author:
DAVE EGGERS

Non-fiction
342 pages
McSweeney’s

When Dave Eggers publishes a new book, I get pretty excited. Partly because his work rarely disappoints, but also (largely!) because McSweeney’s books are a work of art.

Much like his last book, the cover of Zeitoun in many ways reflects not only the story contained inside, but the prevailing mood. It pictures a man paddling a canoe through the flooded streets of New Orleans. His face looks serene as he glides through calm water, and despite submerged houses and the hood of a car jutting out of the unnatural sea, the scene doesn’t conjure up the sense of devastation that we would expect from a book about the disastrous events of Hurricane Katrina.

The story revolves around a man named Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prominent and well-liked man in his community. Early on, we follow his day to day interaction with family and friends, neighbors and clients, demonstrating not only that he is a likeable and dependable guy, but someone with character – with principles. And so, when things start to go downhill for our hero, it is extremely disenchanting. Infuriating even. Thankfully, this is a game Eggers is well-acquainted with, and it is where he shines. In every calamity, Zeitoun sees opportunities to help. For every disgrace he suffers, he sees a reaffirming trace of humanity. When things seem dark, he never abandons hope. In the dreariest moments, through his eyes we are left with a sense that all is not lost. It’s a nice feeling. In fact, if Zeitoun hadn’t been so steadfast throughout his trials, I probably would have grown discouraged reading; but that is not meant as a criticism – it is largely the charm of this story. Dave Eggers has a definite skill for this type of emotional balancing act.

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author:
MARY ROACH

Non-fiction
320 pages
W.W. Norton & Co.

Nonfiction author Mary Roach tackles the science of the afterlife in Spook, a New York Times bestseller when published back in 2005. Spook is less an examination of the evidence of the afterlife as a historiography of the scientific study of the afterlife, from the 21 grams theory of Dr. Duncan Macdougall, introduced in the early twentieth century, to present studies on out-of-body or near-death experiences at the University of Virginia Hospital. Along the way, Roach touches upon reincarnation, spiritualism, EMFs and telecommunications, ectoplasm, mediums, and the formation of the soul.

Despite all this cool stuff to get into, the book doesn’t quite hit the level of examination or humor that it promises. There’s nothing immediate at fault: Roach’s writing style is breezy and entertaining (her footnotes, encompassing topics such as the underestimation of the sea urchin, the breadth of research topics funded at Harvard, and Occam’s editing pencil, are a complete hoot and reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s liberal use of the device), the chapters are all on interesting subjects, and the flow is quick and light. The problem is simply that the topic coverage was simply too wide: I could have done without the chapters on reincarnation and the soul-weighing but done much more with spiritualism as a religious phenomenon, ectoplasm, and mediums. This is a matter of personal taste, surely, and others will feel different.

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authors:
SANDRA NEWMAN
and HOWARD MITTELMARK

Non-fiction
272 pages
Collins

At sixteen years old I was sent a rejection letter containing the immortal lines “That there is a vast reservoir of undiscovered talent out there is a delusion.” It is a view with which, I suspect, the authors of How Not To Write a Novel would agree. Sandra Newman has taught fiction at numerous American universities: you dread to think how much terrible craft she’s ploughed through, how much clumsy laundry-list exposition, lumbering description, scattered exclamation marks and capitalisations like a Victorian adolescent’s diary…

This book begins with the premise that you cannot tell aspiring writers what to write: You can only tell them what not to write. And so begin 250 pages of hilarious dissections of bad writing. Highlights—and there is a highlight in every paragraph—include “Zeno’s Manuscript” (where everything a character does is lavishly described, from mundanities to bathroom functions); “Asseverated the Man,” (where authors use elaborate and contrived forms of dialogue attribution) “The Auto-Hagiography” (where the protagonist is nothing more than an idealised version of the author, tall, handsome and sensitive, and inexplicably attractive to women). Newman and Mittelmark break up the text with fictitious examples featuring absurd plots and recurring characters.

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author:
DIANE ACKERMAN

Non-fiction
368 pages
W. W. Norton & Company Inc.

This is the true story of Jan and Antonia Zabinski, zookeepers of the Warsaw’s Poland Zoo, and how they risked their lives to keep many Jews safe from the Nazi Holocaust. This epic tale is unusual because the couple were practicing Catholic and generally safe from Nazi persecution. They took many risks to provide shelter as all compassionate patriots do.

Jan and Antonia managed the zoo and were well known as having one of the greatest zoos in Europe. The zoo was bombed during the invasion and caused massive destruction—some of the animals were later shipped to Germany to safeguard them from further harm. Then, to make matters even worse, the Nazis came back to the zoo and they killed many of the animals for sport, cruelly shooting them in their cages.

Jan and Antonina enlarged tunnels built under the zoo’s many cages, erected false panels in the main house to create hidden rooms, and even made many of zoo cages habitable. During this period almost one hundred Jewish escapees, at any given time, were living in these secret places.

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author:
LAURA MILLER

Non-fiction
320 pages
Little Brown

When asked to describe the single book that had most influenced her, the cofounder of Salon.com considered fawning over a weighty university-set text before realizing that “the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly—or the ones we’d most like other people to think we read over and over again.”

Hence Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book, an exploration of the work of Narnia creator C.S. Lewis. The title comes from a passage in the Chronicles where Lucy reads a magical, compulsive book that fades from the memory as soon as the last page is turned. The Chronicles of Narnia was Miller’s Magician’s Book, but Lewis has recently suffered a battering at the hands of contemporary novelists—the masterful Philip Pullman accused Lewis of being a religious propagandist, describing his fiction as ‘morally loathsome.’

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author:
KENNETH C. DAVIS

Non-fiction
288 pages
Collins

America’s Hidden History almost warrants two separate reviews.

The first: If you’ve read Miles Harvey’s Painter in a Savage Land, Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, Joseph Ellis’ His Excellency, David McCullough’s John Adams, any of the other exemplary books about early American history currently out there, or a combination thereof, don’t bother with this one. You probably already know most of it.

Conversely, if you haven’t, Kenneth C. Davis writes an engaging and intriguing look at the “forgotten” bits of early American history, the parts that probably weren’t included in your average high-school textbook. From George Washington’s early and questionable military career to Benedict Arnold before he became a turncoat, America’s Hidden History pulls out the juicy bits from the dry dates you already know.

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author:
WILL STORR

Non-fiction
320 pages
Ebury Press

“Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage,” drones the impeccable Madeline Kahn in the classic 1985 film Clue. While others can attest to the post-nuptial state of physical relations, British writer and journalist Will Storr goes in search of life after death in this eponymous-titled nonfiction. Only his quest is a bit more than a search for ghosts and things that go bump in the night: Storr, an admitted lapsed Catholic and probable agnostic at best, seeks the supernatural with the notion that to believe in ghosts is to believe in life after death, ergo the existence of some spiritual higher being, whatever that may be.

Despite a massively weighty premise, Storr keeps the writing and the musing light, accessible, occasionally philosophical, and always entertaining as he goes through ghost vigils and hunts, television programs, bogus clairvoyants, haunted houses, the official Vatican exorcist, quantum physics-lite, and one truly terrifying encounter whose terror has much less to do with demonic possession than the religion involved. He reaches his own conclusions and is frank about it, though leaves very much open to speculation and interpretation by the reader.

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author:
STEVEN RINELLA

Non-fiction
259 pages
Spiegel & Grau

There is perhaps no other icon that is more symbolic of the American West than the Buffalo. It has graced our currency, our national parks and has even been protected by the U.S. government since the early nineteen hundreds after their prolific and near catastrophic slaughter of their species.

In American Buffalo, author Steven Rinella enters himself into a lottery in Alaska to win the opportunity to hunt Buffalo in the wild (and wins one of the coveted slots), embarking on a journey to take down the largest land animal in North America. While a good portion of the novel focuses on the actual hunt in the Alaskan wild, an equal length is dedicated to the history of the American Buffalo, from its arrival here in North America to its present numbers and questionable future.

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author:
MIR BAHMANYAR
w/ CHRIS OSMAN

Non-fiction
256 pages
Osprey Publishing

Modern warfare has created a more sophisticated and dedicated elite fighter, who has unbelievable skills, utilized every day in combat. World War II had Underwater Demolition Technicians (UDT) and these brave men were replaced by inclusion of new duties performed as U.S. Navy SEALS, (SEa, Air and Land) which refers to methods of insertion and ability to perform missions in these environments.

The training of these high caliber crusaders is extremely complex and rigorous. Those who go through the initial training phase called BUD/S find that the attrition rate is seventy-five to eighty per cent. This is a six month training cycle followed by six months probation before receiving the Navy Special Operations designation, the Budweiser (Trident). This is only the beginning for the budding SEAL, who goes on to further cycles such as Jump School, HALO training, Ranger Training, Army Special Forces training, and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). \The class of 1989 donated a class gift as a motto for UDT/Seal Training” “The only easy day was yesterday”.

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author:
PIERRE BERG
w/ BRIAN BROCK

Non-fiction
304 pages
American Management Association

Pierre Berg of Nice, France was seventeen and had aspirations of being a hairdresser and a ladies man, but never imagined that the unspeakable could happen to him. While visiting a friend who owned a shortwave radio the two were captured and sent to Nazi Concentration camps because the Gestapo banned all shortwave radio broadcasting. Pierre and his friend made broadcasts of Laurel and Hardy, which were sent only to neighbors, but the Nazi’s suspected them of making long-range broadcasts. Pierre was sent to Auschwitz and his friend was never heard from again.

Written with the assistance of Brian Brock, the story unfolds with twists and turns, in a style that reads like a novel, but was real nonetheless, and fatal for many of the people portrayed. For instance, Berg’s life is spared thanks to the shaky hand of another prisoner whose job was to administer the camp tattoos. A guard misreads one of the numbers while reporting a serious infraction that Berg committed. The prisoner with the misread number is executed, and Berg attributes this to “outhouse luck.”

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