Adventuring in Narnia: The Magician's Book Offers Skeptics Take

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

What is it about the CS Lewis Narnia books that gives them such a hold over a child's imagination? That is the question Laura Miller addresses in this book, in which she examines her unfolding responses to the books as a child enthusiast, a maturing apostate and an adult critic.

I know exactly what she means. I, too, cherish the memory of my discovery of Narnia. When I was 11, I had found few books that bridged the gap between the skeletal honesty of the fairytale and the weighty adventures that beckoned from adult novels.

One sunny Saturday, a childhood friend and I came across The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobein the public library and our lives changed.

Miller remembers the same moment, of wishing for two things: "First, I want a place I've read about in a book to really exist, and second, I want to be able to go there." I felt the same, and thought Lewis might really have discovered some actual magic land and, protectively, disguised it as fiction.

Miller relates much that is familiar about Lewis's life and a little that is less well known, concentrating on his childhood traumas and his adult friendship with JRR Tolkien, who considered Narnia "a disgracefully slapdash creation", Miller writes, rather than the kind of painstaking self-enclosed world he created in Lord of the Rings.

She discusses the virtues as well as the uglier sides of Narnia – its classism, racism, sexism, and its depiction of a godhead whose mercy extends only to those pure enough to deserve it. Miller's most daring conceit, likening the mutually influential friendship between Tolkien and Lewis to that between Coleridge and Wordsworth, is persuasive. Miller has learned much from Lewis, not least a bracingly colloquial, honest, intimate tone.

Read more about The Magician's Book here, or get a copy now!

The Bankers Who Broke the Economy: Lords of Finance

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Books grounded in history sometimes offer an eerie resonance for contemporary readers. Rarely has that statement seemed truer than with Lords of Finance.

As the United States plus most of the world's other nations struggle through the economic downturn of 2009, author Liaquat Ahamed is an unexpected beneficiary. When he started researching his history of global finance years ago, he almost surely did not realize how relevant it would become upon its publication date.

Ahamed's frame is built around the lives of four nearly forgotten men who wielded power between World War I and World War II – the central bankers from the United States (Benjamin Strong, Federal Reserve Bank of New York), England (Montagu Norman, Bank of England), France (Emile Moreau, Banque de France) and Germany (Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank).

Relating the life of each man on his way to power constitutes a considerable biographical accomplishment for Ahamed, especially given that he is primarily an investment manager, not a professional writer. The author characterizes Strong as a policymaker whose "veneer of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man." Norman is "neurotic and enigmatic." Moreau is "xenophobic and suspicious." Schacht is "rigid and arrogant but also brilliant and cunning."

The fifth main character in Ahamed's narrative held no official position at a central bank. Instead, he was a gadfly from the younger generation, an independent-minded scholar in England with unusual ideas. His name – John Maynard Keynes – is invoked today far more frequently than the names of the central bankers.

The overarching reality of national and global economics during the period of Ahamed's narrative was the gold standard. Nations tied the amount of money in circulation to how much gold they possessed, mostly in bank vaults. Considered logically, tying economic policy to gold stores made no sense.

Read more about Lords of Finance here, or get a copy now!

The Great Lover: A Novel About Poet Rupert Brooke

The Great Lover

Dawson's novel takes as its setting The Orchard Tea Rooms in Grantchester, the real-life former lodgings of the poet Rupert Brooke that sit next door to another of his temporary homes, The Old Vicarage. The author plunges back to 1909 for the bulk of the novel, recreating the sedentary pace of Cambridge student life with its small talk on the lawn, bowls of strawberries and languorous discussion of life, politics, art and books on the punts that oozed their way up and down the River Cam.

Into the middle of all this arrives the young Rupert Brooke, renting two rooms at Orchard House and spending much of his time being visited by fervent young men as he sits in the idyllic gardens breakfasting off honey, milk and eggs. Caught up in the golden bubble he creates around himself in Grantchester is 17-year-old Nell Golightly, the "good, sensible girl" whose talents "chiefly involve bees" and who is employed as maid of all work at Orchard House.

It is difficult for the reader to like the Brooke who emerges from Dawson's pen, and therein lies an enjoyable clash between his outward appearance and his inner thoughts, as well as a good contrast between his edgy restlessness and the timeless, sleepy backdrop of Cambridgeshire. Fey, brash, insecure and fickle, Brooke works his way through a succession of admirers hoping to find the right person to lose his virginity to. As the novel progresses, one realizes that the title of Dawson's novel is gently ironic. Brooke is not the great lover he would like to be, but a shameful, furtive sort of boy-man, indulging in his first homosexual encounter almost out of desperation and leaving his dirty sheets for poor infatuated Nell to sort out.

Read more about the book here, or get a copy now!

Debut Novel Wins Critical Acclaim: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel


Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novelis a debut novel with abundant sentiment but not sentimentality as it describes the friendship and love between Chinese-American Henry Lee and Japanese-American Keiko Okabe in early 1940s Seattle.

The two 12-year-olds are the only Asian students in a private school and are drawn to each other in a Seattle where the city's ethnic groups don't mix. The fifth-grade scholarship students share a love of jazz, an integral part of Seattle's music scene at the time, and become friends with a black saxophone player named Sheldon, who is in his mid 20s. Henry is continually victimized by bullies Chaz Preston and Denny Brown -- classmates at Ranier Elementary -- because of his ethnicity and especially because of his friendship with Keiko.

It only gets worse after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and when the federal government starts rounding up Japanese-Americans in early 1942. The internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans, promoted by racist Californians and others on the West Coast and promulgated by President Roosevelt in his February 1942 Executive Order 9066 -- against the advice of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and others -- is vividly described by Ford, himself of part Chinese ancestry.

Complicating the friendship is Henry's Chinese-born father, who doesn't want his son fraternizing with the "enemy." His father wants Henry to succeed in the U.S. -- which accounts for his son's studying at a prestigious all-Caucasian school -- but he wants his American-born son to retain his identity as a ethnic Cantonese. His father supplies Henry with an "I Am Chinese" button to distance him from Japanese-Americans.

Read the rest of the review here, or get a copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novelnow!

Alaska and the Inupiaq People: A Memoir of the Wilderness

Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People

Among the traditional delicacies of the native Inupiaq people in Alaska is something called utniq - pickled walrus flipper. It's not a simple thing to prepare.

You need to first coat the flippers with the animal's blubber. Then you wrap them in the walrus' own skin, turned inside out. This package is stored in a cool, dry place for as long as a year. Meanwhile, the fermenting process works its strange magic. The results are said to be pungently delicious. The problem with pickled walrus flipper is that, if it is not prepared very carefully, it can become rife with botulism.

In William L. Iggiagruk Hensley's often harrowing new memoir, Fifty Miles from Tomorrowset in the far northern Kotzebue Sound region of Alaska, he recounts an evening in the late 1940s - the author was 6 at the time - when he and his adopted family sat down to a meal of utniq that had, unbeknownst to them, gone very bad. Before long, his adoptive father and pregnant stepsister had died. One stepbrother, in a hallucinatory daze, survived by paddling a small boat 10 miles, or 16 kilometers, to the nearest town.

For many memoirists, this kind of catastrophic event would be enough to hang an entire book upon. Hensley - many Inupiaq received their surname from visiting missionaries; Hensley was partly named after his maternal grandfather - and his adoptive family, Alaska Natives, lived along the Bering Sea, 29 miles within the Arctic Circle. They lived in tarpaper or sod houses and survived on what they could fish, hunt or grow in the region's abbreviated summertime. It would be decades before the family or its neighbors had electricity, telephones, indoor toilets or medical care. Every pair of hands was vital.

Yet in Fifty Miles from Tomorrowthese deaths take up only a few short paragraphs. Hensley has written a book that is so full of incident, yet so stoic, that life - and narrative - simply marches on.

Read the rest of the review here, or get a copy

The New York Yankee Years: Baseballs Love-Hate Team'

The Yankee Years

The New York Yankees probably rate the highest on the ‘teams you love to hate’ scale, however, few baseball fans can help but love former manager Joe Torre.

Torre managed the Yankees to the 12 straight playoff appearances, six pennants, and four World Series, yet none of it ever seemed good enough for the fans, the media or the owner. The even keeled, soft spoken skipper comes clean on his tenuous tenure with the Yankees in his memoir “The Yankee Years,” co-written by longtime Sports Illustrated baseball beat writer Tom Verducci.

Much within these pages validates what many baseball fans already knew or suspected: Owner George Steinbrenner is a megalomaniac, general manager Brian Cashman may not have a spine, the media is exhausting, closer Mariano Rivera is awesome, captain Derek Jeter likes to party, and so on.

Under Torre’s leadership, the Yankees won four World Series in five years, an impressive feat that led to the team’s demise, at least by the media’s and fans’ perspective.

The World Series teams were built with a careful mix of young talent such as Jeter, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte developed through the Yankee farm system and savvy, role-playing veterans such as David Justice, Scott Brosius, Paul O’Neil and Tino Martinez.

However, this philosophy was upended as the bombastic, meddlesome Steinbrenner, drunk with power and money, spent lavishly on marquee free agents such as declining pitcher Randy Johnson and Jason Giambi, federally indicted on steroid charges, and most notably Alex Rodriguez, whose skill set and contract were equally respected and resented.

Read more about the book, or grab a copy now!

Spark Your Teenager's Inner Strengths: Book Offers Tips, Resources, and the Latest Science

Sparks: How Parents Can Ignite the Hidden Strengths of Teenagers

When I was young, there were not many options for educational and mental development. There was one school that I could attend – Columbine Elementary. There were the usual after school sports and extra curricular activities that my parents could enroll me in: soccer, music, or tutoring. Not to say that my education or upbringing was bad; far from it. However, there were not a lot of options. This was especially true if you were one of those kids who the regular school offerings just didn’t appeal to. That was me. I was into spending time in the woods, skateboarding, reading, and imagining far off lands. Not activities that were supported or offered in the usual educational environment during my youth.

Now things are different. There are many, many options for parents and kids alike to find educational activities, extra curricular programs, and just plain fun things to do that spark your kid’s interest. And sparking your kid’s inner self is the most powerful way for you to encourage and help develop your teenager or kids inner strengths. If you help your teenagers and kids find their inner strengths, you give them their own key to success. That is what I was looking for during my youth – something to spark my interest and give me inner strength.

Sparks: How Parents Can Ignite the Hidden Strengths of Teenagers,
the new book by Peter L. Benson, Ph.D., provides parents, teachers, and others with the latest research and science on finding these inner strengths, these sparks. Bringing together over seven years of research, experimental data, and personal experience, Benson presents methods, exercises, tips, and stories on how one can find and develop their teen’s inner strengths. With a world filled with a multitude of options, it has become even more difficult sometimes for parents, teachers, and even teens themselves to know who they are and what their inner strengths are. Sparksis a timely and much needed book.

Consisting of two parts, Sparkscovers how to recognize the power of sparks for your teenager or child, how to know your teenager, how to help your teenager find their spark, and how to help your teenager grow and cultivate their sparks. All in all, Peter L. Benson provides a roadmap for parents and others to help their teen thrive.

The second part of Sparksoffers stories from across America on how teenagers found their inner strength – their spark. These are amazing stories, and provide a personal perspective that shows you just how important it is to help your teenager find their spark and let it grow. Finally, in the back Peter L. Benson offers a resource list of over 200 sparks, and the list keeps growing: visit www.ignitesparks.com.

Sparks: How Parents Can Ignite the Hidden Strengths of Teenagersis a timely and resource rich book. If you want to help your teenager find their sparks – the thing(s) that make them strong and feed their spirit – then look no further.

Get a copy now,or check out Peter L. Benson's other bookshere.