Salida Book Review

Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop, A History, by Frank Driggs, Charles Haddix, Chuck Haddix. ISBN 0195047672. There were but four major galaxies in the early jazz universe, and three of them--New Orleans, Chicago, and New York--have been well documented in print. But there has never been a serious history of the fourth, Kansas City, until now. In this colorful history, Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix range from ragtime to bebop and from Bennie Moten to Charlie Parker to capture the golden age of Kansas City jazz. Readers will find a colorful portrait of old Kaycee itself, back then a neon riot of bars, gambling dens and taxi dance halls, all ruled over by Boss Tom Pendergast, who had transformed a dusty cowtown into the Paris of the Plains. We see how this wide-open, gin-soaked town gave birth to a music that was more basic and more viscerally exciting than other styles of jazz, its singers belting out a rough-and-tumble urban style of blues, its piano players pounding out a style later known as "boogie-woogie." We visit the great landmarks, like the Reno Club, the "Biggest Little Club in the World," where Lester Young and Count Basie made jazz history, and Charlie Parker began his musical education in the alley out back. And of course the authors illuminate the lives of the great musicians who made Kansas City swing, with colorful profiles of jazz figures such as Mary Lou Williams, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Rushing, and Andy Kirk and his "Clouds of Joy." Here is the definitive account of the raw, hard-driving style that put Kansas City on the musical map. It is a must read for everyone who loves jazz or American music history.

How Soccer Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory Of Globalization, by Franklin Foer. ISBN 0060731427. The global power of soccer might be a little hard for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same skepticism used for the metric system and the threat of killer bees, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, soccer is not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political, and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans. New Republic editor Franklin Foer, a lifelong devotee of soccer dating from his own inept youth playing days to an adulthood of obsessive fandom, examines soccer's role in various cultures as a means of examining the reach of globalization. Foer's approach is long on soccer reportage, providing extensive history and fascinating interviews on the Rangers-Celtic rivalry and the inner workings of AC Milan, and light on direct discussion of issues like world trade and the exportation of Western culture. But by creating such a compelling narrative of soccer around the planet, Foer draws the reader into these sport-mad societies, and subtly provides the explanations he promises in chapters with titles like "How Soccer Explains the New Oligarchs", "How Soccer Explains Islam's Hope", and "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan." Foer's own passion for the game gives his book an infectious energy but still pales in comparison to the religious fervor of his subjects. His portraits of legendary hooligans in Serbia and Britain, in particular, make the most die-hard roughneck New York Yankees fan look like a choirboy in comparison. Beyond the thugs, Foer also profiles Nigerian players living in the Ukraine, Iranian women struggling against strict edicts to attend matches, and the parallel worlds of Brazilian soccer and politics from which Pele emerged and returned. Foer posits that globalization has eliminated neither local cultural identities nor violent hatred among fans of rival teams, and it has not washed out local businesses in a sea of corporate wealth nor has it quelled rampant local corruption. Readers with an interest in international economics are sure to like How Soccer Explains the World, but soccer fans will love it. --John Moe

Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, by Bryan Burrough. ISBN 0143035371. In Public Enemies, bestselling author Bryan Burrough strips away the thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.

Nanny 911: Expert Advice for All Your Parenting Emergencies, by Deborah Carroll, Stella Reid. ISBN 006085295X. Take heart, America. When your family's in trouble, Nanny 911 is there on the double. Because brats are not born, they're made. No one knows that better than Deborah Carroll and Stella Reid -- Nanny Deb and Nanny Stella -- the stars of the overnight hit television show on Fox network. Each week, up to ten million viewers tune in to see the nannies take charge and transform one family's utter chaos into serenity. No matter how loud the tantrums or how clueless the parents, Nanny Deb and Nanny Stella help them become the families they always wanted to be.

Now the nannies share their remarkable wisdom with millions of overwhelmed parents desperate for foolproof parenting advice at their fingertips. They'll show that parents need to change their behavior first -- because when there are no consequences for naughty behavior, kids quickly realize there's no reason for the naughtiness to stop. And when mom and dad just don't know what to do, the kids take over. You'll learn how to confront problems head-on, with firm but loving discipline, effective communication, and the implementation of clear House Rules.

The Road to Esmeralda: A Novel, by Joy Nicholson. ISBN 0312268637. From the author of The Tribes of Palos Verdes, a compelling new novel about a couple's getaway to a Mexican paradise that goes horribly wrong. Joy Nicholson's second novel, The Road to Esmeralda, is a dark, seductive story about Americans abroad. Fed up with their L.A. lives, Nick and Sarah decide to head south to Mexico. They are looking for something: love, self-fulfillment, inspiration, or even just peace of mind. However, as the roads get windier and the jungle thicker, this naïve pair realizes that all of the trappings of society-greed, drugs, violence and jealousy-exist even in the remotest of places. Even tiny Esmeralda has a secret agenda... While her prose remains hearfelt and spare, Nicholson, in The Road to Esmeralda, also reveals a political edge. In exploring the prejudices of a small Mexican town, she weaves a harrowing and tragic story of love, devastation, and what it means to be a young, intelligent American in a very angry world.

Red Leaves, by Thomas H. Cook. ISBN 0151012504. Eric Moore has reason to be happy. He has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith is asked to babysit Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning Amy is missing. Suddenly Eric is one of the stricken parents he has seen on television, professing faith in his child's innocence. As the police investigation increasingly focuses on Keith, Eric must counsel his son, find him a lawyer, protect him from the community's steadily growing suspicion. Except that Eric is not so sure his son is innocent. And if Keith is not . . . and might do the same thing again . . . what then should a father do? Red Leaves is a story of broken trust and one man's heroic effort to hold fast the ties that bind him to everything he loves. Thomas H. Cook is the author of eighteen novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four different categories, and his novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.

Mr. Paradise, by Elmore Leonard. ISBN 0060083964. It's a dubious proposition from the outset, destined to lead to trouble: Chloe Robinette, a high-end former Detroit call girl, asks her lingerie model roommate, Kelly Barr, to help her entertain a wealthy octogenarian trial lawyer named Anthony Paradiso. By "entertain," she means donning a cheerleader's skimpy skirt, but going topless, and doing rah-rah routines beside a TV set while Paradiso--"Mr. Paradise"--watches videotaped football games. A bit kinky for Kelly's taste, but she finally goes along--only to be caught in the middle of a contract hit on Paradiso and Chloe. Rather than tell what little she knows of these crimes, Kelly buys into a scheme, concocted by Paradiso's right-hand man, Montez Taylor, that could lead to a huge payoff from the lawyer's estate. But only if the 27-year-old Kelly can convincingly assume Chloe's identity ...

William Empson: Among The Mandarins, by John Haffenden. ISBN 0199276595. William Empson (1906-1984) was the foremost English literary critic of the twentieth century. He was a man of huge energy and curiosity, and a genuine eccentric who remained imperturbable in the face of all the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself. The discovery of contraceptives in his possession by a bedmaker at Cambridge University led to his being robbed of a promised Fellowship. Yet Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), drafted while he was still an undergraduate, promptly brought him world-wide fame. Empson invented modern literary criticism in English. He acted too as a cultural fifth-columnist, challenging received doctrine in life and literature. "It is a very good thing for a poet . . . to be saying something which is considered very shocking at the time," he maintained. "To become morally independent of one's formative society . . . is the grandest theme of all literature, because it is the only means of moral progress." His public life took him through many of the major political events of the modern world--the rise of imperialism in Japan, the Sino-Japanese war in China, wartime propaganda for the BBC, and the Chinese civil war and Communist takeover of Peking in 1949. His friends and critical sparring partners included I. A. Richards, Kathleen Raine, J. B. S. Haldane, Humphrey Jennings, George Orwell, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, Stephen Spender, Helen Gardner, and T. S. Eliot. "It is of great importance now that writers should try to keep a certain world-mindedness," he insisted. "Without the literatures you cannot have a sense of history, and history is like the balancing-pole of the tightrope-walker . . . ; and nowadays we very much need the longer balancing-pole of not national but world history." His passionate world-mindedness, and his humanism, combativeness, and wit, are fully in evidence in this, the first of two volumes exploring his remarkable life and work.

Catch and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life, by Mark Kingwell. ISBN 0143035142. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part reflection on the deep truths of fly fishing, this original and free-wheeling book brings a philosopher’s (actually a philosophy professor’s) mind to bear on an avocation that turns ordinary men into philosophers. As he relates the progress of his yearly fishing trip to British Columbia with his father and brothers, Mark Kingwell considers everything from work, procrastination, and the way of manhood to the wet vs. dry fly debate and the best ways of fooling a fish. Sly in its humor, unassuming in its erudition, Catch and Release is a perfect book for anyone who loves fishing—or anyone who’s perplexed by it. A professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Mark Kingwell is the author of six books, including The World We Want and Practical Judgments. He is a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.