Salida Book Review

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back, by Norah Vincent. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 111/2 shoes—a perfect disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism that’s destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.

With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a high-octane sales job taught her the gut- wrenching pressures endured by men who would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically sealed as a men’s therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent ended her journey astounded—and exhausted—by the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn’t an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent’s surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.

Rasputin's Daughter, by Robert Alexander. With the same riveting historical narrative that made The Kitchen Boy a national bestseller and a book-club favorite, Robert Alexander returns to revolutionary Russia for the harrowing tale of Rasputin’s final days as told by his youthful and bold daughter, Maria. Interrogated by the provisional government on the details of her father’s death, Maria vividly recounts a politically tumultuous Russia, where Rasputin’s powerful influence over the throne is unsettling to all levels of society and the threats to his life are no secret. With vast conspiracies mounting against her father, Maria must struggle with the discovery of Rasputin’s true nature—his unbridled carnal appetites, mysterious relationship with the empress, rumors of involvement in secret religious cults—to save her father from his murderers. Swept away in a plot much larger than the death of one man, Maria finds herself on the cusp of the Russian Revolution itself. With Rasputin’s Daughter, Robert Alexander once again delivers an imaginative and compelling story, fashioned from one of history’s most fascinating characters who, until now, has been virtually unexplored in fiction.

The Hunt Club, by John Lescroart. A federal judge is murdered, found shot to death in his home—together with the body of his mistress. The crime grips San Francisco. To homicide inspector Devin Juhle, it looks at first like a simple case of a wife’s jealousy and rage. But Juhle’s investigation reveals that the judge had powerful enemies...some of whom may have been willing to kill to prevent him from meddling in their affairs. Meanwhile, private investigator Wyatt Hunt, Juhle’s best friend, finds himself smitten with the beautiful and enigmatic Andrea Parisi. A lawyer who recently has become a celebrity as a commentator on Trial TV, Andrea has star power in spades, and seems bound for a national anchor job in New York City. Until Juhle discovers that Andrea, too, had a connection to the judge, along with a client that had everything to gain from the judge’s death.

And then she suddenly disappears....

Cell: A Novel, by Stephen King. Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological attack. What matters to them is surviving the aftermath. Before long a band of them-"normies" is how they think of themselves-have gathered on the grounds of Gaiten Academy, where the headmaster and one remaining student have something awesome and terrifying to show them on the school's moonlit soccer field. Clearly there can be no escape. The only option is to take them on. CELL is classic Stephen King, a story of gory horror and white-knuckling suspense that makes the unimaginable entirely plausible and totally fascinating.

Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life, by Lloyd Allen. When Martha's longtime friend and former neighbor Lloyd Allen heard those negative stories, he hardly recognized the generous, fun-loving, and down-to-earth woman he's known and loved for years, and after she was indicted, he told Martha he was going to write this book. With Being Martha, Allen introduces you to the flesh-and-blood woman behind the glamorous public image. Drawing on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Martha; her family, including her mother, her daughter, Alexis, her sister Laura, and her brother George; and many of her closest friends and colleagues over the years, the author at last shows us the real Martha: an enormously talented, passionate, determined, and hard-working woman who has achieved phenomenal success by inspiring and enriching the lives of millions.

Lloyd Allen weaves together fascinating, never-before-told stories and details from Martha's early years as a model, stockbroker, and caterer, telling the true story of how an always-busy Connecticut homemaker broke through big-time to become the world's most successful businesswoman at the helm of the company that bears her name, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You'll meet Martha the mentoring teacher and benefactor through the eyes of the many people who view their time with her as the turning point in their careers, even their lives. You'll see Martha's carefree and wild side as she enjoys the simplest things with the excitement and wonder of a kid encountering them for the first time. Allen also describes what Martha really went through during her trial and prison term and how these experiences changed her—making her stronger, more grounded, and more determined than ever to help people learn to enjoy the good things in life. As Martha Stewart begins the next phase of her life, with multiple television shows and new venture after new venture in the works, Being Martha is a must-read for her legion of fans—and for anyone who wants to understand the real Martha Kostyra Stewart.

In the Company of Flowers, by Ron Morgan and Keith Lewis. This beautiful book presents a detailed, step-by-step approach to creating unique and elegant table settings. Using a dramatic floral arrangement as the centerpiece, Ron Morgan shows how to maximize the overall effect through the creative use of props and everyday decorative items. Over 220 colorful photographs detail 70 table settings that are inexpensive to create yet have high visual and decorative impact. The book includes a wealth of practical advice, including when to cut flowers, how to make them last longer, choosing the right container, acceptable substitutions, finishing touches, and much more.

Dave Barry's Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar? by Dave Barry. Did you ever wish that you really understood money? Well, Dave Barry wishes that he did, too. But that hasn’t stopped him from writing this book. In it, Dave explores (as only he can) such topics as:

• How the U.S. economy works, including the often overlooked role of Adam Sandler
• Why it is not a good idea to use squirrels for money
• Strategies that will give you the confidence you need to try for a good job, even though you are—let’s be honest—a no-talent loser
• How corporate executives, simply by walking into their offices, immediately become much stupider
• An absolutely foolproof system for making money in the stock market, requiring only a little effort (and access to time travel)
• Surefire tips for buying and selling real estate, the key being: Never buy—or, for that matter, sell—real estate
• How to minimize your federal taxes, safely and legally, by cheating
• Why good colleges cost so much, and how to make sure your child does not get into one
• How to reduce the cost of your medical care by basically not getting any
• Estate planning, especially the financial benefits of an early death
• And many, many pictures of Suze Orman

But that’s only the beginning! Dave has also included in this book all of the important points from a book written by Donald Trump, so you don’t have to read it yourself. Plus he explains how to tip, how to negotiate for everything (including bridge tolls), how to argue with your spouse about money, and how much allowance to give your children (three dollars is plenty). He also presents, for the first time in print anywhere, the Car Dealership Code of Ethics (“Ethic Seven: The customer is an idiot”). Also, there are many gratuitous references to Angelina Jolie naked. You can’t afford not to buy this book! Probably you need several copies.

Leonardo's Swans: A Novel, by Karen Essex. Isabella d’Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, born into privilege and the political and artistic turbulence of Renaissance Italy, is a stunning black-eyed blonde and a precocious lover and collector of art. Worldly and ambitious, she has never envied her less attractive sister, the spirited but naïve Beatrice, until, by a quirk of fate, Beatrice is betrothed to the future Duke of Milan. Although he is more than twice their age, openly lives with his mistress, and is reputedly trying to eliminate the current duke by nefarious means, Ludovico Sforza is Isabella’s match in intellect and passion for all things of beauty. Only he would allow her to fulfill her destiny: to reign over one of the world’s most powerful and enlightened realms and be immortalized in oil by the genius Leonardo da Vinci.

Though Isabella weds the Marquis of Mantua, a man she has loved since childhood, Beatrice’s fortunes rise effortlessly through her marriage to Ludovico. The two sisters compete for supremacy in the illustrious courts of Europe, and Isabella vows that she will not rest until she wrestles back her true fate and plays temptress to the sensuous Ludovico and muse to the great Leonardo. But when Ludovico’s grand plan to control Europe begins to crumble, immortality through art becomes a luxury, and the two sisters must choose between familial loyalty and survival in the treacherous political climate.

Leonardo’s Swans is an exceptionally vivid evocation of the artist during his years in the glittering court of Milan, re-creating the thrilling moments when he conceived The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. It portrays a genius ahead of his time who can rarely escape the demands of his noble patrons long enough to express his own artistic vision. A haunting novel of rivalry, love, and betrayal that transports readers back to Renaissance Italy, Leonardo’s Swans will have you dashing to the works of the great painter—not for clues to a mystery but to contemplate the secrets of the human heart.

The World to Come, by Dara Horn. A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a thirty-year-old quiz-show writer. As Benjamin and his twin sister try to evade the police, they find themselves recalling their dead parents—the father who lost a leg in Vietnam, the mother who created children's books—and their stories about trust, loss, and betrayal. What is true, what is fake, what does it mean? Eighty years before the theft, these questions haunted Chagall and the enigmatic Yiddish fabulist Der Nister ("The Hidden One"), teachers at a school for Jewish orphans. Both the painting and the questions will travel through time to shape the Ziskinds' futures.

With astonishing grace and simplicity, Dara Horn interweaves a real art heist, history, biography, theology, and Yiddish literature. Richly satisfying, utterly unique, her novel opens the door to "the world to come"—not life after death, but the world we create through our actions right now. Dara Horn, born in 1977, is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Harvard University. Her first novel, In the Image, received three national awards including the National Jewish Book Award. She lives in New York City.

State of the World 2006, by The Worldwatch Institute. In State of the World 2006, the Worldwatch Institute's award-winning research team provides concerned citizens and national leaders with comprehensive analysis of the global environmental problems we face, together with detailed descriptions of practical, innovative solutions, like the increased demand for meat production and consumption, growing awareness of corporate social responsibility, the booming industry of ecotourism, and the ethics and application of nanotechnology. Written in clear and concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of the World 2006 presents a view of our changing world that we, and our leaders, cannot afford to ignore. The Worldwatch Institute is a Washington, DC-based, nonprofit research and publishing organization dedicated to fostering the evolution of an environmentally sustainable society.

Purity of Blood, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Arturo Perez-Reverte is one of the most beloved writers in the world. His bestselling novels, including The Club Dumas and The Queen of the South, have been published in fifty countries and translated into twenty-eight languages. Now, with The Adventures of Captain Alatriste, he delivers a magnificent series, already a million-copy bestseller in Spain, that chronicles the heroic adventures of a seventeenth-century swordsman. In Purity of Blood, the second novel in the series, the courageous Alatriste is considering rejoining his old regiment to fight in Breda-but his blade leads him to another adventure. A desperate father hires him to rescue his daughter from a convent where a powerful priest is said to be using the girl as his personal concubine. The father has been prevented from legal recourse because the priest has threatened to reveal that the man's family is "not of pure blood"-is, in fact, of Jewish descent -which will all but destroy the family name. Alatriste agrees to help, and several nights later, under the cloak of darkness, a rescue attempt is made.

But soon Alatriste discovers that he has become part of a religious and political conspiracy that leads all the way to the highest levels of the Inquisition. When a date is set to burn the man's daughter at the stake, Captain Alatriste springs into action -sword first-setting off a series of twists and turns that will keep readers riveted to the page. Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden. Arturo Perez-Reverte lives near Madrid. Originally a war journalist, he now writes fiction full-time. His novels have been published in fifty countries. In 2002, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy.

Gilead: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson. Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life.

Life in the Undergrowth, by David Attenborough. An insect disguises itself as a flower or leaf. A spider lassoes its prey. A beetle persuades a bee to care for its young. This beautifully illustrated book by veteran naturalist Sir David Attenborough offers a rare glimpse into the secret life of invertebrates, the world's tiniest--and most fascinating--creatures. Small by virtue of their lack of backbones, this group of living things plays a surprisingly large role in the evolutionary cycle. These diverse creatures (more than one million species are believed to exist) roamed the earth before us and will still be here when we have gone. They are the pollinators, cleaners, and recyclers of life on earth. Without them, we would not last long. Attenborough has studied and enjoyed these diminutive beings since he was a schoolboy in the Leicestershire countryside of England. Life in the Undergrowth, part of his innovative series on natural history topics, looks at invertebrates the world over: their arrival on land and mastery of every habitat, and their fantastic variety of hunting, mating, and highly organized social behaviors. Adults are prejudiced against insects--handicapped by their ignorance and fears and limited by their size and vision. Children, who are closer to insects in size, notice and enjoy the tiny creatures. In this companion book to the Animal Planet television program, Attenborough shares his childlike curiosity for invertebrates, taking us down wormholes and into insect homes for an up-close-and-personal look at their habitats. As the biblical book of Proverbs implores: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard: consider her ways and be wise." David Attenborough does go. It is worth going with him.

The Saddest Place on Earth: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia, by Camille Rose Garcia. These newest works by Camille Rose Garcia examine ideas of decadence, deception, and denial explored within the context of Empire. It serves as a looking glass into the everyday violence that supports the current power structure and prescribes a glitter coated pill to ease the swallowing. The effect of the pill, once digested, depends upon the viewer. The Saddest Place on Earth is beautiful, the ballroom of an Empire, a forest of aquamarine jewels, a place where cream layered cakes, crystal castles, and opiate abundance serve to sedate the masses. But as the telescope retracts, the glossy veneer of privilege falls away to reveal another reality. Machine guns and machetes decorate the landscape alongside exploding poppies. Deer and Princesses hang suspensefully in a cloud of malaise, and disbelief becomes the ether of the living. The Saddest Place on Earth is opulent wallpaper of destruction that decorates our lives. Its surface is seductive, its layers complex, and its future uncertain. Camille Rose Garcia draws inspiration for her creepy distopias from her upbringing in the generic suburbs of Orange County. Her disenchantment with society brought her into a world of subversive art and music. Garcia's work has appeared in Juxtapoz, Paper, Flaunt, and Blab and is shown at galleries throughout the United States.

The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music, by Ted Libbey. A jam-packed, 11-year undertaking of 928 pages, 1,500 entries, and over 1,000 recommended recordings, The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia is an everything-you-need-to-know bible for the classical music lover. Written with infectious enthusiasm by Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, with 174,000 copies in print, this is an encyclopedia with wit and verve, covering those terms, works, composers, and performers that NPR listeners and concertgoers are most likely to encounter. In addition, buyers of the book will receive a password that opens the door to an interactive Web site, created in a partnership with the classical music powerhouse, Naxos, that allows them to listen to 600 examples of works, techniques, and performers discussed and cross-referenced in the book. This is the first interactive encyclopedia of music! Libbey, a spirited, selective guide, writes “lyrically and lucidly about music and music makers” (Chicago Tribune) and knows how to ground abstract ideas in the real. How does it work? Look up barcarolle, and he not only defines the term vividly (“the melody is a gentle, rocking rhythm suggestive of the swaying of a boat”) but suggests three exemplary pieces of music to listen to—Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, and Chopin’s Barcarolle. Then go to the Web site and hear what he’s writing about.

What is the tonic? Why is there such a satisfying psychological impact at the end of a sonata? Who is Thomas Tallis? What is the idea behind Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and was there ever an ill-tempered clavier? For the music lover, impossible to put down. Ted Libbey is one of America's most highly regarded music critics. A former music critic for The New York Times, he is known to millions of NPR listeners as curator of the Basic Radio Library on "Performance Today." Mr. Libbey is now Director of Media Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, by Gail Sheehy. A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience... She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft... The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life. In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon–increased vitality in women’s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses. Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women–married and single–who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don’t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women–once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers–find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their “second adulthood” as a period of reawakening.

Written in Sheehy’s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women’s sex lives. From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

The Judgment of Paris, by Ross King. From the acclaimed author of the bestsellers Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas, would at times resemble a battlefield; and, as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.

The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions: the scandalous Salon des Refusés in 1863, and the first Impressionist showing in 1874, set against the rise and dramatic fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire, after the Franco-Prussian War. A tale of many artists, it revolves around the lives of two, described as "the two poles of art"—Ernest Meissonier, the most famous and successful painter of the 19th century, hailed for his precision and devotion to history; and Edouard Manet, reviled in his time, who nonetheless heralded the most radical change in the history of art since the Renaissance. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel lives, illuminated by their legendary supporters and critics—Zola, Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Hugo, Degas, and many more—Ross King shows that their contest was not just about Art, it was about how to see the world. With a novelist’s skill and the perception of an historian, King recalls a seminal period when artistic expression had the power to electrify and divide a nation.

The Year of Yes, by Maria Dahvana Headley. Like many young people everywhere, playwright Maria Headley had had her fill of terrible dates. Discouraged and looking for love, she decided the time had come for her to eliminate her own (clearly not adequately discriminating) taste from the equation. Instead-as she vowed to her roommates one frustrated morning-she would date every person who asked her out for an entire year, regardless of circumstances. It would be her Year of Yes.Leaving her judgment and predispositions at the door, our heroine ventured into a world suddenly brimming with opportunity and found herself saying yes to: The Microsoft Millionaire who still lived with his mom. An actor she had previously sworn off as gay. And finally the significantly older man, divorced with kids, who she never would have looked at twice before the Year of Yes-and to whom she is now happily married.Hilariously funny and ultimately inspirational, The Year of Yes will appeal to every person who has turned down a date for the wrong reason.

Class Act: William Haines Legendary Hollywood Decorator, by Peter Schifando, Jean H. Mathison, Dan Shaw, Stafford Cliff (Creator), Anne Hellman (Editor). Whether you are a fan of Hollywood's golden era, interior design, furniture design, or just great photography, this book will not disappoint you. Authors Schifando and Mathison have lovingly crafted the authorative book on the man who gave up a promising career as an actor (he was the quintessential handsome matinee idol) in the name of love when the studios issued the ultimatinum of "give up your gay lifestyle or else". What the film world lost was a gain to the world of interior design --- Haines was among the most clever of designers and his impact on American interior design has been overshadowed by other, more household-name designers. But luckily for all of us, this gorgeous book rectifies all of that and now we can enjoy the labors of the authors time and time again. Even those not interested in interior design per se will find this book fascinating for its layout and pictorial flow. Kudos to publisher Pointed Leaf Press for making such books available. It will easily become one of your favorite books on Hollywood and interior design!

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, by Taylor Branch. At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history. In At Canaan's Edge, King and his movement stand at the zenith of America's defining story, one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. Branch opens with the authorities' violent suppression of a voting-rights march in Alabama on March 7, 1965. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King in negotiations with all three branches of the U.S. government. The marches from Selma coincide with the first landing of large U.S. combat units in South Vietnam. The escalation of the war severs the cooperation of King and President Lyndon Johnson after a collaboration that culminated in the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. After Selma, young pilgrims led by Stokely Carmichael take the movement into adjacent Lowndes County, Alabama, where not a single member of the black majority has tried to vote in the twentieth century. Freedom workers are murdered, but sharecroppers learn to read, dare to vote, and build their own political party. Carmichael leaves in frustration to proclaim his famous black power doctrine, taking the local panther ballot symbol to become an icon of armed rebellion.

Also after Selma, King takes nonviolence into Northern urban ghettoes. Integrated marches through Chicago expose hatreds and fears no less virulent than the Mississippi Klan's, but King's 1966 settlement with Mayor Richard Daley does not gain the kind of national response that generated victories from Birmingham and Selma. We watch King overrule his advisers to bring all his eloquence into dissent from the Vietnam War. We watch King make an embattled decision to concentrate his next campaign on a positive compact to address poverty. We reach Memphis, the garbage workers' strike, and King's assassination. Parting the Waters provided an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness, beginning with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and ending with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In Pillar of Fire, theologians and college students braved the dangerous Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 as Malcolm X raised a militant new voice for racial separatism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation by race and mandated equal opportunity for women. From the pinnacle of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, King willed himself back to "the valley" of jail in his daunting Selma campaign. At Canaan's Edge portrays King at the height of his moral power even as his worldly power is waning. It shows why his fidelity to freedom and nonviolence makes him a defining figure long beyond his brilliant life and violent end.

The Accidental: A Novel, by Ali Smith. A finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, The Accidental is the virtuoso new novel by the singularly gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing “thrilling.” Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her “style, ideas, and punch.” Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor. Amber—thirtysomething and barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner. Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she’s an angel.

As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how she’s come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amber’s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but not—they discover when they return home to London—from their profoundly altered lives. Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy, The Accidental is a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling.

Ali Smith is the author of six works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was short–listed for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories. Born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962, Smith now lives in Cambridge, England.

The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives, by Ted Sargent. What if a doctor could stop cancer by targeting a single malignant cell before it multiplied? Imagine a paper-thin "power suit" that could keep you warm on a winter day. What about a computer that connects directly with a person’s thoughts? In this groundbreaking exploration of the future of nanotechnology, Ted Sargent reveals how all disciplines of science, from medicine to microchips, are converging to create materials using the tiniest scale possible—molecule by molecule. And instead of trying to overcome the natural world, nanotech takes its every move from the perfect, elegant structure of nature itself. Its potential is seemingly endless, with practical implications that will revolutionize the way we live, work, and play. In an age when science often evokes more fear than faith, when the potential for superviruses and diabolical cloning looms in our consciousness, Sargent enthusiastically illuminates nanotech’s positive possibilities. By working with the tiniest building blocks in nature, pioneering scientists will drastically improve the quality of life for all of us.

The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America, by Jeff Biggers. The word Appalachia is seldom uttered in the same sentence with the word enlightenment. More likely, images of the film Deliverance, corncob chomping grannies, or bonafide gun-toting hillbillies come to mind. However, in truth, Appalachia has been a cradle of US freedom, independence, and enlightenment, as well as a region of progressive social history, literature, and music. The United States of Appalachia reveals to us how so many of our nation’s basic freedoms and founding moments grew out of the Appalachias. From the first declaration of independence to the beginnings of folk music, literature, and poetry, Jeff Biggers illuminates with humor, intelligence, and clarity, the many reasons why we all need a lesson in Appalachian history.

Happiness: A History, by Darrin M. McMahon. Darrin M. McMahon's sweeping new book, chronicling the evolution of happiness over two thousand years of Western culture and thought, argues that our modern belief in happiness — that happiness is a natural right — is a relatively recent development. It is a product of a dramatic revolution in human expectations carried out since the eighteenth century. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, when men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could — in fact should — be happy in this life as opposed to the hereafter. Ultimately, the Enlightenment's recognition of happiness as a motivating ideal led to its consecration in the Declaration of Independence and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man. McMahon follows this great pursuit through to the present day, showing how our modern search for happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. In the tradition of works by Peter Gay and Simon Schama, Happiness draws on numerous sources, including art and architecture, poetry and scripture, music and theology, literature and myth to offer a sweeping intellectual history of man's most elusive yet coveted goal.

Up the Road: Cycling's Modern Era from LeMond to Armstrong, by Samuel Abt and Graham Watson. Preeminent cycling journalist Samuel Abt's distinctive voice has told the stories of countless champions and decisive turning points in the most famous international races since the late 1970s. In this collection of articles originally published in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, Sam profiles three decades of cycling, culminating with the retirement of Lance Armstrong following the 2005 Tour de France. Featuring vivid color photos by Graham Watson, Up the Road immortalizes Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, Bobby Julich, Andy Hampsten, and a host of other luminaries.

Hermann Maier: The Race of My Life, by Knut Okresek, Lance Armstrong, and Hermann Maier. Hermann "The Herminator" Maier, born in 1972, rose from humble beginnings as a scrawny mason to the heights of sports stardom, skiing to four world champion titles and two gold medals in super-G and giant slalom. All that changed in 2001, when a motorcycle accident threatened to end not only his career but his life. True to his reputation, Maier fought his way back to the slopes and further victories. This compelling biography, which includes insightful text selections by Maier himself, tells a riveting story of flirting with death and dodging it through sheer willpower, of painful recoveries and worldwide triumphs. The dramatic text and many color and black-and-white photographs cover Maier’s highs and lows, including his appearance at the 1998 Olympic Games at Nagano, where he stunned millions in what has become the most notorious downhill crash of all time. This best-selling biography profiles a man who is a superstar in every sense.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing -- a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar, but loyal, family. Jeannette Walls has a story to tell, and tells it brilliantly, without an ounce of self-pity.

Eating Stella Style: Low-Carb Recipes for Healthy Living, by George Stella. George Stella lost more than 250 pounds on a low-carb eating plan and has turned thousands of fans on to Stella Style -- eating fresh, natural foods prepared with minimum effort for maximum taste. In Eating Stella Style, he shows readers how to tailor his recipes to fit any personalized weight-loss plan, whether it's low carb, low fat, or low calorie. He inspires even the most jaded dieters to begin a new eating lifestyle and shows them how to stay on track.

But Eating Stella Style is really about mouthwatering recipes: How does a Hot Ham and Cheese Egg Roll sound for breakfast? Or Strawberry and Mascarpone Cream Crêpes, Stella Style Baked Eggs Benedict, or Coconut Macaroon Muffins? For lunch or dinner, choose Grilled Portabella and Montrachet Salad, Wood-Grilled Oysters with Dill Butter, Kim's Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Lemony White Wine Sauce, Shaved Zucchini Parmesan Salad, or Spaghetti Squash with Clams Provençal Sauce. Satisfy your snack cravings with Better Cheddar Cheese Crisps, Devilish Deviled Eggs with Tuna, or Cheesy Pecan Cookies. And for dessert, try Pumpkin Pound Cake, Lemon Meringue Pie, Honeydew and Blackberry Granita, or Chocolate Pecan Truffles. Perfect for both devoted Stella Style fans and new converts, Eating Stella Style will tempt you with tasty, flexible recipes that satisfy everyone!

The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life, by Lee Eisenberg. The often-avoided, anxiety-riddled discussion about financial planning for a secure and fulfilling future has been given a new starting point in The Number by Lee Eisenberg. The buzz of professionals and financial industry insiders everywhere, the Number represents the amount of money and resources people will need to enjoy the active life they desire, especially post-career. Backed by imaginative reporting and insights, Eisenberg urges people to assume control and responsibility for their standard of living, and take greater aim on their long-term aspirations. In 1999, Eisenberg was in the midst of downshifting from having served as the Editor-in-Chief of Esquire and other high profile positions. He was "half-in, half-out of the workplace" with an enviable consulting position at Time, Inc., and a family comfortably settled in the suburbs. That's when he received an unexpected offer from the Wisconsin-based Lands' End which, in the end, he couldn't resist. It meant uprooting his family and moving to the rural heartland, and taking on the challenges of an entirely new way of life. Before the move, he admits, "I was worried about the Number." Once in Wisconsin, Eisenberg confesses that the "Number was leading us around by our noses."

From Wall Street to Main Street USA, The Number means different things to different people. It is constantly fluctuating in people's minds and bank accounts. To some, the Number symbolizes freedom, validation of career success, the ticket to luxurious indulgences and spiritual exploration; to others, it represents the bewildering and nonsensical nightmare of an impoverished existence creeping up on them in their old age, a seemingly hopeless inevitability that they would rather simply ignore than confront. People are highly private and closed-mouthed when it comes to discussing their Numbers, or lack thereof, for fear they might either reveal too much or display ineptitude. In The Number, Eisenberg describes this secret anxiety as the "Last Taboo," a conundrum snared in confusing financial lingo. He sorts through the fancy jargon and translates the Number into commonsense advice that resonates just as easily with the aging gods and goddesses of corporate boardrooms as it does with ordinary people who are beginning to realize that retirement is now just a couple of decades away. Believing that the Number is as much about self-worth as it is net worth, Eisenberg strives to help readers better understand and more efficiently manage all aspects of their life, money, and pursuit of happiness.

Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists, by Lynne Perrella. Mixed media techniques have come to forefront again, with artists in every field combining materials and effects to create journals, altered art, collage pieces, memory art and more. With all the creative experiementation developing at such a fast pace, it is pertinent to know how various techniques and combinations work and whether they are right for your latest project. Alphabetica illuminates new techniques through detailed visuals and rich, explanatory text. From cover to cover, readers absorb the specialties of each contributing artist, such as Judi Riesch's use of vintage photographs, and Lesley Riley's sophisticated fabric transfers, and are able to get an "over the shoulder" glance at how these artists work. Lynne Perrella is on the editorial advisory board of Somerset Studio magazine, a bi-monthly paper arts magazine, and Legacy, a new quarterly publication that features articles about using family history and memorabilia to create unique works of art. Her work appears regularly in a variety of publications that feature collage, assemblage, and written features on the Arts. She is the author of Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks (Rockport, 2004) and True Colors (Stampington and Company, February 2003). She lives in Ancramdale, New York.

Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway's Big Musical Bombs, by Steven Suskin. If Broadway's triumphant musical hits are exhilarating, the backstage tales of Broadway failures are tantalizing soap operas in miniature. Second Act Trouble puts you with the creators in the rehearsal halls, at out-of-town tryouts, in late-night, hotel-room production meetings, and at after-the-fact recriminatory gripe fests. Suskin has compiled and annotated long-forgotten, first-person accounts of 25 Broadway musicals that stubbornly went awry. Contributions come from such respected writers as Patricia Bosworth, Mel Gussow, Lehman Engel, William Gibson, Lewis H. Lapham, and John Gruen. No mere vanity productions, these; you can't have a big blockbuster of failure, it seems, without the participation of Broadway's biggest talents. Caught in the stranglehold of tryout turmoil are Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman, Cy Coleman, Charles Strouse, John Kander, Mel Brooks, and even Edward Albee. The infamous shows featured include Mack and Mabel; Breakfast at Tiffany's; The Act; Dude; Golden Boy; Hellzapoppin'; Nick and Nora; Seesaw; Kelly; and How Now, Dow Jones.

Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison, by Joshua M. Greene. In this intimate biography, Joshua M. Greene sheds new light on the most mysterious of the Beatles. Greene knew George Harrison and has remained in touch with people who were close to him, including many of his closest friends. Drawing on scores of previously unpublished transcripts of recorded conversations and first-hand accounts, Greene gives us an unprecedented close-up portrait, offering fresh insights into Harrison’s underrated contribution to the Beatles’ music, his spiritual awakening through Indian music and meditation, and his efforts to spread spirituality through his solo career. Here Comes the Sun also includes fresh new anecdotes about Harrison and other musical greats, including Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. Written with a you-are-there immediacy and complete with 20 pages of rare photographs, Here Comes the Sun is an insightful, thought-provoking look at the inner life of one of history’s most beloved artists–sure to be a hit with Beatles fans and all those interested in an extraordinary spiritual journey.

Joshua M. Greene (Long Island, NY) is the author of two acclaimed biographies and the producer of numerous award-winning films. His articles have appeared in print media internationally, and his books on the Holocaust were adapted for broadcast on PBS and the Discovery channel.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle–yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own. Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.

The Pale Horseman, by Bernard Cornwell. Uhtred is a Saxon, cheated of his inheritance and adrift in a world of fire, sword, and treachery. He has to make a choice: whether to fight for the Vikings, who raised him, or for King Alfred the Great of Wessex, who dislikes him. In the late ninth century, Wessex is the last English kingdom. The rest have fallen to the Danish Vikings, a story told in The Last Kingdom, the New York Times bestselling novel in which Uhtred's tale began. Now the Vikings want to finish England. They assemble the Great Army, whose one ambition is to conquer Wessex. A dispossessed young nobleman, married to a woman who hails from Wessex, Uhtred has little love for either, though for King Alfred he has none at all. Yet fate, as Uhtred learns, has its own imperatives, and when the Vikings attack out of a wintry darkness to shatter the last English kingdom, Uhtred finds himself at Alfred's side.

Bernard Cornwell's The Pale Horseman, like The Last Kingdom, is rooted in the real history of Anglo-Saxon England. It tells the astonishing and true story of how Alfred, forced to become a fugitive in a few square miles of swampland, fights his enemies against overwhelming odds. The king is a pious Christian, while Uhtred is a pagan. Alfred is a sickly scholar, while Uhtred is an arrogant warrior. Yet the two forge an uneasy alliance that will lead them out of the marshes to the stark hilltop where the last remaining Saxon army will fight for the very existence of England.

Enthralling as both a historical and personal story, The Pale Horseman is a novel of divided loyalties and desperate heroism, featuring a cast of fully realized characters, from a king in despair to a beguiling British sorceress. And always, beyond the spearmen and the swordsmen are the folk who suffer as the tides of war sweep over their farmlands. From Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times bestselling author whom the Washington Post calls "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today," The Pale Horseman is yet another masterpiece of historical and battle fiction that gives life to one of the most important and exciting epochs in the history of the English people and culture.