Edited by Michael Segell
Forget about the "Simple Abundance" gimmickry. This is a marvelous collection of 55 pithy essays by and about men. The contributors include such well-regarded authors as Rick Bass, Roy Blount Jr. and Reynolds Price. But also in the lineup is a Microsoft programmer explaining his fascination with Captain Nemo's sub, a Jungian analyst delving into male moodiness, a hermit describing solitude. Some of the pieces are disturbing, and some surprising. Others are just plain moving, like John Tierney's tale of a homeless man who retrieves himself from oblivion. Asked what turned his life around, the man says, "I met this woman in the park, and I fell in love for the first time since I was a teenager." Five years later they were still together. (Scribner, $22)
Bottom Line: Simply terrific
by Gary Giddins
Book of the week
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Bing Crosby sounds the way other people think they sound in the shower, some wag once observed. Bing "sings nice," noted one of his Jesuit schoolmates in Spokane, Wash., "but different." Different, indeed, as noted jazz critic Gary Giddins makes clear in this fine first half of a two-part biography of the crooner and actor, who died in 1977.
When Crosby was beginning to hit his stride in the late 1920s, most crowd-pleasing male singers were "effeminate tenors," the author notes, and recording artists were urged to be as vanilla-flavored as possible, the better to move sheet music out of the store. As Giddins points out, the term "pop singer" didn't exist. In fact it was coined to describe the breed Crosby invented.
A man of extremes—never missed a binge and never missed mass—he was also America's troubadour, influencing performers as diverse as Sinatra and Elvis, Ella Fitzgerald and Perry Como. Crosby in turn acknowledged that his chief influence had been Louis Armstrong: "He is the beginning and end of music in America," Bing once said. Giddins packs in a lot more than most readers may want to know about Crosby, yet the author's boundless but utterly clear-eyed enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. (Little, Brown, $30)
Bottom Line: Absorbing biography
by Richard North Patterson
Patterson's compelling new thriller starts off dramatically: Seconds after swearing in Kerry Kilcannon as President, the nation's Chief Justice collapses with a fatal stroke. For Kilcannon, an RFK-like Democrat elected by the slenderest of margins, this turn of events both tantalizes him with the prospect of reshaping the high court and threatens to destroy him. The reason is Kilcannon's choice: Federal appellate judge Caroline Masters of San Francisco, potentially the country's first female Chief Justice. Though the attractive, single jurist's credentials are impeccable, she secretly carries significant personal baggage. On top of that, an explosive case concerning late-term abortion is headed for her judicial docket, threatening to derail her nomination.
The riveting courtroom scenes that ensue will come as no surprise to fans of trial lawyer and seasoned author Patterson's (No Safe Place, Eyes of a Child). But equally gripping is his savvy evocation of the back-corridor maneuvers of the Beltway chess game. Though too much of the plot—including an overly melodramatic climax—hinges on convenient personal secrets, this shrewd novel should keep you wide awake and make you ponder anew the ways our democracy conducts its business. (Knopf, $26.95)
Bottom Line: Crackling political drama
by Olivia Goldsmith
Guilty pleasures don't come much tastier than this latest bon-bon from Goldsmith (The First Wives Club), in which just about every twenty-something in Seattle is sleeping with someone (or sometwo) else. Everyone, that is, except Jon Delano, a computer geek whose love life reads like a disaster report: Blind dates flee; true dates fail to materialize. The only thing going for Jon is his best friend, journalist Tracie Hig-gins, who is smart, sexy and sophisticated. When Jon begs her to help rework him into a more desirable man—a "bad boy," as she puts it—the novel kicks into comic high gear. Even after the makeover—new clothes, a hipper haircut, an edgier attitude—Jon keeps flubbing his assignments. Unlike most of the louts Tracie knows, he's basically a sincere, responsible, straightahead sort of a guy.
Goldsmith tips her hat to Jane Austen and other literary greats with the meddling Tracie, whose motives for remaking Jon are decidedly less than noble. Not to worry, though. Just as Jon gets everything "right," everything goes wrong in Trade's life. (Dutton, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Delightful romantic farce
by John le Carré
The spy world that le Carré exploited in his early novels has become passé since the Cold War ended. But this masterly novelist (The Tailor of Panama, Single & Single)—who, at 69, recently admitted to his own past involvement in espionage—has found different crises for his characters to face. His latest novel begins in corrupt, suffering Kenya, where Tessa Quayle—the activist wife of a career British diplomat—is found murdered. Though an adulterous affair is rumored, her horticulture-loving husband, Justin, doesn't believe it; he begins investigating a pharmaceuticals company that Tessa suspected of dispensing a toxic drug. The truth, however, is elusive. No sooner does Justin find it in e-mails than the e-mails disappear, courtesy of the drugmaker's hackers. Doggedly Justin tracks Tessa's activist friends from Italy to Germany to Canada, finally returning to Kenya—where he confronts an embassy superior who is complicit in the cover-up. "You know the game," he is told. "We're not paid to be bleeding hearts." That sentiment clearly infuriates le Carré, but The Constant Gardener is most memorable for Justin's attempt to redeem the marriage he left untended. (Scribner, $28)
Bottom Line: Pistil-packing tension
>LOVE LETTERS OF A LIFETIME Foreword by Dana Reeve Laced with pain, regret, humor and honest, gushy sentiment, this is a collection of real-life love letters from more than 25 everyday couples and individuals. (Hyperion, $15.95)
SPEAKING IN TONGUES Jeffery Deaver From the bestselling author of The Bone Collector comes an eerie tale about a therapist plotting to kidnap a patient. (Simon & Schuster, $25)
PROOF POSITIVE Philip Singerman Undercover agent Roland Troy has retired to Vermont...but then he is drawn into solving a deliciously intriguing conspiracy. (Forge, $24.95)
- Contributors:
- William Plummer,
- Joanne Kaufman,
- Pam Lambert,
- Anne Moore,
- Edward Karam.
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!
