduction for multiple diseases, including non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, and as central to weight control and the maintenance of bone mass. Using trans-theoretical theory, techniques for assisting sedentary clients are described as well as mechanisms for engaging moderately or highly active clients. The Patient-Centered Assessment and Counseling for Exercise (PACE) program, an empirically tested program for systematic exercise development, is explored in depth.

Chapter Seven, "Sexual Health," looks at sexuality as a healthy dimension of being human. With an understanding of the diversity of sexual health needs across varied subgroups, the chapter examines how sexual health is defined and promoted. After assessing the evidence for the effectiveness of sexual health promotion, the chapter presents two interventions for clinical care settings: taking sexual histories and promoting individual safer sex.

In Chapter Eight, "Oral Health," the effects of common oral diseases and health conditions that place clients at risk of periodontal diseases, dental decay, and oral cancer are reviewed. An emphasis is placed on recognizing symptoms of these oral diseases through clinical assessment. Evidence-based preventive health activities are provided for health care professionals to use with their clients to prevent new disease and to reduce the severity of existing disease.

Chapter Nine, "Smoking Cessation," highlights the population subgroups that continue to smoke despite the enormous resources applied to both national and worldwide smoking cessation education and legislation. It addresses the causes of smoking, including emerging findings on genetic susceptibility. Further, the chapter explores key interventions for smoking cessation, particularly among the vulnerable oncology and psychiatric populations.

Chapter Ten, "Substance Safety," details the benefits of such safety promo­tion. It classifies drugs into several types: prescribed and over-the-counter drugs; banned street drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin; alternative medicines, such as herbs and vitamins; and social drugs, such as nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol. Alcohol, the most widely used of the risky substances, is the focus of the remainder of the chapter.

Chapter Eleven, "Injury Prevention,' investigates injuries as a public health problem. It begins with the causes and magnitude of the problem, detailing the epidemiology of injuries. Axioms for injury prevention are then provided to guide efforts to control this problem. The chapter describes strategies for health promotion, education and behavioral change, legislation and law enforcement, use of engineering and technology, and use of combined behavioral and environ­mental approaches to injury prevention.

Resting on an epidemiologic base, Chapter Twelve, "Violence Prevention," details the significant advances that have been made in understanding violence as a public health issue. Using a taxonomy of types of violence and an ecological framework, violent behavior is thoughtfully examined. A framework for violence prevention and intervention is outlined as are strategies for program evaluation. The process of implementing and disseminating effective interventions is illus­trated through discussion of the use of consensus documents and evidence-based guidelines and the involvement of those public health agencies that are leading the efforts to reduce violence.

Chapter Thirteen, "Disaster Preparedness," examines emerging concerns about threats to safety and security now omnipresent in the United States. In the prologue, it explores the social ecological determinants of population health following disasters. It also discusses approaches to threat detection, vehicles for terrorism, and human responses to potential disasters. Detailing protocols for system wide evacuations, triage, and treatment, this chapter explores a new area of public health that is now in the forefront of public health professionals' attention.

Chapter Fourteen, "Organizational Wellness," adopts a comprehensive definition that strategically integrates business, interpersonal, and individual needs to optimize overall human and organizational well-being. Applying a myriad of concepts derived from psychology and sociology to the understanding of the work-site as a venue for and an influence on health promotion, this chapter suggests a set of innovative approaches to enhance workplace wellness.

As Chapter Fifteen, "Enhancing Development," unfolds, development is explored as an ongoing and evolving process in individuals, families, groups, and communities. Viewed from a life course perspective, development is seen as complex, unique, and patterned. Resilience, spirituality, and grieving are discussed as significant forces in human systems as they develop. Throughout the chapter, loss and growth are viewed as intrinsically linked, at no time more than at the end of life.

Part Three of Health Promotion in Practice, "Economic Applications and Forecasting the Future of Health Promotion," explores some of the factors shaping the present and the future of the field. Chapter Sixteen, "Economic Considerations in Health Promotion," recognizes the pivotal role economics plays in directing health promotion practice at present. Practical tools for analyzing the economic advantages of health promotion practices are offered. A detailed example of the process of implementing a health promotion program in a managed care organization anchors the chapter.

Finally, Health Promotion in Practice closes with a chapter titled "Future Directions for Health Promotion." This chapter invites students and health professionals to look forward and to create the future of their practice, not just react to it. According to Gorin, it is likely that the opportunities will include addressing the needs of the growing elderly population, designing health promotion for a diverse populace, harnessing the forces of global change to promote health, measuring community change, and engaging in an ongoing ethical dialogue.

Finally, a signature book in which practitioners of health promotion will find relevant guidance for their work. Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin and Joan Arnold have compiled an outstanding cast of savvy experts whose collective effort has resulted in a stunning breadth of coverage. Whether you are a practitioner or a student preparing for practice, this book will help you to bridge the gap between theory and practice-driven empiricism. – John P. Allegrante, professor of health education, Teachers College and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

The models of health promotion around which Health Promotion in Practice is built have a sound basis in current understanding of human development, the impact of community and social systems, and stages of growth, development, and aging. This handbook can provide both experienced health professionals and students beginning to develop practice patterns the content and structure to interactions that are truly promoting of health. – Kristine M. Gebbie, Dr.P.H., R.N., Columbia University School of Nursing

Much has been made in the writings of scientists of the need for theory and evidence to guide practice, but this plea often sounds hollow to practitioners who perceive the theory and the scientific evidence to have come from outside the realities of everyday practice situations. The applications in Health Promotion in Practice should help to bridge that gap between theory and practice. Full of chapters written by the leading practitioners and researchers in the field of health promotion, the book is a key text and reference for students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners. The book will help health professionals and students preparing for practice to find applications of theory in understanding the problems they face in practice, but even more important will be the solutions to problems in practice that will grow out of their greater understanding. Editors Gorin and Arnold have waded courageously into the challenges and complexities of public health to strike the right balance between theory and practice with a creative approach as they sort out and frame the various theories and problems of behavior and of practice. 

Health, Mind & Body / Diet & Weight Loss / Mental Health / Biographies & Memoirs

The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict [LARGE PRINT] by William Leith (Thorndike Press Large Print Biography Series: Thorndike Press) 

Hunger is the loudest voice in my head. I'm hungry most of the time.

"I thought: if I can understand the despair, my own and everybody’s else’s, I could write the story – of why we hate fat, of why we are fat, of why, in some perverse way, we want to be fat. And, most importantly, what we can do to stop being so fat. Obesity is the essential human problem in a nutshell – we try to make life easy by giving ourselves access to resources, and then we make life difficult by over consuming those resources. We have more of everything than we’ve ever had, and yet we feel emptier." – William Leith

William Leith, a leading British journalist, began the eighties slim; by the end of that decade he had packed on an uncomfortable amount of weight. In the early nineties, he was slim again, but his weight began to creep up once more. On January 20th, 2003, he woke up on the fattest day of his life. That same day he left London for New York to interview controversial diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins. But what was meant to be a routine journalistic assignment set Leith on an intensely personal and illuminating journey into the mysteries of hunger and addiction.

From his many years as a journalist, Leith knew that being fat is something people find more difficult to talk about than nearly anything else. But in The Hungry Years he does precisely that. Leith realized that he could not report on diet alone; he wanted desperately to develop a deeper understanding of his relationship with food and the pathological cravings that led him (and millions of others) to become dangerously overweight. His Atkins interview led him to probe not only the link between carbohydrates and addiction, but also how our relationship with food has changed over the last few decades in light of economic, technological, and cultural changes in the world, as well as our cultural obsession with our bodies. 

…In his fast-paced, stream-of-conscious style, Leith molds a journalistic exposé, a food journal and a memoir into the personal exploration of a man consumed by a consuming society. … Leith's ups and downs will ring true for anyone who has tried to lose a significant amount of weight, and the revelations that come out of Leith's therapy sessions will undoubtedly have readers asking why they really want that doughnut. – Publishers Weekly
The Hungry Years is a confessional, satirical, wise, tragic, truly original book about addiction, food and what's really inside a fat man that's trying to get out. The Hungry Years defies categorization – it's part memoir, part diet book, part comedy, and part sugar rush. It's the first real book about body image for men, and it breaks taboos, breaks new ground, and breaks your heart. William Leith has finally fulfilled his always huge potential. I loved it. – Tim Lott, cultural critic and author of White City Blue 
A personal journey of discovery, written as a feverish addict's memoir: waist size, sex life, repressed childhood bullying, it's all laid bare in painful details. It's wired, often desperate but, finally, hopeful. Its striking design and well-connected author will ensure plenty of exposure and unlike most books about diets, you don't have to feel guilty about devouring it. – Bookseller (UK)

Fat has been called a feminist issue: William Leith's unblinking look at the physical consequences and psychological pain of being an overweight man charts fascinating new territory for everyone who has ever had a craving or counted a calorie. The Hungry Years is a story of food, fat, and addiction that is both funny and heart wrenching.

Combining the science of food addiction with memoir, humor, and sociological insights, The Hungry Years forces us to look at our culture of consumption in a new way. 

Health, Mind & Body / Diet & Weight Loss

Make Over Your Metabolism: 4 Weeks to a Faster Metabolism and a Fitter, Firmer You by Robert Reames (Meredith Books)

• Drop pounds. Gain energy.

• Look and feel great!

• Metabolism is the key to energy and weight loss.

Now, according to Robert Reams, nationally recognized fitness expert and head fitness consultant/trainer for Dr. Phil’s Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge, a tested and proven approach to fitness gives readers the power to boost their metabolism permanently.

Reams strongly believes that continuing education is a lifelong endeavor and constantly provides his predominately executive clientele with the latest research in exercise science, as well as the most up-to-date information in the fields of health, wellness, weight loss, anti-aging, sports specific training, and injury prevention.

Reams asks readers: Why can some people eat all they want and still stay thin? Answer: Their high metabolism simply burns up the calories. Reames’ breakthrough fitness and nutrition plan revs up readers’ sluggish metabolism so they burn more calories even when they’re not working out.

Make Over Your Metabolism provides a road map to ultimate fitness, including:

• Workout options for any level of fitness.
• Exercises for working out at home, on the road, or in the gym.
• Journal pages to track progress.
• Tips to staying motivated.
• A four-week meal plan with foods that boost calorie-burning muscle.

Highlights of the program include:

• Focused 4-week program based on an innovative exercise concept – ‘metabolic burst training’ – that turns the body into an efficient calorie-burning machine 24/7 with just 3 hours of exercise per week.
• Special sequences of easy-to-do exercises, proven to deliver real fitness results.
• Detailed photos show the suggested order and correct form for every exercise.
• Expert nutrition advice to increase the metabolism and maximize the body’s ability to burn fat while also taming cravings.
• Detailed recommended eating plan to help get the most out of each meal and snack.
• Guidance to specific lifestyle practices that can be easily put into a daily routine to help normalize metabolism and ensure greatest results.
• A simple guide to designing a home gym – five pieces of basic equipment.
• Bonus: Optional programs, each 4 weeks long, which target specific trouble zones (i.e., abs, thighs, hips, etc.) and step up fitness level.

Make Over Your Metabolism offers four basic workouts 30 minutes in length:

• Tubing and body-weight workout.
• Chair and dumbbell workout.
• Stability ball and dumbbell workout.
• Gym workout.

Read this book and change your life! – Torn Freston, President and CEO, Viacom Inc.

I lost 141 pounds in nine months. – Jim Toth, winner of Dr. Phil's Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge

Robert ramped up my fitness program to a new level that I never thought my 43-year-old body could endure. – Monika Barkley, Dr. Phil's Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge and ABC's Extreme Makeover

Make Over Your Metabolism integrates timesaving exercise techniques, the latest nutrition advice, and proven lifestyle strategies that increase readers’ energy as well as their metabolism – and, if applied consistently, gives each reader a body that is more trim, toned, and noticed. All it takes is a decision to get started. 

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Compassion and Courage in the Aftermath of Traumatic Loss: Stones in My Heart Forever by Kathryn Bedard (The Haworth Press, Inc.) presents a glimpse into the mind and heart of a mental health clinician who volunteered after the World Trade Center attacks.

Written as the events unfolded, Compassion and Courage in the Aftermath of Traumatic Loss gives a behind-the-scenes view of disaster response, including the mechanics of developing a plan, setting up systems to address the needs of survivors and victims' families, and the responses of those who suddenly found themselves in the midst of one of the most traumatic events in recent history. Kathryn Bedard illustrates through this personal journal the reactions of families, the stages of grief, the stages of compassion fatigue, coping with trauma exposure, the effects of the disaster on survivors and disaster workers, and ultimately, the touching lessons learned of compassion, strength, hope, and courage.

Bedard has been in human services since 1972 and has extensive clinical experience, including treatment of individuals with severe and persistent mental illness in psychiatric inpatient hospitals; she also has extensive administrative experience in program development, policy development, implementation, clinical and administrative supervision; and she has been a faculty member of the Rutgers School of Alcohol and Drug Studies.

This book is a journal about journeys to Ground Zero, a mass graveyard. These journeys were crucial to the families and survivors who made them. They were, for the most part, the first steps in their recovery process. As a clinician and someone who has responded to almost 70 disasters, I can attest that this book is a valuable resource for all clinicians studying posttraumatic experience and secondary or vicarious traumatization. Find heart in the tragedy – find hope and gratitude that helpers are there. – Judy Farrar Nicholson, MSW, LCSW-C, Disaster Mental Health Manager, American Red Cross

This volume ... pulls at your heart and soul, as it should. Kathryn Bedard's book – journal, really – of her work at the New Jersey Family Assistance Center after 9/11 allows us to walk with these angels as they escort the families into the hell of Ground Zero and back out again. – Craig Nakken, LICSW, LMFT, author of The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior

Compassion and Courage in the Aftermath of Traumatic Loss provides a stirring look at disaster response and the overwhelming emotions that result; it is vital reading for human services professionals, medical professionals, clinicians, early responders, disaster workers, educators, students, families of victims and survivors, and for anyone interested in the day-to-day trials and tribulations of this horrific historic event. Compassion and Courage in the Aftermath of Traumatic Loss is more than a retelling; the book enfolds readers with intense multi-sense descriptions of what happened after the soul-searing disaster and the ways people tried to cope. Bernard presents a clear picture of post-disaster operations, along with the ways in which support was provided to survivors and families. She reveals important lessons along the way, most of all about how simple, ordinary people can rise to extraordinary heights of courage, compassion, and resiliency.  

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help / Religion & Spirituality

The Templeton Plan: 21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness (4 Audio CDs, abridged, running time 4 hours, 37 minutes) by John Marks Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press)

Sir John Templeton was born in Winchester, Tennessee, went to Yale and then to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He is known for his astute investment skills on Wall Street and through the Templeton Mutual Funds. In 1987 he founded the John Templeton Foundation, and he currently funds the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Templeton believes that his financial accomplishments are directly related to his strong convictions.

Forbes has called John Marks Templeton "one of the handful of true investment greats in a field of crowded mediocrity and bloated reputations." Templeton, regarded by Wall Sweet as one of the world's wisest investors, shares his personal plan for increasing listeners’ quotient of happiness and prosperity in The Templeton Plan. According to Templeton, the secret to life lies in having a plan to live by.

The Templeton Plan reveals the secrets of Templeton’s phenomenal success in 21 principles that provide readers with guidelines for prosperity and happiness. He maintains that the common denominator connecting successful people with successful enterprises is a devotion to ethical and spiritual principles. He emphasizes the ‘laws of life’ – truthfulness, perseverance, thrift, enthusiasm, humility and altruism – that can help everyone discover and develop their individual abilities. The practical steps – to be followed one step a day for three weeks –  can improve anyone's personal and professional life. These steps, which form the structure of the program, are:

1. Learning the Laws of Life
2. Using What You Have
3. Helping Yourself by Helping Others
4. Putting First Things First
5. Achieving Happiness by What You Do
6. Finding the Positive in Every Negative
7. Investing Yourself in Your Work
8. Creating Your Own Luck
9. Utilizing Two Principles of Success
10. Making Time Your Servant
11. Giving the Extra Ounce
12. Conserving Your Resources to Best Advantage
13. Progressing Onwards and Upwards
14. Controlling Your Thoughts for Effective Action
15. Loving as the Essential Ingredient
16. Maximizing the Power of Your Faith
17. Receiving Strength Through Prayer
18. Giving as a Way of Life
19. Winning Through Humility
20. Discovering New Frontiers
21. Seeking Solutions

The solid program described in The Templeton Plan is spiritual and common-sensical in nature; it’s about self-management more than about money management. By following Templeton's twenty one step program, vital connec­tions between beliefs in religious principles and belief in oneself are revealed, enabling listeners to become more successful and happier.  

History / Europe

Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840 -1870 by Liza Picard (St. Martin’s Press) 

When reflecting on an age of dramatic technological change, it is all too common to focus more on the technology than the people who were affected by it. After all, the buildings of Victorian London are still with us, while its inhabitants are long gone.

But Victorian London takes readers back. To Londoners, the years 1840 to 1870 were years of dramatic change and achievement. As suburbs expanded and roads multiplied, London was ripped apart to build railway lines and stations and life-saving sewers. The Thames was contained by embankments, and traffic congestion was eased by the first underground railway in the world. A start was made on providing housing for the ‘deserving poor.’ There were significant advances in medicine, and the Ragged Schools are perhaps the least known of Victorian achievements, in those last decades before universal state education. In 1851 the Great Exhibition managed to astonish almost everyone, attracting exhibitors and visitors from all over the world.

Liza Picard in Victorian London shows readers the physical reality of daily life. Picard, author of an acclaimed set of books about London, takes readers into schools and prisons, churches and cemeteries. Many practical innovations of the time – flushing lavatories, underground railways, umbrellas, letter boxes, driving on the left – point the way forward. But London was also, at least until the 1850s, a city of cholera outbreaks, transportation to Australia, public executions, and the workhouse, where children could be sold by their parents for as little as £12 and street peddlers sold sparrows for a penny, tied by the leg for children to play with. Cruelty and hypocrisy flourished alongside invention, industry, and philanthropy.

In this history about class consciousness, burgeoning suburbs, and leading industries in post-Industrial London, Picard's Victorian London uses unpublished diaries of Londoners from all classes to uncover signs of progress in the great metropolis – from sewer systems and umbrellas to urban oases and the Underground.

The author freezes a three-decade time frame to capture the essence – literally, the sights, sounds, and odors – of the British capital at the height of the Victorian era. Picard's systematic examination offers both detail and insight into conditions of life, from all walks of life, as she presents an account at once greatly factual and highly atmospheric. The format is logical and the material easy to follow, with chapters ranging in topic from "Smells"…, "The Streets," "Destitution and Poverty," "Upper Classes and Royalty," "Health," "Education," and "Religion." Not for casual browsers but for serious and well-versed readers seeking to stoke their interest in learning more about the city that, at the time, was the world's capital. – Brad Hooper, Booklist

This compassionate and wonderfully observant book re-creates the splendor and misery, the inventiveness and energy, the vices and pleasures of that extraordinary age. Victorian London is full of acute detail and humor, setting it apart from traditional history books. In an era that emphasized class distinctions, Picard covers everything from health to amusements, providing a vivid social history of one of London's most dramatic and exciting periods.
 

History / Europe / Philosophy

First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea by Paul Woodruff (Oxford University Press) 

If you can vote, if the majority rules, if you have elected representatives – does this automatically mean that you have a democracy?

Americans have an unwavering faith in democracy and are ever eager to import it to nations around the world. But how democratic is our own ‘democracy’?

First Democracy is an eye-opening look at an ideal that we all take for granted; classical scholar Paul Woodruff offers some surprising answers to these questions. Drawing on classical literature, philosophy, and history – with many intriguing passages from Sophocles, Aesop, and Plato, among others – Woodruff immerses us in the world of ancient Athens to uncover how the democratic impulse first came to life. The heart of First Democracy isolates seven conditions that are the sine qua non of democracy: freedom from tyranny, harmony, the rule of law, natural equality, citizen wisdom, reasoning without knowledge, and general education. Woodruff, Darrel K. Royal Professor in Ethics and American Society and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin, concludes that a true democracy must be willing to invite everyone to join in government. It must respect the rule of law so strongly that even the government is not above the law. True democracy must be mature enough to accept changes that come from the people. And it must be willing to pay the price of education for thoughtful citizenship. If we learn anything from the story of Athens, Woodruff concludes, it should be this – never lose sight of the ideals of democracy.

Paul Woodruff takes us to where democracy began – as a beautiful idea – and brings us all the way to the present moment of peril and the challenge we face to fulfill the dream. – Bill Moyers

This book is a masterpiece. It's a heartfelt story of the birth, life and death of real democracy in ancient Athens and, by implication, its country cousin in America. Woodruff … subtly compares how modern American democracy has collapsed, as did Athens, because of imperial overreach and betrayal of democratic ideals by ambitious elites. He correctly concludes, with a fervent hope, that America's future salvation lies in finding a way to be true to Athens at its best. – Ted Becker, Alumni Professor of Political Science, Auburn University

This elegant essay from a distinguished classicist raises fundamental questions relevant to our contemporary political life through the prism of the Athenian democracy. The reader may disagree with Woodruff's policy prescriptions – I do, myself – but one must admire the insights and erudition of the analysis. It is a beautiful book. – Philip C. Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History

…This book will make even jaded readers want to see more of that ideal in action. – Publishers Weekly

First Democracy is compact, eloquent book which illuminates the ideals of democracy and lights the way as we struggle to keep democracy alive at home and around the world.
 

History / Middle East

The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 by Gershom Gorenberg (Times Books) 

There is little doubt that the best way to truly understand current events is to go back several decades in history. Never has that been truer than with the current stasis of Israel, a region that continually experiences great turbulence. Veteran journalist Gershom Gorenberg takes readers back several decades in A Question of Torture, a riveting look at the moments that led to much of what we've seen recently in the news for the region, and that sheds light on what might be in store for Israel.

The Accidental Empire is the untold story, based on groundbreaking original research, of the actions and inactions that created the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
After Israeli troops defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967, the Jewish state seemed to have reached the pinnacle of success. But far from being a happy ending, the Six-Day War proved to be the opening act of a complex political drama, in which the central issue became: Should Jews build settlements in the territories taken in that war? Today – nearly forty years after the war's end – this question continues to drive events in the Middle East, from the pullout from Gaza, to the Israeli elections following Ariel Sharon's stroke, to the landslide win of Hamas in the recent Palestinian vote.
The Accidental Empire is Gorenberg’s account of the strange birth of the settler movement, which was the child of both Labor Party socialism and religious extremism. It features the giants of Israeli history – Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Levi Eshkol, Yigal Allon – as well as more contemporary figures like Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. Gorenberg shows how the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations turned a blind eye to what was happening in the territories, and reveals their strategic reasons for doing so.
Drawing on newly opened archives from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Texas to the settlement records in the West Bank and Golan Heights, Gorenberg, who has been based in Jerusalem for more than twenty years, reconstructs what the top officials knew and when they knew it, while weaving in the dramatic first-person accounts of the settlers themselves.

An indispensable and riveting account – Naomi Klein, The Nation

Revelatory ... [An] essential guide to understanding Israel's own contribution to its current tragic pass. – Publishers Weekly, starred review

Of hard choices and strange bedfellows: an illuminating account of a current controversy that extends back many years, namely, Israeli settlements beyond the bounds of Israel . . . An exemplary history of a phenomenon that is still unfolding. – Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Given recent developments in both Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled areas, this is a timely, vital, and even riveting analysis of how the current territorial and ethnic Gordian knot developed. – Booklist, starred review

A thoroughly documented, path breaking analysis of Israel’s disastrous settlement project in the occupied territories; it reads like a chapter in Barbara Tuchman’s well-known book, The March of Folly. – Amos Elon, author of The Pity of It All and The Israelis: Founders and Sons

The Accidental Empire is an extraordinary book. It offers insight and understanding into a period that has never been well understood. …As Gershom Gorenberg shows in this wonderfully written history, the building of settlements took on a life of its own – too easy to do, too hard to stop, and too easy to simply let happen. – Dennis Ross, former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, and author of The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace

Proclaimed a ‘groundbreaking investigation’ by the bestselling historian Michael Oren, The Accidental Empire is a masterful, eye-opening look at a complex history that continues to resonate to this day. Fast-moving and penetrating, The Accidental Empire casts the entire enterprise of West Bank ‘resettlement’ in a new and controversial light, calling into question much of what we think we know about this issue that continues to haunt the Middle East. What really sets the book apart is that it is a gripping and articulate narrative of history – one which provides a foundation to a better understanding of current affairs.

Home & Garden

Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens by Penny Underwood (The Crowood Press, distributed in the US by Trafalgar Square Publishing)

Japanese gardens over the centuries have expressed awareness of the natural world and acknowledged the interdependence of plants, rocks, gravels and water. Spiritual beliefs have been embraced with Taoist, Shinto and Buddhist myths and legends woven into the developing designs.

For the Japanese, the garden is a microcosm of the world, rich in symbols; it is also the perfect expression of their affinity with nature. From early times, natural materials that were close to hand have been skillfully maneuvered to create vignettes of Japanese life, whether it be in a restricted space within the confines of a dwelling, in a small garden leading to the Tea House, in association with magnificent shrines and temples, or providing recreational parks for emperors and nobility. The common thread running through the design, creation and nurturing of Japanese-style gardens was and is the recognition of man's affinity with the natural world. The resultant aura has a powerful effect on those open to spiritual experiences.

Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens explains the spiritual and philosophical symbolism of the Japanese garden and how Western gardeners can recreate its beauty and serenity. Featuring more than 300 color photos and drawings, Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens is a lavishly illustrated introduction to the unique qualities of Japanese gardens and what they express, as well as a practical guide to their design, creation, and care. Among the topics are:

• History, philosophy and spirituality – an introduction to what a Japanese-style garden can represent and mean.
• Changing styles, design and fusui – from pavements and stepping stones to gateways and lanterns.
• Plants and planting – the importance of the cultivation, choice, positioning and maintenance of plants is explained and practical tips given.
• Water and structural features – whatever their scale, these features enhance the tranquility and beauty of the garden.
• Gardens of Japan and advice on gardening in the West.

Inspiring as well as practical, Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens is a guide to the Japanese style of garden. By dispelling some Western misconceptions, Designing and Creating Japanese Gardens, written by Penny Underwood, degreed, professional horticulturalist, brings readers closer to the experience of peace and tranquility that is the quintessence of Japanese gardens through the ages. With it extensive and lavish photographs and line drawings, the book is sure to inspire enthusiasts and attract all gardeners, whatever their experience and their gardening space.
 

Literature & Fiction / International

Absent by Betool Khedairi, translated from the Arabic by Muhayman Jamil (The American University in Cairo Press) 

There is a demand – make that a need or a hunger – in the U.S., in the West, in the English-speaking world, for fiction to help ordinary people understand the way people in the Middle East think, how they conduct their lives – where are the writers to satisfy the need? Here’s one…

Betool Khedairi was born in Baghdad in 1965 to an Iraqi father and a Scottish mother. She received a B.A. in French literature from the University of Mustansiriya and then traveled between Iraq, Jordan and the United Kingdom. She worked in the food industry while writing her first novel, A Sky So Close, published in Arabic in 1999 and now translated into English, Italian, French and Dutch. Absent is her second novel.

Set in a crowded apartment building in Bagdad in the 1990s, Absent tells the story of Dalal, a young Iraqi woman living with the childless aunt and uncle who raised her. Dalal and her neighbors try to maintain normal lives despite the crippling effect of bombings and international sanctions resulting from the first Gulf War. By turns affectionate, wry, and darkly comic, Absent paints a moving portrait of people struggling to get by in impossible circumstances. Upstairs, the fortune-teller Umm Mazin offers her customers cures for their physical and romantic ailments; below, Saad the hairdresser attends to a dwindling number of female customers; and on the second floor, the nurse Ilham dreams of her long-lost French mother to escape the grim realities she sees in the children's ward at the hospital. Hoping to bring in much needed cash by selling honey, Dalal's uncle turns to beekeeping, and instructs his niece in the care and feeding of these temperamental creatures. With memories of happier times during the ‘Days of Plenty’ of her childhood, Dalal falls in love for the first time against a background of surprise arrests, personal betrayals, and a crumbling social fabric that turns neighbors into informants.  

Tightly crafted and skillfully told, Absent, translated by Muhayman Jamil, who was born in Bagdad, and is currently an associate specialist in palliative medicine in London, is a haunting portrait of life under sanctions, the fragile emotional ties between individuals, and, ultimately, the resilience of the human spirit.
 

Literature & Fiction / History & Criticism / Religion & Spirituality

The New Testament and Literature: A Guide to Literary Patterns by Stephen Cox (Open Court)

The New Testament is perhaps the most influential book in the world from an intellectual, religious and literary standpoint. So pervasively influential has the New Testament been within English-speaking culture that even works by anti-Christian authors or writers whose orientation to Christianity is ambiguous persistently replicate the New Testament's literary patterns. But while the New Testament's impact upon people's religious beliefs and practices has been analyzed – and continues to be analyzed – at length and in detail, amazingly little has been written about the New Testament's impact as literature.

In The New Testament and Literature, Stephen Cox offers a literary guide to the New Testament and to some of the classic works of Christian literature that have followed it. Cox, Professor of Literature and Director of the Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego, identifies the literary formulas in the New Testament and shows how these elements have shaped English and American literature. He looks at the New Testament both as a distinctive work of literature and as a productive influence on later works of literature. Cox begins with fundamental questions of the origin and nature of the New Testament, identifies its literary genres, and shows how its basic literary patterns unite specific ideas with specific techniques.

Making the New Testament accessible as literature does not mean examining its techniques in abstraction from its mes­sage. Nor does it mean tracing its themes in abstraction from its literary methods. The New Testament and Literature approaches its subject by identifying certain patterns, certain combinations of ideas and methods, that give the New Testament its distinctiveness and coherence and its ability to create resemblances to itself in later literature. Cox calls these patterns the ‘DNA’ of the New Testament.

Part I (the first eight chapters) explores these patterns, identifying specific elements of the New Testament's DNA, and examining their effects on the four major types of New Testament literature: gospel, epistle, church history, and apocalypse. The chief examples are the gospels of Luke and John, the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of Paul to the Galatians and the Corinthians, and the Revelation.

Part II (Chapters 9-16), the heart of the book, examines the influence of New Testament patterns on a wide range of English and American literature. Chapter 9 shows the persistence of the New Testament DNA in one of the earliest works in the English language, the Dream of the Rood, and in a story written twelve centuries later, Rudyard Kipling's "The Gardener." Chapter 10 samples the vast popular literature of Christian revival, with special reference to George Foxe's Book of Martyrs, a work of the Protestant Reformation, and Christian hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter 11 discusses the importance of the New Testament DNA in the seemingly opposed religious movements represented by John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress and the poetry of John Donne and George Herbert. Chapter 12 explores the tradition of New Testament individualism, as represented especially in the work of William Blake and Emily Dickinson. Chapter 13 takes up the influence of the book of Revelation, particularly in American culture. It looks at a variety of popular American writers, including Dickinson, Julia Ward Howe, James Baldwin, and Vachel Lindsay. Chapter 14 analyzes literary challenges to Christianity, exposing their ironic tendency to assimilate Christian patterns of thought and writing. This chapter considers works by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, D.H. Lawrence, Harold Frederic, Sinclair Lewis, and others. Chapter 15 follows some of the many literary responses that Christians and non-Christians have made to attacks on Christianity and the New Testament. The authors considered here include Thornton Wilder, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Betjeman, Martin Luther King, C.S. Lewis, and Robert Browning. Chapter 16 studies two distinguished examples of twentieth-century literature, the fiction of I.F. Powers and the poetry of T.S. Eliot – vivid illustrations of the way in which the same New Testament patterns can renew themselves in works that seem radically different in approach and style.

For readers’ convenience, Part III presents the texts of some of the works discussed in the book.

The New Testament and Literature is a large quarry from which English teachers will take useful paving stones. Stephen Cox makes thoughtful comments on writers from Luke to Lewis (both Sinclair and C.S.). – Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-chief, World magazine

The New Testament and Literature does what some books only promise to do. It explains the characteristic literary features of the New Testament – its ‘DNA’ – and then demonstrates how this 'DNA' helps us read the texts as they were written. Marrying his literary expertise to his biblical knowledge, Professor Cox traces the New Testament's ‘DNA’ through literature in English, showing how much it relies on the New Testament. – Michael E. Travers, Professor of English, Southeastern College

Many books have been written about ‘the Bible as literature.’ For some, the phrase means, in effect, the Old Testament as literature. For many others, it means the study of historical issues that have little to do with the special characteristics of New Testament writing. Few books are willing to assess the literary quality of the New Testament, and fewer still are written for intelligent readers who may not already be very familiar with the Bible or Christian teachings, but The New Testament and Literature is one. This book is not primarily theological, historical, or devotional. It does something uncommon, something often mentioned or recommended but rarely attempted in a serious way – it explicates the Bible’s real impact on English literature. The book will be very useful for English teachers.
 

Medicine / Philosophy / Ethics

Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies, 2nd edition edited by Richard T Hull (Prometheus Books) 

In the last few decades, as new reproductive technologies have been developed, couples desiring children have increasingly turned to various medical interventions when natural conception has been unsuccessful. These new technologies have raised ethical concerns from various quarters, including medical ethics committees, the American Fertility Society, and the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies provides an overview of the ethical implications of reproductive technologies; in it philosopher Richard T. Hull offers a cross-section of the thinking of individuals specializing in the ethical and legal problems involved in this new area of medicine. The contributors – including Joseph Patzinger and Pope Benedict XVI – reflect interests as varied as those of the enthusiastic proponent of the new reproductive technologies, the feminist opposing the exploitation of women, the social critic worrying about erosion of the responsibilities of parenting, and the traditionalist concerned with the transformation of the fundamental moral fabric and social character of the family. Many of the chapters include cases for further discussion and reflection. Also included are three speculative scenarios: selections from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Gena Corea’s report of the drive to develop an artificial womb.

In this updated second edition, Hull, recognized researcher in the field of ethics, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, offers, in addition to the areas covered in the first edition, in a new chapter, the vision – to some, utopian, but to the contributors, dystopian (that is, the reverse of uto­pian) – of the future of reproduction as society comes to terms with the consequences of decreasing fertility in the industrialized world and the social, religious and technological imperatives of our new reproductive possibilities. The book also provides a glossary of ethical, legal, medical, and technical terms. The glossary also lists URLs for Internet resources where readers can access additional information about the terms.

The work lies squarely in the discipline of bioethics because it is concerned with the application of biotechnology to problems of fertility and practices of childbearing. At the same time, we can view this work as overlapping with the more general ethical concerns about having children that have come to characterize much of our social reflection about human institutions. The concern in Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies is first with the struggles of individuals who have unsuccessfully attempted to have children, and with the professional ethical concerns and motivations of those who have sought to bring relief to the couples' problems of infertility with medical technology. Finally, with the uses of the available technology developed for medical purposes, it seeks to also address the needs and wants of individuals not afflicted with biological causes of infertility. Contributors provide factual information about the scope and limitations of those technologies, and the uses to which these technologies have been put. Essays examine the functions of the technologies in the wider cultural context of our collective wisdom about human reproduction broadly construed.

[Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies] provides many potentially interesting hours of discussion for college courses in ethics and morals. Health care professionals, particularly those who counsel infertile couples, will find it an accurate, up-to-date reference source book. Infertile couples, their friends, and their families will find, from the many different viewpoints expressed, guides for personal and societal decisions. – Science Books and Films

Ethical Issues in the New Reproductive Technologies is an excellent and highly informative collection of expert articles sure to stimulate appreciation of the complex and multi-tiered character of moral decision-making as it is experienced by patients, medical professionals, and legislators and jurists charged with preserving, protecting, and applying justly the principles of society.
 

Mysteries & Thrillers

All in One Piece by Cecelia Tishy (Mysterious Press: Warner Books) 

Prolific writer Cecelia Tishy, Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, who has won the University's prize for excellence in teaching, lived in Boston for some 20 years before moving to Nashville. When she introduced Boston’s psychic-sleuth Reggie Cutter in Now You See Her (reviewed by www.SirReadaLot.org) she was greeted with high praise. Publishers Weekly said, "Tishy's mystery thriller with a psychic twist introduces an engaging new heroine...Tishy does a good job conveying the feel of contemporary Boston." Booklist said "With just the right degree of psychic intercession, Tishy neatly interweaves the disparate threads of her newly divorced, forty-something protagonist's life. An appealing mix of foolish enthusiasm and derring-do, Reggie makes a reasonably credible and quite likable amateur detective."

Now Reggie returns in Tishy's new novel, All in One Piece. When Reggie is hit by a car while crossing the street in front of her townhouse in Boston's South End, she gratefully accepts the help of her attractive upstairs tenant, financial analyst Steven Damelin. Over ice packs, Reggie is surprised to hear that Steven and her late Aunt Jo, the psychic, were involved in a deal just before she died, and now Steven wants to get Reggie involved. But before she can hear more, Steven is murdered, and her own apartment door is smeared in blood. Reggie’s used her psychic powers before to help the Boston P. D., but this time she’s the suspect who discovered the body – and she’s relegated to the sidelines. But Reggie knows she must use all her powers to find the murderer – before she becomes the next victim.

Tishey provides a cool, clear portrait of Boston’s property landscape [in All in One Piece] while giving her heroine enough edges to make her more than a television show premise. – Chicago Tribune

Boston psychic Regina ‘Reggie’ Cutter is a little more comfortable with her sometimes strong but always unpredictable paranormal powers in her second outing from English professor Tishy (after 2005's Now You See Her). Reggie escapes with minor injuries after a car tries to run her down outside her South End townhouse, which she inherited along with her psychic abilities from