Salida Book Review

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, by Caroline Finkel. The dramatic history of an empire that shaped the modern world in the first authoritative account written for general readers. According to the Ottoman chronicles, the first sultan, Osman, had a dream in which a tree emerged fully formed from his navel "and its shade compassed the world"-symbolizing the vast empire he and his descendants were destined to forge. His vision was soon realized: At its height, the Ottoman realm extended from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, from North Africa to the Caucasus. The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. For centuries, Europe watched with fear as the Ottomans steadily advanced their rule across the Balkans. Yet travelers and merchants were irresistibly drawn toward Ottoman lands by their fascination with the Orient and the lure of profit. Although it survived for over six centuries, the history of the Ottoman Empire is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes. In this magisterial work Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth century through its destruction on the battlefields of World War I.

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, by Karenna Gore Schiff. In this highly readable, illuminating narrative that spans the twentieth century, Karenna Gore Schiff tells the remarkable stories of nine influential women who each in her own way tackled inequity and advocated a change. These women recognized our country wasn't living up to its promise and fought to alter it. The women she's selected are as varied as they are inspirational. Ida B. wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who established our social secruity program; Virginia Durr, a high society Southern belle who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, currently one of the nation's leading child advocates.

Karenna Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as a guiding light for activists and leaders of tomorrow. Karenna Gore Schiff is the eldest daughter of Al and Tipper Gore. She is the director of community affairs for the Association to Benefit Children, a children's advocacy organization. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. This is her first book.

Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning, by Cass Turnbull and Kate Allen. Nothing about pruning is obvious; in fact, most of it is downright counterintuitive, says expert Cass Turnbull. This second edition of her definitive illustrated guide adds 40 percent new material, with more coverage of different kinds of trees, shrubs, and ground covers and how to prune them for health and aesthetics. The book is organized around the most common types of plants found in Northwest gardens: evergreen and deciduous shrubs; bamboos and tea roses; rhododendrons, camellia and other tree-like shrubs; hedge plants like boxwood and heather; clematis, wisteria and all those vines; and detailed information on trees by species from dogwoods to weeping cherries. In her trademark witty style, Turnbull also addresses tools, landscape renovation, and design errors. Included too are her amusing Ten Commandments for gardeners, which feature such treasures as "Thou shalt not weed-whip the trunk of thy tree, nor bash it with thine mower, nor leave anything tied on thy tree or the branches of thy tree, as is done in the land of the philistines."

FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want, by Daniel Nissanoff. Visionary Internet entrepreneur Daniel Nissanoff breaks the news that the eBay auction phenomenon is about to explode in a big new way, fundamentally revolutionizing the way all consumers--not just Internet mavens--do their shopping both online and offline. As huge as eBay has become--it is now the tenth largest retailer in America--it has only scratched the surface of the potential for online buying and selling: by 2004 only 5 percent of all eBayers had ever sold anything on the site. But that is about to change, dramatically, and the whole world of buying and selling will be transformed.

Nissanoff reveals that a massive growth of new online auction "facilitators," called drop shops, is under way--thousands have opened around the world just this year. As these shops become as pervasive as Starbucks, they will make buying and selling online so hassle free that the masses of consumers who have stayed away thus far will jump aboard. As we do so, a great deal of money will be made. As Nissanoff cites, the closets of the average American household are cluttered with thousands of dollars of value waiting to be found.

With resale so easy and lucrative, we will transform from an "accumulation nation" into an "auction culture" of temporary ownership, in which we buy the goods we most want, even at prices we haven't been able to afford, and then sell them for optimal resale value when we are ready to trade up to the next best thing. We will, in effect, be able to lease the good life.

Building a Straw Bale House: The Red Feather Construction Handbook, by Nathaniel Corum, foreward by Jane Goodall. "This book is a timely and important tool for the empowerment of communities facing housing deficits. The Red Feather project is extremely important; it is truly making a difference."—Jane Goodall For more than a decade the Red Feather Development Group, a volunteer-based organization, has built and repaired straw bale houses for Native Americans. Somewhere along the way—and this was certainly not the plan—they created an architectural phenomenon: This inexpensive, environmentally sound, easily constructed, and downright beautiful form of building has, for good reason, caught the public's imagination. Here, Red Feather provides a step-by-step, easy-to-follow manual for would-be strawbale builders—indeed, they supply everything you'll need but time, energy, and lots and lots of straw. Informative sections on safety, design, tools, and materials, and case studies picked from over thirty-five Red Feather projects give a comprehensive overview to straw-bale building. But this book is much more than a construction manual. It is also the inspiring story of Red Feather itself, a tale of community action and cooperation that suggests a can-do solution to the growing housing crisis on America's Native American reservations.

The Good Life, by Jay McInerney. Hailed by Newsweek as “a superb and humane social critic” with, according to The Wall Street Journal, “all the true instincts of a major novelist,” Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far. Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit. Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side’s social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulation of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause—especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother’s. But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock. What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life?

Posed with astonishing understanding and compassion, these questions power a novel rich with characters and events, both comic and harrowing, revelatory about not only New York after the attacks but also the toll taken on those lucky enough to have survived them. Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see–through personal, social, and moral complexity–more clearly into the heart of things.

Paul McCartney, by Christopher Sandford. Between 1963 and 1970, Paul McCartney sold 160 million albums throughout the world; co-authored with John Lennon twenty-five US and UK number one singles; recorded the first rock album with Rubber Soul and established the concept of rock-as-art with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As a member of the most important rock band ever, Paul McCartney compelled millions of kids to pick up electric guitars and others to burn vinyl. He helped usher in the Swinging Sixties, the Love Generation, rock n' roll's studio era, and left the world dumbfounded when the Fab Four called it quits in the early 70s. However, to this day McCartney remains one of the world's most beloved and respected musicians. McCartney is a tale of self-destruction and epic excess as well as creative genius and brilliant music. The Beatles' bloody in-fighting, the sex, the drugs, and McCartney's extraordinary marriages are revealed here in full. Yet, while the revelations will genuinely astound, this book remains a celebratory feast for millions of fans, capturing the glorious rush of the best songs and revealing the untold stories behind them. McCartney is the definitive biography, charting not only the pop legend, but the man and his era.

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, by Mike Mullane. With a testosterone-fueled swagger and a keen eye for particulars, Mullane takes readers into the high-intensity, high-stress world of the shuttle astronaut in this rough-hewn yet charming yarn of low-rent antics, bureaucratic insanity and transcendent beauty. Mullane opens this tale face down on a doctor's table awaiting a colorectal exam that will determine his fitness for astronaut training. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses," he writes, setting the tone for the crude and often hilarious story that follows. Chosen as a trainee in 1978, Mullane, a Vietnam vet, quickly finds himself at odds with the buttoned-up post-Apollo NASA world of scientists, technocrats and civilian astronauts he describes as "tree-huggers, dolphin friendly fish eaters, vegetarians, and subscribers to the New York Times." He holds female astronauts in special disregard, though he later grudgingly acknowledges the achievement and heroism of both the civilians and women. The book hits its stride with Mullane's space adventures: a difficult takeoff, the shift into zero gravity, his first view of the Earth from space: "To say the view was overwhelmingly beautiful would be an insult to God." -Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman. With wry candor and tender humor, acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what. For Emilia Greenleaf, life is by turns a comedy of errors and an emotional minefield. Yes, she’s a Harvard Law grad who married her soul mate. Yes, they live in elegant comfort on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But with her one-and-only, Jack, came a stepson—a know-it-all preschooler named William who has become her number one responsibility every Wednesday afternoon. With William, Emilia encounters a number of impossible pursuits—such as the pursuit of cab drivers who speed away when they see William’s industrial-strength car seat and the pursuit of lactose-free, strawberry-flavored, patisserie-quality cupcakes, despite the fact that William’s allergy is a figment of his over-protective mother’s imagination.

As much as Emilia wants to find common ground with William, she becomes completely preoccupied when she loses her newborn daughter. After this, the sight of any child brings her to tears, and Wednesdays with William are almost impossible. When his unceasing questions turn to the baby’s death, Emilia is at a total loss. Doesn’t anyone understand that self-pity is a full-time job? Ironically, it is only through her blundering attempts to bond with William that she finally heals herself and learns what family really means.

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.