Critic's Choice
Coulter doesn't do herself any favors with her hyperbolic wisecracks: The conservative gadfly calls Japan's WWII pilots, for instance, "savage Oriental beasts." But like her equal on the left, Michael Moore, she's tough for even her enemies to ignore.
This time Coulter (Slander) argues that there is a continuing pattern of anti-Americanism among elites of the political and journalistic class. As an example, she devotes a big chunk of the book to McCarthyism. It's accepted that Sen. Joseph McCarthy tarred innocents as Communists, but Coulter reminds us that both President and Robert Kennedy admired him and that Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs and many others tied to the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were eventually proved to have been Soviet spies. Old news? Not really, for as Coulter points out, people constantly claim to be victims of "McCarthyism" these days.
Lately, Coulter says, the media has watered down the suspected Beltway snipers' apparent fondness for radical Islam—one of them registered his vehicle on the first anniversary of Sept. 11, at 8:52 a.m., the minute the first plane hit the World Trade Center. You know those pundits who bore you to tears trying to balance everyone's point of view? Coulter isn't one. (Crown Forum, $26.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Exciting Coulter clash
By Rupert Holmes
Gather 'round, kiddies, and listen to your pal K. O'Connor. Devious and callow, the narrator of Holmes's first novel has everything you want in a '70s showbiz reporter. She also knows all about an unsolved murder in 1959, when the comedy team of womanizer Vince Collins and nebbish Lanny Morris (clearly modeled after Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) found a woman's body in the bathtub of their hotel suite. Both men had airtight alibis, but soon afterward they split. K. agrees to write a book with the pair, and soon she is in over her head.
Holmes, a '70s character himself—blame him for the last No. 1 hit of the decade, "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)"—nicely recalls the era when health-minded folk had vermouth on the rocks for lunch. He is a gifted plotter as well, and though K. can be as irritating as polyester slacks, the story line is as refreshing as a you-know-what. (Random House, $24.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Pleasant escape
By Kavita Daswani
Bombay bachelorette Anju, still unattached at 26, leaves behind her matchmaking-obsessed family and flirts with independence in "Umrica" in a cross-cultural confection that may curry favor with My Big Fat Greek Wedding fans. When you open the novel, you sense that the happy ending is a feta accompli.
Daswani, a former CNN fashion correspondent, meshes Indian and American traditions; not surprisingly, given the author's résumé, Anju's adventures read like a colorful Marie Claire feature. In Bombay, Anju rubs the marble feet of Hindu good-luck god Lord Ganesh; in Manhattan, where she flits as fashion publicist, she worships at the altar of Kate Spade. Darker are the character's observations about the plight of women in modern India. But by the time Anju gets to select a spouse at 36, her tale feels prearranged from the start. (Putnam, $23.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Familiar ring
- Contributors:
- Todd Seavey,
- Edward Karam,
- Moira Bailey.
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
