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|  | Ananthaswamy, Anil THE EDGE OF PHYSICS
November 15, 2009 - In the late 20th century, work by Einstein and quantum physicists seemed on the verge of explaining everything when confusion descended. Astronomers discovered that galaxies were moving too fast. Their stars and dust produced far too little gravity
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| | Barker, Adele NOT QUITE PARADISE
November 15, 2009 - Within days of her sojourn to Sri Lanka in 2001, American-born Barker was met with immense sympathy for her homeland and its citizens—she had arrived just three weeks after 9/11. Feeling the need for a change of pace, Barker sought out teaching
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| | Biggers, Jeff RECKONING AT EAGLE CREEK
November 15, 2009 - The author's forebears hailed from Eagle Creek, Ill., tucked away in the Shawnee National Forest and rich in several coal veins, now devastated by strip mining. By 1998 the last relation had sold what was left of the homestead to the encroaching
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| | Blehm, Eric THE ONLY THING WORTH DYING FOR
November 15, 2009 - After 9/11, America could not rush a conventional army into Afghanistan to wreak vengeance on al-Qaeda, so it sent elite Special Forces teams. In Horse Soldiers (2009), Doug Stanton chronicled the soldiers who assisted Northern Alliance forces in
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| | Blum, Deborah THE POISONER'S HANDBOOK
November 15, 2009 - Pulitzer Prize winner Blum (Science Journalism/Univ. of Wisconsin; Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, 2006, etc.) focuses on two main characters. Charles Norris became chief medical examiner of New
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| | Bradburd, Rus FORTY MINUTES OF HELL
November 15, 2009 - It's unjust that the legacy of Nolan Richardson, legendary former University of Arkansas basketball coach, is distorted by a surreal 2002 press conference that resulted in his termination. Bradburd (Writing/New Mexico State Univ. Paddy on the
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| | Braestrup, Kate MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY
November 15, 2009 - Braestrup (Here If You Need Me, 2007, etc.) again recounts both tense and tender moments with the men of the Maine Warden Service, whom she not only accompanies on search-and-rescue operations but also gently counsels on matters of the heart. The
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| | Castle, Terry THE PROFESSOR
November 15, 2009 - Each of the pieces contains elements of autobiography, but it would be inaccurate to call the author a mere memoirist, as she deftly uses her personal experience to illuminate an array of other subjects. In "Courage, Mon Amie," she analyzes her
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| | Collins, Francis THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE
November 15, 2009 - Collins (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents the Evidence for Belief, 2006) anonymously investigated three leading commercial firms offering genetic analyses by sending them a cheek swab or saliva sample to be measured against gene variants
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| | Critser, Greg ETERNITY SOUP
November 15, 2009 - Wise men throughout history have pondered aging, writes journalist Critser (Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies, 2005, etc.), but science didn't reveal facts until the 20th century. In the book's
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| | Davies, Sharon RISING ROAD
November 15, 2009 - On Aug. 11, 1921, Edwin Stephenson, a Methodist minister in Birmingham, Alabama, gunned down James Coyle, a Catholic priest. The reason? The priest had married his 18-year-old daughter, Ruth, to a Puerto Rican migrant named Pedro Gussman. Stephenson
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| | Davis, Matthew WHEN THINGS GET DARK
November 15, 2009 - Based in the central mountainous city of Tsetserleg from 2000 to 2002, Davis was just 23 years old and fairly inexperienced in many things when he arrived in Mongolia. However, he was easygoing and not terribly fussy about heat and personal hygiene,
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| | Dow, David R. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION
November 15, 2009 - Most of the more than 100 death-row clients the author has represented since 1989 were indeed guilty of unspeakable crimes. Yet, he writes, "if you believe it's wrong to kill, you believe it's wrong to kill." So Dow continually tried to prevent—or,
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| | Epstein, Randi Hutter GET ME OUT
November 15, 2009 - The book is as much a study in sociology as historical snapshot of human birthing practices and gynecological advances, with particular emphasis on developments in the late 19th- and 20th-century United States. Beginning with Eve, who "started the
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| | Feiffer, Jules BACKING INTO FORWARD
November 15, 2009 - First among these are the comic strips and superhero comics that Feiffer (Passionella and Other Stories, 2006, etc.) read and copied in his Bronx youth; he pays warm tribute to their creators throughout his memoir. Second—and looming so large that
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|  | Friedman, Andrew KNIVES AT DAWN
November 15, 2009 - Food and tennis writer Friedman (co-author, with Pino Luongo: Dirty Dishes: A Restaurateur's Story of Passion, Pain, and Pasta, 2008, etc.) dynamically illustrates the colorful personalities, ego-battering conflicts, career-defining aspirations,
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| | Goodman, Jordan THE DEVIL AND MR. CASEMENT
November 15, 2009 - In 1909, at the request of Parliament, British consul and activist Roger Casement began investigating rubber trader Julio Csar Arana's operations along the Putumayo River in Peru's Amazon Basin. Already an international hero for an earlier report
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| | Hansen, James STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN
November 15, 2009 - After sounding the climate alarm in papers and conferences for two decades, here Hansen takes off the gloves, faulting "the undue influence of special interests and government greenwash" for the failure to take the actions necessary to stabilize
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| | Hirsch, James S. WILLIE MAYS
November 15, 2009 - On the first page, former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter Hirsch (Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes, America's Biggest Epidemic, 2006, etc.)—who wrote a bestselling biography of boxer Rubin Carter (Hurricane, 2000)—compares the
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| | Hoare, Philip THE WHALE
November 15, 2009 - The author approaches his subject with fascination, with the creatures themselves, but also their environment: the ports that grew in their wake, the literature they spawned and, of course, the ocean, captured by Thoreau just the way Hoare likes
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| | Ingrassia, Paul CRASH COURSE
November 15, 2009 - In the mid 1920s, Henry Ford, mass production's inventor, outsold all competitors combined. General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan pioneered mass marketing—"a car for every purse and purpose"—and hired the auto industry's first design staff. Walter
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| | Lanier, Jaron YOU ARE NOT A GADGET
November 15, 2009 - Lanier, an iconoclastic speaker, columnist, computer scientist, musician and innovator of virtual-reality experiments in the 1980s, skewers the degeneration of the modern digital world. The author convincingly argues that changes in digital and
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| | Lomazow, Steven FDR'S DEADLY SECRET
November 15, 2009 - In the last few years of his life, Roosevelt's health rapidly declined, and he became visibly frail and thin. On April 12, 1945, the president complained of a headache and collapsed and died shortly afterward. The accepted cause of Roosevelt's
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| | McCain, Cilla MURDER IN BAKER COMPANY
November 15, 2009 - In July 2003, shortly after returning to Fort Benning, in Columbus, Ga., from a tour in Iraq, 25-year-old Army Specialist Richard Davis went missing. Several months later his body was found buried in the woods not far from the base. Four of his
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| | Plokhy, S.M. YALTA
November 15, 2009 - The Big Three—Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin—met under heavily guarded, secret conditions over eight days in February 1945 to establish a blueprint of geopolitical interests for the anticipated peace after World War II.
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| | Reavis, Dick J. CATCHING OUT
November 15, 2009 - Driven simultaneously by financial concerns and sheer curiosity about the plight of gypsy workers finding cash jobs on a day-to-day basis, Reavis (English/North Carolina State Univ.; The Ashes of Waco, 1995, etc.) signed up at an agency that matches
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| | Regan, Margaret THE DEATH OF JOSSELINE
November 15, 2009 - Tucson Weekly columnist Regan expands on her newspaper coverage in this close-up look at what is happening on the border. Increasing militarization, with ramped-up patrols and surveillance of older, well-traveled routes, has altered immigration
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| | Rosenblatt, Roger MAKING TOAST
November 15, 2009 - Rosenblatt (English and Writing/Stony Brook Univ.; Beet, 2008, etc.), who has excelled in nearly every literary form—journalism, drama (six Off-Broadway plays), nonfiction and fiction—now adorns the memoir genre with a graceful, slim but piercing
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| | Salda˜a, Stephanie THE BREAD OF ANGELS
November 15, 2009 - In 2004, Salda˜a arrived in Damascus, where she learned Arabic, studied the Quran, mingled with the micro-societies inhabiting the old city and frequented the Mar Musa monastery, where she rekindled her Christian faith. Raised in San Antonio, Texas,
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| | Salwen, Kevin THE POWER OF HALF
November 15, 2009 - As told by former Wall Street Journal reporter Kevin Salwen and teenage daughter Hannah, the Salwens had it made: lives as "obnoxious, consuming yuppies," a three-floor historic home, both kids in private schools and a comfortable investment
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| | Shapiro, Dani DEVOTION
November 15, 2009 - At midlife, novelist Shapiro (Black & White, 2007, etc.) was anxious, sleepless and worried about nameless things, asking herself constantly, "Who was I, and what did I want for the second half of my life?" Having grown up in a religious Jewish
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| | Shetterly, Susan Hand SETTLED IN THE WIND
November 15, 2009 - After a brief early childhood in Manhattan, naturalist and children's-book author Shetterly (Shelterwood, 1999, etc.) and family moved to a large colonial house in Connecticut surrounded by natural beauty. In these open environs, the budding
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| | Siblin, Eric THE CELLO SUITES
November 15, 2009 - Siblin, the former pop-music critic at the Montreal Gazette, travels around the world following the suites through the lives of Bach and Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, whose performances of the suites launched them to their current fame. The author
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| | Thomson, David BETTE DAVIS
November 15, 2009 - Eminent film critic Thomson (The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, 2009, etc.) brings a historian's acumen and poet's sensibility to his portraits of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman (ISBN: 978-0-86547-934-0), Humphrey
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| | Wade, Nicholas THE FAITH INSTINCT
November 15, 2009 - People have been practicing religion for thousands of years, but they have been practicing morality even longer. In this probing work of science reporting, New York Times correspondent Wade (Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our
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| | Watters, Ethan CRAZY LIKE US
November 15, 2009 - "We are engaged," writes the author, "in the grand project of Americanizing the world's understanding of the human mind." But who is we? There's the rub, for there is a strong cui bono element in the idea that our psychic well-being or lack thereof
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| | Wilkinson, Richard THE SPIRIT LEVEL
November 15, 2009 - In a scholarly work that is already exciting widespread discussion outside the academy, Wilkinson (Univ. of Nottingham Medical School) and Pickett (Univ. of York) show that by nearly every measure of the quality of life, societies with high income
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| | Wills, Garry BOMB POWER
November 15, 2009 - In 1942, Gen. Leslie Groves headed the atomic-bomb program, a mission so clandestine even Vice President Truman didn't know it existed. The atomic bomb was something altogether new. In the mix of unconstrained authority, hidden money and absolute
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| Online Exclusive
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| "We welcome reader feedback"
November 15, 2009 - Lately in our reader-feedback inbox we've had a few pleas to split our Children's section into subsections based on audience age. I understand these readers' motivations: There are only so many minutes in a day, and to spend some of them reading reviews of books you don't work with can feel burdensome...But I have to say that simply putting together the Best Children's Books (in the Nov. 15 issue) and Best Young Adult Books (in the Dec. 1 issue) supplements this year was agony for me. While it's easy enough, I suppose, to declare Jerry Pinkney's glorious "The Lion and the Mouse" a children's book and Nick Burd's edgy-in-the-extreme "The Vast Fields of Ordinary" a YA book, drawing the line got pretty arbitrary
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