nonfiction

“A fluid study of how
heavy-handed repression by authoritarian regimes
has given way to more subtle forms of control.”
from the dictator’s learning curve
WHAT A PLANT KNOWS
A Field Guide to the Senses
Chamovitz, Daniel
Scientific American/Farrar,
Straus and Giroux (192 pp.)
$23.00 | Jun. 1, 2012
978-0-374-28873-0
The science behind how a plant
senses and adapts to its environment.
Director of the Manna Center for
Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University,
Chamovitz realized early in life that “the genetic difference
between plants and animals is not as significant as [he] once
believed.” Unlike animals, which can move to search for food,
shelter or a mate, plants are confined to one spot. “Because
of this,” writes the author, “plants have evolved complex sensory
and regulatory systems that allow them to modulate their
growth in response to ever-changing conditions.” Through
extensive research and scientific models, Chamovitz explains
in accessible language how plants have somewhat human-like
sensory responses to stimuli. Plants “see” by showing evidence
of phototropism, the bending of a plant toward what is now
known as blue light, and plant growth is affected by red and farred
light. When leaf-eating insects attack a tree, the affected
tree emits volatile chemicals into the air. Through “smell,” this
effectively warns neighboring trees of a possible attack. Using a
Venus fly trap as a model, Chamovitz proves plants feel specific
kinds of “touch”—a fly trap will not shut when rain drops hit it,
but only when two of its tiny hair-like projections are touched
within seconds of each other. By comparing human senses to
the abilities of plants to adapt to their surroundings, the author
provides a fascinating and logical explanation of how plants survive
despite the inability to move from one site to another.
Backed by new research on plant biology, this is an intriguing
look at a plant’s consciousness. (28 b/w illustrations)
MOST TALKATIVE
Stories from the Front
Lines of Pop Culture
Cohen, Andy
Henry Holt (288 pp.)
$25.00 | May 8, 2012
978-0-8050-9583-8
The Bravo network executive who
green-lighted the Real Housewives franchise
shares backstage insights into reality
TV.
In this uneven memoir/gossip fest, Cohen attempts to strike a
balance between the story of his upbringing in a close-knit Jewish
family and dishing on the antics of “Bravolebrities.” In the former,
he often succeeds, portraying his parents as warmly and humorously
as you would expect from someone who implored his mom
to send him updates on All My Children while he was away at camp.
Cohen’s youthful obsession with soap maven Susan Lucci further
highlights his eventual lionizing of the Real Housewives, and he
sprinkles his awkward encounters with his diva idol throughout
the text. He also effectively captures the fear of coming out in
the 1980s, a time when homophobic jokes and AIDS misinformation
were rampant. Cohen is candid, but he will try many readers’
patience with his devotion of several pages to the most mundane
details of the Housewives’ fame-mongering: e.g., tweets from their
dogs, transcripts of interviews gone awry and defenses of their
shallowness that ring—surprise!—hollow. In one tortured instance,
he reveals how the Bravo team recut all episodes of the Real Housewives
of Beverly Hills after a participant’s husband committed suicide,
then claims that what they presented on TV was “real life.”
The disclosure that the film crew shoots 85 hours of footage for
every hour aired gives the lie to the claim that reality TV is any
such thing. By the time that Cohen’s father tells him, “I just can’t
get over that people speak to each other this way, in public places,”
most readers will agree and likely stop reading.
Anyone except the most devoted Housewives fans will
wish that Cohen were less talkative.
HERE LIES HUGH GLASS
A Mountain Man, a
Bear, and the Rise of
the American Nation
Coleman, Jon T.
Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus
and Giroux (272 pp.)
$26.00 | May 1, 2012
978-0-8090-5459-6
An inadvertent American archetype
comes in for thoughtful consideration in the hands of Coleman (History/Notre
Dame Univ.; Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, 2004).
Hugh Glass had no idea he’d be a figure in the history books.
A sort of entry-level mountain man in the early days of American
exploration in the West, he “approached grizzly bears and bosses
with the same disreputable grin.” One of those grizzly bears mutilated
him so badly that it was highly unlikely he would survive.
Andrew Henry, his boss on a trapping expedition along the Missouri
River, left two men to bury Glass. The two men fled when a party
of Indians approached, but Glass didn’t die. Instead, he crawled
and hobbled for 38 days eastward to the nearest American outpost,
swearing to avenge himself on the men who had abandoned him.
Richard Harris did a fine job as a wronged man based on Glass in
the 1971 film Man in the Wilderness, which figures at turns in Coleman’s
vigorous narrative. But Glass, writes the author, turns up in
countless other places in the larger story of the American West, an
illustration of his staying power as a symbol of an ordinary guy who
“merely endured.” It’s not exactly news that the history of the West
is peppered with myth and legend spun out precisely to convince
other ordinary guys to enter into the dangerous business of taming
the frontier. Coleman doesn’t pretend otherwise, instead picking
apart the tale of Glass to determine what can be called factual with
any confidence. The answer is—well, perhaps not much, though,
as Coleman wisely notes, “[t]he truth of these stories matters less
than their coincidences.”
Good storytelling matched with appropriate historical
skepticism—a useful model for examining other 10-gallon
yarns of westward expansion.
DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
A Memoir
Colvin, Shawn
Morrow/HarperCollins (256 pp.)
$25.99 | $12.99 e-book | Jun. 5, 2012
978-0-06-175959-8
978-0-06-209916-7 e-book
A chatty, but only occasionally enlightening,
life story from the confessional
singer-songwriter.
Three-time Grammy winner Colvin’s
life has long been a source for her songs, but it wears thin in her
memoir. She’s frank about the many ups and downs of her personal
life and career, where the slow climb to commercial and critical
success meant overcoming a series of personal disasters: alcoholism,
anorexia, clinical depression, panic disorder and numerous
broken romances. In perspective, it’s an inspiring story, as Colvin
spent years of paying dues and saw her first album, Steady On, win
a Grammy. She has overcome a lot, and is apparently content with
her life as a respected singer and devoted mother. Unfortunately,
the book too often bogs down into the territory of many numbing
addiction chronicles, padded with daily affirmations, mad
shopping binges and the usual dreary details of life on the road. At
times, the book feels like a therapeutic chore. For patient readers
and close listeners of her music, there is some payoff when Colvin
discusses her songs and the writing process: how “Diamond in
the Rough” put her in the odd position of co-writing “a song with
someone about breaking up with that someone” or how “if you
can get one good line or verse right at the beginning, the song will
be set up well for you.” Also: “the act of performing a new song in
front of people is the ultimate bullshit detector.”
Ultimately, there’s too much “Of Meds and Men” and
too little of the music that made Colvin popular. (B/W photos
throughout. Author appearances in Austin and New York)
BAG OF BONES
The Sensational Grave
Robbery of the Merchant
Prince of Manhattan
Conway, J. North
Lyons Press (320 pp.)
$24.95 | May 1, 2012
978-0-7627-7812-6
The final installment of the author’s
true-crime trilogy about New York City
in the Gilded Age.
Conway (The Big Policeman: The Rise and Fall of America’s First,
Most Ruthless, and Greatest Detective, 2010, etc.) tells the story of
the life and death of “The Merchant Prince of Manhattan,” A.T.
Stewart, the father of the American department store, who was,
at the time of his death, the third richest man in the United
States (behind William Astor Sr. and Cornelius Vanderbilt). A
hard-working Irish immigrant, Stewart eventually grew his
fortune to $40 million but was never accepted by New York’s
elite—despite two landmark retail outlets and his massive Italian
marble mansion, “considered one of the most ornate and
elaborate private homes in America.” Two years after his death
in 1876, his body was stolen from the family crypt. “Not only did
the grave robbing cause a national sensation,” writes Conway,
“it also led to one of the most notoriously bungled police investigations
in New York City’s history.” Judge Henry Hilton, Stewart’s
friend, was directed to sell off Stewart’s businesses, but he
ran them into the ground within six years. Eventually Stewart’s
wife exchanged $20,000 for a bag of bones she hoped were her
husband’s. Hilton also impeded the police investigation, which
never got off the ground, and may have committed fraud in the
form of Cornelia’s will, which named him as a significant benefactor.
In support of his story, Conway uses numerous headlines
and portions of articles from newspapers of the era. The device
is occasionally clunky and leads to a repetitive, though generally
engrossing, narrative.
A quick read about a gruesome crime with a twist at the
end—will appeal mostly to die-hard fans of historical true crime.
THE DICTATOR’S
LEARNING CURVE
Inside the Global
Battle for Democracy
Dobson, William J.
Doubleday (352 pp.)
$28.95 | Jun. 5, 2012
978-0-385-53335-5
A fluid study of how heavy-handed
repression by authoritarian regimes has
given way to more subtle forms of control.
Despite some reassuring advances in democracy over the
last 40 years, from the collapse of dictatorships in Latin America,
East Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and recent progress since
last year’s Arab Spring, Slate foreign affairs editor Dobson sees
a pernicious, no-less-repressive shift in the tactics of autocrats
still hanging on. Old-style authoritarian regimes have given way
to modern dictators who “work in the more ambiguous spectrum
that exists between democracy and authoritarianism”—
e.g., in Russia and China. In chapters that treat the newfangled
dictatorial styles of these leaders (e.g., “The Czar” refers to
Vladimir Putin; “The Pharaoh” to Hosni Mubarak) alternating
with chapters on the increasingly savvy forces working against
them (“The Opposition” and “The Youth”), Dobson travels
around the globe, from Malaysia to Venezuela, chronicling his
encounters with both camps. The tools of the dictator have
always involved centralization of power, and for the modern
autocrat no less, especially control of TV and newspapers. They
are also more careful now not to upset the sense of political
apathy, “the grease that helps any authoritarian system hum.”
812 | 15 april 2012 | nonfiction | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | nonfiction | 15 april 2012 | 813