Table of Contents
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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Seeing Stars
Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).
The review journal assigns the star.
Out and About. . .
I'm playing around at Shelfari, LibraryThing, and Good Reads. I've set up links to my pages on these sites. And, yes, I have a hard time keeping up-to-date on these sites...
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Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Starred Reviews
Nonfiction Stars - 2003
September 9, 2008
Nonfiction Stars of 2003 - A selected list of titles.
This reading list is based on personal preferences. It reflects interests in history, science, nature, travel, biography, memoirs and a few assorted odd topics. Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
December
- The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
Author: Balf, Todd
Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 009609890
Kirkus
Based on the vividly detailed log entries of the U.S. Darien Exploring Expedition, this is a rich, utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed Isaac's Storm, the accounts of the Shackleton expedition, and all similar sagas of adventure at the limits of endurance.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 10.8.03 - The Splendor
of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World
Author: Basbanes, Nicholas A.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0060082879 Date: 2003Kirkus
From the notable author ofA Gentle Madness andPatience & Fortitude comes this story-filled narrative on books in contemporary society.
Suggested Reading: Books About Books
Updated 9.08.03 - Crowded
With Genius: The Scottish Enlightment: Edenburgh's Moment of the Mind
Author: Buchan, James
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0060558881Booklist
Updated 11.25.03 - 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
Author: Kurlansky, Mark
Publisher: Ballantine $ 26.95 ISBN: 0345455819Kirkus
The New York Times bestselling author ofCod, Salt andThe Basque History of the World looks at this pivotal moment in history.
Updated 11.12.03 - Report
From a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939
Author: Roth, Joseph
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393051455KirkusPW
Joseph Roth (1894-1939), the greatest European newspaper correspondent of his age, left the splintering Weimar Republic for Paris in 1925. Translated and collected together here for the first time in English, the exhilarating pieces in this evocative collection distill the wisdom of a lost generation.
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
Updated 11.17.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
November
- Tragically I Was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook
Author: Cook, Peter
Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 031231891x Date: 2003LJ
This is a unique collection of Cook's finest and funniest writings of which many have never been published before.
Updated 9.25.03 - Madness Visible
Author: Di Giovanni, Janine
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375410732 Date: 2003KirkusPW
From an internationally celebrated war correspondent comes a searing firsthand chronicle--told with extraordinary immediacy--of the ordeal of the Balkan people during the continuing breakup of Yugoslavia.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Former Yugoslavia
Updated 8.25.03 - In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation
Author: Goliszek, Andrew
Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312303564 Date: 2003Kirkus
As Goliszek demonstrates in this chilling book, science has been called upon to kill people as often as it has to cure them. The grim catalogue of inhumanities committed culminated with the Nazi experiments, but in recent history the U.S. government has sponsored experiments on human subjects without their full knowledge.
Updated 9.08.03 - Goya
Author: Hughes, Robert
Publisher: Knopf $ 40 ISBN: 0394580281 Date: 2003BooklistLJ
With characteristic critical fervor and sure-eyed insight, Hughes brings readers the story of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, an artist whose life and work bridged the transition from the 18th-century reign of the old masters to the early days of the 19th-century moderns.
Updated 11.18.03 - Spix's Macaw: The Race
to Save the World's Rarest Bird
Author: Juniper, Tony
Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 074347550x Date: 2003LJ
Tony Juniper's heart-stopping inside account of the race to save a rare blue parrot, the last of its species, is a priceless addition to nature literature -- and a timely portrait of Earth's endangered wildlife. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Nature | For the Birds | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 9.08.03 - Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
Author: Leroi, Armand Marie
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670031100 Date: 2003PW
Stepping effortlessly from myth to molecular biology, this elegant, humane, and illuminating book explores the myths and fantasies associated with mutants and their critical link to human development.
Updated 10.2.03 - Living
with the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery
Author: Lightman, Alan
Publisher: Island $ 27 ISBN: 1559634197 Date: 2003Booklist
Updated 12.15.03 - Living to Tell the Tale
Author: Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 1400041341 Date: 2003BooklistLJ
From the Nobel Laureate writer Marquez comes a magnificent piece of writing that finds him telling the story of his life from his birth in 1927 through his career as a writer.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 11.18.03 - The World: Travels 1950-2000
Author: Morris, Jan
Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393052087 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
Ranging from Manhattan to Venice, Oxford to the Middle East, and Paris to South Africa, the book provides Morris's eyewitness accounts of such seminal moments as the first successful ascent of Everest, the historic Eichmann trial, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 10.2.03 - Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Atlantic
Author: Niven, Jennifer
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786868635 Date: 2003Booklist
From the author ofThe Ice Master comes the remarkable true story of a young Inuit woman who survived six months alone on a desolate uninhabited Arctic island in 1921.
Updated 10.23.03 - Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
Author: Philbrick, Nathaniel
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 067003213x Date: 2003Kirkus
Like the award-winningIn the Heart of the Sea, Sea of Glory combines meticulous history with spellbinding human drama as it circles the globe from the palm-fringed beaches of the South Pacific to the treacherous waters off Antarctica and to the stunning beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and, finally, to a court-martial aboard a ship anchored off New York City.
Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 8.25.03 - Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams
Author: Simpson, M.J.
Publisher: Justin Charles $ 27.95 ISBN: 1932112170 Date: 2003Booklist
M.J. Simpson has produced a rich, revealing chronicle of one of the most wildly creative minds of our time: Douglas Adams, creator of the phenomenally successfulHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Suggested Reading: If You Like Douglas Adams
Updated 11.25.03 - Brave Men, Gentle Heroes:
American Father and Sons in World War II and Vietnam
Author: Takiff, Michael
Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 006621081x Date: 2003Kirkus
In this thought-provoking work, American veterans of World War II and their sons who served in Vietnam share their indelible stories of the enduring legacy of war.
Updated 8.11.03 - Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith in Difficult Times
Author: Terkel, Studs
Publisher: New Press $ 25.95 ISBN: 1565848373 Date: 2003LJ
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times is the tenth oral history by the Pulitzer Prize winner and his account of an "American century" of hope, activism, and determination.
Updated 9.08.03 - Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook
Author: Thomas, Nicholas
Publisher: Walker $ 28 ISBN: 0802714129 Date: 2003PW
Blending an elegant, assured style with bold, cross-disciplinary originality, Thomas breathes life into the complex and controversial legacy of Captain James Cook, an often-misunderstood man.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Sea Stories
Updated 10.7.03 - Thank Your For Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia
Author: Ugresic, Dubravka
Publisher: Dalkey $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1564782980 Date: 2003Kirkus
Updated 9.08.03 - An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
Author: Wiencek, Henry
Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 0374175268 Date: 2003PW
In this groundbreaking work, Wiencek explores George Washington's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now readers see him in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
Updated 9.08.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
October
- Oath: The Remarkable Story of Surgeon's Lfe Under in Cheyna
Author: Baiev, Khassan
Publisher: Walker $ 26 ISBN: 0802714048 Date: 2003BooklistPW
InThe Oath, a heroic Chechen doctor relates his harrowing experiences in the line of fire to bear witness to this international calamity, and illuminates his remarkable people and their culture.
Suggested Reading: Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 9.09.03 - The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response
Author: Balakian, Peter
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060198400 Date: 2003PW
The highly acclaimed author ofBlack Dog of Fate offers a landmark history of the Armenian massacres of the 1890s and the genocide of 1915--and America's extraordinary response.
Updated 8.18.03 - In the Land of Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in Africa
Author: Bergner, Daniel
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 22 ISBN: 0374266530 Date: 2003Kirkus
In the Land of Magic Soldiers follows a set of white would-be saviors and also a set of Sierra Leoneans. A story of black and white, of those who would nation-build and those who live in a region of fire and jungle, this is an unforgettable work of literary reportage by "a terrific reporter with a novelist's eye" (New York Times Book Review).
Updated 7.8.03 - Inside Orwell: A
Biography
Author: Bowker, Gordon
Publisher: Palgrave $ 35 ISBN: 031223841x Date: 2003PW
This revealing biography of one of the greatest authors of the 20th century includes new material on Orwell's complex and sometimes reckless sex life, new evidence of his being hunted and spied on in Spain, his paranoia about possible assassination, and his deathbed wedding to a woman 15 years his junior.
Updated 8.11.03 - From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity
Author: Braudy, Leo
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0679450351 Date: 2003Kirkus
Beginning with the world of the chivalric Middle Ages and ending in this age of global terrorism and limited war, Braudy shows how the perceptions and images of masculinity have changed in relation to major wars and advances in war technology.
Updated 8.11.03 - Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter
Author: Cahill, Thomas
Publisher: Doubleday/Talese $ 27.50 ISBN: 0385495536 Date: 2003KirkusPW
In the fourth volume of the acclaimed Hinges of History series, the author of How the Irish Saved Civilization brings his characteristic wit and style to a fascinating tour of ancient Greece.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Ancient Greece
Updated 8.25.03 - America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
Author: Collins, Gail
Publisher: Morrow $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060185104 Date: 2003Kirkus
Collins chronicles a history spanning book rich in detail, filled with fascinating characters and 400 years of women--dolls, drudges, helpmates, and heroines.
Updated 7.28.03 - An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland
Author: Dirda, Michael
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393057569 Date: 2003KirkusLJ
A funny, wistful memoir by a Pulitzer Prize--winning critic that recalls the charm of growing up and the tenderness of one writer's beginnings.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 8.14.03 - Ungoldy: The Passions, Torments,
and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Author: Dracos, Ted
Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 0743228332 Date: 2003Booklist
As the woman who won a longshot, landmark Supreme Court case to ban prayer in public schools, Madalyn Murray O'Hair was one of the most powerful personalities of the 20th century. Dracos now shares the complete account of O'Hair's life.
Updated 10.23.03 - Tibet, Tibet
Author: French, Patrick
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400041007 Date: 2003Kirkus
At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty. The Dalai Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of agnostics. Patrick French has been fascinated by Tibet since he was a teenager. He has read its history, agitated for its freedom, and risked arrest to travel through its remote interior. His love and knowledge inform every page of this learned, literate, and impassioned book.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Tibet
Updated 8.25.03 - City Room
Author: Gelb, Arthur
Publisher: Putnam $ 29.95 ISBN: 0399150757 Date: 2003PW
An affecting and enlightening memoir of 45 years at The New York Times from a man who joined the paper as a night copy boy in 1944 and rose to become its managing editor. A history of our times andThe Times.
Updated 9.08.03 - The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors
Author: Gribbin, John R.
Publisher: Random $ 35 ISBN: 1400060133 Date: 2003BooklistLJ
Focusing on the lives and achievements of individual scientists, this wonderfully readable description of scientific development over the past 500 years is by the bestselling author ofIn Search of Schrodinger's Cat.
Updated 10.30.03 - Skin Deep: Of Tattoos, the Disappearing West, Very Bad Men, and My Deep Love for Them All
Author: Griffin, Karol
Publisher: Harvest $ 24 ISBN: 0151008841 Date: 2003Booklist
Believing herself a daughter of the West, Griffin took the myths of the place--and of the outlaw--on faith. Soon Karol was a full-time tattoo artist, an occasional outlaw, and a tattooed woman looking for love in all the wrong places.
Updated 8.13.03 - Doubt: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickenson
Author: Hecht, Jennifer
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060097728 Date: 2003PWLJBooklist
This fascinating account explores the great doubters and their legacy of innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Jefferson and Wittgenstein--a fascinating view of how doubt has been the driving force in the intellectual and religious history of the world.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 11.25.03 - The Georgetown
Ladies' Social Club: Power, Passion, and Politics in the Nation's Capital
Author: Heymann, C. David
Publisher: Atria $ 26 ISBN: 0743428560 Date: 2003Booklist
In this riveting book--a heady mix of politics, sex, scandal, and power--Heymann reveals the real moguls of Washington.The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club, a term coined by Ronald Reagan, comprises a list of formidable and fascinating women.
Updated 10.23.03 - Art: A New History
Author: Johnson, Paul
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 39.95 ISBN: 0060530758 Date: 2003BooklistKirkusLJ
A provocative, personal view of the history of art, from the earliest cave paintings to the present day, is delivered by the bestselling author of Modern Times. 300 color illustrations.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10.8.03 - The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography
Author: Kaplan, Fred
Publisher: Doubleday $ 35 ISBN: 0385477155 Date: 2003Booklist
One of our most distinguished biographers offers a bold, revisionist life of the inimitable Mark Twain.
Suggested Reading: Twain Stars
Updated 9.22.03 - The Brass Wall: the Betrayal
of Undercover Detective #4126
Author: Kocieniewski, David
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805065334 Date: 2003Kirkus
In 1993, Vincent Armanti, Undercover Detective #4126, agreed to infiltrate the branch of the Lucchese family responsible for the homicide of a beloved fireman. Here, in all his humanity, is an unforgettable hero, battling for his honor and survival.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 7.8.03 - They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967
Author: Maraniss, David
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 29.95 ISBN: 0743217802 Date: 2003KirkusLJPW
From the author ofWhen Pride Still Mattered ("Near perfect . . . May be the best sports biography ever published."--Sports Illustrated) comes a new book on the Vietnam war.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 8.18.03 - Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life
Author: Moorehead, Caroline
Publisher: Holt $ 27.50 ISBN: 0805065539 Date: 2003PWKirkusBooklist
Martha Gellhorn's career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the Cold War. This seminal work spans half the globe and an entire century to offer an exhilarating, intimate portrait of one of the defining women of our times.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10.2.03 - Paradise of Cities: Venice in the 19th Century
Author: Norwich, John Julius
Publisher: Doubleday $ 32.50 ISBN: 0385509049 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
The greatest living chronicler of Venetian history brings to life the city's magical charm in a beautifully illustrated and captivating book. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Venice
Updated 7.28.03 - The Doctor's Plague:
Germs, Childbed Fever, and theStrange Story of Ignac Semmelweis
Author: Nuland, Sherwin B.
Publisher: Norton $ 21.95 ISBN: 0393052990 Date: 2003LJBooklist
A great medical detective story, by the author of the bestsellingHow We Die. The Doctors' Plague is a riveting, revealing narrative of one of the key turning points in medical history.
Updated 9.25.03 - And
the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of
Leo Frank
Author: Oney, Steve
Publisher: Pantheon $ 35 ISBN: 0679421475 Date: 2003KirkusPWBooklistLJ
On April 27, 1913, the bludgeoned body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was discovered in the basement of Atlanta's National Pencil Factory. The girl's murder would be the catalyst for an epic saga that to this day holds a singular place in America's collective imagination--a saga that would climax in 1915 with the lynching of Leo Frank, the Cornell-educated Jew who was convicted of the murder. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | True Crime Stars
Updated 10.2.03 - An Accidental Cowboy
Author: Parker, Jameson
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312310242 Date: 2003Booklist
A stunning and breathtaking memoir that pays homage to a dying way of life.An Accidental Cowboy is a story of trauma, depression, and the beginnings of hope, set against the backdrop of the American Southwest.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 9.22.03 - Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocohontas, and the Heart of a New Nation
Author: Price, David A.
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375415416 Date: 2003KirkusPW
Unraveling the crucial roles of Pocahontas, Captain John Smith, and Chief Powhatan, Pagels offers a dramatic retelling of one of the great survival stories of American history--the opening of the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
Updated 7.21.03 - The Bookseller of Kabul
Author: Seierstad, Asne
Publisher: Little Brown $ 19.95 ISBN: 0316764500 Date: 2003KirkusPW
Invited to live with a Kabul bookseller and his family for several months, an award-winning journalist now gives readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Afghanistan Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 10.2.03 - Middletown, America: One Town's Passage from Trauma to Hope
Author: Sheehy, Gail
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375508627 Date: 2003PWLJ
The author ofSilent Passage pens a harrowing--and inspiring--story of the New Jersey town that suffered the highest death toll in the World Trade Center attack and the community's journey toward recovery.
Updated 10.2.03 - Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse
Author: Silverman, Kenneth
Publisher: Random $ 35ISBN: 0375401288 Date: 2003KirkusPWBooklistLJ
In this brilliantly conceived and written biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning Kenneth Silverman gives us the long and amazing life of the man eulogized by the "New York Herald in 1872 as "perhaps the most illustrious American of his age."- Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 10.30.03 - Death of Innocence; The Story of the Hate Crime That Changes America
Author: Till-Mobley, Mamie
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400061172 Date: 2003LJ
Speaking out for the first time, Mamie Till-Mobley offers a memoir of the 1955 slaying of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till--the teenager whose murder galvanized the civil rights movement.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 9.08.03 - Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy
Author: Varon, Elizabeth R.
Publisher: Oxford $ 35 ISBN: 0195142284 Date: 2003LJPW
A gripping account of the Civil War era story of Elizabeth Van Lew: high-society Southern lady, risk-taking Union spy, and postwar politician.
Updated 9.08.03 - Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
Author: Wallace, David Foster
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393003388 Date: 2003Booklist
The bestselling author ofInfinite Jest takes on the 2,000 year-old quest to understand infinity. Wallace brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.
Updated 10.23.03 - The Middle Mind: Why American's Don't Think for Themselves
Author: White, Curtis
Publisher: Harper $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060524367 Date: 2003LJ
What do George W. Bush, the Ivory Tower, Steven Spielberg, and Terri Gross have in common? Does a political scandal make for good news copy? Does network programming allow us to unwind from a day's work? Does the art at the local museum make for pleasant cocktail conversation? An unflinching and wry look at the dumbing down of the American imagination. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 9.08.03 - The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts
Author: Whitehead, Colson
Publisher: Doubleday $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385507941 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, an award-winning novelist re-creates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York, composing a love song that will entrance anyone who has lives in or spent time in the city.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 10.2.03 - The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Author: Winchester, Simon
Publisher: Oxford $ 25 ISBN: 0198607024 Date: 2003KirkusPWBooklistLJ
From the bestselling author ofThe Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, andKrakatoa comes a wonderful celebration of the English language and of its treasure house, theOxford English Dictionary.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10.30.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
September
- The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Author: Alexander, Caroline
Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 067003133x Date: 2003PWBooklist
In giving theBounty mutiny its historical due, Alexander has chosen to frame her narrative by focusing on the court-martial of the ten mutineers who were captured in Tahiti and brought to justice in England. This fresh perspective wonderfully revivifies the entire saga.
Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 8.13.03 - Lost in Mongolia
Author: Angus, Colin
Publisher: Broadway $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0767912802 Date: 2003Kirkus
The adrenaline junky who brought usAmazon Extreme now takes on an expedition that makesSurvivor look like a luxury tour.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 6.30.03 - In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in
the Heart of America, 1859-1863
Author: Ayers, Edward L.
Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393057860 Date: 2003KirkusPWLJBooklist
Through a gripping narrative based on massive new research, a leading historian tells a reassuring story of the triumph, in an inevitable conflict, of the dynamic, free-labor North over the traditional, slave-based South, vindicating the freedom principles built into the nation's foundations.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Virginia Stars
Updated 7.17.03 - Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia
Author: Bissell, Tom
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375421300 Date: 2003Kirkus
In this high-octane narrative, Bissell chronicles his journey--sometimes raucous, sometimes powerfully sobering--through Uzbekistan to the disappearing Aral Sea.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 11.12.03 - Kansas Charley: A Boy Murderer from the American Past
Author: Brumberg, Joan Jacobs
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 067003228x Date: 2003LJ
Most Americans regard "kids who kill" as a problem unique to our era. But in historian Brumberg's important new work, she reminds readers that it is, tragically, a long-standing dilemma.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 8.14.03 - Twin Tracks: The
Unexpected Origins of the Modern World
Author: Burke, James
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743226194 Date: 2003Kirkus
" One of the most intriguing minds in the Western World" (The Washington Post) delivers a landmark book of real-world stories that contends with the nature of change and divines as never before the unlikely origins of many aspects of contemporary life.
Updated 7.8.03 - Antiquity: Civilization of the Ancient World
Author: Cantor, Norman
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060174099 Date: 2003KirkusPW
This is the most up-to-date, succinct history of ancient civilization by the author of theNew York Times bestsellerIn the Wake of the Plague.
Updated 6.30.03 - Disarmed: The Story of the Venus De Milo
Author: Curtis, Gregory
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0374515238 Date: 2003Kirkus
A rich tale of historical intrigue, this is the story of the Venus de Milo, one of the most famous works of art of all time.
Updated 8.11.03 - Where I Was
From
Author: Didion, Joan
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0679433325 Date: 2003KirkusPWBooklist
In this moving and unexpected work, Didion reassesses her life, her work, and both her own and America's history, locating the contradictions in the stories people tell themselves about their past and their present.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 7.18.03 - The Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
Author: Dawkins, Richard
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618335404 Date: 2003Kirkus
Bestselling author Dawkins offers another dazzling gift to his readers--his first collection of essays on what matters most to him, from science, religion and mysticism to today's educational methods.
Updated 7.28.03 - The Boy's Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwest Europe, 1944-1945
Author: Fussell, Paul
Publisher: Modern Library $ 19.95 ISBN: 0679640886 Date: 2003Kirkus
From the author of the classicThe Treat War and Modern Memory and a decorated World War II combat infantry officer comes a brilliant reckoning with the American soldier's experience of war from D-day to the fall of Berlin.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 6.30.03 - Driving by Moonlight: A Journey Through Love, War, and Infertility
Author: Henderson, Kristin
Publisher: Seal $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 1580050980 Date: 2003Booklist
In this ultimately hopeful and affirming memoir, Henderson discards her map and finds peace following a road she never expected.
Updated 10.23.03 - George Gershwin:
A New Biography
Author: Hyland, William
Publisher: Praeger $ 39.95 ISBN: 0275981118 Date: 2003LJBooklist
Updated 10.23.03 - Mountains Beyond Mountains
Author: Kidder, Tracy
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375506160 Date: 2003KirkusPW
At the center ofMountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer--brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti--blasts through convention to get results. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Link: Partners in Health web site
Updated 7.8.03 - Th Fifth Book of Peace
Author: Kingston, Maxine Hong
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0679440755 Date: 2003Booklist
From the acclaimed author ofThe Woman Warrior comes a brilliant hybrid of memoir and fiction, her first major work in more than a decade. Her real and imagined narrative enrich one another as Kingston weaves together fact, fiction and memory in an powerfully emotional book.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 7.17.03 - Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall
Author: Meier, Andrew
Publisher: Norton $ 28.95 ISBN: 0393051781 Date: 2003KirkusPW
With the power ofLenin's Tomb andBalkan Ghosts, this is an illuminating portrait of contemporary Russia--a country in limbo, a land of vast potential struggling with an unfinished past.Black Earth is a penetrating view of the new Russia from a bold new voice in political journalism.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 6.30.03 - Seattle and the Demons of Ambition: A Love Story
Author: Moody, Fred
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95ISBN: 0312304218 Date: 2003Booklist
In a fascinating yet unsettling account of the transformation of Seattle, America's most conflicted city, Moody offers a remarkable history of urban boosterism and underground rage.
Updated 8.13.03 - Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predators in the Jungles of History and the Mind
Author: Quammen, David
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393051404PWBooklistLJ
Casting his expert eye over the rapidly diminishing areas of wilderness where predators still reign, the award-winning author ofThe Song of the Dodo examines the fate of lions, saltwater crocodiles, brown bears and others that are disappearing.
Suggested Reading: Nature | All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 8.14.03 - The White Headhunter
Author: Randell, Nigel
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786712562Kirkus
An astonishing anthropological detective story of a nineteenth-century sailor's real-lifeHeart of Darkness in the South Seas. In 1876, sailor Jack Renton was finally rescued from the Pacific island home of the headhunting Malaitans, after spending eight years in their captivity. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 7.8.03 - The Best American Science Writing 2003
Author: Sacks, Oliver (ed)
Publisher: Ecco $ 27.50/$13.95 ISBN: 0066211638/0936517 Date: 2003PW
Updated 7.1.03 - True Notebooks
Author: Salzman, Mark
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375413081 Date: 2003PWBooklist
From the author of the bestsellingIron & Silk andLying Awake comes the exhilarating story of his experiences teaching writing in a juvenile correctional facility.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 8.1303 - The Smoking Gun: Day by Day Through a Shocking Murder Trial With Gerry Spence
Author: Spence, Gerry
Publisher: Scribner $ 30 ISBN: 0743246969 Date: 2003Kirkus
Spence, renowned for his work on the cases of Karen Silkwood and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, offers the true account of a trial that exposes the unrelenting power of the state that so often crushes all who come before the bar of justice--guilty or innocent.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 6.30.03 - Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill
Author: Stern, Jessica
Publisher: Ecco $ 27.95 ISBN: 006050532x Date: 2003Kirkus
Updated 7.8.03 - Triangle: the Fire That Changed America
Author: Von Drehle, David
Publisher: Atlantic $ 26 ISBN: 0871138743 Date: 2003PW
This poignantly detailed account explores the 1911 factory fire that horrified the country and changed the course of 20th-century politics and labor relations.
Suggested Reading: On Fire | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 5.19.03 - Mr. Apology
Author: Wilkinson, Alec
Publisher: Hougton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618123113 Date: 2003Kirkus
Acclaimed for his wide-ranging and beautifully written essays, Wilkinson now brings together 20 of his best pieces. Among them are his exemplary profiles--from the mass murderer John Wayne Gacy to the man who does research for Elmore Leonard's novels--drawn with an intelligence and compassion.
Updated 7.8.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
August
- Marianne in Chains: Everyday Life in the French Heartland Under the German Occupation
Author: Gildea, Robert
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 32.50 ISBN: 0805071687 Date: 2003Kirkus
A startling and original view of the occupation of the French heartland, based on a new investigation of everyday life under Nazi rule. A great work of reconstruction, this book provides a clear view, unobscured by romance or polemics, of the painful ambiguities of living under tyranny.
Updated 5.9.03 - Hoagland on Nature: Essays
Author: Hoagland, Edward
Publisher: Lyons $ 27.95 ISBN: 1585746525 Date: 2003LJ
Hoagland's exploration, from the boreal forests of Maine to the brawny Belize River, illuminates both the exotic and the wilds of readers' backyards. Hoagland reports from the frontlines of life, and recounts fascinating detail with exacting prose.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 11.18.03 - Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark
Author: Hurd, Barbara
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $23 ISBN: 0618191380 Date: 2003LJ
Hurd begins her foray into the increasingly popular pursuit of caving with a panic attack. Nevertheless, as her hunger to understand caves and caving increases, she lures the reader in deeper as well, to the extraordinary fascination of these dark interiors.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 7.30.03 - Against Love: A Polemic
Author: Kipnis, Laura
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421890 Date: 2003PW
Kipnis begins by evoking a tempestuous adulterous affair and uses it to examine the cultural meaning of adultery.Against Love examines modern love on a societal rather than an individual plane and offers a bracing utopian vision against which readers may judge their lives.
Updated 7.1.03 - Making Connections: Mother-Daughter Travel Adventures
Author: Knight, Wendy (ed)
Publisher: Seal $ 16.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1580050875 Date: 2003LJ
Through lively and vivid accounts of an African safari, a trip to Thailand, and a Canadian canoe trip, this collection examines how the mother-daughter relationship is tested and altered by adventure travel.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 9.08.03 - Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers
Author: Lederer, Katy
Publisher: Crown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0609608983 Date: 2003PW
Lederer's two siblings would go on to become world class gamblers and her father a bestselling author, but her childhood was far from glamorous. InPoker Face, she renders the strange and at times funny story of her family's and her own trajectory through the world.
Suggested Reaing List: Take a Gamble
Updated 6.25.03 - Ambassador to the Penguins: A Naturalist's Year Aboard a Yankee Whaleship
Author: Mathews, Eleanor
Publisher: David Godine $ 29.95 ISBN: 1567922465 Date: 2003Booklist
Updated 12.15.03 - Evil: An Investigation
Author: Morrow, Lance
Publisher: Basic $ 24 ISBN: 0465047548 Date: 2003Booklist
From award-winning essayist Morrow comes a provocative meditation on the nature of evil, and a daring analysis of its role in the modern world.
Updated 8.13.03 - The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria, Medicine,
and the Quest for Quinine, the Cure That Changed the World
Author: Rocco, Fiammetta
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060199512 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
Quinine: Jesuits hoarded it and Nazis invaded for it. This is the story of the ravages of malaria, the search for a cure, and the quest to steal and smuggle cinchona seeds out of South America.
Updated 8.13.03 - Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Author: Satrapi, Marjane
Publisher: Pantheon $ 17.95 ISBN: 0375422307 Date: 2003PWLJ
An intelligent and outspoken only child, Satrapi--the daughter of radical Marxists and the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor--bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. A graphic novel.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Graphic Novels
Updated 7.8.03 - Adam's Naval: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form
Author: Sims, Michael
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670032247 Date: 2003Kirkus
Drawing on evolution and the mechanics of human anatomy, a science writers conducts an engaging tour of the human form--where biology and culture intersect.
Updated 5.9.03 - Terror in the Name of God: Why Reliogious Militants Kill
Author: Stern, Jessica
Publisher: Ecco $ 27.95 ISBN: 006050532x Date: 2003PW
Updated 7.1.03 - A
Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life
Author: Weinstein, Arnold
Publisher: Random $ 29.95 ISBN: 0375506241 Date: 2003Booklist
In the tradition of Harold Bloom'sShakespeare or Jaques Barzun'sFrom Dawn to Decadence, Brown University's Weinstein explores how great works of literature and art reveal the deep levels of human feeling and the great emotional issues of life.
Updated 8.13.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July
- The Spartans: The World of the
Warrior-Heros of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse
Author: Cartledge, Paul
Publisher: Overlook $ 27.95 ISBN: 1585674028 Date: 2003PW
A compelling narrative exploring the culture and civilization of the most famous "warrior people": the Spartans of ancient Greece, told by the world's leading expert. The narrative also details the lives of such illustrious mythmaking figures as Lycurgus, King Leonidas, Helen of Troy (and Sparta), and Lysander.
Suggested Reading: Greece
Updated 4.14.03 - The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love,
and Death in Foreign Lands
Author: Hartley, Aidan
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 0871138719 Date: 2003PW
Weaving together stories, his family's history, and his childhood in Africa, Hartley tells what he saw.The Zanzibar Chest is an enthralling narrative of men and women meddling with, embracing, and being transformed by other cultures in one of the most important examinations of colonialism ever written.
Link: The Zanzibar Chest Site
Updated 4.7.03 - Benjamin Franklin: A American Life
Author: Isaacson, Walter
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 30 ISBN: 0684807610 Date: 2003PW
Rescuing Benjamin Franklin from the clich of genial codger, this book celebrates the most interesting, advanced, and earthy of the founding fathers.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
Updated 6.6.05 - The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl: A Memoir
Author: Kingsland, Rosemary
Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 140004782X Date: 2003PWKirkus
With the same appeal as literary memoirs likeDon't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight andThe Road from Coorain, The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl is a vivid evocation of life in foreign cultures and a keenly observed portrait of a wildly dysfunctional family.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 5.19.03 - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Author: Krakauer, Jon
Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385509510 Date: 2003 Date: 2003KirkusLJ
Krakauer shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief in this true story of an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers who insist God commanded them to kill.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars | True Crime Stars
Updated 6.30.03 - Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World
Author: Rehder, William J.
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393051560 Date: 2003KirkusLJ
Americans have always been fascinated by bank robbers: Jesse James, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde. InWhere the Money Is FBI Special Agent Rehder chronicles the lives and crimes of bank robbers in today's Los Angeles who are as colorful and exciting as the legends of long ago.
Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
Updated 5.9.03 - Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley
Author: Rember, John
Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375422072 Date: 2003Booklist
In 1987 Rember returned to Idaho's Sawtooth Valley, his home as a boy in the late 1950s--a world where he knew he belonged. But his experience there as an adult would be different: not only had he changed, but the appearance and fabric of daily life had also been radically altered.
Updated 6.25.03 - Girl Walks into a Bar: A Memoir
Author: Saroyan, Strawberry
Publisher: Random $ 19.95 ISBN: 037550611x Date: 2003Booklist
In a voice reminiscent of Liz Phair one moment and Mary McCarthy the next, Saroyan's debut memoir depicts the often rocky path from girlhood to womanhood, and what it is like to come of age in New York, Los Angeles, and London in the 21st century.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 3.13.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
June
- Ghetto Celebrity: Searching for the Delbert in Me: A Memoir
Author: Alexander, Donnell
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 1400046025 Date: 2003Library Journal
Vivid, stylish, at times outrageous,Ghetto Celebrity traces author Alexander's rollercoaster journey out of small-town obscurity and drug abuse through self-reinvention as a writer, and his rise to underground fame in the West Coast alternative press scene.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 4.29.03 - Library: An Unquiet History
Author: Battles, Matthew
Publisher: Norton $ 24.94 ISBN: 0393020290 Date: 2003Library Journal
Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes readers on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the British Library, and explores how libraries are built and how they are destroyed.
Suggested Reading: Books About Books
Updated 4.29.03 - Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology
Author: Broks, Paul
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139014 Date: 2003Library Journal
A neuropsychologist and a runner-up for the prestigious Wellcome Trust Science Prize, Broks writes with a doctor's precision and clarity in a series of narratives about the fascinating world of the neurologically impaired, delving not only into the inner lives of his patients but also into a deeper understanding of how they define who they are.
Updated 4.29.03 - Dry: A Memoir
Author: Burroughs, Augusten
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312272057 Date: 2003Kirkus
With unconventional wit and a wonderfully weird way of looking at things, Burroughs, author ofRunning with Scissors, chronicles his life on the edge after leaving his deeply eccentric foster family.Dry is at times howlingly funny, devastatingly moving and, in the end, uplifting.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 4.7.03 - Invisible Eden: A True Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod
Author: Flook, Maria
Publisher: Broadway $ 24.95 ISBN: 0767913744 Date: 2003KirkusLJBooklist
A literary investigation of a story that riveted the nation: how a globe-trotting fashion writer who had retreated to a simpler life as a single mother on Cape Cod became the victim of a brutal, still unsolved murder.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | True Crime Stars
Updated 6.30.03 - Curzon: Imperial Statesman
Author: Gilmour, David
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 45 ISBN: 0374133565 Date: 2003Kirkus
Updated 4.7.03 - Merchants
of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension
Author: Hall, Stephen S.
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618095241Date: 2003PWLJKirkus
Aging, cancer, stem cells, cloning--this book's themes are the stuff of headlines and of humankind's greatest fears and hopes. An award-winning writer delves behind the headlines to reveal just how close scientists are to fulfilling these hopes and fears.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.5.03 - As of This Writing:
The Essential Essays
Author: James, Clive
Publisher: Norton $ 35 ISBN: 0393051803Kirkus
InAs of This Writing James has assembled his most ambitious and expansive collection to date, a book that features 49 essays on poetry, film, culture, and fiction written between 1967 and 2001.
Updated 3.27.03 - Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum
Author: O'Donnell, Edward T.
Publisher: Broadway $ 24.95 ISBN: 0767909054 Date: 2003Booklist
Ship Ablaze is the extraordinary, untold story of the 1904 maritime disaster that took the lives of more than a thousand New Yorkers.
Suggested Reading: On Fire | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 7.6.04 - Boogaloo
Author: Kempton, Arthur
Publisher: Pantheon $ 27.50 ISBN: 0375406123 Date: 2003PW
Boogaloo is the synonym of choice for soul music, or rhythm-and-blues, among the cognoscenti. In this far-reaching study, Kempton reveals the tensions between the sacred and profane at the heart of soul music and the centrality of blacks in America's popular music and culture.
Updated 5.8.03 - An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect
Author: Russell, Sharman Apt
Publisher: Perseus $ 24 ISBN: 0738206997 Date: 2003LJ
A delightful look at the science of butterflies--and our obsession with them--by an acclaimed nature writer.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 6.5.03 - Stolen Figs, and Other Adventures
in Calabria
Author: Rotella, Mark
Publisher: North Point $ 25 ISBN: 0865476276 Date: 2003PWKirkusLJ
Rotella'sStolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into tourist redoubts. This is a model travelogue--at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy sense of life that characterizes Calabria and its people.
Suggested Reading Lisst: Travel Tales | All Stars
Updated 6.5.03 - The Cruelest Miles: The
Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic
Author: Salisbury, Gay
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393019624 Date: 2003KirkusPWLJ
Alaska, 1925: the diphtheria serum is 674 miles away. Without it, the people of Nome will not survive. The never-before-told tale of the dogs and men who braved blizzard conditions to save Nome, Alaska from diphtheria.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 6.5.03 - Learning Joy from Dogs Without
Collars: A Memoir
Author: Summer, Lauralee
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743201027 Date: 2003Kirkus
In a memoir of a life in which nothing is taken for granted, Summer tells a moving story of triumph over adversity. Imbued with the wisdom of a woman who has seen life as a homeless girl and as a student within Harvard University's esteemed walls, this is a stirring tale of the power of the human will.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 4.7.03 - John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of
the American Navy
Author: Thomas, Evan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26.95 ISBN: 0743205839 Date: 2003Kirkus
The author of an acclaimed biography of Robert Kennedy turns to another larger-than-life subject--a "Founding Fighter" who combined the revolutionary zeal of John Adams with the naval daring of Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey--John Paul Jones, naval hero of the American Revolution.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
Updated 3.13.03 - The Language of Passion: Selected Commentary
Author: Vargas Llosa, Mario
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374183260 Date: 2003Kirkus
Since 1977, Vargas Llosa has contributed a biweekly column to Spain's major newspaper,El Pais. In this collection of columns from the 1990s, Vargas Llosa weighs in on the burning questions of the last decade, including the travails of Latin American democracy, the role of religion in civic life, and the future of globalization.
Updated 2.23.03 - Auto Da Fay
Author: Weldon, Fay
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802117503 Date: 2003PW
The acclaimed British author Weldon turns her gimlet-eyed wit and keen eye on--herself. In this engaging autobiography, Fay looks back on her own life and times--as a child in New Zealand, as a poor girl in London, as an unmarried mother, wife, lover, playwright, feminist, antifeminist, and winer-and-diner.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 4.7.03
December
| November | October
| September | August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
May
- Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
Author: Appy, Christian G.
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 067003124x Date: 2003KirkusLJ
In this monumental oral history, Appy has created the first work to probe the war's path through both the United States and Vietnam. Intellectually illuminating and emotionally overwhelming,Patriots allows readers to see and feel what this war really meant to people on all sides.
Updated 4.29.03 - I Saw Ramallah
Author: Barghouthi, Murid
Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 1400032660 Date: 2003Library JournalBooklist
Palestinian poet Barghouti relates his homecoming to Ramallah after 30 years in exile, offering a moving account of what it means to be a Palestinian today. Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 4.29.03 - The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics,
and the Opening of Old Japan
Author: Benfrey, Christopher
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375503277 Date: 2003PW
This beautifully rendered meditation on the subject of cultural identity and on the consequences--both good and bad--of cultural cross-pollination proves that what important history does at its best is transform our worldview.
Updated 4.7.03 - A
Short History of Nearly Everything
Author: Bryson, Bill
Publisher: Broadway $ 26 ISBN: 076708171 Date: 2003KirkusLJ
One of the world's finest and funniest writers goes on a quest to discover the mysteries of the universe--and comprehend the fascinating, eccentric people who devote their lives to unraveling those big questions.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 5.19.03 - Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times
Author: Clottes, Jean
Publisher:Univ of Utah $ 45 ISBN: 0874807581 Date: 2003LJ
Updated 5.19.03 - Still With Me: A Daughter's Journey of Love
and Loss
Author: Collier, Andrea King
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743226100 Date: 2003Kirkus
With an increasing number of terminally ill patients choosing to die at home, journalist Collier's account of taking care of her mother, suffering from stage four ovarian cancer, is a powerful, bittersweet, and unvarnished memoir.
Updated 2.23.03 - George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide
to the Eighteenth Century
Author: Darnton, Robert
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393057607 Date: 2003Kirkus
With characteristic learning and bracing insight, Darnton shows us that the Enlightenment had false teeth also--that it was not the Father of Our Modern World, responsible for all its advances and transgressions.
Updated 4.7.03 - Monkey Dancing: A Father,
Two Kids, and Journey to the Ends of the Earth
Author: Glick, Daniel
Publisher: Peresus $ 26 ISBN: 1586481541 Date: 2003PW
In this frank and funny memoir, a suddenly single father--and nationally known environmental reporter--takes his children on a world tour of some of the world's rare and endangered life forms while reckoning with loss, change, and the challenges of parenting.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature
Updated 5.8.03 - Y: The Descent of Man
Author: Jones, Steve
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 25 ISBN: 0618139303 Date: 2003Library Journal
Updated 3.31.03 - A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures
in Sex and Romance
Author: Juska, Jane
Publisher: Villard $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400060117 Date: 2003Library Journal
This funny, poignant utterly unique memoir tells of a schoolteacher who, in her later years, went in search of a sexual relationship via the personals section ofThe New York Review of Books.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
Updated 3.13.03 - The Peloponnesian War
Author: Kagan, Donald
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670032115 Date: 2003BooklistLJ
One of the world's foremost historians presents a fresh look at the greatest war of ancient Greece and a pivotal moment in Western civilization that still resonates today.
Suggested Reading: Greece
Updated 5.19.03 - The Beginning of Wisdom: A Companion
to the Book of Genesis
Author: Kass, Leon
Publisher: Free Press $ 35 ISBN: 0743242998 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
Updated 3.31.03 - Masters of Doom: The True Story of
How Two Guys Created a Video Game Empire, Transformed Pop Culture and
Unleashed
Doom
Author: Kushner, David
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505245 Date: 2003Library JournalBooklist
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 4.9.03 - Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club
Culture
Author: Owen, Frank
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312287666 Date: 2003Library Journal
In this striking debut, a journalist explores the nightclubs of the 1990s and the rise and fall of a decadent nocturnal empire that stretched over several American cities and spawned its own subculture of celebrities and wannabes.
Updated 4.29.03 - Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
Author: McPherson, James M.
Publisher: $ ISBN: 0609610236 Date: 2003BooklistKirkusLJ
McPherson takes us on one of his Gettysburg tours, with stops at important spots. He reflects on the meaning of the battle in the hearts and minds of Americans, describes the key events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater contexts of American and world history.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | All Stars
Updated 3.13.03 - Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home
Author: Ray, Janisse
Publisher: Milkweed $ 22 ISBN: 1571312722 Date: 2003Booklist
By the author ofEcology of a Cracker Childhood comes the story of a woman's return to her childhood home in Baxley, Georgia.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 4.28.03 - The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity
Author: Repcheck, Jack
Publisher: Perseus $ 26 ISBN: 073820692x Date: 2003LJ
The subject of this expertly crafted narrative is James Hutton, the gentleman farmer from Edinburgh who discovered that the earth is millions of years old, not six thousand, and paved the way for Darwin's theory of evolution.
Updated 5.19.03 - Nature Via Nurture:
Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human
Author: Ridley, Matt
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060006781 Date: 2003Library JournalBooklistPW
Armed with extraordinary new discoveries about genes, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley turns his attention to the nature versus nurture debate to bring readers a stunning book about the roots of human behavior.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 4.29.03 - In
Search of King Solomon's Mines
Author: Shah, Tahir
Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559706414 Date: 2003Library Journal
A shop near the site of the temple built by King Solomon is where Shah, the author of the much-praisedTrail of Feathers andSorcerer's Apprentice, begins his journey. Intrigued by a map he finds there, he sets out to find the king's gold mines, and the clues point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia. Tahir Shah's trail takes him and his readers on a quest described as both "quixotic" (Huntsville Times) and "challenging" (Publishers Weekly).
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 4.29.03 - Dark Star Safarai: Overland from Cairo to
Cape Town
Author: Theroux, Paul
Publisher: Houghton Miffliin $ ISBN: 0618134247 Date: 2003KirkusLJ
Widely acclaimed as one of the world's best travel writers, Theroux takes readers on the ultimate journey across the world's most complex and mysterious continent.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 1.16.03
December | November
| October | September
| August
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
July | June | May | April | March | February | January
April
- The Enemy at His Pleasure
Author: Ansky, S.
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 30 ISBN: 080505944x Date: 2003Kirkus
Finally available in English, the great Yiddish writer's account of a neglected time and place. In daily accounts, Ansky details his struggles: to raise funds; to lobby and bribe at the tsar's court; to procure and transport food, medicine, and money to the ravaged Jewish towns. This story is at once powerful and poignant, a rare and invaluable addition to the historical record.
Updated 2.10.03 - Gulag: A History
Author: Applebaum, Anne
Publisher: Doubleday $ 35.00 ISBN: 0767900561 Date: 2003KirkusPWBooklistLJ
The Gulag entered the world's historical consciousness in 1972, with the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's epic history of the Soviet camps,The Gulag Archipelago. Applebaum has undertaken a fully documented history of the Soviet camp system, from its origins in the Russian Revolution to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.31.03 - Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland
Author: Ascherson, Neal
Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 25 ISBN: 0809084910 Date: 2003Kirkus
Beginning with a breathtaking portrait of the country's landscape,Stone Voices is a rediscovery of Scotland's past and a wake-up call about its future, from a leading scholar-journalist.
Updated 2.10.03 - The Chinese in America:
A Narrative History
Author: Chang, Iris
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670031232 Date: 2003PW
Chang has written an extraordinary narrative that encompasses the entire history of the Chinese in America, an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day.
Updated 5.8.03 - Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging
History of Heavy Metal
Author: Christie, Ian R.
Publisher: Harper $ 24.95 ISBN: 006052362x Date: 2003Library Journal
Raucous, brash, and loud, this book is a definitive history of heavy metal told with wit, charm, and numerous devil signs.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 2.12.03 - The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science
Author: Cutler, Alan
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95ISBN: 0525947086 Date: 2003Library Journal
The life and accomplishments of a 17th-century scientist-turned-priest are explored in this story of science, sainthood, and the humble genius who forever changed the understanding of the Earth and created a new science: geology.
Updated 4.29.03 - White Muguls: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century
India
Author: Dalrymple, William
Publisher: Viking Books $ 34.95 ISBN: 0670031844 Date: 2003Kirkus
This compelling history of Britain's rule over India relates the true story of James Kirkpatrick, a British resident in the Court of Hyderabad in India, who converted to Islam and spied on the East India Company in the midst of an affair with the great-niece of the region's prime minister.
Updated 1.26.03 - A Tale of
Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa
and Sonoma
Author: Deutschman, Alan
Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 0767907035 Date: 2003PW
A Tale of Two Valleys takes young business writer Deutschman to one of America's favorite destinations--California wine country, where he explores the clash of the old and the new in Napa and Sonoma Valleys. This is an exciting romp that will remind readers of Tom Wolfe at his best.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 11.17.03 - Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley
and Livingstone
Author: Dugard, Martin
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385504519 Date: 2003Kirkus
Into Africa traces the journeys of Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Morton Stanley in alternating chapters, capturing with immediacy the dangers, disease, and beauty they encountered in the heart of Africa. The first book to examine the interworkings of physical challenges, political intrigue, and larger-than life personalities, this is a fascinating work of narrative history.
Suggested Reading: Stanley and Livingston
Updated 1.26.03 - A Million Little Pieces
Author: Frey, James
Publisher: Nan A. Talese $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385507755 Date: 2003KirkusBooklistLJ
Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging,A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects self-pity, it brings readers face-to-face with a provocative understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.29.03 - Beauty Before Comfort
Author: Glock, Allison
Publisher: Knopf $ 20 ISBN: 0375401210 Date: 2003Kirkus
Glock captures not only the irrepressible vitality of her maternal grandmother but also the rich ambiance of small-town, working class West Virginia during the twenties, the Great Depression, and the Second World War.
Updated 2.23.03 - The Hedgehog, the Fox and the Magister's Pox:
Ending the False War Between Science and the Humanities
Author: Gould, Stephen Jay
Publisher: Harmony $ 25.95 ISBN: 0609601407 Date: 2003KirkusPW
For the metaphor of cunning versus persistence that runs through this title, Gould refers to the 7th century B.C., when the Greek soldier-poet Archilochus said that "the fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and effective strategy."
Updated 1.10.03 - Miracles at the Jesus Oak: A History
of Supernatural Politics in Reformation Europe
Author: Harline, Craig E.
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385508204 Date: 2003Booklist
Historian Harline happened upon a vast collection of documents written in the 17th century by people who claimed to have experienced miracles and wonders. In this volume he recasts five of these testimonies into engaging vignettes that open a window on the people, politics, and religious movements of Counter-Reformation Europe.
Updated 3.13.03 - Appetites: Why Women Want
Author: Knapp, Caroline
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432252 Date: 2003Library Journal
The bestselling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs has turned her brilliant eye towards how a woman's appetite--for food, for love, for work, and for pleasure--is shaped and constrained by culture. Includes a new discussion guide.
Updated 3.31.03 - A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of
the Warship Somers
Author: Melton, Buckner F., Jr.
Publisher: Free Press $ 25.00 ISBN: 0743232836 Date: 2003Kirkus
Part maritime adventure, part legal thriller,A Hanging Offense brims with fascinating details about everything from 19th century naval discipline to the judicial processes of the time. Melton depicts the insular society of a warship, the challenge of command at sea, and the confrontation of two men of very different characters, beyond society's view or control.
Updated 1.26.03 - Manhattan to Baghdad: Dispatches from the Frontline of the War on Terrorism
Author: McGeough, Paul
Publisher: Allen & Unwin $ 17.95 (paper) ISBN: 1741140994 Date: 2003Kirkus
A foreign correspondent's analysis of the international repercussions from the events of September 11.
Suggested Reading List 9/11 stars
Updated 5.9.03 - Positively
Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
Author: McManus, James
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 26 ISBN: 0374236488 Date: 2003PW
Written in the tradition ofThe Gambler andThe Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes Las Vegas adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand the eros and logistics of man's primary competitive instincts.
Suggested Reading: Take a Gamble
Updated 3.3.03 - Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
Author: McKibben, Bill
Publisher: Times $ 25 ISBN: 0805070966 Date: 2003PW
The bestselling author ofThe End of Nature now looks into the not-so-distant future, when genetic science, robotics, and nanotechnology will push against the very door of humankind's immortality, and he challenges readers to confront this most profound question of their existence with care, intelligence, and ultimately, humility.
Updated 3.3.03 - Taking a History: A Doctor's Training at
Bellevue
Author: Ofri, Danielle
Publisher: Beacon $ 24 ISBN: 0807072524 Date: 2003BooklistLJ
This gripping memoir of learning medicine in the trenches is the story of becoming a doctor by immersion at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country--and perhaps the most legendary.
Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 3.13.03 - Fried Butter: A Food Memoir
Author: Opincar, Abe
Publisher: Soho $ 18 ISBN: 156947334x Date: 2003