Nonfiction Stars 2002

Nonfiction Stars of 2002 - A selected list of titles.

This reading list is based on personal preferences. It reflects interests in history, science, nature, travel, biography, memoirs and a few assorted odd topics. Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author.

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.

December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

December

  • Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands
    Author: D'Orso, Michael
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060193905
    starKirkus
    Against the spectacular backdrop of the Galpagos Islands, D'Orso tells a riveting story of modern-day piracy, greed, and the struggle to save one of the planet's last untouched natural treasures from human destruction.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature
    Updated 11.26.02
  • The Rural Life
    Author: Klinkenborg, Verlyn
    Publisher: Little Brown $ 20 ISBN: 0316741671
    starKirkus
    The hugely admired author of The Last Fine Time preserves and makes new the sights, smells, sounds, and poetry of country living. Klinkenborg reveals the beauty of the American landscape, not from a scenic overlook, but through a screened-in porch or from the window of a pickup driving down an empty highway in the teeth of an approaching storm.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 11.18.02
  • Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy
    Author: Linklater, Andro
    Publisher: Walker $ 26 ISBN: 0802713963
    starBooklist
    Linklater's fascinating, provocative and eye-opening story of why America has ended up with its unique system of weights and measures, is explained in this volume that also shows how it has shaped the culture and country.
    Updated 11.18.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

November

  • Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family
    Author: Bowden, Charles
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 27 ISBN: 0684853434 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarBooklist
    In this real-life version of the award-winning movie, Traffic, one of the foremost writers of nonfiction today initiates an investigation into the shadows of the drug war.
    Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars | Drug Traffic Stars
    Updated 10.28.02
  • Four Sisters of Hofei: A History
    Author: Chin, Annping
    Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 068487377x Date: 2002
    starPW
    Not since Wild Swans has the history of China been so intimately encountered: Through the stories of four sisters born between 1908 and 1914, a renowned historian brings to life a century of Chinese culture.
    Updated 9.30.02
  • Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York
    Author: Ketchum, Richard M.
    Publisher: Holt $ 30 ISBN: 08805061193 Date: 2002
    starBookliststarPW
    Focusing on several individuals before the Civil War, Ketchum describes their response to increasingly drastic actions taken in London by a succession of the king's ministers. These actions forced people to take sides and decide whether they would continue their loyalty to Great Britain, or cast their lot with the American insurgents.
    Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
    Updated 9.23.02
  • Dangerous Men
    Author: Lasalle, Mick
    Publisher: Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312283113 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Using the same mix of snappy prose, accessibility and insider knowledge that he employed so powerfully in Complicated Women, LaSalle now turns his attention to the men of the pre-code Hollywood era, highlighting such names as James Cagney, Clark Gable, and Gary Cooper.
    Updated 9.30.02
  • Mayflower Bastard
    Author: Lindsay, David
    Publisher: Dunne $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312262035 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    The life of Richard More, who was dumped on the Mayflower at the age of five in the care of strangers, and who went on to epitomize the colorful profile of a new nation is detailed in this story of a dubious man's doings in a new world.
    Updated 9.30.02
  • From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey
    Author: Thwe, Pascal Khoo
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060505222 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarPW
    It was during a tour on a trip through Burma that John Casey, Cambridge don, first met Pascal Khoo Thwe, who was moon-lighting in a restaurant to support himself as a student at Mandalay University. Despite his humble beginnings and the oppression he faced, Thwe brings readers into a world forgotten by the West, but one that readers will not soon forget.
    Suggested Reading: Burma
    Updated 10.30.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

October

  • The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
    Author: Alder,Ken
    Publisher: Free $ 27 ISBN: 074321675x Date: 2002
    starPW
    In June 1792, the cosmopolitan Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and the scrupulous Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain set out from Paris to calculate the length of the meter. In the bestselling tradition of Longitude and The Map that Changed the World, Alder has written an extraordinary and riveting tale.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana
    Author: Bardach, Ann Louise
    Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375504893 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Bardach expertly explores the troubled waters of U.S.-Cuban relations since Fidel Castro came to power. Cuba Confidential examines the human consequences of this estranged relationship and deflates the mirror-image rhetoric of the "two Cubas"--the Communist regime on the island and the Cuban-exile community of south Florida.
    Suggested Reading: Cuba
    Updated 9.30.02
  • Genius: A Mosiac of 100 Exemplary Creative Minds
    Author: Bloom, Harold
    Publisher: Warner $ 34.95 ISBN: 0446527173 Date: 2002
    starBookliststarPW
    From the Bible to Ralph Ellison, America's most prominent and bestselling literary critic takes an enlightening look at the concept of genius through the ages in a celebration of the greatest creative writers of all time.
    Updated 9.30.02
  • The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002
    Author: Cart, Michael (ed)
    Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 27.50 ISBN: 0618249632 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Updated 9.30.02
  • Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land
    Author: Childs, Craig
    Publisher: Sasquatch $ 22.95 ISBN: 1570613060 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In Soul of Nowhere, Craig Childs answers the call of fierce places; the more desolate the landscape, the more passionately he is drawn to it.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 7.3.02
  • My Losing Season
    Author: Conroy, Pat
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385489129 Date: 2002
    starPW
    Turning to nonfiction, the bestselling author of Beach Music has written an American classic about young men and the bonds they form, about losing and the lessons it imparts, and about finding one's self in the midst of defeat.
    Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
    Updated 9.30.02
  • Ninty Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole
    Author: Fleming, Fergus
    Publisher: Grove $ 26 ISBN: 0802117252 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarPW
    The acclaimed author of Barrow's Boys and Killing Dragons relates the epic story of the men who stopped at nothing to unravel the mysteries of the North Pole. In scintillating detail he tells of the wing governments and fantastic eccentrics who, despite their heroic failures, often achieved massive celebrity as they battled to reach the top of the world.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 7.3.02
  • Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
    Author: Horwitz, Tony
    Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 0805065415 Date: 2002
    starPW
    In an exhilarating tale of historic adventure, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Sea Stories | Reading Group Stars
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
    Author: Macmillan, Margaret Olwen
    Publisher: Random $ 35 ISBN: 0375508260 Date: 2002
    starPWstarLJstarBooklist
    In this landmark work of narrative history, MacMillan brings extraordinary personalities to life. The great-granddaughter of Lloyd George, she makes use of his personal papers and gives a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--were founded whose troubles haunt the world still.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Paris Stars
    Updated 8.28.02
  • In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
    Author: Norton, Mary Beth
    Publisher: Norton $ 30 ISBN: 037540709x Date: 2002
    starPWstarLJ
    Norton, an admired historian, gives readers a unique perspective on the events at Salem, helping to understand the trials as they were understood by those who lived through the frenzy. Norton examines the crucial turning points, the accusers, the confessors, the judges, and the accused, among whom were 38 men.
    Suggested Reading: Witches
    Updated 7.3.02
  • The Man Who Fell Into A Puddle
    Author: Sarna, Igal
    Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375420622 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    From one of Israel's leading investigative journalists comes a piercingly honest portrait of people who try to hold onto their past and their sanity. Sarna lets their unexpected and harrowing tales speak for themselves, carefully weaving individual voices into a narrative of shattering power.
    Updated 9.30.02
  • The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading
    Author: Spufford, Francis
    Publisher: Metropolitan $ 23 ISBN: 0805072152 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarBooklist
    In this extended love letter to children's books and the wonders they perform, Spufford goes back to his earliest encounters with books, exploring such beloved classics as The Wind in the Willows, The Little House on the Prairie, and the Narnia chronicles.
    Suggested Reading: Reading
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication
    Author: Walton, Stuart
    Publisher: Harmony $ 24 ISBN: 0609610449 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In this engaging and often surprising consideration of intoxication, Walton shines a heterodox and penetrating light on the history and spectrum of psychoactive drug use, from ancient Greece and Rome to the Victorian era to modern times, from alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco to opiates, amphetamines, and hallucinogens.
    Suggested Reading: Drink Up Stars
    Updated 8.28.02
  • The Best American Travel Writing 2002
    Author: Wilson, Jason (ed)
    Publisher: Houghton $ 27.50 ISBN: 0618118799 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 8.28.02
  • In Ruins
    Author: Woodward, Christopher
    Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421998 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Woodward has penned a wondrous meditation--at once a travelogue, memoir, and history--on the meaning of ruins and their persistent hold on the imagination.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 8.28.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

September

  • Charles Darwin: The Power of Place
    Author: Browne, Janet
    Publisher: Knopf $ 37.50 ISBN: 0679429328 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    The second volume of Browne's magisterial biography of Charles Darwin triumphantly fulfills expectations as it continues and rounds out Darwin's life
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Hold the Enlightenment: More Travel, Less Bliss
    Author: Cahill, Tim
    Publisher: Villard $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507663 Date: 2002
    starPublishers Weekly
    America's funniest adventure writer returns with his most entertaining collection of essays yet as he travels the globe and faces down challenges that are animal, topographical--and human.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 7.3.02
  • The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics
    Author: Davenport-Hines, Richard
    Publisher: Norton $ 29.95 ISBN: 0393051897 Date: 2002
    starPW
    In this startling account of the history of drug abuse spanning five centuries and several continents, the author forces readers to reconsider many of their views on the controversial subject. of illustrations.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril
    Author: Ferris, Timothy
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0684865793 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarLJ
    America's finest science writer describes a major revolution sweeping astronomy, as amateur astronomers, in global networks linked by the Internet, make discoveries that are changing knowledge of the universe. The appendix includes star charts, observing lists, and a guide on how to get involved with the stars.
    Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism
    Author: Friedman, Thomas
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 26 ISBN: 0374190666 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarPW
    As the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times, Friedman is in a unique position to interpret the world for American readers. This new book contains Friedman's columns about the most momentous news story of our time, as well as a diary of his experiences and reactions during this period of crisis.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • The Founding Fish
    Author: McPhee, John A.
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374104441 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    The American shad--a species beloved of sportsmen since George Washington--provides the remarkable focus of this book, its every specimen carrying its autobiography within its scales and coursing through the water routes of U.S. political history.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Benjamin Franklin
    Author: Morgan, Edmund S.
    Publisher: Yale $ 24.95 ISBN: 0300095325 Date: 2002
    starPublishers Weekly
    Chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and as a best book for 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Publishers Weekly. A finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. The greatest statesman of his age, Benjamin Franklin was also a pioneering scientist, a successful author, the first American postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant. In addition, he was a man of vast contradictions. This bestselling biography by one of our greatest historians offers a compact and provocative new portrait of America's most extraordinary patriot. - Publisher Marketing.
    Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars | Ben Franklin
    Updated 7.3.02
  • The Shark Chronicles: A Scientist Tracks the Consummate Predator
    Author: Musick, John A.
    Publisher: Times $ 26 ISBN: 0805070931 Date: 2002
    starLJ
    This captivating and educational scientific exploration challenges readers to rethink their relationship with sharks, leaving them with the question: Are humans the prey, or the predator?
    Suggested Reading: Shark Stars
    Updated 8.28.02
  • To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Two Towers
    Author: Petit, Philippe
    Publisher: North Point $ 30 ISBN: 0865476519
    starKirkusstarPWstarLJ
    In 1974, 100,000 people on the ground watched 24-year-old high wire artist Petit make eight crossings between the World Trade Towers. In this visually and verbally stunning book, Petit tells for the first time the story of his walk, from conception and clandestine planning to the performance and its aftermath.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 8.28.02
  • The Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    Author: Pinker, Steven
    Publisher: Viking $ 27.95 ISBN: 0670031518 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on language and the workings of the mind, Pulitzer Prize finalist Pinker has now undertaken the most ambitious and controversial work of his career--a brilliant reexamination of the concept of human nature.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • The Demon in the Freezer
    Author: Preston , Richard
    Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375508562 Date: 2002
    starPWstarKirkus
    Te timely and terrifying investigation into the dark underworld of biological weapons from the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author of The Hot Zone.
    Updated 10.07.02 The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired
    Author: Prose, Francine
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060196726 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    A finalist for the National Book Award offers a brilliant, wry, and provocative examination of the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. Prose explores the lives of such noted artists as Lewis Carroll, George Balanchine, and John Lennon, and the women who inspired their greatest achievements.
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
    Author: Rushdie, Salman
    Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0679463348 Date: 2002
    starBookliststarKirkusstarPW
    The best of Booker Prize-winning author Rushdie's nonfiction pieces from the past decade are assembled in this collection on wide-ranging and often unexpected topics.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 9.30.02
  • The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution
    Author: Schecter, Barnet
    Publisher: Walker $ 24 ISBN: 0802713742 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    The Battle for New York tells the story of how the city became the pivot on which the American Revolution turned. The struggle for control of New York was by far the largest military venture of the Revolutionary War, involving almost every significant participant on both sides.
    Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
    Updated 7.3.02
  • The Killers Within: the Deadly Rise of Drug-Resisant Bacteria
    Author: Shnayerson, Michael
    Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316713317 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    A battle is taking place on the frontiers of medicine between rapidly evolving bacteria and the doctors struggling to outwit them. The Killers Within tells this horror story that just happens to be true.
    Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction
    Updated 8.28.02
  • Partly Cloudy Patriot
    Author: Vowell, Sarah
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 22.95 ISBN: 0743223527 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    From the author who Nick Hornby calls "smart, funny, soulful, and even educational"--a smart, funny, soulful, and even educational collection of first-person experiences about life in America. Vowell captures the hilarious and moving things that happen when she confronts history.
    Updated 7.3.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

August

  • My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time
    Author: Birkets, Sven
    Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670031097 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In The Gutenburg Elegies, an acclaimed New York Times Notable Book, Birkerts won attention as a graceful and thoughtful essayist. Now he shows what only literature can do, in a moving, compelling, brilliantly written memoir that probes what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture.
    Updated 6.30.02
  • How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention
    Author: Blauner, Susan Rose
    Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066211212 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Blauner breaks the silence about this epidemic offering guidance and hope for those contemplating ending their lives--and for their loved ones. A survivor of multiple suicide attempts, Blauner describes the feelings and fantasies and offers affirmations and suggestions for those experiencing life-ending thoughts.
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones
    Author: Campbell, Greg
    Publisher: Westview $ 26 ISBN: 0813339391 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Updated 7.3.02
  • Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown
    Author: Cunningham, Michael
    Publisher: Crown $ 16 ISBN: 0609609076 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours explores one of America's oldest towns--Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. Known as a summer mecca of beautiful beaches and quirky stores, the town has attracted an impressive array of artists and writers.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Nobody's Perfect: Selected Writings from the New Yorker
    Author: Lane, Anthony
    Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 0375414487 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Written with urgent inquiry, wry reflection, and penetrating wit, this is the much-anticipated collection of The New Yorker critic's most memorable pieces on film, literature, and culture.
    Updated 7.3.02
  • The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It
    Author: Miller, John, Michael Stone and Chris Mitchell
    Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786869003 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Written by ABC News journalist John Miller and co-writer Michael Stone, a blow by blow investigation into the terrorist cells involved in the September 11 attacks, using information gleaned from sources within the FBI and CIA, and from reporting Miller has gathered during his many years as a reporter covering the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, through the present.
    Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars
    Updated 7.3.02
  • "I": The Creation of a Serial Killer
    Author: Olsen, Jack
    Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312241984 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    Armed with full access to one of the most sadistic serial murderers in American history, an acclaimed crime journalist reveals the inner thoughts of a psychotic killer in this inside story of Keith Hunter Jesperson, Oregon's Happy Face Killer, who strangled eight innocent women in the 1990s.
    Suggested Reading: True Crime Stars
    Updated 6.30.02
  • 11-Sept: An Oral History
    Author: Murphy, Dean
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385507682 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Published in commemoration of the tragic events on September 11, 2001, this moving collection of 40 first-person accounts captures the courage and compassion exhibited at that time by people of all walks of life.
    Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars
    Updated 7.3.02
  • A Wounded Thing Must Hide: In Search of Libbie Custer
    Author: Poolman, Jeremy
    Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582341214 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Brilliant, inventive, but not in any conventional sense a biography, this is Poolman's first foray into nonfiction, taking as its subject the fascinating wife of General Custer. He relates key scenes in Libbie's extraordinary life, each episode proving rich in relishably surreal detail.
    Suggested Reading: Custer
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town
    Author: Smith, Helmut Walser
    Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 039305098x Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In 1900, in the German Empire, the body of a murdered boy is found frozen beneath the ice. Using new material, Smith has pieced together the web of false stories and accusations that engulfed the Prussian town. The Butcher's Tale anticipates the Nazi pogroms that would descend on Germany three decades later--a true historical thriller.
    Updated 6.30.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

July

  • The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy
    Author: Clifford, Barry
    Publisher: Morrow $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060198184 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In 1678, most of the French Fleet in the Caribbean sank on the killer reef of Lad Aves island, devastating the French naval power and sparking a new age of piracy. A renowned explorer interweaves the legend of this maritime disaster with the story of his expedition to the wrecks.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Pirate Stars
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Youth: Scenes from a Provincial Life
    Author: Coetzee, J.M.
    Publisher: Viking $ 22.95 ISBN: 067003102x Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    Set against the background of the 1960s--Sharpeville, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam--Youth is a remarkable memoir of an artistic and sexual coming of age by the Booker Prize-winning author of Disgrace.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars | Authors
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Gatekeeper
    Author: Eagleton, Terry
    Publisher: St Martins $ 17.95 ISBN: 0312291221 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    From the author of The Truth About the Irish and the bestselling Literary Theory comes a sharp-witted coming-of-age memoir of being caught between colliding worlds as a Catholic in Protestant England.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit
    Author: Meloy, Ellen
    Publisher: Pantheon Books $ 24 ISBN: 0375408851 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and in the deep canyons of the Southwest, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy plumbs her lifelong intoxication with light and color, expressed as a profound attachment to landscape.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Forty-Seven Roses
    Author: Sheridan, Peter
    Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670031003 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    A family secret, a sacrifice for love, a dying mother, a search for the truth: the ingredients of 47 Roses suggest a compelling novel. But for Peter Sheridan, these are not the elements of fiction--they are the ingredients of his own life.
    Updated 6.30.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

June

  • In Lands Not My Own: A Wartime Story
    Author: Ainsztein, Reuben
    Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507574 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Told with an eloquence reminiscent of Conrad, here is a tale of heartbreaking sorrow, courage, and the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. In Lands Not My Own is the story of one man's journey across war-torn Europe and his personal testimony to the horrors that give birth to war and are nurtured by it.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 4.2.02
  • Back Then: Two Lives in 1950's New York
    Author: Bernays, Anne & Justin Kaplan
    Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060198559 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarPWstarLJ
    This dual memoir by two prominent figures in American arts provides a candid, anecdotal account of two children of privilege who came of age in the transformative 1950s and faced the challenges of new careers, married life and parenting against growing sexual and social freedoms, and the shadows of McCarthyism and the Cold War.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Memoirs
    Updated 5.3.02
  • Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now
    Author: Conroy, Frank
    Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 061815468x Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Conroy's commentaries on life, music, and writing have appeared regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and more. Dogs Bark collects these pieces into an autobiography in journalistic snapshots. They evoke Conroy's southern childhood, his teen years in New York, and his experiences as a teacher and director.
    Updated 3.15.02
  • Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of North Platte Canteen
    Author: Greene, Bob
    Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060081961 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In search of "the best America there ever was," Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable in this true tale of small-town Americans who banded together to warm the lives of lonely young men being sent off to war.
    Updated 4.18.02
  • Me and Shakespeare: Adventures With the Bard
    Author: Gollob, Herman
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385498179 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    One of the most entertaining and unusual books on Shakespeare ever written is a distinguished book editor's memoir that attests to the lifelong power of literature to enrich, enlarge, and exalt.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Shakespearean Stars
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Defying Hitler
    Author: Haffner, Sebastian
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ ISBN: Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarBooklist
    A bestseller in Germany, Defying Hitler is a memoir about the rise of Nazism in Germany and the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. Available for the first time in English, this highly illuminating work is a unique portrait of a time, a place, and a people.
    Suggested Reading: Nazis
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Mutiny on the Globe: The Fatal Voyage of the Samuel Comstock
    Author: Heffernan, Thomas
    Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393041638 Date: 2002
    starPW
    A bloody mutiny on a whaling journey, followed by an incredible tale of survival on land and sea. Samuel Comstock knew he was born to do some great thing, but his only legacy was a reign of terror--while on a whaling voyage, he organized a mutiny and murdered the officers of the Globe.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
    Updated 4.2.02
  • Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering
    Author: Lesser, Wendy
    Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 061808293x Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    From classic novels to poetry, Lessing covers the whole literary spectrum in this witty and humane exploration of what books can mean to our lives, and vice versa.
    Suggested Reading: Reading
    Updated 4.1.02
  • The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village Through Time
    Author: Merriman, John
    Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393051137 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    This is a story of resilience. It is also a love letter from an acclaimed historian who with his family has made Balazuc his adopted home. Here, fully realized, is a place that is both universal and irreducibly French.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 6.30.02
  • French Revolutions
    Author: Moore, Tim
    Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312290454 Date: 2002
    starKirkusstarBooklist
    Determined to tackle the most fearsome physical challenge outside of classical mythology, Moore, the ultimate amateur, resolves to complete all 2,256 miles of the Tour de France in the weeks before the professionals set off in this epic comic depiction of how to hilariously exceed one's limits.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 4.18.02
  • Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides
    Author: Nicolson, Adam
    Publisher: North Point $ 27 ISBN: 0865476365 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with these breathtakingly beautiful islands called the Shiants. Crowned with huge cliffs of black basalt and surrounded by tidal rips, they are wild, dangerous, and dramatic--with a long, haunting past. "Sea Room celebrates this extraordinary place and shares with us the greatest gift an island can bestow: intimate and profound engagement with the natural world.
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Flute
    Author: Powell, Ardal
    Publisher: Yale $ 35 ISBN: 0300093411 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    This authoritative book tells the story of the flute in the musical life of Europe and North American from the twelfth century to the present day. It discusses the evolution of the instrument, the revolutions in playing style and repertoire, the lives of flute players and makers, and the uses of the instrument within various types of music. The volume will delight both those who play the flute and those who love its music. - Publisher Marketing.
    Suggested Reading: Music
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Hamlet's Dresser: A Memoir
    Author: Smith, Bob
    Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0684852691 Date: 2002
    starPWstarLJ
    In gorgeous and tender prose, Smith weaves together the story of his difficult childhood and his encounters with "the old people" to tell the story of a life shaped by poetry. Hamlet's Dresser is both a redemptive memoir of a man made whole by art, and an intimate encounter with the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare.
    Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
    Updated 5.3.02
  • On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat
    Author: Stone, Nathaniel
    Publisher: Broadway $ 21.95 ISBN: 0767908414 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In a new twist on the nautical voyage, author Stone rows his way around the "eastern island" of the United States in a 17-foot scull offering a unique tour of America and a pioneering personal story perfect for boat-lovers everywhere.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 6.30.02
  • 8 Men and a Duck: An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island
    Author: Thorpe, I.J.
    Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 0743219287 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Bill Bryson meets Thor Heyerdahl in this hilarious and perilous adventure, as an award-winning journalist sails 2,500 miles from South America to Easter Island in a reed boat.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Travel Tales
    Updated 3.15.02
  • The Ghost With Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking, and the Search for Lost Species
    Author: Weidensaul, Scott
    Publisher: North Point $ 26 ISBN: 0374246645 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    In this round-the-world detective story, the author of Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds goes on a search to rediscover vanished species.
    Suggested Reading: Nature
    Updated 4.2.02
  • As I Live and Breathe: Notes of a Patient Doctor
    Author: Weisman, Jamie
    Publisher: North Point $ 23 ISBN: 0865476020 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    In this probing and inspiring book, Dr. Weisman offers a view of medicine from both sides of the trenches, embracing the patientUs fervent desire for health and the doctor's fervent desire to grant it.
    Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd
    Author: Zacks, Richard
    Publisher: Hyperion $ 25.95 ISBN: 0786865334 Date: 2002
    starPW
    This harrowing tale traces Kidd's voyages in the 1690s from his home near Wall Street to London, from the ports of the Caribbean to a secret pirate paradise off Madagascar. Filled with superb research, The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a ripping good yarn--an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.
    Suggested Reading: Pirate Stars
    Updated 6.13.05
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

May

  • Double Bond: The Live of Primo Levi
    Author: Angier, Carole
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 40 ISBN: 0374113157 Date: 2002
    starLibrary JournalstarKirkusstarPWstarBooklist
    Perhaps the most important writer to emerge from the death camps, Primo Levi is known for Survival in Auschwitz, The Reawakening, and the classic The Periodic Table. Angier has spent nearly ten years writing this meticulously researched, vivid, and moving biography.
    Primo Levi web site ~ "Primo Levi's Last Moments" article
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 4.29.02
  • The Fall of Berlin 1945
    Author: Beevor, Antony
    Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670030414 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Acclaimed for his vivid re-creations of some of the 20th century's most significant battles, Beevor now offers a gripping, street-level portrait of the harrowing days of January 1945 in Berlin when the vengeful Red Army and beleaguered Nazi forces clashed for a final time.
    Suggested Reading: Berlin Stars
    Updated 4.2.02
  • Radical Hollywood: the Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies
    Author: Buhle, Paul
    Publisher: New Press $ 29.95 ISBN: 1565487180 Date: 2002
    starPW
    The authors present a revealing and affectionate account of the personal and political lives of the left-wing screenwriters, directors, and actors behind Hollywood's Golden Age.
    Updated 4.2.02
  • Dirt Under My Nails: An American Farmer and Her Changing Land
    Author: Foster, Marilee
    Publisher: Bridge Works $ 22.95 ISBN: 1882593545 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Dirt Under My Nails tells of a year in the life of a 31-year-old modern farm woman. Foster's farmland is in the midst of "the Hamptons," but her story of her changing heritage and environmental harm are relevant to the American farm scene almost everywhere.
    Updated 3.14.02
  • Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker
    Author: Gavin, James Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN:0679442871 Date: 2002
    starPW
    The wild ride of the most romanticized icon in jazz, thrillingly recounted in this first major biography. Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled, dragging with him those who dared to get close. Deep in a Dream is a revelation of a musician whose singular artistry and personal aura have never lost their power to fascinate and seduce.
    Suggested Reading: Music
    Updated 4.18.02
  • The Last American Man
    Author: Gilbert, Elizabeth
    Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030864 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Acclaimed journalist and fiction writer Gilbert focuses on the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway, who left his comfortable suburban home at the age of 17 to move into the Appalachian Mountains, where for the last 20 years he has lived off the land.
    Updated 2.28.02
  • Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria
    Author: Honigsbaum, Mark
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374154694 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    The Fever Trail is a story of courage, of geopolitical rivalry, of the New World against the Old, of the fabled curse of the cure that lies in the cinchona tree--and of a disease that eludes all efforts to contain it.
    Malaria Foundation
    Updated 4.1.02
  • Another River, Another Town: A Teenage Tank Gunner Comes of Age in Combat 1945
    Author: Irwin, John P.
    Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375507752 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Reminding many readers of The Red Badge of Courage,this book is the distinctive memoir of a teenage tank gunner in World War II.
    Suggested Reading: Child Soldiers
    Updated 4.2.02
  • The Tiger Ladies: A Memoir of Kashmir
    Author: Koul, Sudha
    Publisher: Beacon $ 23 ISBN: 0807059188 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    Skillfully interweaving the story of her family with tales of the gods and goddesses, myths, and history of Kashmir, Sudha Koul reveals how the women of her region have attained their extraordinary power in a lost Eden.
    Updated 3.14.02
  • American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads
    Author: Ledraoulec, Pascale
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060197366 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    An engaging, quirky travelogue and adventure-cookbook brings back from the highways and backroads a homemade slice of America.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Cooked Books
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Following the Sun: A Bicycle Pilgrimage from Andalusia to the Hebrides
    Author: Mitchell, John Hanson
    Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 1582431361 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    Mitchell spins the story of his entrancing, sun-drenched bicycle journey fromthe beaches of Southern Spain to solar temples in the Outer Hebrides.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 4.2.02
  • The Black Veil: A Memoir With Digressions
    Author: Moody, Rick
    Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316578991 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Looking for familial clues to his own melancholy, one of the most renowned writers of our time ties past and present, family legend, and serious scholarship into a dazzling original memoir.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
    Updated 4.1.02
  • Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich
    Author: Phillips, Kevin
    Publisher: Broadway $ 29.95 ISBN: 0767905334 Date: 2002
    starPW
    The bestselling author of The Politics of Rich and Poor now he turns his insight toward the hidden history of the American rich, from the nation's founding through the present day, to reveal a political pattern that debunks our country's false promise of a fair shake for everyone.
    Updated 4.18.02
  • The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship, Tragedy, and Survival in the Alaskan Wilderness
    Author: Schooler, Lynn
    Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 0066210852 Date: 2002
    starPW
    This haunting memoir is about the search for one of the world's most elusive animals, the friendship it forged, and the tragedy that ensued.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature | Alaska
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Artic
    Author: Shaw, David W.
    Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 0743222172 Date: 2002
    star PW
    This stirring narrative is the riveting tale of the sinking of the steamship Arctic --a story of extraordinary bravery and appalling cowardice that took nearly 400 lives and the American merchant marine business down with it.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
    Links: Site survey of Artic
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy
    Author: Preston, Diana
    Publisher: Walker $ 28 ISBN: 0802713750 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    In her riveting account of the torpedoing and sinking of the ship Lusitania, Preston recalls both a pivotal moment in history and a remarkable human drama.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
    Updated 4.24.02
  • Letters to a Young Novelist
    Author: Vargas Llosa, Mario
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 16 ISBN: 0374119163 Date: 2002
    starLibrary JournalstarKirkus
    In the tradition of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers, revealing in the process his deepest beliefs about the world of letters.
    Suggested Reading: Authors
    Updated 4.1.02
  • On a Wave: A Surfer Boyhood
    Author: Ziolkowski, Thad
    Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 087113845x Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    A disenchanted English professor decides on a whim one day to sneak off from his job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. On a Wave is an unpretentious portrait of youth in the tradition of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Frank Conroy's Stop-Time.
    Suggested Reading: Surfer Stars
    Updated 2.18.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

April

  • Amazon Extreme: Three Men, a Raft, and the World's Most Dangerous River
    Author: Angus, Colin
    Publisher: Broadway $ 22.95 ISBN: 0767910508 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Culminating in an astonishing victory that garnered major media coverage, this is the pulse-pounding story of three guys who truly went off the deep end, and one who came back to write a riveting recollection of their Amazon adventure.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Amazon
    Updated 3.19.02
  • West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Reflects on Islam and the West
    Author: Ansary, Tamim
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 22 ISBN: 0374287570 Date: 2002
    starKirkus starBooklist
    Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to 20 friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. He has now emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West and this is his deeply personal account.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 6.30.02
  • Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs
    Author: Assmann, Jan
    Publisher: Metropolitan $ 35 ISBN: 0805054626 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    The Mind of Egypt presents an unprecedented account of the mainsprings of Egyptian civilization--the ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems, and aspirations that shaped the first territorial state in human history. Drawing on a range of literary, iconographic, and archaeological sources, the renowned historian Jan Assmann reconstructs a world of unparalleled complexity, a culture that, long before others, possessed an extraordinary degree of awareness and self-reflection.- Publisher Marketing.
    Suggested Reading: Egyptian Stars
    Updated 3.19.02
  • Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women's Resistance
    Author: Benard, Cheryl
    Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 0767913019 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    An inside look at the women of RAWA, the underground Afghan women's organization whose daring, clandestine activities are the only effective civil resistance to the Taliban.
    Suggested Reading: Afghanistan Stars
    Updated 4.24.02
  • Revenge: A Story of Hope
    Author: Blumenfeld, Laura
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0684853167 Date: 2002
    starLibrary JournalstarPW
    A powerful, global exploration of the nature of revenge is offered by a Washington Post correspondent who goes undercover looking for the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father.
    Updated 4.24.02
  • Who Owns History
    Author: Foner, Eric
    Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 24 ISBN: 0809097044 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    In this thought-provoking work by one of America's finest historians, the author offers a provocative, even controversial, study of the reasons we care about history--or should.
    Updated 3.14.02
  • Fish's Eye: Essays About Angling and the Great Outdoors
    Author: Frazier, Ian
    Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 20 ISBN: 0374155208 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    Exploring his lifelong passion for fishing, fish, and the aquatic world, the author of On the Rez brings together 20 years of heartfelt, funny, and vivid essays on a timeless pursuit where so many mysteries, both human and natural, coincide.
    Suggested Reading: Nature
    Updated 3.15.02
  • Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
    Author: Gawande, Atul
    Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 0805063196 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    A book about medicine that reads like a thriller, Complications is "a uniquely soulful book about the science of mending bodies" (Adam Gopnik, author of From Paris to the Moon).
    Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction
    Updated 3.14.02
  • Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim
    Author: Gill, Anton
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0060196971 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starBooklist starLibrary Journal
    Insightful and comprehensive, Anton Gill's work reveals Peggy Guggenheim as never before, including new information about her relationship with her daughter. It is a book that will appeal to serious art lovers, art history buffs, and anyone who wants to read an engrossing tell-all biography of a fascinating woman.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Art
    Peggy Guggenheim collection
    Updated 3.14.02
  • My Fine Feathered Friend
    Author: Grimes, William
    Publisher: North Point $ 15 ISBN: 0865476322 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW
    One day in the dead of winter, New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes looked out the window into his backyard in Queens and saw a chicken, jet black with a crimson comb. His relationship with the hen eventually left him with a funny, enlightening, and heartwarming tale to tell.
    Suggested Reading: Nature | For the Birds
    Updated 2.18.02
  • It Takes a Worried Man: A Memoir
    Author: Halpin, Brendan
    Publisher: Villard $21.95 ISBN: 0375507167 Date: 2002
    star Library Journal
    An unsentimental, inspiring, and surprisingly funny account is written by a husband trying to deal with his wife's cancer--by turns horrifying and funny, but most of all, a love story.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars | Breast Cancer
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Culture of Make-Believe
    Author: Jensen, Derrick
    Publisher: Context $ 18 (trade paper) ISBN: 1893956288 Date: 2002
    starPWstarBooklist
    Interweaving political, historical, philosophical, and deeply personal perspectives, Jensen attempts to understand the atrocities that characterize so much of our culture, from lynchings in early 20th-century America to death squads in South America to the destruction of the natural world.
    Updated 5.13.02
  • Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence
    Author: Jones, Gerard
    Publisher: Basic $ 25 ISBN: 0465036953 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Children choose their heroes more carefully than readers think. Drawing on a wealth of true stories, Jones explains why validating children's fantasies teaches them to trust their own emotions, helps them build stronger selves, leaves them less at the mercy of the pop-culture industry, and strengthens parent-child bonds.
    Updated 3.19.02
  • Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir
    Author: Kephart, Beth
    Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393050742 Date: 2002
    starKirkus
    When Beth Kephart met and fell in love with the artist who would become her husband, she had little knowledge of the place he came from - an exotic coffee farm high in the jungle hills of El Salvador. Yet, love, she finds, means taking in not only the stranger who is one's lover, but also a stranger's history - in this case, a country, language, people and culture utterly foreign to a young American woman. Kephart's transcendently lyrical prose (often compared to the work of Annie Dillard) has already earned her a National Book Award nomination. - from the author's web site.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Memoir Stars
    Updated 3.15.02
  • A House Unlocked
    Author: Lively, Penelope
    Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 0802117120 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    From the Whitbread Award and Booker Prize-winning writer comes a stirring, intimate look at the tumults and trials of the 20th century through the perspective of her family's ancestral home.
    Updated 4.1.02
  • The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily
    Author: Maggio, Theresa
    Publisher: Perseus $ 25 ISBN: 0738203424 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    In this sparkling book, Theresa Maggio takes readers on a journey in search of Sicily's most remote and least explored mountain towns. A beautifully wrought meditation on time and place, The Stone Boudoir will be treasured by all who love fine travel writing.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 3.14.02
  • A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape
    Author: Mares, Michael A.
    Publisher: Harvard $ 29.95 ISBN: 0674007476 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Travel with Michael Mares into the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and the American Southwest and encounter a rich and memorable variety of small, tenacious animals. Observe the remarkable behavioral, physiological, and ecological adaptations that have allowed them to persist in an arid world.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 4.1.02
  • Tumbling After: Pedaling Like Crazy After Life Goes Downhill
    Author: Parker, Susan
    Publisher: Crown $24 ISBN: 0609608568 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    Suzy Parker and her husband, Ralph Hager, spent every free moment together biking, skiing, and hiking. All that changed in a split second when a freak cycling accident left Ralph permanently paralyzed below the shoulders. In that moment, Suzy's old life fell away and her new one began. In Tumbling After, Suzy chronicles her transformation from carefree outdoorswoman to full-time caregiver, and paints a loving portrait of the impromptu, oddball family of concerned neighbors and friends who become her new lifeline. With Jerry, the tender ex-con; Momma Scott, a guardian angel and force of nature in a feather boa; and Harka, the culture-shocked Nepalese, at their side, Suzy and Ralph weather the loss of old friends and learn to embrace a new way of life with hope and a healing dose of the absurd.
    This astonishing memoir, devoid of self-pity and told with breathtaking candor and a wry sense of humor, is an inspiring journey that is ultimately a story of survival and second chances--and the unexpected joy and love that can growout of grief if given the slightest encouragement. - Publisher Marketing.
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Tsar's Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima
    Author: Pleshakov, Constantine V.
    Publisher: Basic $ 30 ISBN: 0465057918 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starBooklist
    On May 14-15, 1905, in the Tsushima Straits near Japan, an entire Russian fleet was annihilated, its ships sunk, scattered, or captured by the Japanese. With a novelist's eye and a historian's authority, Pleshakov tells of the Russian squadron's long, difficult journey and swift, horrible defeat.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
    Battle of Tsushima eyewitness account | Togo at Tsushima
    Updated 3.14.02
  • Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet
    Author: Reichl, Ruth (ed)
    Publisher: Modern Library $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679642501 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Reichl offers an enchanting compendium of food and travel essays from Gourmet magazine's extensive archives. Includes contributions by Anita Loos, James Beard, Madhur Jaffrey, Robert P. Tristam Coffin, Laurie Colwin, and many others.
    Suggested Reading: Cooked Books
    Updated 4.1.02
  • Brown: An Erotic History of the Americas
    Author: Rodriguez, Richard
    Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030430 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starBooklist
    In his two previous works, Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation, Rodriguez wrote about the intersection of his private life with public issues of class and ethnicity. With Brown, his consideration of race, Rodriguez completes his "trilogy on American public life."
    Updated 3.14.02
  • The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous 19th Century Chess Playing Machine
    Author: Standage, Tom
    Publisher: Walker $ 24 ISBN: 0802713912 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    Part historical detective story, part biography, The Turk relates the saga of an unusual 18th century robot--fashioned from wood to look like a man who was dressed like a Turk and played chess.
    Updated 3.15.02
  • My Mentor
    Author: Wilkinson, Alec
    Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 22 ISBN: 0618123016 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    At 24, Alec Wilkinson decided he wanted to write, so his father sent him to William Maxwell, the famous writer and New Yorker fiction editor. My Mentor is the poignant story of a young man's education at the hands of a master and a heartbreaking meditation on the end of Maxwell's life.
    Updated 2.18.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

March

  • Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain
    Author: Abraham, Carolyn
    Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 031228117x Date: 2002
    star LJ
    When, in 1995, pathologist Thomas Harvey removed Einstein's brain during autopsy and plopped it in a Tupperware container for safekeeping, he thought he was preserving history. Instead, he was embarking on the greatest misadventure of his life.
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Stud
    Author: Conley, Kevin
    Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 25.95 ISBN: 1582341842 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    Stud takes readers into the strange and seductive world of horse breeding on Thoroughbred farms from the gentle hills of Kentucky to the rich valleys of California.
    Suggested Reading: Horse Tales
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life With Alzheimer's
    Author: Debaggio, Thomas
    Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 0743205650 Date: 2002
    star LJ
    This intensely intimate and moving account of a 57-year-old writer afflicted with the early onset of Alzheimer's disease is a work, like Tuesdays with Morrie, that paints a vivid picture of memory--and the pain that comes from its loss. A rare, historic, and profoundly important chronicle of Alzheimer's, this is a book where the author is also the disease's victim.
    Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction
    Updated 2.18.02
  • I Have Seen the World Begin
    Author: Jensen, Carsten
    Publisher: Harcourt $ 28 ISBN: 0151007683 Date: 2002
    starBooklist
    Fusing social commentary and history with vibrant descriptions of people and places, Jensen brilliantly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of these venerable civilizations.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 6.30.02
  • The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton
    Author: Klein, Joe
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385506198 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW starLJ
    This "New York Times" bestseller is the first work to cut through the gossip, scandals, media hype, and emotional turbulence that former President Bill Clinton has always engendered, to step back and analyze the eight years of his administration.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Fifty Year Wound: Assessing the Costs of the Cold War
    Author: Leebaert, Derek
    Publisher: Little Brown $ 29.95 ISBN: 0316518476 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW starBooklist
    Drawing upon literature, strategy, biography, and economics--plus an inside perspective of the Cold War from the intelligence community--Leebaert explores what Americans sacrificed at the same time that they achieved the longest great-power peace since Rome fell.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Trouser People
    Author: Marshall, Andrew
    Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 1582431205 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, The Trouser People is an enormously appealing and vivid account of Sir George Scott, the unsung Victorian adventurer who hacked, bullied, and charmed his way through uncharted jungle to help establish British colonial rule in Burma.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Burma
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Midnight to the North
    Author: Nickerson, Sheila
    Publisher: Tarcher $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585421332 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    The true story of what happened on the ill-fated Polaris expedition, from the perspective of the Inuit woman whose skills enabled all 19 members to survivethe longest ice drift in history.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Paperboy: Delivering the Press in the Fifties
    Author: Petroski, Henry
    Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375413537 Date: 2002
    star KirkusstarLibrary Journal
    Engineer Petroski now turns his keenly observant eye on himself and tells the story of his Eisenhower-era adolescence in the Cambria Heights section of Queens. Paperboy is a dual delight: at once a nostalgic memoir of a bygone America and a charming account of the intellectual maturation of one of the most eloquent science writers of our time.
    Updated 3.19.02
  • The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its Cargo of Female Convicts
    Author: Rees, Sian
    Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 078687876 Date: 2002
    star PW
    A seafaring story with a twist, this riveting work of rediscovered history tells for the first time the plight of the female convicts aboard the Lady Julian, which set sail from England in 1789 and arrived in Australia's Botany Bay a year later.
    Suggested Reading: Australia
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Bad Blood: A Memoir
    Author: Sage, Lorna
    Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066214432 Date: 2002
    star LJ starPW
    In this extraordinary personal history, the late author and influential literary critic Lorna Sage tells the searing tale of her escape from a claustrophic childhood in post-World War II Britain--a phenomenal story of courage, humor, and pain that brings to life the nature of family life, memory, and marriage through three generations.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle
    Author: Vogel, Steven
    Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393021262 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    A bioengineer offers the story--and the science--of nature's greatest engine: the muscle.
    Updated 1.31.02
  • A Scythe of Fire: The Civil War Story of the Eighth Georgia Infantry Regiment
    Author: Wilkinson, Warren & Steven E.Woodworth
    Publisher: Morrow $ 27.95 ISBN: 0380977524 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    In this stirring volume, two renowned historical researchers bring a human dimension to the Civil War struggle as they recount these soldiers' experiences from their unit's creation in May 1861 to the war's end. Based on diaries, letters, and other primary sources, Steven E. Woodworth tells a story of individual hopes and fears at the heart of this wrenching event.
    8th Georgia Infantry Site
    Updated 1.31.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

February

  • Blues for Cannibals: the Notes from Underground
    Author: Bowden, Charles
    Publisher: North Point $ 24 ISBN: 0865476241 Date: 2002
    star Booklist
    Blues for Cannibals continues the quest Charles Bowden began in Blood Orchid--to discover the headwaters of the sickness that seeps through the American soul, and to consider what it might mean to come fully alive in a time of exalted consumption, global pillage, gated communities, and wholesale destruction of the environment.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature
    Updated 2.18.02
  • Breaking Clean
    Author: Blunt, Judy
    Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375401318 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW
    An astonishing literary debut: the true story of a remarkable woman's life in the contemporary American West, where the lessons she learned carried her through blizzards, devastating prairie fires, and extreme isolation.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Nature | Reading Group Stars
    Updated 1.31.02
  • I'll Know It When I See It: A Daughter's Search for a Home in Ireland
    Author: Carey, Alice
    Publisher: Clarkson $ 22 ISBN: 060960984x Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW
    By turns bittersweet and laugh-aloud funny, I'll Know It When I See It tells an Irish-American woman's story of restoring a cottage in Ireland and reclaiming her roots.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 12.18.01
  • Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
    Author: Cassidy, John
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060008806 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    In the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash comes a revealing history of the Internet stock market boom and bust from The New Yorker's economics writer.
    Updated 3.19.02
  • Sounds of the River
    Author: Chen, Da
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060199253 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW
    Teenager Da Chen gathers soil from the riverbank near his village before he leaves to attend the University of Beijing. Those grains bear witness to his past and contain the now-silent sounds of the river. Later spilled onto the dry soil of the North, they will merge two parts of Da's life in the second volume of his lyrical trilogy of memoirs.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Science Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, a Massive Cover-Up, and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo
    Author: Crewdson, John
    Publisher: Little Brown $ 27.95 ISBN: 0316134767 Date: 2002
    star KirkusstarLibrary Journal
    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Crewdson presents a magisterial narrative of how Big Science really works today--the vanity, cutthroat competition, corruption, greed, and mendacity--told through the story of the warring combatants who claim to have discovered the AIDS virus.
    Updated 3.19.02
  • Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny
    Author: Dash, Mike
    Publisher: Crown $ 25 ISBN: 0609607669 Date: 2002
    star Booklist
    As richly textured as his acclaimed Tulipomania, Mike Dash's Batavia's Graveyard is the true saga of a mad 17th-century heretic who led history's bloodiest mutiny off the coast of Australia.
    Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Light at the End of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures
    Author: Davis, Wade
    Publisher: National Geo $ 35 ISBN: 0792264746 Date: 2002
    star Booklist
    In this major new work, renowned anthropologist and bestselling author Wade Davis explores and reveals the awe-inspiring wealth of human diversity and makes an impassioned case for preservation of Earth's disappearing cultures.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 2.18.02
  • The Dressing Station: A Surgeon's Chronicle of War and Medicine
    Author: Kaplan, Jonathan
    Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802117074 Date: 2002
    star PW
    The Dressing Station is a searing portrait of devastation on the battlefield--a haunting and elucidating look into the nature of human violence, the shattering contradictions of war, and the complicated role of medicine in this modern world.
    Suggested Reading: Medical Nonfiction
    Updated 11.27.01
  • Lonesome Rangers; Homeless Minds, Promised Land, Fugitive Cultures
    Author: Leonard, John
    Publisher: New Press $27.95 ISBN: 156584694x Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    "The fastest wit in the East" (The New York Times Book Review) is back with his off-beat, wide-ranging style. Now, with an eye to the social and political experience of writers, Leonard adopts a broad definition of exile and explores Primo Levi's exile of survival, Bruce Chatwin's self-imposed exile in travel, as well as the work of Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Phillip Roth, Barbara Kingsolver, and Don DeLillo, among others.
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo
    Author: McAllester, Matthew
    Publisher: New York Univ $ 24.95 ISBN: 0814756603 Date: 2002
    star Library Journal starKirkus starPW
    Emotionally gripping and elegantly written, Beyond the Mountains of the Damned looks past the headlines to explain the ongoing strife and chaos in the Balkans. - Publisher Marketing.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Former Yugoslavia
    Updated 1.31.02
  • Lincoln's Greatest Speech: the Second Inaugral
    Author: White, Ronald C.
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743212983Date: 2002
    star Booklist starKirkus
    In this insightful book, White shows how Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered five-and-a-half weeks before the president's assassination, drew from the whole of his rhetorical genius, biblical learning, and a lifetime of moral contemplation.
    Suggested Reading: Lincoln
    Updated 2.18.02
December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January

January

  • Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense
    Author: Butler, Richard
    Publisher: Perseus $ 22 ISBN:0813339804 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starPW
    In Fatal Choice, a well-known and respected voice on the subject of nuclear armament, argues that we are poised on the verge of a second and much more threatening nuclear arms race than the one experienced throughout the Cold War.
    Updated 11.29.01
  • When Katie Wakes
    Author: Fowler, Connie May
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 038550201x Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    In this piercing memoir, the author of Before Women Had Wings chronicles the emotional battery and physical abuse that marked her own passage to adulthood and describes the unexpected gifts of love that helped her survive.
    Suggested Reading: Memoir Stars
    Updated 11.27.01
  • Dont' Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
    by Fuller, Alexandra
    Publisher: Random House $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507507 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starBooklist starPW
    Magnificently original and affecting, Fuller's memoir of a childhood dominated by the Rhodesian civil war of 1971-1979 captures the fascinating life of a white family living in one of the most remote regions of Africa.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars | Memoir Stars | Adult Books for Teens
    Updated 11.27.01
  • No Stone Unturned: The True Story of Necrosearch International, the World's Premier Forensic Investigators
    Author: Jackson, Steve
    Publisher: Kensington $ 24 ISBN: 1575664569 Date: 2002
    star PW
    New York Times bestselling author Steve Jackson offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at NecroSearch International, an organization of the nation's top scientists and other specialists who help solve "unsolvable" crimes.
    Suggested Reading: Crime Scene Investigators
    Updated 11.27.01
  • Salt
    Author: Kurlansky, Mark
    Publisher: Walker & Company $ 28 ISBN: 0802713734 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus starLibrary Journal
    Kurlansky, author of Cod and The Basque History of the World takes an extraordinary look at an ordinary substance--salt, the only rock humans eat-- and how it has shaped civilization from the very beginning.
    The Salt Book Web Site
    Updated 12.18.01
  • Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
    Author: LeDoux, Joseph
    Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670030287 Date: 2002
    star Library Journal
    From a world-renowned expert on the brain, a major new work examining how nature and nurture collaborate--via the brain--to create our personalities.
    Updated 12.18.01
  • Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street
    Author: Lingeman, Richard R.
    Publisher: Random $ 35 ISBN: 0679438238 Date: 2002
    star Booklist starLibrary Journal
    Bringing to light new correspondence, diaries, and criticism, Lingeman, the much-praised biographer of Theodore Dreiser, paints a sympathetic portrait of an American writer who was, on the inside, the loneliest of men and, on the outside, as gregarious as his creation George F. Babbitt.
    Sinclair Lewis Homepage
    Suggested Reading: Authors
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family
    Author: Lovell, Mary S.
    Publisher: Norton $ 29.95 ISBN: 0393010430 Date: 2002
    star PW starBooklist
    The Mitfords had style, presence, and were extremely gifted: four would go on to write bestselling books. Above all, they were funny--hilariously and often mercilessly so. In this wise, evenhanded, and generous book, Lovell captures the vitality and extraordinary drama of a family that took the 20th century by the throat and became, in some respects, its victims.
    Suggested Reading: Mitfords | Sisters
    Updated 11.27.01
  • Mrs. Paine's Garage: And the Murder of John F. Kennedy
    Author: Mallon, Thomas
    Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375421173 Date: 2002
    star Library Journal
    Nearly 40 years have passed since Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife. This haunting portrait is an examination of how her life became inextricably tangled in the events of November 22, 1963.
    Updated 12.18.01
  • Them: Adventures with Extremists
    by Ronson, Jon
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743227077 Date: 2002
    star Kirkus
    In the tradition of Bill Bryson, a fascinating and frequently hilarious look at extremists around the globe, and the conspiracy theory that unites them. Journalist Jon Ronson, the mild-mannered but ironic observer, learns some alarming things about the looking-glass world of them and us. Are the extremists onto something? Or has Ronson become one of Them?
    Updated 11.27.01
  • England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond
    Author: Savage, Jon
    Publisher: St Martins $ 19.95 (trade paperback) ISBN: 0312288220 Date: 2002
    starLibrary Journal
    Savage's critically acclaimed social history of the punk band the Sex Pistols and 1970's England is a searing and disturbingly familiar study of a country suffering from a stagnant economy, a disgruntled work force, and youthful rage.
    Suggested Reading: Music
    Updated 4.1.02
  • Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life
    Author: Simmons, Philip
    Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 16.95 ISBN: 0553802666 Date: 2002
    star Booklist
    Faced at 35 with the prospect of dying, Simmons succeeded, instead, at the art of living. Learning to Fall contains his ruminations on turtle behavior, Buddhist philosophy, Robert Frost's poetry, and his affirmation that whatever life throws at us, we can learn to live with joy.
    Updated 1.31.02
  • The Last Opium Den
    Author: Tosches, Nick
    Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 16.95 ISBN: 158234227x
    star PW
    Driven by romantic, spiritual, and medicinal imperatives, Nick Tosches goes in search of something that may no longer exist--an opium den. Weaving hallucinogenic quests with razor sharp prose, Tosche's trip becomes a deeper meditation on what true fulfillment is.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
    Updated 11.27.01
  • Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill
    Author: Whitaker, Robert
    Publisher: Perseus $ 27 ISBN: 0738203858
    star Kirkus starBooklist
    Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, and government documents, this haunting book raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane, " and what we value most about the human mind.
    Updated 1.31.02
~ December ~ November ~ October ~ September ~ August ~ July
~ June ~ May ~ April ~ March ~ February ~ January