Best of the Month: January 2008

Spotlight Title: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne

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The DC Comics Action Figure Archive by Scott Beatty		People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Looking for a one-stop tome chronicling every DC figure ever produced? In The DC Comics Action Figure Archive, 1,400 characters line the pages in 600 full-color photos with every release date, variant, and accessory included. Batman alone takes up 25 pages with Superman commanding 11 (and one tiny corner for Beppo the Supermonkey). You can pore through every page in A-to-Z fashion (Ace the Bat-Hound to Zauriel) or flip randomly throughout to land on welcome suprises like a pistol-packing Mad Hatter, Solomon Grundy (DC Comics' only zombie action figure), Spider Jerusalem (whose accesories include a two-headed cat), and a red-and-black jump-suit clad fellow known as Elongated Man. The book serves as the ultimate wish list for fanboys while doubling as a rock-'em-sock-'em pop-culture-packed coffee table book. Shazam! --Brad		One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari
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Duma Key by Stephen King		My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen King's latest novel in just a few words. Suffice it to say that Duma Key, the story of Edgar Freemantle and his recovery from the terrible nightmare-inducing accident that stole his arm and ended his marriage, is Stephen King's most brilliant novel to date (outside of the Dark Tower novels, in which case each is arguably his best work). Duma Key is as rich and rewarding as "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" (yes, that Shawshank Redemption), and as truly scary as anything King has written (and that's saying a lot). Readers who have "always wanted to try Stephen King" but never known where to start should try a few pages of Duma Key--the frankness with which Edgar reveals his desperate, sputtering rages and thoughts of suicide is King at the top of his game. And that's just the first 30 pages... --Daphne		It's not the first time a story like this has been told: a '60s radical-turned-terrorist, living quietly under a new name with a family that doesn't know his history, finds his past about to catch up with him. But Hari Kunzru's novel, My Revolutions, feels fresh on every page. Not from the over-the-top pyrotechnics that brought so much attention to his precocious debut, The Impressionist, but from a thorough fictional imagination that gives every scene and every character the rich strangeness of reality. It's a grownup story of a youth lived at the edge (and a life spent in its shadow), which makes an emblematic tale of a generation feel irreducibly individual. --Tom
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David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair by Irène Némirovsky		The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret by Seth Shulman
In 2006 English readers worldwide were introduced to Irène Némirovsky's rediscovered masterpiece, Suite Française, which topped just about every "best of" list that year, including our own. Thanks to the editors of the Everyman's Library 20th-Century Classics series, a second wave of the prolific author's writing has just hit our shores. In a single volume, readers can find four of Nemirovsky's gem-like early novellas--David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, and The Courilof Affair--complete with all the trimmings: a shrewd introduction by Claire Messud (The Emperor's Children) and a detailed chronology of the author's life and times. These first novellas demonstrate Némirovsky's genius for exposing an individual's virtues and flaws, much like a jeweler examining a diamond under a loupe. Potentially one-dimensional characters such as a greedy businessman or a spiteful teenager emerge from these stories as multi-faceted figures whose questionable beliefs and actions compel us to re-examine our own. Don't miss these short, but potent tales. --Lauren		Seth Shulman closely examines the race to build the first telephone and uncovers potential bombshells with The Telephone Gambit. Although Alexander Graham Bell is widely accepted as the father of the telephone (despite the fact that rival inventor Elisha Gray submitted a similar claim the same day Bell filed his patent), Schulman provides intriguing evidence questioning if the scales were deliberately tipped in Alexander's favor. Was the venerable inventor party to theft from Gray's own research? Or are such accusations merely sour grapes from a bitterly contested legal battle? Fraught with controversy, conspiracy, and possible chicanery, Shulman spins real-life Da Vinci Code drama around one of the most influential inventions of the modern era. --Dave
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