Non-Fiction
 

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

by Daniel Okrent

Everyone loves reading about a fiasco, and one that affected a whole nation, launched criminal empires, and is infused with the glamour of New York speakeasies and Havana nights can't help but be a winner. Last Call is the best, most entertaining non-fiction book of the year so far. As Okrent tells the tale of the 13 years during which the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal, we see how it started out as a simple moral movement that rapidly gained strength when it joined with anti-immigrant factions. Evangelist Billy Sunday declared that Prohibition that would end slums and empty prisons, which could then be turned into factories and corncribs: “Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.” Americans being Americans, there were loopholes in the Volstead Act (the actual laws governing Prohibition), and they were exploited.  Doctors were allowed to write prescriptions for medicinal alcohol, launching the first “drug-stores” (the source of Gatsby's wealth in Fitzgerald's novel). It was legal to sell wine for sacramental purposes, and Beaulieu Vinyards made a fortune by encouraging bishops and cardinals to visit the lovely, sycamore-shaded Napa Valley estate to “test” the wines. Asking for a particular brand of liquor got its start during the “dry” years in order to protect yourself from whiskey or gin which might be flavored industrial alcohol originally destined for an aftershave manufacturer—or badly-made wood alcohol which could blind you. Soft drink sales soared. Scofflaws (a term coined specifically for Prohibition “wets”) used it to make questionable hooch palatable, while the law-abiding drank it instead of liquor. Ultimately, the system could not sustain itself. Forty-four percent of all government prosecutions were Prohibition-related, and city and state legislatures had neither the staff nor the popular will (bootleggers had “customers, not victims”) to fight what many considered to be perfectly civilized behavior.

The Disappearing Spoon

by Sam Kean

Gallium is a metal whose melting temperature is a mere 84 degrees Fahrenheit: you can cast objects out of it like you would with silver or iron, but anything you forge will begin melting as soon as it encounters a hot day, or a steaming cup of tea—thus its use in gag jokes and in the title of Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon.                         

Using the grouping of the periodic table as a starting point, Kean unwinds a series of stories about everything from noble gases to actinides, and the scientists who worked on them. He covers world-renowned names like Marie Curie, James Watson and Francis Crick, but takes special care to write about the lives of lesser-known and almost unknown scientists: those whose spouses and fellow researchers took credit for their labwork, those whose papers were published late or disrupted by world wars, and those who labored for decades in obscurity. Many of the best stories are located in the first half of the book, but some of the most interesting scientific writing is in the second, when Kean begins describing the creation of manmade elements that can exist only for fractions of a second in a lab environment. The Disappearing Spoon is an excellently researched story about our understanding of elemental properties.

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran

by Rob Sheffield

Sheffield's hilarious memoir of his high school and young adult years, as filtered through the music he was listening to at the time, pulls no punches. On one hand, the 80's were a cultural wasteland: “the biggest movie of 1985 was the one where Michael J. Fox used a time machine to get the hell out of 1985.” On the other hand, the music we have in high school becomes the soundtrack of our youth, and, because the emotions are happening to us, the tunes are always perfectly appropriate. The five years that Gatsby and Daisy had—for Sheffield, “the emblem of a doomed, fatal, endless obsession”—are the same five years as the boy and girl in Human League's “Don't You Want Me.” The siren on the cover of a Roxy Music album is the teacher he had a crush on. Sheffield dutifully chronicles his failed experiments with New Romantic clothing (“I blame a certain Scritti Politti video.”) and his obsession with A Flock of Seagulls' hairdos (“They were the first famous rock group ever to have started out as hairdressers—and they definitely saved their best work for themselves.”). But he also provides an analysis of one-hit-wonder bands like Men Without Hats and Haysi Fantayzee (if you have to ask, this is not the book for you), and recounts his sister’s experiment in wringing humor from New Kids On The Block. The 80’s where indeed a time were everyone could act like they came from out of this world and leave the real one far behind.

The Great Typo Hunt

by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson

reviewed by Kevin Lauderdale

The internet has given us a new literary genre:  My Year of Doing X, writing a blog about it, and then turning that into a book. Deck and Herson's adventures across America correcting public spelling errors  (“bread puding” offers a sign outside one restaurant, “He's Black and Im Proud” declares a Barack Obama t-shirt, while another restaurant warns “No Smoking Are Dogs Allowed”) is part guerilla theater and part Eats Shoots and Leaves. Started because Deck has an eye for typos and wanted to combat what he only half-jokingly calls “the creeping menace of carelessness,” (referral vs referal: “the difference between directing someone to the help they need and . . . returning to savagery?”) the result is much more than you might expect. More than an exercise in activist sticklerism, the authors discuss the ultimate meanings of conversion and language as they travel from town to town armed with Wite-Out, black markers, and chalk. The Obama t-shirt leads to a conversation with the seller about race and politics. A typographical incident at a Hallmark store results in ruminations on the nature of our service economy. The authors always asked permission before making any correction, and it's remarkable the number of times they were turned down. If the fix could be made without anyone noticing the change (simply removing the extra, giant plastic T from a sign selling SWEATTS), that was fine, but few people wanted a correction that would draw attention to itself (forcing a 've between you and got). Though a shop owner “would hardly appear infallible by not correcting the error” he might prefer instead to try to “get away with it.” That speaks volumes about our culture. Before and after pictures of numerous corrections are included.

Star Island

by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen’s back in great form and he’s brought a few old friends along with him for the wild ride in Star Island.  In fact, this zany romp through pop culture features none other than his greatest creation of all: Skink, aka Clinton Tyree, the former governor of Florida, who one day walked out of the State Capitol to become a hermit-like vigilante bent on protecting what’s left of Florida’s ever-threatened ecosystem.  

This time out the wondrous Skink has also sworn to protect one Ann DeLusia, a mostly failed actress who now makes her living as the full-time impersonator of an out-of-control rock star who’s a hybrid concoction of  Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.  She quite accidentally finds herself kidnapped by sleezy paparazzi Bang Abbot who leaches off the lives of celebrities hardly worth the effort.  Star Island also features the normal requisite of shady real estate developers, high-life sycophants, morally depraved entertainment industry types and, also making a triumphant return, none other than Chemo from Hiaasen’s Skin Tight.  The hideously deformed giant with a weed whacker for a hand is on board as bodyguard and keeper of pop sensation Cherry Pye whose constant indiscretions threaten her career while adding even more hilarious hijinks to the tale. 

There are many imitators, claimants to the throne, but there is only one Carl Hiaasen who once again masters the sub-genre he practically invented.  The plot may be a bit thin and Hiaasen’s satire somewhat less savage.  But Star Island rates five stars for laugh-out-loud fun and the best social commentary this side of TMZ.

The Cookbook Collector

by Allegra Goodman

Jess Bach and her sister Emily live in the San Francisco Bay Area at the height of the internet bubble. Emily is the CEO of a high-tech company that's just gone public, and Jess is a Berkeley grad student in philosophy. This excellent novel of manners paints the ups and downs in their fortunes, and those of their friends and lovers, over the handful of years just preceding and following the turn of the last century. The people in the sisters' circles are largely young and uniformly brilliant, no matter what their calling. Though the characters are all obsessed with IPOs and the “gazillions” they can bring, this book remains sweetly comic, never satirical. Goodman loves all of her characters, and her readers will as well—not just the Bach sisters, but the Dickensian supporting cast who span from a webmaster rabbi (“I have some Apple, I have some Cisco.  I bought Crossroad Systems at 19. I know from technology stocks.”) to the sexy British programmer who makes up a blues song about a rubber chicken. The old and the new, represented by the fixedness of books and the fluidity of the internet, do battle throughout this novel. The title refers to a collection of over 800 antiquarian cookbooks found by Jess' boss, a used book dealer. The books are stored in a kitchen:  in drawers, on shelves. . .  in the oven. The question of theory vs. practice (here “the perversity of substituting cookbooks for utensils”) suffuses this novel. We used to have to rely upon the artifact for information, but, if the internet separates the information from the artifact, do we still need it? The characters ponder that in art, business, and in love.

Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow

by Zsuzsi Gartner

Darwin’s Bastards is an anthology of Canadian speculative fiction set in the future or near future (or near alternate past) under dystopian or post-apocalyptic conditions.  

Douglas Coupland’s “Survivor” is a bleak spin on the reality show as it’s transformed into reality. Timothy Taylor’s “Sunshine City” is a mystery within a gated community that takes its golf seriously. Stephen Marche’s “The Personasts” has too much exposition to explain its vague mysticism. 

Jessica Grant’s “Love in the Pneumatic Tube Era,” is romantic and satisfying. Anosh Irani’s “Notes from the Womb” is a startlingly original story from the POV of a baby waiting to be born. Elyse Friedman’s “I Found Your Vox,” while rife with nice pop references, doesn’t quite rise above the stalker motif. 

Buffy Cram’s “Large Garbage” upends the tension between the privileged and the homeless. Paul Carlucci’s “This Morning All Night” is a surreal metaphor for plundering the environment. Sheila Heti’s “There Is No Time in Waterloo” seems to be about over reliance on technology, but all its clever physics notions add up to a confusing ending. 

Laura Trunkey’s “Fire from Heaven” is a sprawling story of spontaneous combustion that ties together nicely. Pasha Malla’s “1999” is a welcome burst of humor with Prince (the rock star) as the last man on earth. Matthew J. Trafford’s “The Divinity Gene” is epic in conception, but suffers from tonal shifts between sections. 

Well worth reading for these and other stories.

Ice Cold

by Tess Gerritsen

reviewed by Jon Land

The adventure started off well enough. 

When an early chapter opens like that, you pretty much know things are about to spin out of control fast and that’s exactly what happens in Ice Cold.  Tess Gerritsen’s latest features one of the creepiest set-ups this side of Stephen King or Dean Koontz.  But, fear not, this is no cross-genre departure.  Instead, it’s a terrific entry in the Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli  series, which now has a television offshoot on TNT. 

Medical examiner Maura is traveling with friends when a snowstorm strands them in the very small town of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where all the residents have disappeared, vanished with meals on the table, fires burning, and televisions left on. After an attempt to find help leads to her disappearance as well, Detective Jane comes riding to the rescue with a mystery to solve that Maura finds herself in the middle of after she lands in the custody of a teenage boy who may be the only one with the answers both she and Jane seek. One hint:  Expect no zombies or monsters released by some scientific experiment gone awry. 

Michael Crichton’s masterful The Andromeda Strain notwithstanding, Ice Cold is suspenseful storytelling at its level best, certain to chill you to the bone even in the dog days of summer.  A flat-out stunner that’s riveting from first page ‘til last.

The Typist

by Michael Knight

reviewed by A.B. Mead

Set in Japan during the early days of the American occupation which followed World War II, this short novel reads more like a memoir. Spare in detail, but mesmerizing, we follow young soldier Francis Vancleave as he works as a typist in General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. We see the reverence the Japanese hold for MacArthur as he becomes a replacement emperor to them, the illicit world of the panpan girls, and the new society struggling to rise from—yet firmly-anchored to—the ashes to conquest and humiliation. The plot is composed of intimate, everyday occurrences. Francis gets roped into being a playmate for MacArthur's young son. A bunkmate sets up housekeeping with a prostitute. The wife Francis barely knows, whom he left back home, writes to confess that she's been unfaithful. All of this is made dream-like by the setting and by the detachment with which our hero moves and records. For readers with an interest in post-war Japan, The Typist is an artistic change of pace. For those without an interest, the novel will inform and illuminate.

The Cardturner

by Louis Sachar

Sachar has set himself the herculean task of writing a YA novel about . . . bridge. Yes, the card game:  north, south, trump, redouble . . . Fortunately, if anyone has the street cred to get kids to pick up a book about such an incredibly uncool topic, it's the author of YA classic Holes. (If potential readers can get past the cover, which not only doesn't look YA, it doesn't even look like fiction; it looks like something that you'd hear discussed on NPR—a book about downsizing and airports, maybe.) The narrator is seventeen-year-old Alton, who gets forced into helping his grandfather (who is blind but has a photographic memory) play the game in a series of tournaments one summer. Although he says that his goal in telling the story isn't to teach us how to play, necessarily some of that seeps through as we read. Alton thoughtfully sets aside sections of the story with a whale sign to indicate when he's about to go into game details, so less-interested readers can skip those portions—rather  like the encyclopedia entries on cetology that Melville copied into Moby-Dick—and just continue with the plot. And there is a plot.  This is not a junior version of Tuesdays with Morrie. There is a family mystery to unravel involving madness, suicide, and politics—linked, of course, to bridge. As someone who knows nothing at all about the game, I found myself becoming more and more interested. I had to frequently turn back to earlier pages though to remind myself, for example, who gets to set the trump or that the real number of tricks is an unspoken six plus whatever you actually bid. The book helpfully includes the standard North, East, South, West diagrams of various hands that you see on your newspaper's comics page. Although probably not destined to launch a major craze for bridge among America's teens, it will certainly turn a few of them on to it. It did me.

Little Blog on the Prairie

by Cathleen Davitt Bell

Teenager Genevieve Welsh and family are spending their summer vacation at a “frontier history family camp,”a re-creation of 1890's pioneer life right out of Little House on the Prairie, an obsession of Gen's mother's. Of course, she hates it. The clothes are hot, hungry chickens attack her, and don't get her started on having to sleep in the same bed with the rest of her family; back home her little brother isn't even allowed in her room. True, there's no refrigerator, but the hand-churned butter sure tastes better than the stuff from the supermarket. She secretly sends complaining text messages to her friends (“Here's the thing: being a farmer is BORING”), one of whom puts them up on a blog as her summer school class project. Gen isn't bratty in her criticisms, she's practical.  It isn't the lack of cable TV that annoys her, it's all the buttons you have to do up just to get dressed—or undo to use the outhouse.  As Gen bonds with the other kids over games of Kick The Can, and finds herself competing with another girl not just for the cutest boy there but in cow milking skill, little does she know that the blog is becoming more and more popular.