Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan provides such a harrowing sense of what combat can be—deafening, chaotic and cleansed by fire of virtually every idea but survival—that it may end forever the traditional Hollywood view of war as a star vehicle in which only the supporting cast dies. The same might be said of this vivid account by historian Ambrose, a technical adviser on the film, of the lives and times of U.S. soldiers in World War II Europe. Pieced together from his other books on the subject, including the bestselling Citizen Soldiers, The Victors is less a review of the war's grand strategies than of the experiences of men on the ground—or in it, since so much of their time was spent huddled in foxholes. Many of these men were true heroes, and much of their heroism would consist of endurance—the ability to tolerate the intolerable conditions of warfare, whether inflicted by the enemy, the Army itself (as in its failure during the Battle of the Bulge to provide troops with proper winter boots) or exposure to the inescapable elements. (Simon & Schuster, $28)
Bottom Line: War up close and personal
by Anne Perry
Page-turner of the week
It sounded like the society wedding of the season in Victorian London, the betrothal of brilliant architect Killian Melville to beautiful heiress Zillah Lambert. But then the groom-to-be announced he would not—nay, could not—walk down the aisle. The result: a titillating lawsuit, and the premise of one of Perry's most engrossing puzzlers.
Unlike so many novels that use historical detail merely to gussy up generic whodunits, Perry's mystery—unraveled by her popular private eye William Monk—is a period piece in the best sense, the action seamlessly growing out of the social tapestry she weaves. Despite one key coincidence too many, Perry offers a disturbing slice of earlier life. (Fawcett Combine, $25)
Bottom Line: Captivating historical conundrum
by Garry Shandling with David Rensin
Playing the fictional star of The Larry Sanders Show (which ended an acclaimed six-year run on HBO last summer), Garry Shandling etched a dead-on portrait of Sanders as a vain, fussy, insecure-to-the-point-of-paranoid rival to Leno and Letterman. Unfortunately this spoof of vapid, name-dropping showbiz memoirs reads like the real thing. Instead of fleshing out Larry's pretend life, the authors reduce it to a dart-board at which they hurl a lot of stale gags. ("I was a fat child," Larry recalls. "I couldn't get girls in high school. I couldn't even get guys.") A few riffs do hit the chuckle zone: Larry describing how a jealous Dick Cavett planned for a scuba-diving hit man to ambush Johnny Carson on the beach, or telling how he met his craven TV sidekick Hank ("Hey now!") Kingsley on a cruise ship "as he was trying to rip the life jacket off a young boy during a fire safety drill." After Larry and an old teacher tryst at his 20th high school reunion, he says, "She looked at me and said, 'B-minus.' I was ecstatic. I knew I could improve on my D." Alas, this faux tell-all merits only an Incomplete. (Simon & Schuster, $23)
Bottom Line: Stick with the reruns
by John Glatt
With the exception of Princess Grace, Monaco's Grimaldis might be considered the aluminum siding of royal families: lightweight, tacky and astonishingly resilient. Veteran British journalist John Glatt does little to dispel that image in this dishy account, which reveals that Grace aborted a baby by designer Oleg Cassini, her onetime fiancé, and that Rainier's handlers, looking to improve tourism, first approached Marilyn Monroe as a possible bride. Glatt also delves into the escapades of Grace and Rainier's three children. When we hear about Princess Stephanie's special knack for appearing topless in paparazzi shots, or Prince Albert joking that "his reputation for having slept with more than 150 women is a 'conservative estimate,' " Glatt's theory—that the family lost its rudder after Grace's death in 1982—seems all too true. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: How do you say "juicy" in French?
Edited and with an introduction
by Jamaica Kincaid
When we cannot understand the attraction between lovers, we shake our heads and wonder, "What can he possibly see in her?" Equally difficult to fathom, sometimes, is the unbridled passion people can feel for a song, a place, a favorite food, or even—as this volume convincingly demonstrates—a single plant. It could be the fabled Himalayan blue poppy or the otherworldly lady's slipper orchid or even the humble Kentucky Wonder bean. This collection of 35 stories, essays and poems by gardeners and writers not only revels in the mystery of plant love, it also illuminates it. And thanks to editor Jamaica Kincaid, the noted author {Annie John) and floraphile who grew up on the Caribbean island of Antigua and now gardens in Vermont, My Favorite Plant offers all the contrasting play of light and shadow of a beautifully designed landscape.
Sharp about her likes and dislikes, British garden expert Mary Keen is put off by the blowsiness of rhododendrons, writing that they are "like fat women dressed to kill." Instead she loses her horticultural heart to the neat little auricula, calling it "a child with a clean face." Writer Ian Frazier recalls being press-ganged into dreaded weeding chores when he was growing up in Ohio. In middle age he has no garden of his own but writes that when visiting gardening friends, he will sometimes drift outside and begin "carefully to pull up cheese-flower and burdock unbidden, for no reason I can explain." In the plant kingdom, as in romance, apparently the heart alone knows what it wants. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $20)
Bottom Line: Fresh bouquet of essays
>MIRROR IMAGE Danielle Steele
Identical twins, the Titanic, the suffrage movement, war-torn Europe, star-crossed love—and, of course, naughty behavior—are the stuff of this frothy coming-of-age historical saga. (Delacorte, $26.95)
THE FIRST HORSEMAN John Case In this first-rate thriller, scientists seek to recover the bodies of long-dead miners but unearth a deeper, darker and more deadly secret. By the bestselling author of The Genesis Code. (Fawcett Columbine, $25)
THE CENTURY Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster From the launch at Kitty Hawk to the death of Diana, the ABC News anchor salutes the 20th in this riveting and richly illustrated send-off. (Doubleday, $60)
- Contributors:
- Ross Drake,
- Pam Lambert,
- Mike Lipton,
- Janice Min,
- Emily Mitchell.
VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
Heartbreak & Hope
After Jaycee Dugard's rescue, a look at the cases of six young people who went missing in 2009
