Edited by J. C. Suarés
Dogs come when they are called," feminist author Mary Bly once observed, "cats take a message and get back to you." No matter how they respond, the best of both species answered the casting call of magazine design director and pet lover J.C. Suarés. Using movie stills, studio publicity shots and a few personal pictures of stars with their pets, the author has assembled two wolfishly witty and entertaining volumes of photographs.
In Cats, Sigourney Weaver cuddles finicky Jones, Alien's spaceship mascot, and June Lockhart swims with a game pet. Siamese seemed the breed of choice in Hollywood's heyday, favored by Ava Gardner, Peter Loire and Hayley Mills.
Among Dogs, terriers charmed. Youthful Bette Davis posed with her Scottish Highland, Meg; Bogart loved his Scotties; and Jean Harlow hugged a wire-haired fox terrier in 1933. What some celebs did for their pets goes above and beyond humane treatment. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton spent six months on their boat in the Thames in 1971 rather than put their Lhasa apsos and Pekinese into a six-month English quarantine.
Both books reveal why actors don't like to work with animals. The cats and dogs were often, well, more human than their two-legged costars: Consider such scenery chewers as Bell, Book and Candle's Pyewacket, DC of That Darn Cat, Lassie, Benji and Asta. If these collections fail to make you purr with satisfaction, you're barking up the wrong tree. (Collins, $14.95 each)
by Martha Fay
In a book only a baby boomer could read (or need), Fay, 47, tackles an issue many contemporary households avoid. Turning to the experts, single mother (of Anna, 10) Fay finds scant discussion of religion in the classic child-rearing texts. Her friends, for the most part, sidestep the issue. And this is the problem: In a country where religion plays such a primary—and often incendiary—role, Fay seems to confine her research to an elitist minority. Few of the faithful present their points of view, while pages and pages are devoted to those who view religion from a disbelieving distance. Though the writing is eloquent, the subject significant, in the end most readers will be tempted to echo the sentiment of one little boy who, rather than join this pedantic debate, concludes, "Mom, some people think too much." (Pantheon, $23)
by Gary Taubes
It's rare for a single discovery to change scientific history, but it happens. Albert Einstein earned instant immortality with his General Theory of Relativity; so did Watson and Crick, for figuring out the chemical structure of DNA. And for a few short weeks in 1989, it looked as though two obscure chemists were destined for the same elite club.
In March of that year, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that they had mastered controlled fusion, the form of nuclear energy that powers the sun and the stars—not in a megamillion-dollar reactor running at tens of millions of degrees, the way physicists said it had to be done, but in what amounted to a test tube, at room temperature. If they were right, they had found a cheap, nonpolluting, virtually endless source of energy.
Pons and Fleischmann not only failed to become household names, they ended up with irreparably tarnished reputations, and in his detailed account of the "cold fusion" episode, Taubes, a New York City-based science writer, makes it clear why. They performed a sloppy experiment, then followed it up with aggressive publicity flavored with secrecy and paranoia. Taubes's tale of ego and ambition is fascinating and exhaustive. The details occasionally become exhausting as well, but this remarkable glimpse into the dark side of science is worth the effort. (Random House, $25)
by John Jakes
Jakes, that best-selling purveyor of historical fiction, is at it again in a big (785 pages) way. This time the author of The Kent Family Chronicles and The North and South Trilogy tells the sweeping story of a German immigrant, Pauli Kroner, making a new life in America between 1890 and 1900.
When Pauli's destitute aunt can no longer care for him in Berlin, she sends him off to live with his rich uncle in Chicago, where he comes of age, falls impossibly in love and pursues a career as one of the first newsreel cameramen. As usual, Jakes peppers his tale with real historical figures—significant players from Eugene Debs to Thomas Edison to Teddy Roosevelt. This slice-of-life saga is also chock-full of subplots that embody the controversies of the time: There's Pauli's uncle, a Civil War veteran whose moralistic wife disapproves of her husband's successful brewery; his idealistic cousin, who chooses Socialism over a society life; and his well-bred girlfriend, who must find a way to balance feminist leanings with her traditional upbringing.
History buffs will relish Jakes's careful research, but those looking for more than wooden characters may be disappointed. In the end, Homeland settles into a mediocrity that seems better suited to a miniseries than a serious historical novel. (Doubleday, $25)
- Contributors:
- J.D Reed,
- Susan Toepfer,
- Michael D. Lemonick,
- Jill Rachlin.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
