The Secrets to Zappos' Success
Kimberly Palmer

The success of online shoe retailer Zappos has been well-documented: It went from a struggling start-up in 2000 to getting acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at $1.2 billion in 2009. The face of the company, chief executive Tony Hsieh, an avid Twitterer and successful entrepreneur even before leading the shoe company, shares the secrets to his success

The American Revolution's Ordinary Heroes
Mallie Jane Kim

Before Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams signed the Declaration of Independence, everyday farmers were already banding together, ready to take on tyranny. These lost heroes, their stories scattered among letters and diaries for more than 200 years, come to life in American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People by historian T. H. Breen

The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less
Kimberly Palmer

John Robbins wants to help replace our culture of excess with 'more of a high-joy culture.' Says Robbins, 'We can actually have a higher quality of life even though we may have a lower standard of living.' Robbins urges us to shift our definition of success. To do that, Robbins recommends making lifestyle changes. Here are some of his suggestions

Hoover Dam's Big Government Lessons
Zach Miners

The sprawling cities and suburbs of the American West would not exist as they do today without the Hoover Dam, author Michael Hiltzik says. But without the dam, they might also have been spared many problems that have come with decades of population growth.

Why News Is Aimed At Your Emotions
Zach Miners

It can be hard to resist sensational news, from the 'if it bleeds, it leads' priorities of local newscasts to the harangues of cable TV pundits. Veteran newsman and journalist Jack Fuller wants to know why. Fuller examines the allure of emotionally charged news and how that affects the kind of information Americans are getting today

Fran Hawthorne Discusses 'The Overloaded Liberal'
Zach Miners

Fran Hawthorne, a self-professed liberal, found herself arguing over the selling points of Whole Foods. Her friend praised the food chain's organic, green products, but Hawthorne criticized the company for being against unions and for leading to the closures of small local stores. Fran recently discusses the difficulties of living ethically in a time of heightened political awareness

J.D. Salinger: Artist Who Never Wanted to Be an 'Idol'
Mitch Albom

When someone told me J.D. Salinger had died, I jokingly asked, 'How do they know?' It was dark humor and a tad disrespectful. But I was trying to be complimentary. Salinger, who was even more passionate about his privacy than his writing, had managed, at age 91, to die a legend in both areas.

The Future of the U.S. Economy: 2050
Matthew Bandyk

Think back to 1967. The job you have today may not even have existed. The Internet, and all the jobs that have come with it, were decades away. The Detroit automakers were dominant. Quality of life was different, too. The lifestyle of the average American may change just as much from 2010 to 2050 as it did from 1967 to 2006. The economy will especially undergo change.

The Power of the Unconscious on Terrorism, Race and Politics
Jessica Rettig

From suicide bombers to the average American voter, most humans believe their decisions are based on sound judgment and core values. Yet, according to Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam, much of everyday decision making is rooted in assumptions that lie outside the realm of awareness.

Book of the Year -- 'Game Change!'
Liz Smith

If you want to refresh yourself on Barack Obama's talents at organizing and leading and inspiring, you must sit down right now and read the book of the moment -- 'Game Change' by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. There, laid out for all to follow, is the story of Obama's incredible rise to the top and how he overcame the forces of intolerance and old-fashioned thinking.

Thomas Fleming discusses Intimate Lives of Founding Fathers
Jessica Rettig

Tired of hearing about Tiger Woods and Mark Sanford? Historian Thomas Fleming has a few new names to add to the list of America's most famous playboys, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington. Fleming exposes the little-known tales of the country's early figures in his latest book, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers.

Understanding Why America Loves Animals, But Eats Them
Bonnie Erbe

A new book asks the question in the title, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, and then attempts to supply answers from a psychological perspective. Author and psychologist Melanie Joy has some pretty surprising answers to that question

Ronald Reagan and the Ascendency of Conservatism
Robert Schlesinger

Until the votes were cast, the 1980 election was too close to call, with polls showing President Jimmy Carter leading Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. The former actor won comfortably, marking the conservative political ascendancy. Craig Shirley recently chatted with Robert Schlesinger about pivotal elections, today's GOP, and how close Reagan came to losing.

New View of Ronald Reagan and End of the Cold War
Jules Witcover

Ever since Ronald Reagan left the White House in 1989, it has been debated whether he was indeed responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or whether it just happened after his watch. In 'The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War,' author James Mann makes a persuasive case that Ronald Reagan actually played a part, intentionally or otherwise, in the Soviet Union's disintegration.

Avatar and the Faith Instinct
Jonah Goldberg

Avatar has been subjected to a sustained assault from many on the right as an apologia for pantheism. These criticisms hit the mark, but Avatar is not meant to be controversial and aimed at pleasing a wide audience. After all, we live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion.

Helping Women Help the World
Isobel Coleman

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn argue that "the brutality inflicted routinely on women and girls in much of the world" is "one of the paramount human rights problems of this century." Their statistics are numbing: every year, at least two million girls worldwide "disappear" due to gender discrimination. But Kristof and WuDunn go beyond moral outrage.

An Elegy for Journalism? The Future of the News and Journalism
Peter Osnos

The twenty-first century has been a traumatic one for journalism. Changes in how people consume news combined with the Great Recession have produced a dark era in journalism. In Losing the News, Alex Jones, addresses how the rise of the Internet and the precipitous decline in advertising have left print journalism in desperate straits.

Join a Book Club - Best New Year's Resolution You'll Ever Make
Robyn Blumner

I have a humble suggestion for a New Year's resolution: Join a book club. With this one step, your annual book-reading tally could shoot up. It helps make room for pleasure-reading in busy lives. Here's why plus tips for joining a book club or starting your own book club

Animal Books for Your Pet-Loving Friends and Relatives
Steve Dale

Searching for last-minute gifts? How about books for your pet-loving friends and relatives, or maybe as presents to yourself? Here are some suggestions:

William Eggers discusses his book If We Can Put a Man on the Moon
Jessica Rettig

The majority of Americans do not believe that the federal government is capable of major policy initiatives. After studying 75 major U.S. policy initiatives since World War II, William D. Eggers and John O'Leary wrote "If We Can Put a Man on the Moon...Getting Big Things Done in Government." Eggers discusses th book with Jessica Rettig

A Woman's Review of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin
Mary Kate Cary

I want to like Sarah Palin. She's got a houseful of kids, she was one of the nation's few female governors, and she's not my father's GOP. The Republican Party is in dire need of new leadership, and I think a conservative woman would be great. So I want to root for her.

Palin's 'Going Rogue' Review
Reader Comments

Going Rogue is a pretty quick read -- interesting when it comes to Sarah's personal life, but snotty the way she comments about the journalists and the campaign people

The Bible: A Word for the Elizabethans
Paul Greenberg

There is no end to the writing of books, said the author of Ecclesiastes, and today he could have said it of translations of the Bible. Now there are translations not just for every denomination and generation but for every class, sex and age -- men, women, young people, conservative, liberal or neither . . . .

The War on the Book
Paul Greenberg

In Ashburnham, Massachusetts, a prep school has just given up on books. The headmaster of Cushing Academy, one James Tracy, doesn't see any need for them. Not any more. Anybody who's anybody or wants to be now has an iPhone with apps, a Kindle or whatever the Next Big Thing turns out to transiently be. Who needs books?

Why Americans Should Not Fear Scientific Progress
Jessica Rettig

Science is advancing at a rate so fast that it is difficult to forecast where it will take us. According to Michael Specter, this uncertainty has developed into a widespread fear or denial of scientific progress across the nation. Specter identifies why Americans have grown to mistrust science. He recently chatted with Jessica Rettig about the dangers of resisting vaccines and the value of preventative healthcare

The Good Soldiers: U.S. Troops and the Wounds of War in Baghdad
Anna Mulrine

The 2nd Battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division -- the 2-16, as it's called -- spent 15 months in 2007 and 2008 in one of the toughest areas of Baghdad at the height of the surge. David Finkel chronicles their story in The Good Soldiers

Barbara Ehrenreich on the Negative Power of Positive Thinking
Jessica Rettig

Author and commentator Barbara Ehrenreich sympathizes in her book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Holiday Cookbook Review: Warm Bread and Honey Cake
Nick Malgieri

Among the latest crop of new baking books, the hands-down winner is undoubtedly 'Warm Bread and Honey Cake, Home Baking from Around the World,' by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra

Reagan, Obama and Legacy of the Berlin Wall
Kenneth T. Walsh

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a conclusive sign that the United States and the other Western democracies had finally won the Cold War. In the end, two presidents deserve much of the credit: George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Twenty years later there are plenty of lessons for President Obama's approach to foreign policy.

Political Book of the Year
Jules Witcover

Sarah Palin's cathartic tome may be flying off the shelves, but the best political book in years by far is 'The Audacity to Win,' the inside account of how Barack Obama won the presidency, written by one of the two chief architects of that historic achievement, campaign manager David Plouffe.

Free Markets, Free Muslims
Jon B. Alterman

Vali Nasr's new book, Forces of Fortune, was written largely in the exuberant phase of Dubai's story, but it is being published in a more sober time. It reflects some of the old enthusiasm for the notion that 'the Dubai model' -- a multiethnic, capitalist society insulated from violence and ideology -- could save the Middle East from a downward spiral of intolerance and political extremism.

Sarah Palin Book: Feminists Jealous of Sarah's Rise
Paul Bedard

Talk about timing. With former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin readying the release of her own 432-page campaign tell-all, Going Rogue: An American Life, now would be the perfect time to pop out another Palin book, and that's exactly what Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti has done with The Persecution of Sarah Palin

Dear Sarah: Keep Up the Great Writing
Carl Hiaasen

Thank you for turning in the manuscript so quickly. I thought only Stephen King could crank out 400 pages in four months! Seriously, there's some terrific material here, and all of us are thrilled to be publishing your life story. Before we move ahead, the fact-checking department has asked me to pass along a few notes and comments that may require some revisions on your part.

The Movie Star Deluxe - Elizabeth Taylor
Liz Smith

YOU SEE, she didn't care about being a star. She cared about living a certain way. It was what she was used to. And she lived that grand life with Burton and thought they'd have it forever. That's what was most important to her: to have a great companion in her great life ... it was all about being with him. That's all that really mattered.

Military Contractors and the Perils of Outsourcing War
Alex Kingsbury

Half the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is made up not of soldiers, marines, and airmen but of private contractors. And although contractors are not combat troops, almost 1,800 of them have been killed since 9/11. Allison Stanger says this is a dangerous and unprecedented outsourcing of foreign policy that bodes ill for the future of the nation. Her latest book, One Nation Under Contract

Bush's Bad Speeches and Karl Rove's Disappointing Genius: Matt Latimer discusses Speech-less
Robert Schlesinger

The growing frequency of presidential speeches has necessitated staffs of White House writers to help presidents craft their messages. For Matt Latimer, writing speeches for President George W. Bush during the last two years of his administration was an exercise in disillusionment, as he recounts in his book Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor

Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing
Arianna Huffington

Plouffe's book arrives at a crossroads moment for the administration -- exactly one year after the election, and one year before the 2010 midterms. A lot has happened in that year, as the audacity of winning has given way to the timidity of governing.

A Simple Plan for Killing al Qaeda
Alex Kingsbury Interviews Howard Clark

Howard Clark's answer is to both amplify the nihilism of its message and promote moderate Islamic voices. Clark, a former marine who served two tours in Iraq, now works as a consultant on counter-terrorism problems for the Department of Defense. He is also president and founder of Seventh Pillar, a nonprofit that seeks to combat al Qaeda's ideology. He recently spoke about his three-part plan for strengthening moderates and defeating extremists

The Mutilated Book: The Cartoons That Shook the World
Paul Greenberg

The same forces that have held much of the Muslim East in thrall now are reaching out to dictate to the West, too. And they've found a willing accomplice in Yale University, which has decided to publish 'The Cartoons That Shook the World' by Prof. Jytte Klausen without including the principal reason for it -- the controversial cartoons that Danish newspapers published in 2005 and early 2006 that so enraged mobs throughout the Muslim world. Here, you would think, ...

New Career Books to Grow On
Joyce Lain Kennedy

Consider catching up on reading aimed to solve problems in your career. Here some 2009 titles that fill that bill

Need To Lose Weight? 10 Ways to Conquer Emotional Eating
January W. Payne

Do you blindly turn to food as a source of comfort when you're feeling upset? Since emotional overeating doesn't provide any lasting satisfaction and can lead to health problems, it's far better to find other ways to deal with the stresses of daily life. That's the premise of a book out this month ...

Dealing With Irrational, Possibly Nuclear, Enemies
Louis R. Beres, Thomas G. McInerney and Paul E. Vallely

To back up credible U.S. deterrence against a still-growing number of adversaries, Barack Obama will need to rebuild a declining military infrastructure and doctrine. Otherwise, it is likely that this country's state and sub-state enemies may increasingly dismiss American retaliatory and other threats as empty bluster and false bravado.

How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Outside Contractors
Allison Stanger

Recent revelations of contractor involvement in CIA covert operations have been shocking. The CIA deploys contractors because it no longer has the in-house capacity to pursue new mission-critical tasks without an assist from the private sector. At first glance, this looks like free-market fundamentalism taken to its logical extreme ...

Finding a Better Way to Prosecute Terrorists
Queenie Wong

At the center of the controversy surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention center is what to do with the suspected terrorists once the prison camp shuts in January. Trying detainees before military commissions or in federal courts isn't the solution, argues Capt. Glenn Sulmasy ...

Book Review: Charles Higham's 'In and Out of Hollywood'
Liz Smith

Mr. Higham is a well-known chronicler of the famous and infamous. Although he is a noted poet and has written a number of reasonably received plays, his biographies are the meat of his career. His new book -- 'In and Out of Hollywood' -- tells many dishy tales.

Review-a-Day for Fri, Sep 3: Homesick (Hebrew Literature)
Homesick (Hebrew Literature) by Eshkol Nevo, a review from Harper's Magazine by Benjamin Moser.

Daily Dose for Fri, Sep 3: The Shadow of the Wind
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Reviewed by Anna from Boise, Idaho.

Review-a-Day for Thu, Sep 2: Composed: A Memoir
Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash, a review from The Oregonian by Jeff Baker.

Daily Dose for Thu, Sep 2: City of Bones: Mortal Instruments #1
City of Bones: Mortal Instruments #1 by Cassandra Clare
Reviewed by Mariah from Ivins, Utah.

Review-a-Day for Wed, Sep 1: Minefields of the Heart: A Mother's Stories of a Son at War
Minefields of the Heart: A Mother's Stories of a Son at War by Sue Diaz, a review from The Christian Science Monitor by Chuck Leddy.

Daily Dose for Wed, Sep 1: Drood
Drood by Dan Simmons
Reviewed by Manek from Olympia, Washington.

Review-a-Day for Tue, Aug 31: Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America
Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America by Ira Rutkow, a review from The Wilson Quarterly by Charles Barber.

Daily Dose for Tue, Aug 31: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim
Reviewed by Terri from Portland, Oregon.

Review-a-Day for Mon, Aug 30: Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems
Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems by Chase Twichell, a review from Rain Taxi by Dennis Barone.

Daily Dose for Mon, Aug 30: A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Novel
A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini
Reviewed by Celeste from Glendale, California.

Review-a-Day for Sun, Aug 29: Close Calls With Nonsense (09 Edition)
Close Calls With Nonsense (09 Edition) by Stephen Burt, a review from Cerise Press by Stephen Sossaman.

Daily Dose for Sun, Aug 29: Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America
Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock
Reviewed by Tyler from Prescott, Arizona.

Review-a-Day for Sat, Aug 28: Choose Your Own Adventure #06: House of Danger
Choose Your Own Adventure #06: House of Danger by R A Montgomery, a review from Powells.com by Chris Bolton.

Daily Dose for Sat, Aug 28: Tuck Everlasting
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Reviewed by Colleen from Benicia, California.

Review-a-Day for Fri, Aug 27: Muriel Spark: The Biography
Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard, a review from Harper's Magazine by Benjamin Taylor.

Powell's Books: Overview
The latest book-related content from Powells.com

 

Ife sculpture: Magnificent mysteries

Ancient West African treasures embark on a journey round America

AFTER acclaim in Spain and Britain, “Dynasty and Divinity”, the first big exhibition devoted to sculpture from the Kingdom of Ife (in present-day Nigeria), begins an 18-month tour of America in Houston on September 19th. The show, which consists of works in stone, terracotta and metal made between the 9th and 15th centuries, is a revelation and a treat. Art from dramatically different cultures is often hard to connect with, but these sculptures are naturalistic and remarkably accessible. Whether the subject is an animal, a person or a mythical creature, each image is well observed and has tremendous presence.

More than 100 works are on view. All are loans from Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Some have left Africa for the first time. Text and photo murals on the walls instruct visitors about the kingdom, an unbroken monarchy for more than 800 years. Today Ife is a city of 600,000 people. Its present ruler or Ooni is Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II; now aged 80, he studied in Britain, became a businessman and is enjoyably wealthy. ...

Walking in Africa: In the steps of the master

An adventure-laden expedition to Sierra Leone and Liberia

Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africa’s Fighting Spirit. By Tim Butcher. Chatto & Windus; 325 pages; GBP18.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

IN HIS bestselling book about the Congo, “Blood River”, Tim Butcher, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, followed the route of Henry Stanley, an explorer with a reputation for colourful exaggeration, “a cocky chancer”. One place that Mr Butcher conspicuously failed to visit during his hectic dash through “the most daunting, backward country on Earth” was the leper colony that inspired Graham Greene’s 1960 novel, “A Burnt-Out Case”. Now he has made good this omission by trekking in the novelist’s footsteps through another neglected region of Africa, an expedition that resulted in Greene’s “Journey Without Maps”. For Mr Butcher it meant a 350-mile (560km) walk into the forests of Sierra Leone (“the poorest country on Earth”) and Liberia (“one of the world’s most failed and scarred states”). ...

Climate change: The ways of a warmer world

Books about how people can and will adapt to climate change need not be Panglossian—as these two show

Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future. By Matthew Kahn. Basic Books; 288 pages; $26.95 and GBP16.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles Will Change as the World Heats Up. By Marek Kohn. Faber & Faber; 368 pages; GBP14.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk ...

Myanmar's Than Shwe: A tyrant nobody knows

A biography of Myanmar's dictator

Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant. By Benedict Rogers. Silkworm Books; 256 pages; $30. Buy from Amazon.com

“PERFECTION, of a kind, was what he was after” wrote W.H. Auden in his “Epitaph on a Tyrant”. Perhaps it is this ambition that moves Than Shwe, the “senior general” in the junta which has run Myanmar into the ground. It may explain an inexplicable folly: building Naypyidaw (“Seat of Kings”), a grand new capital in a remote malaria-ridden area 320km (200 miles) from Yangon, Myanmar’s main city and former capital. ...

Social history: Home comforts

Bill Bryson's book about his house

At Home: A Short History of Private Life. By Bill Bryson. Doubleday; 512 pages; $28.95 and GBP20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE fruits of Bill Bryson’s fluent and amusing writing have been fame and fortune, so he now lives in one of the most desirable dwellings in the world: an old rectory in an English country village. The social and technological history of this lovely old house is the theme of his latest book, published earlier this year in Britain and coming out in America next month. ...

New thriller: Oily conspiracies

A new thriller about oil and finance

The Garden of Betrayal. By Lee Vance. Knopf; 320 pages; $24.95. Corvus; GBP14.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

SINCE oil lubricates almost every geopolitical machination, triggering wars, coups and uprisings, it is a bit curious that there are so few thrillers written about the stuff. “The Garden of Betrayal” is a welcome addition to a tiny subgenre. ...

Correction: King George II

In "Sham country, but not sham bard" (July 31st) we wrote that the kilt was banned by King George IV’s grandfather. We were a generation wrong: George II, who did the banning, was George IV’s great-grandfather. This has been corrected online.

...

A biography of Simon Wiesenthal: The pursuit of evil

A complicated man, obsessed by his search for justice

Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends. By Tom Segev. Doubleday; 482 pages; $35. Jonathan Cape; GBP25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

AMONG the 300,000 pieces of paper in Simon Wiesenthal’s private archive is a letter from a Holocaust survivor explaining why he had ceased to believe in God. In Tom Segev’s description: “God had allowed SS troops to snatch a baby from his mother and then use it as a football. When it was a torn lump of flesh they tossed it to their dogs. The mother was forced to watch. Then they ripped off her blouse and made her use it to clean the blood off their boots.” ...

Black migration in America: From hominy grits to cold shoulder

An account of the 20th-century exodus of millions of African-Americans

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. By Isabel Wilkerson. Random House; 622 pages; $30. Buy from Amazon.com

THE words ring out on Sundays from pulpits in America’s inner cities as well as its Deep South: “We ain’t what we oughta be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But thank the Lord God Almighty, we ain’t what we was.” Read Isabel Wilkerson’s account of the 20th-century exodus of millions of her fellow African-Americans from the states of the old Confederacy and the only possible response is “Amen!” ...

Philanthropy: Do-gooders in 1790s London

A bid to end slavery

The Clapham Sect: How Wilberforce’s Circle Transformed Britain. By Stephen Tomkins. Lion Hudson; 272 pages; $16.95 and GBP10.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE group called the “Clapham Sect” is best known now for its contribution, under William Wilberforce’s leadership, to the campaigns for the abolition of the British slave trade and, ultimately, of slavery itself. It was a collection of evangelical, philanthropic families, spread across three generations, many of whom settled during the 1790s in Clapham, then a prosperous village just outside London. The name itself, given later, was a mild dig at their religious clannishness. A contemporary, the Rev Sydney Smith, had been sharper, calling them the “Clapham Church”. ...

New theatre: Scottish tragedy as burlesque

“Caledonia”, at the Edinburgh festival, does less than justice to its subject

THE foolhardy attempt by the Scots to establish a foreign colony of their own at Darien on the isthmus of Panama in the 1690s has all the ingredients for a perfect drama. It reveals greed, ambition, ignorance, folly, suffering and forbearance, all washed with an essential nobility of spirit.

The venture would have circumvented attempts by the English king, William of Orange, to stop the Scots from playing their part in international trade. A new and exciting entity, a joint-stock company created by act of Parliament and financed by public subscription, would oversee the project. The Company of Scotland caught the national mood. No longer simply a business speculation, it became a patriotic crusade. ...

Japanese cartoons: The professor to the rescue

A cartoon strip takes on the repatriation of treasures from the British Museum

“THE Stonehenge megaliths have been stolen!?” So exclaims Professor Munakata at the outset of a rollicking adventure set at the British Museum, in the form of a manga, or Japanese cartoon. Over the past five months, readers of Big Comic, a Japanese fortnightly magazine, have followed the exploits of the fictitious ethnographer as he gets embroiled in a bizarre plot to force the repatriation of the museum’s prized objects.

The strip, called “The Case Records of Professor Munakata”, was introduced 15 years ago by Yukinobu Hoshino, one of Japan’s most notable manga artists. Portly, bald and impeccably dressed with cap, cape and cane, the professor is Japan’s anti-Indiana Jones. He does not invite danger but bumbles into it. The strip does not follow any set formula but takes on serious issues. ...

New fiction: The stuff of life

Jonathan Franzen’s brilliant new novel studies the planet, happiness and marriage

Freedom. By Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 576 pages; $28. Fourth Estate; GBP20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

IT WAS John DeForest, a writer of the civil-war period, who defined the Great American Novel in an 1868 essay for the Nation as “painting the American soul within the framework of a novel”. DeForest was arguing over the relative merits of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe, two writers who definitely fit the bill. Others have laid claim to the title (or had claim laid to it by their hopeful publishers), including J.D. Salinger, Don DeLillo, Tom Wolfe and John Updike. ...

New essays: The landscape of a blighted planet

A collection of pleasingly quirky essays

Book of Days: Personal Essays. By Emily Fox Gordon. Spiegel & Grau; 320 pages; $15. Buy from Amazon.com

“TO CALL oneself a born essayist seems implicitly ironic,” writes Emily Fox Gordon about three-quarters of the way through her book, “like calling oneself a born dowager or a born eminence grise.” Ms Gordon likes to be gently coy about the profession she happened on in middle age, casting her eyes down as if she were a pacifist or a vegetarian. But it is all part of a game. Behind her lashes Ms Gordon knows full well that she has the heart of a hunter; she has been firing with both barrels since page one. ...

Social change in Japan: When the myths are blown away

A book that takes an uncliched look at Japanese society today

Contemporary Japan: History, Politics and Social Change Since the 1980s. By Jeff Kingston. Wiley-Blackwell; 328 pages; $89.95. Buy from Amazon.com

THE modern image of Japan is built on shaky foundations. In the 1980s nearly all Japanese considered themselves middle class. Other abiding beliefs include companies looking after workers through lifetime employment and the yakuza, Japan’s mafia, being guardians of the lost samurai spirit. There is some truth in all this but, as with other national myths, their real importance is in what they reveal about those who hold them dear. ...

Geography of Britain: Take your time, and look

A guidebook with a delightful difference

Never Eat Shredded Wheat: The Geography We’ve Lost and How to Find it Again. By Christopher Somerville. Hodder & Stoughton; 240 pages; GBP12.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

FOR Christopher Somerville, the age of Sat Nav and GPS is one of paradox. We are better than ever before at finding our way from A to B, but we know less and less about what’s in between. As we get better at navigating, we become lost in our own countries. The soothing screen of a Sat Nav system shows roads as thin, abstract strips striding through a featureless grey emptiness. Real life—the rivers, towns, caves, cliffs, bridges, battlefields, towers, cairns, factories and palaces that make up the world—is nowhere to be seen, and so the memory of it fades slowly from our collective consciousness. ...

Brazil: The view from Rio

A book laced with anecdotes from a New York Times reporter

Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed. By Larry Rohter. Palgrave Macmillan; 304 pages; $27 and GBP18.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

POLITICAL strategists sometimes say that voters can hold only three things in their minds about a candidate. So candidates spend quite a bit of time determining what those three will be; once they have become known as a technophobe, an arugula muncher or a flip-flopper, the perception is hard to shift. The same might be true of countries. For Brazil, the three are forests, sex and football. ...

Historical detection: Who killed the Soviet economy?

A brilliant detective story asks what went wrong

Red Plenty: Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream. By Francis Spufford. Faber & Faber; 434 pages; GBP16.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

EVERYONE knows that economic central planning in the Soviet Union was a failure. Many people can make a stab at saying why. Few will expect to pick up a longish book on the topic by a non-economist and devour it almost at a sitting. But that is what you have in store with “Red Plenty”. It is part detective story—who or what is killing the Soviet economy?—and part a brilliantly clear explanation of some very intricate history and economics. Some of the characters are real, some invented. Everyone has words put into their mouths. ...

Stately homes: Men only

By Robert Sackville-West who benefited from the tradition of male primogeniture

Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles. By Robert Sackville-West. Walker; 320 pages; $26. Bloomsbury; GBP20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

GREAT houses and families don’t come much greater than Knole and the Sackvilles. Robert Sackville-West tells their story, lightly and clearly, tracking the house (365 bedrooms, 52 staircases) as it zigzags down the generations, from 1604 when Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, Lord Treasurer to Elizabeth I and James I, bought the freehold, to the time when the author and his family moved in. ...

The Economist: Books and arts
Books and arts

 

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