Author Tim Gautreaux's New Book: The Missing

The Missing

Souls are sloppy, meandering things. So while readers often prefer a certain tightness to their plots, squishing realizations of the spirit into neat boxes requires illusion, manhandling or knives. Set in New Orleans before and after World War I, Gautreaux's wandering, searching book is an untidy mashup of genres. This Louisiana writer, author of the acclaimed novel "The Clearing," abandons precise edges for something that feels closer to real life.

Gentle, French-speaking Sam Simoneux finds himself in France working bomb-disposal duty at the end of the Great War. Although he missed the mass slaughter, what he saw was enough to instill "the notion that the surface appearance of things was not to be trusted." So when Sam returns, he junks his dreams of being a piano player in favor of a steady job in a department store. He's on his way to what might have been a comfortably uneventful life when a child disappears on his watch. Sam joins her parents, professional musicians on a riverboat, to aid their search.

Sam's an OK guy, that's the most he or anyone else would say about him, but Lily's disappearance reawakens old wounds about his childhood as an orphan. "There were people missing in his life like big holes cut out of the night sky." Months pass; Sam joins the boat's dance orchestra, and what began as a good deed becomes a quest - the outlaws behind the girl's disappearance may have also killed Sam's family when he was a baby. As he slowly realizes that you don't need a war or violence to make a person die inside, he has to decide if he will become Lily and his own parents' avenging angel.

Gautreaux's paragraphs linger like a Southern afternoon, warm and languorous. "The boat doddered downstream ... and a breeze rose off the water like a blessing." Gautreaux takes his time teasing out the suspense, wandering down lovely side stories: long dances on the riverboat, a wise-stubborn mule that understands French. The plot of Lily's theft and the villains behind it (greedy rich folks straight out of central casting) aren't that satisfying, but what fascinates is watching Sam, an ordinary man, unspool his beautiful, ordinary mind.

Read the rest of Laurel Maury's review here, or get a copy of The Missing now!

The Original American Health Guru: Bernarr MacFadden in New Book

Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr MacFadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet

It makes no difference whether you start at the beginning of this book, with author Mark Adams' lively story of the bizarre life of America's original health guru, or with the appendix, where Mr. Adams reports on how he himself fared when he put some of Bernarr Macfadden's advice into practice (the author had no trouble with extreme exercise, raw foods chewed forever and even quite a bit of fasting, but he drew the line at the all-milk diet). It's a delightful read.

Mr. Macfadden was born into a poverty-stricken family in the Ozarks in 1868 and died penniless in New Jersey in 1955. But between times he embraced “physical culture,” married four times, fathered lots of offspring, established a publishing empire built on America's seemingly insatiable appetite for self-improvement, and hobnobbed with the rich and famous. Mr. Adams tells the story briskly, as in this summary of his hero's early years: “Having endured savage beatings from his drunken father as a toddler, near-starvation (both physical and emotional) at an orphans' home, two episodes of domestic serfdom and the death of both parents, Bernard [he jazzed up his name later], perhaps not surprisingly, had by the age of 12 developed an unshakeable confidence.”

His epiphany came at age 15, when he chanced by a well-equipped St. Louis gymnasium filled with fit, Apollo-like German immigrants. He, the veritable 97-pound weakling, picked up a free pamphlet of dumbbell exercises, bought some used dumbbells for 50 cents and began to work out around the edges of his bookkeeping job. By age 18, he had the strength and brawn for wrestling. Because this sport is organized by weight categories, he began to experiment with reducing his food intake to two meals a day, a practice he would preach for the rest of his life (he didn't eat at all on Mondays).

He read up on diet and exercise at the gym's reading room, began organizing wrestling tournaments and hung out his shingle as a “kinisitherapist,” a term he intended to mean, says the author, “the use of movement in the cure of disease.” He visited the Chicago World's Fair, where he picked up some bodybuilding pointers from a Prussian strongman, Eugen Sandow.

Read more of Priscilla S. Taylor's review here, or get a copy of Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr MacFadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet now!

Seeking Authors and Writers: Contributors Needed for The Naval Civil War Encyclopedia

Seeking Contributors for The Naval Civil War Encyclopedia

The Naval Civil War Encyclopedia

ABC-CLIO is pleased to announce its latest encyclopedia project, which seeks to document and contextualize U.S. and Confederate naval participation in the Civil War (to include sea, riverine, and inland waterways warfare). Essays for the print encyclopedia will also be used for company web sites, workbooks, and handbooks for students and academics alike.

This work is under the general editorship of Dr. Spencer Tucker, formerly the John Briggs Chair of Military History at the Virginia Military Institute, and Senior Fellow of the Military History Institute at ABC-CLIO. Dr. Paul G. Pierpaoli, the associate editor, is a fellow of the Military History Institute at ABC-CLIO. An advisory board of distinguished historians and teachers is also assisting in the endeavor.

Each entry includes general facts and figures, a detailed historical analysis, and further readings. Sample entries begin at the end of this file. Style and content guidelines will be supplied to contributors upon their essay assignments.

WILLIAM WHYTE – ASSISTANT EDITOR
WWHYTE@RCN.COM

William Whyte
Assistant Editor
Email: wwhyte@rcn.com

Interview with Award Winning Author Lynn Freed

When award-winning writer Lynn Freed stops talking, does her eyebrow immediately arch in irony? In wry challenge? When sharing a bottle of wine with a worthy conversationalist does she sit back and scrutinize?

Her delicious replies to 20 Questions may have you wishing, like us, that she could be your dinner guest. The world of possible topics for discussion is her plate of oysters - oysters she will crack open with the proper tool, wrench from their protective covering, and then share with you and savor with laughter.

For those of us who will not have such an opportunity, we'll have to enjoy Freed's company in this interview, and from within the pages of her first novel in seven years, "The Servants' Quarters," being published this month.

1. The latest book or movie that made you cry?

Cry? I don't cry easily, but, come to think of it - and only if the books or movies are so well done that one doesn't feel manipulated towards tears - there are, in the main, two sorts of situations that may make me cry: someone returning home after a long absence, and, less often, someone triumphing over odds (not to include missing limbs or the facility for speech - "The Butterfly and the Diving Bell" moved me not one inch, and I detested that "Slumdog Millionaire" for every sort of reason, including its transparent manipulations).

Back to tears: I can think of no current movie that has entranced me, let alone brought me anywhere near them. But there are any number of old movies I can think of, top of the list being Truffaut's "L'Enfant Sauvage" ("The Wild Child"). I adore everything about this movie, every scene, every character, and, as much as anything, the consideration, within the story, of what it means, what it costs to be civilized. The scenes in which the boy runs out ecstatically into the rain, free again, home again - these are heart-rending.

2. The fictional character most like you?

Ah, the aria of I: iPod, iPhone, and do, please, Mobileme.

If the best writing is a sort of shape-shifting - the writer disappearing into the story - then so, by extension, is the best sort of reading. That, at least, is what I look for in a book - the chance to lose myself. Villains, wimps, heroes, cowards, male and female, old and young - as long as they're alive and breathing on the page, there I am, with them, or in them. But that's rare, at least for me.

More common is to have the hand of the writer showing itself everywhere, even in decent writing, showing off, drawing attention to itself. I have a deep aversion to being manipulated, even into applause. So, I shut the book. Or, if it warrants it, hurl it across the room.

Read more of Lynn Freed's interview, or get a copy of her most recent book.

The Life of Helen Gurley Brown: Bad Girls Go Everywhere

Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown

Long before the phenomenon of Carrie Bradshaw and “Sex and the City,” there was Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmopolitan, playful, irreverent and independent, showcased bosomy models and advised readers on “How to Marry a Millionaire” and provided a “Three Year Plan to Get Sexier, Smarter, Thinner, Happier, Funnier, Braver, Richer by New Year's Eve.”

Many feminists dismissed Cosmopolitan as sexist and oppressive. Others trashed it as lowbrow. Nonetheless, the theme of the magazine embodied this feminist principle: All women, whether divorced or widowed, young or old, secretary or career professional, must put their energies into their work and their selves, and occasionally shake things up, in order to have rewarding lives.

Now, in this first biography written about Mrs. Brown, Jennifer Scanlon convincingly argues that Mrs. Brown deserves to be counted among the great figures of the 1960s and '70s feminist movement, on par with Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. The author relies more heavily on the papers Mrs. Brown bequeathed to Smith College than upon live interviews. As such, one wishes there would have been less analysis and more of Mrs. Brown.

If the tone of the book strikes one as academic and sober (Ms. Scanlon is a professor of gender and women's studies at Bowdoin College), it is also sympathetic and thorough. Ms. Scanlon gives an intelligent, rounded picture of her subject and the sociological currents underlying her time and place, with footnotes providing resources and ideas for further study.

Read the rest of Marion Rodgers' review here, or get a copy of Bad Girls Go Everywhere now!

Call for Manuscripts: New Book Series on Transatlantic Perspectives

NEW SERIES: TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES WITH BERGHAHN BOOKS

Submissions of manuscripts and collections of essays as well as proposals for editions of primary sources are solicited for a new book series dedicated to Atlantic/Transatlantic culture and history, broadly perceived. We are especially interested in manuscripts (60,000 to 100,000 words in length) dealing with transatlantic relations and/or transatlantic interpretations of culture, history, and politics. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed. The series is published by a strong academic press with a presence on both sides of the Atlantic, Berghahn Books, which publishes approximately 80 new titles per year, with headquarters both in New York and Oxford, UK (www.berghahnbooks.com). Please send inquiries to the series editors, Christoph Irmscher, Indiana University Bloomington (cirmsche@indiana.edu)or Christof Mauch, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universtaet Muenchen(mauch@lmu.de).

Christoph Irmscher
Professor of English
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall 417
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 855-2037
Email: cirmsche@indiana.edu
Visit the website at http://www.iub.edu/~engweb/faculty/Christoph-Irmscher.html

Keeping Your Money Safe and Sound in 2009: Suze Orman's Action Plan

Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan: Keeping Your Money Safe and Sound

Suze Orman feels your pain: "I bet you are scared. Angry, too. And confused. These are absolutely rational and appropriate responses to the global credit crisis that erupted in 2008 and continues to send tremors through every household in America."

That sense of 'I understand and here's what you need to do' from these opening lines of her new book is exactly why Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan: Keeping Your Money Safe and Sound,has hit the top 10 on most best-seller lists across the country.

Suze Orman coaches us to confess to our worries: years of savings have vanished from our 401ks, retirement accounts may never fully recover, unemployment is rising, and government bailouts may not work. Confess to your worry, she urges, despite how overwhelming it may seem. Then, buck up and take action.

And Orman is there as our coach, trusted counselor and friend. She expresses the rage many of us feel at the current financial situation.

"I cannot overstate my wrath at mortgage lenders that pushed toxic loans on borrowers, knowing there was little chance they could honestly afford those loans," she writes in her introduction. "I cannot absolve those who chose to drink the Kool-Aid that they could buy a $350,000 house on an income that could pay for only a $150,000 one."

Orman helps us vent our frustrations, but she doesn't stop there. She tells us that in 2009, we must stop being dishonest with ourselves about our financial situations and get a grasp on the reality that the rules have changed. This year, she says, is critical for your money.

Read the rest of Paul Sanders' review here, or get a copy of Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan now!