nonfiction

“An inspiring and useful memoir from
a significant figure in 21st-century American politics.”
from it worked for me
A UNIFIED THEORY
OF HAPPINESS
An East-Meets-West
Approach to Fully
Loving Your Life
Polard, Andrea F.
Sounds True (400 pp.)
$24.95 | Jun. 1, 2012
978-1-60407-788-9
978-1-60407-818-3 e-book
The pursuit of joy gets a radical makeover.
Polard, a German-born clinical psychologist and practitioner
of “Zen Psychology” (a fusion of Zen Buddhism and Western
behavioral study), imparts 20 years of research into theories
of true contentedness by way of the “Two Wings of Happiness.”
She believes these “wings” can be accessed once the Basic (relating
to those surrounding us) and Supreme (the “Being” within)
modalities of consciousness strike a synergistic balance. Polard
provides sporadic schematics to aid novices eager to discover
her new understanding and valuing of life and its potential for
glee. The author offers an effective contrast between Eastern
and Western spiritual traditions and notes how they can work
together in relation to the cyclical nature of good deeds and
karmic resolve. With careful instruction and compassionate
guidance, she examines meditation, embracing insecurities,
lightheartedness and the importance of defining and isolating
strengths and deficiencies. Polard also provides recommendations
on how to improve competence, ambition, receptivity
and other traits with applicable exercises and supportive media
material. Despite a prolix narrative on a well-worn subject, the
author reinvigorates it with conceptual ponderings rooted in
spiritual theory and substantiated with references drawn from
economists, philosophers, professional journals, poems, prayers
and even the sage musings of advice columnist Ann Landers.
Happiness is accessible to anyone, writes Polard, as long as you
keep an open mind and a willingness to be joyful.
Contemplative, upbeat enlightenment for spiritually
inclined positive thinkers.
IT WORKED FOR ME
In Life and Leadership
Powell, Colin with Koltz, Tony
Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.)
$27.99 | May 22, 2012
978-0-06-213512-4
With the collaboration of Koltz (coauthor:
Leading the Charge: Leadership Lessons
from the Battlefield to the Boardroom,
2009, etc.), Powell picks up the thread of
his life story.
The author rose in the military to become “the first black
Army officer to have a four-star troop command.” He was chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Iraq war and served
as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. The release of his first
book, My American Journey (2003), fueled a groundswell campaign
to nominate him for president in the upcoming election. However,
he recognized that he was not cut out for the job despite his
proven leadership strengths. He describes how, as he advanced in
rank, his military training also prepared him for his role in government.
He learned the importance of always focusing on the mission,
being resolute in the face of danger and setbacks, not being
governed by ego and maintaining a can-do spirit (with the proviso,
“I try to be optimistic, but I try not to be stupid”). A good leader, he
writes, accepts responsibility for the failure of those in his command,
but makes sure to reward them for their successful missions.
Unlike the corporate world, the Army recruits from within
its ranks, which makes recognizing potential and providing continuing
education a primary concern. Powell reviews his profound
disagreements with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice
President Dick Cheney on the handling of the war in Iraq, while
taking full responsibility for mistakes made on his watch—e.g., his
“infamous speech at the U.N. in 2003” claiming that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destructions.
An inspiring and useful memoir from a significant figure
in 21st-century American politics.
IGNITING THE FLAME
America’s First
Olympic Team
Reisler, Jim
Lyons Press (304 pp.)
$24.95 | Jun. 5, 2012
978-0-7627-7848-5
A writer of numerous baseball books
(A Great Day in Cooperstown: The Improbable
Birth of Baseball’s Hall of Fame, 2006, etc.)
shifts to another summer event, telling the
little-known story of the 1896 Olympics, the first in 1,500 years.
Imagine: An American Olympian shows up for the discus
event, having never really tried it before; some accommodating
Greek athletes demonstrate, and he wins. Such was the state of
turn-of-the-century international athletic competitions. And
so it was that a small American team (14 members) traveled to
Athens, having no idea what sort of competition they would
face. Not much: They came home with 11 firsts to a country now
ecstatic about the Games (yawns had accompanied their departure).
Reisler weaves a handful of narrative threads: the story of
the resurrection of the Olympic Games, and of the men who
accomplished it; the primitive means of travel and lodging; the
stories of the individual American athletes and accounts of the
events; and some whatever-happened-to-those-guys follow-up.
An American won the first medal (James Connolly in the triple
jump), a couple of wealthy pistoleers, almost on a lark, headed
for Greece and took firsts, and another American attempted
the marathon, which was won by the Greeks, to tumultuous
patriotic thunder. The American pole-vaulters passed on all the
lower levels; when they were ready, all the other competitors
were eliminated. Reisler writes well about the oddities—the
photograph of the sprinters lined up in a potpourri of poses is
a howl—but he sets us up for an exciting 100-meter race, cuts
away, then disappoints later with his perfunctory account.
Though the author sometimes writes like the team’s PR
agent, he skillfully records the cries and struggles attending
a nearly miraculous rebirth.
THE ESKIMO AND
THE OIL MAN
The Battle at the
Top of the World for
America’s Future
Reiss, Bob
Business Plus/Grand Central (304 pp.)
$27.99 | May 15, 2012
978-0-89296-076-7
An on-the-ice view of the struggle
over offshore oil exploration in Alaska.
With U.S. demand for oil skyrocketing, major petroleum
companies believe the last huge undiscovered oil fields will be
found north of the Arctic Circle beneath the sea. Out front in
the search is Shell Oil Company, which plans to sink an exploratory
well in the seabed off Alaska’s North Slope this summer.
In this brisk, revealing account, veteran author and journalist
Reiss (Black Monday, 2007, etc.), a former correspondent for
Outside magazine, tells the story of two men whose dealings are
critical to the region’s future. Pete Slaiby is the Shell employee
charged with clearing the way for exploratory drilling. Edward
Itta, an Inupiat Eskimo whaler and the Barrow-based mayor of
the North Slope of Alaska, must protect his people’s natural
resources (“The ocean is our garden,” he says) while ensuring
that acceptable oil drilling generates much-needed tax revenue.
Based on interviews with these men and others, the author
describes the misunderstandings, suspicions and interactions
between Slaiby and Itta in 2010 as they discussed plans that
would transform a pristine region whose waters have sustained
tribal cultures and subsistence hunting for many generations.
Itta, concerned at first about the possibility of oil spills and
that seismic work might scare off whales, helped build safeguards
into Shell’s drilling plans for 2011, which were eventually
thwarted by U.S. agencies. While Russia and other nations have
clear-cut policies on Arctic oil, the U.S. has long remained indecisive.
With Itta working to convince environmental and other
groups to hold off on further lawsuits to block Shell’s exploration
of its offshore leases, both he and Slaiby gradually became
“uneasy allies” who recognized that their common enemy was a
byzantine federal government mired in regulations and policies.
A rewarding glimpse behind the Alaska oil headlines.
THE OCEAN OF LIFE
The Fate of Man
and the Sea
Roberts, Callum
Viking (432 pp.)
$30.00 | May 24, 2012
978-0-670-02354-7
Roberts (Marine Conservation/Univ.
of York; The Unnatural History of the
Sea, 2009) warns that “the oceans have
changed more in [the] last thirty years
than in all of human history before.”
In this follow-up to his award-winning account of man’s 1,000-
year exploitation of maritime resources, the author not only documents
the loss of large sea animals, such as whales, sharks and
turtles and the destruction of coral reefs and the broader ocean
environment, but he anticipates further devastation from the
onset of deep-sea mining in the near future. While environmentalists
are keenly aware of the danger man poses to animal species,
Roberts suggests that the oceans have always played a significant
role in human survival. He writes that the view of our ancestors as
a “plucky species” of big-game hunters has a “certain mythological
ring to it.” However, our early survival may have depended mainly
on water creatures for sustenance: “Could our shift to bipedalism
have been an aquatic adaptation developed by wading to gather
shellfish” While the author notes that the 1880s shift to steam
power and then later to diesel “heralded the beginning of the modern
era in commercial fishing,” these were still just improvements
on more traditional fishing methods. Not so the introduction of
echo sounders and other electronic devices augmented by computers
and satellites, which now allow fishermen to detect the presence
of fish with an extremely high degree of precision. Roberts
maintains his optimism while looking at the problems that have
been compounded by global warming, pollution, the destruction of
marshlands, etc., and he notes that remedial action is still possible.
It is not too late, he writes, for “strategies that rebuild nature’s vitality
and fecundity”—e.g., protecting one-third of the ocean from
direct exploitation and restricting fishing of tuna, salmon and cod.
A timely wake-up call.
WHAT MONEY
CAN’T BUY
The Moral Limits
of Markets
Sandel, Michael J.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.)
$27.00 | Apr. 24, 2012
978-0-374-20303-0
Sandel (Government/Harvard Univ.;
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do, 2010,
etc.) sounds the alarm that the belief in a
market economy diminishes moral thought.
Taken to its extreme, a market economy dictates that any
inanimate object, any animal, any human being can be bought
830 | 15 april 2012 | nonfiction | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | nonfiction | 15 april 2012 | 831