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Reviewer key (JF) = John Freeman (MSG) = Michael S. Gant (RK) = Rick Kleffel (RvB) = Richard von Busack Railroad: Identity, Design and Culture by Keith Lovegrove Full column. This coffee-table volume about the lore of rail travel is both a social and a design history, with chapters about the trains themselves, the service (mainly dining) en route and the advertising used to lure passengers aboard. These are all topics for whole libraries, and Railroad feels like a skimming over rather than a diving into the subject. But the pictures are glorious, from a private car outfitted like a mansion to the sleek boiler shrouds of 1930s streamliners like the 20th Century Limited and the Burlington Zephyr; from ad slicks of happy lounge passengers to an eye-catching spread of train posters, including a Pennsylvania RR ad for its air-conditioned cars that could be used today for March of the Penguins. The book includes up-to-date photos of streaky European and Japanese bullet trains, but it is clear that the golden age of railroading has long since been shunted to a siding. (Rizzoli; 160 pages; $29.95 paper) (MSG) Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul by Scott Weidensaul Full column. About a half-century ago, famed birder Robert Tory Peterson and naturalist James Fisher toured North America counting flora and fauna; the 100-day, 30,000-mile dash was written up as Wild America. Fifty years later, Scott Weidensaul duplicated the feat, taking the pulse of the continent's natural heritage in the process. His journey starts at the murre rookeries of Newfoundland and scoots south along the Atlantic coast (with forays to the Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Park) to the Everglades. After a rugged hike through the Sierra Madre range of eastern Mexico, looking for jaguarundis and wolves (the area encompasses animals of both the temperate zone and the tropics), Weidensaul heads up the Pacific shore, stopping to visit the contentious salmon runs of the Klamath River, finally ending at the auklet havens of the Bearing Sea. Weidensaul teeters between awe at what remains of the great flocks and herds, aided in many cases by the preservation causes of the 1960s and '70s, and deep concern about environmental degradation presided over by the Bush administration with "a yawn of denial and inaction." Throughout, Weidensaul proves an astute and even poetic observer of fur and feather: "Roseate terns, starkly white with long forked tails that twisted gently in the breeze like streamers, flew past us." It isn't necessary to read the original to appreciate Weidensaul's melancholy achievement, and Return to Wild America should be by your side the next time some nitwit like Rep. Richard Pombo starts pontificating about gutting the Endangered Species Act. (North Point Press; 394 pages; $26 cloth) (MSG) The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard Full column. In 1913, Teddy Roosevelt, after losing his third-party presidential bid, took off to the Amazon for an expedition down the uncharted River of Doubt, 1,000 miles of boiling rapids full of piranha, flowing through a dense jungle buzzing with disease-carrying insects. (Would George W. Bush do that? I think not.) The entire harrowing story is related with skill and great narrative pulse by National Geographic writer Candice Millard. During this believe-it-or-not journey, the ex-president soldiered on despite a near-fatal infection to his injured leg, while his monomaniacal son Kermit vowed to bring the grand old man out alive. The expedition's co-leader, Brazilian Cândido Mariano, is just as fascinating—against considerable odds, he ordered his men to die rather than fire upon a single native Amazonian. (Doubleday; $26 cloth) (MSG) Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty edited by Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly Full column. In 1970, artist Robert Smithson orchestrated the construction of a 1,500-foot-long dike of basalt rock extending into the Great Salt Lake in the shape of a coiled plant tendril on the verge of opening. On the back of the extraordinary piece rests the whole aesthetic argument for the "earth art" movement. Shortly after its creation, Spiral Jetty sank beneath rising waters, becoming a ghost image for three decades, preserved mainly through Smithson's experimental film about his project. Then, starting in 2002, the piece re-emerged as the lake's surface receded. The new Jetty, as recorded in the spectacular photographs in this coffee-table tribute, is caked with crystalline salt deposits that resemble snow drifts. The images, which capture the piece in a variety of perspectives and lighting conditions, emphasize both its ephemeral and its enduring qualities. The volume also includes Smithson's preliminary drawings plus several critical assessments. The best writing, however, comes from the artist himself, in his seminal 1972 essay about the symbolic urges behind the Jetty and in a 1971 article called "A Cinematic Atopia," full of unique insights into the mysteries of film perception. (Dia Art Foundation and UC Press; 208 pages; $39.95 cloth) (MSG) The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery and Lore of the Persian Carpet by Brian Murphy Full column. Foreign correspondent Brian Murphy's fascinating hajj to Iran and surrounding carpet-weaving regions takes its title from the evocatively named madder plant, from which is extracted the best natural red dye. The dye from this "leafy little plant" is so strong, the author notes, that it "can turn our bones red." Murphy's obsession with hand-woven Persian rugs is bone-deep, even if he starts out as an amateur in a field in which even experts can be fooled by clever copies. Seduced by both the beauty and the history of these intricate weavings that he calls "one of the great crossroads of ... fundamental spiritual and creative yearnings," Murphy seeks the guidance of merchants in the Tehran bazaar, quizzes historians, visits women weavers at their looms in remote villages—and snags a few finds of his own. Not a buyer's guide to patterns and prices, the book is a historical and cultural study of how a folk tradition struggles to survive in a modern marketplace. Although they are making a bit of a comeback, natural dyes have been supplanted by chemical ones, and pre-ordered patterns outsell indigenous iconography. The urge is understandable—to many poor villagers a single carpet sold to a European buyer can be a windfall—but Murphy understands the quality of loss when a tribe's memories succumb to globalization. Ultimately, the Persian rugs Murphy pursues are more than a commodity; they "possess unbroken links to the earliest forms of expression and self-awareness." (Simon & Schuster; 287 pages; $25 cloth) (MSG) San Jose's Historic Downtown by Bob Johnson and Lauren Miranda Full text review. The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright by Jean Nathan Full column. How much do we really want to know about our favorite children's-book authors? Lewis Carroll's unseemly taste in urchins, A.A. Milne's disaffected son, who hated being Christopher Robin—some backstories are best left alone. Then again, when it turns out that Dare Wright, who wrote and took the photo illustrations for the popular Lonely Doll series in the late 1950s and early '60s, was a stunning ice-princess blonde fashion model who liked to pose in the nude covered only with sea weed and shells, like a dead body washed ashore; who carried a torch for a dead RAF pilot while fending off a succession of sexually frustrated suitors; and whose mother, Edie, was so domineering, so smothering, that she made Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver—well, the reality is more fascinating than the fantasy. Reporter Jean Nathan structures her biography like a detective story. While searching for a copy of The Lonely Doll, she discovered that Wright, a bed-ridden recluse, was still alive in a New York hospital. Over the course of several years, Nathan befriended Wright and begin to peel back the layers of a life as enlivened by glamour as it was crippled by neurosis. As Nathan discovered, the psychosexual currents that roiled Wright's life made their way into her clever books in which a blonde cloth doll named Edith embarks on adventures with her toy pal, Little Bear. The pictures of Edith's miniaturized world are expertly set-designed and posed—Wright was a talented photographer and seamstress—but also rather creepy by today's sensitized standards for child sexuality. In one disturbing image, Edith ends up gagged and trussed to a tree; more than once, she receives spankings from Mr. Bear. After the death of her mother and beloved brother, Blaine, Wright slipped into a slow, steady decline, forgotten by readers and publishers alike. Only lately have used copies of her books become hot collectors' items. Nathan's marvelous tribute to the troubled author includes some amazing photographs, including a chilling shot of Wright's mother, Edie, smoking a cigarette and sporting cat glasses as she suns herself in a deck chair—she looks exactly as spiderish as Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. (Picador; 308 pages paper) (MSG) The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods and the End of Earth First! by Kate Coleman Full text review. A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk about Their Craft, Lives and Inspiration by Michael Shapiro Full text review. The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliot Article. The Simpsons: One Step Beyond Forever edited by Jesse L. McCaan Full column. While this book does give bright children something to read aloud to their parents until they get yelled at, this book—like its predecessors—spoils the pleasure of rewatching Simpsons reruns by unearthing all the tidbits suddenly caught the fourth time around. Still, it will settle arguments: here's what the Ultrahouse said; here's the exact spelling of the Charles Nelson Reilly-style, finger-in the-collar reaction noise ("Guh-ooo!"). Suitable for framing is an illustration of Homer being assaulted by vengeful beavers. For the pondering is a Roger Rosenblatt-style fulmination by Abe: "Movies were better in our day. For a nickel, you got two movies, a cartoon, a bag of popcorn and a whuppin'! Kept your mind on your business!" For the searching, there is every "blackboard joke": "The giving tree is not a chump," "Vampire is not a career choice," "Spongebob is not a contraceptive." (Harper; 128 pages; $14.95 paper) (RvB) Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever by Leslie Savan Full column. Leslie Savan watches way too much TV—commercials in particular. Luckily, she pays close attention to the way copywriters, sitcom hacks and filmmakers turn slang into "not clichés exactly, but snappy turns of phrase with a televisual sheen"—in short, "pop talk." We've all heard them: "I don't think so," "No way/Way!," "Duh," "Don't go there," ad nauseam. Savan analyzes the epidemiology of "buzzphrases," especially the ones driven by TV shows such as The Simpsons, Friends and Seinfeld (although, curiously, she turns a deaf ear to Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Savan is especially astute tracing the path of hip-hop slang through the media wringer. McDonald's misconstrues the sexual boast "I'd hit it" into an endorsement for a double cheeseburger in an effort to earn points with the urban demographic. Budweiser's ubiquitous "Whassup?!" campaign appropriated the exaggerated expression by black filmmaker Charles Stone III, providing "yet another way for white men, and women, to bond with black people without having to actually know any." Most pop talk is harmless rhetorical "bling," but when George Tenet predicates that finding WMDs in Iraq will be "a slam dunk," we've moved dangerously close to George Orwell's doublespeak. (Knopf; 340 pages; $23.95 cloth) (MSG) A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin Full text review. Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas Full text review. Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World by Hugh Pope Full column. Last month, Saparmurat Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, banned lip-syncing in his country—at last, a despot who puts his powers to a good cause. The Central Asian tyrant, who has erected a revolving monument to himself ("a cross between a marble-clad space rocket and a tripod Eiffel Tower"), is just one of the many leaders, dissidents and intellectuals interviewed by Istanbul-based British journalist Hugh Pope for his fascinating trek through the lands of the Turkic people. Pope's main focus is on the "stans": Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakstan. In these remote regions where the Huns and the Mongols rose up and headed west to conquer Byzantium, oil-rich countries struggle to slough off Soviet-era strictures and to maintain their balance between the Islamic fundamentalists on one side and the Chinese empire on the other. Despite a British tendency to romanticize nomadic tribes, a la Lawrence of Arabia, Pope offers significant insights into a region and a people likely to play an increasingly significant role in the 21st century. (Overlook Press; 413 pages; $35 cloth) (MSG) Spice: A History of a Temptation by Jack Turner Full column. Neatly packaged in tins and bottles, spices are easy to take for granted. In times past, however, pepper, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon were fiercely sought-after treasures that sparked ancient trading urges and jump-started Western Europe's voyages of exploration and colonial rapaciousness. Jack Turner's breezy (if a heavily annotated, near-400-page-long book can be called breezy) history of our spice jones ranges over the religious, sensual, medicinal and culinary uses of spices, liberally citing period sources, from Chaucer and John Donne to Dante (who consigned wealthy taste-bud indulgers to the lower rings of hell). Eventually, the spice prices plummeted, and the ultimate luxury became just another commodity. The process was aided by one of the most fascinating characters unearthed by Turner: the appropriately named Pierre Poivre, a one-armed 18th-century adventurer who plotted to break the Dutch monopoly in the Moluccas by stealing their spice plants and whisking them away to French colonies. (Vintage; 384 pages; $14.95 paper) (MSG) Still Standing: A Century of Urban Train Station Design by Christopher Brown Full column. Even if we do get a high-speed train from Southern California to Northern California (and the chances are about as good as surviving a hunting trip with Dick Cheney), we probably won't get any magnificent new stations in which to wait for the 5:15 to Emeryville and points north. What we're missing can be seen in large, glorious color photos in Christopher Brown's survey of some of the world's most impressive architectural spaces. Developing apace with the steam engine in the 19th century, train-station designers experimented with new structural techniques that allowed for large uninterrupted interior spaces; the 1852 Garde de L'Est in Paris effortlessly encompasses an entire "interior street." The 1894 Union Station in St. Louis, Mo. (now restored, thankfully) boasts castlelike walls and a soaring clock tower around a huge vaulted waiting room. In the 20th century, stations favored sleek Art Deco design, culminating in such treasures as the 1933 Cincinnati Union Terminal, as fancy as any movie palace, and L.A.'s iconic Union Station of 1939, a familiar set for film noir dramas. The brief text is helpful, but it is hard to turn away from the photos. (Indiana University Press; 134 pages; $49.95 cloth) The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt Article. The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise by Michael Grunwald Full column. Sometimes it seems that humans just ruin everything they touch. In the early 19th century, as Florida's new ruler, the United States, was trying to empty the former Spanish territory of the Seminole tribes, no more than a few dozen white people called south Florida home. The Everglades was just a huge swamp. By 2000, there were 7 million residents and nearly six times that number of tourists coming through every year. The phenomenal growth of the area has had a devastating effect on the Everglades—which has been drained, filled and polluted in the name of progress—and its indigenous wildlife. In this page-turner, Washington Post reporter Michael Grunwald describes how in a rare moment of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans got together at the end of former President Bill Clinton's tenure to reverse the damage this encroachment had cost, launching the biggest environmental project in American history. In the process, Grunwald spins a vast and profoundly enlightening history of the region, showing how the very forces that ruined the Everglades are now being employed to resurrect its grandeur. Success is not assured. "Most of all, the Everglades is a moral test," Grunwald writes. "It will be a test of our willingness to restrain ourselves, to share the Earth's resources. ... If we pass, we may deserve to keep the planet." (Simon & Schuster; 464 pages; $27 cloth) (JF) Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco with essays by Kendall H. Brown and Sharon A. Miniciello Full column. With the fading of the Meiji empire and the coming of the Taisho era in the early 20th century, Japan entered a period of troubled engagement with Western ideas and capitalism that did not fade until the Depression. The push-pull relationship between East and West is explored in artists' images of young women in Taisho Chic, an amply illustrated catalog accompanying a traveling exhibit by the Honolulu Academy of Arts (now at the Berkeley Art Museum). As noted in the introduction, "Women were at the very core of the social and cultural tension in interwar Japan." New economic opportunities produced the moga, or modern girl, who worked in offices and cafes and represented the leading edge of social change (including a push for workers' rights). With their marcelled hairdos and contemporary fashions, the moga challenged centuries of tradition. The fascinating examples in the catalog show familiar woodblock and ink-on-silk techniques used to depict glamorous fashion plates at play in nightclubs or relaxing on the beach in Western-style slacks. In Tamakawa Shuho's spectacular screen painting Three Sisters, the daughters of a famous industrialist are portrayed in and about a luxury sedan of Packard vintage. Although dressed in traditional kimonos, the women look thoroughly as ease with a modern world of wealth as they stare confidently ahead, almost daring the viewer to judge them. The emphasis is on painting, but the section on "decorative arts" shows how ubiquitous the worldwide influence of streamline design and art deco was in the late '20s and early '30s. (Honolulu Academy of Arts; 176 pages; $29.95 paper) (MSG) Take Me by Nyree Belleville Article. Tart by Jody Gehrman Review/article. The Tattoo Artist by Jill Ciment Full column. Jill Ciment's new novel covers a lot ground—geographical, temporal and epidermal—in a hurry. After a few years of avant-garde painting and political agitating in New York in the 1920s, Sara and her Boho lover, Philip, embark on a hunt for primitive masks and end up stranded on a Polynesian island. Blamed for the death of a tribal elder's child, the couple are punished with elaborate and painful tattoos. After Philip is shot by Japanese soldiers, Sara channels her artistic impulses into an skin-inked record of her whole life, until, 30 years later, she is returned to a world she can no longer fathom. Ciment's highly condensed, poetic style works tattooing as a metaphor for the creative process and the history of modernist art until it draws blood: "The greatness of the tattoo artist lies in her ability to gauge the degree to which she can push her art before the art kills the canvas." At times, though, Ciment's images clunk like cocoanuts on the head: a young woman's "bare breasts were so huge and projectile, they came at us like hurled footballs." (Pantheon Books; 207 pages; $23 paper) (MSG) Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey by Bill Roorbach Full column. I am generally immune to the back-to-nature urges of college professors, but I'll make an exception for Bill Roorbach, who has spent many years strolling, bushwhacking and canoeing along the Temple Stream near his home in Farmington, Maine. The Temple is hardly the Amazon, but even this modest waterway contains natural, historical and human surprises. The author astutely tracks the landscape-altering activities of the Temple's many beavers, comments on the unforgiving landscape (whose value as farmland peaked more than a century ago) and relates with novelistic flair his encounters with some deeply suspicious locals, mostly notably Earl Pomeroy, a Bunyanesque recluse with a deep mean streak. At times, when detailing his academic duties and his wife's pregnancy, Roorbach is guilty of padding (the book expands on a Harper's Magazine article), but when he's afield, spotting muskrats and catching sight of a bald eagle, Roorbach does justice to his distant mentor in the genre, Henry David Thoreau. (Dial Press; 288 pages; $24 cloth) (MSG) Thud! by Terry Pratchett Review/article. Towelhead by Alicia Erian Full text review. The Trudeau Vector by Juris Jurjevics Full column. The Hot Zone gets the chill-factor treatment in Juris Jurjevics' medico-thriller. At an Arctic research center built by the Canadians, a deadly what's-it is killing scientists in terrible ways—calcifying their innards and eating away the pupils of their eyes. Dr. Jessica Hanley, a crack American epidemiologist, parachutes into the frozen facility to investigate. Hanley is a UC-Santa Cruz grad and therefore espouses the virtues of homeopathy (the school needs an anti-defamation league to stamp out that kind of stereotyping). Meanwhile, a Russian agent disappears in a submarine, setting up a breathless parallel plot. But the real action is in the lab, where Hanley rushes to isolate the contagion—stopping only for a couple of perfunctory sex scenes with an Inuit engineer: "He stripped off their clothing and took her. The pleasure was nearly painful." The rat-a-tat narrative sometimes stalls in flurries of factoids about cold-weather survival gear, but the denouement makes useful nods toward the dangers of global warming. The Trudeau Vector is perfect summer reading, even if Labor Day has come and gone. (Viking; 400 pages; $24.95 cloth) (MSG) True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole by Bruce Henderson Full text review. Two Trains Running by Andrew Vachss Full text review. Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird Full column. Warning! Don't read half of this book, have a beer and go online to enthuse about it. Be sure to finished the second half, which falls apart like a $99 suit. You'll lament your intemperate praise with bitter tears. The first half of this first novel by the 30-year-old Nick Laird is a joy: a well-written mix of Ulster slum-funk and the discontents of a starchy London job. A Northern Irish petty criminal comes to visit the flat of his childhood chum, an assimilated but bored lawyer, and the trouble starts right away. But then, everything frays: characters start dropping out as if they'd vanished through trap doors; there's a thickly written sex scene, a touristy visit to Belfast, a slow-speed chase through London and a would-be Hitchcockian finale at the Tate Modern. It all seems slammed together for the inevitable movie sale. Laird has the pleasure (and no doubt the embarrassment) of being married to the most beautiful and famous novelist in England. That's a strike against him being taken seriously in the English literary world. And the webpagish supplements to this novel (what's on his playlist and what poetry he's reading) aren't going to give him extra stature. Still: Utterly Monkey's first half shows a careful yet explosively funny writer who may surpass this first effort. (HarperPerennial; 344 pages; $13.95) (RvB) What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff Full text review. Article. Willful Creatures: Stories by Aimee Bender Full text review. The Wit in the Dungeon by Anthony Holden Full column. English author and publisher Leigh Hunt was tirelessly prolific throughout the first half of the 19th century—if a coach rattled through the streets of London, Hunt was there to pen an essay or improvise an ode about it. Hunt is one of those literary figures whose fame faded long ago but whose memory lingers like a phantom limb because he befriended and championed writers with sturdier reputations. Everyone who knew Hunt—and that includes the likes of Romantic poets Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron and critics Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt—praised Hunt fulsomely as a boon companion, and complained quietly (or out loud, in Byron's case) about his tendency to put the bite on his pals for a pound or two now and again. Biographer Anthony Holden tracks the soaring intellectual and sinking financial careers of Hunt from his early fame as a political prisoner locked up for deprecating the morals of the Prince of Wales through his many briefly shining, quickly extinguished publications (often issued with the help of his long-suffering and much more practical brother). Holden is especially good on Hunt's difficult menage a trois with the blowhard Byron and the peacemaking Shelley. Their tragic early deaths left Hunt looking like a relic from another era by the time Charles Dickens maliciously satirized the older man in Bleak House as Harold Skimpole, a "mere child in the world" who "had no idea of money" and a freeloader "cadging money from the tale's young innocents." Hunt deserved better from the novelist whose books he had touted, and Holden's volume goes a long way toward redressing the injustice. (Little, Brown and Company; 448 pages; $29.95 cloth) (MSG) Written Lives: Essays by Javier Marias, translated by Margaret Jull Costa Full column. The rise of the author tour has made the author interview a staple of newspapers. But what exactly do these stories tell us? Can they traffic in gossip or hearsay? Are they allowed to pivot on a telling anecdote? Before one sniffs at such devices as morally reprehensible, it is worth noting they are exactly what make certain biographies so deliciously readable. In Written Lives, Spain's pre-eminent novelist, Javier Marias, constructs a series of minibiographies of 20 writers from these materials alone. The result is guilty good reading. James Joyce, we learn, "would not deign to open his mouth" while eating out, expecting "to be kept entertained with chatter while he remained silent." Isak Dinesen apparently subsisted on champagne and oysters. Arthur Miller once politely inquired which doctor recommended this diet, and Dinesen barked back, "Doctor? The doctors are horrified. ... I am an old woman, and I eat what agrees with me." Written Lives moves from one such tale to the other, some of them surprising, other confirming our suspicions. Malcolm Lowry once sold the clothes off his back to buy a bottle of gin. Emily Bronte learned to fire a pistol at a young age and was an addict of target practice. Telescoped into the present, these details bring vague lives into sudden focus. They make writers human, perhaps painfully so. As Marias writes, "Posterity always has the advantage of enjoying the work of writers without having the bother of putting up with the writers themselves." These essays remind us that this is only partly true, because, when it comes down to, authors might write the books. When they're dead, we write their lives. (New Directions; 200 pages; $22.95 cloth) (JF) Zorro by Isabel Allende Full text review. [ Books Central | Metroactive Central ]