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Starred Publishers Weekly Review for Bill Streever's Heat
December 14, 2012
Fantastic starred review for Heat: Adventures in the World's Fiery Places by Bill Streever (Little, Brown, Jan 2013) in Publishers Weekly:
Streever's follow-up to his 2010 New York Times bestseller, Heat... (is) delivered in funny, matter-of-fact prose, as when describing his ineptitude at starting a fire ("If the world were populated by people like me, we would still be living in trees and eating fruit. Climate change would not be an issue"). In this worthy companion to Cold, Streever is able to mix the pop science, personal experiences, and historic asides into a fun and informative commentary on a subject that few people think about despite its inherent life and death implications.
Dolls Behaving Badly, a novel by Cinthia Ritchie: a tale of female triumph
December 14, 2012
Great Publishers Weekly review for Cinthia Ritchie's debut novel, Dolls Behaving Badly (Grand Central, Feb. 2013):
Ritchie’s quirky debut concerns 38-year-old Carla Richards, whose many years of waitressing and motherhood have derailed her dreams of becoming an artist. After Carla begins making erotic dolls to supplement her income, she rediscovers her passion for painting.... Ritchie’s tale of female triumph makes for a fun read.
You can catch the full review on Cinthia's blog.
Kirsten Grind's The Lost Bank: Library Journal Best Nonfiction Pick
December 10, 2012
Library Journal tapped The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual, the Biggest Bank Failure in American History by Kirsten Grind (Simon and Schuster, 2012) as one of the five best business books of 2012.
Leela Corman's Unterzakhn lands on Salon.com's List of Great Graphic Novels from 2012
December 5, 2012
Unterzakhn by Leela Corman (Schocken/Pantheon, 2012) grabbed the #2 spot on Salon.com's list of the top 10 graphic novels from 2012.
Here's the review:
Twin sisters in early-20th-century New York's Lower East Side meet very different fates as they grow to adulthood in the roaring '20s. Corman's title, Yiddish for "underwear," alludes to the way each girl's life is determined by sex, men and the vulnerability and power inherent in the female body. Fanya becomes the apprentice of a "lady-doctor" (a sort of amateur OB-GYN), but bridles at her mentor's puritanical refusal to provide contraception and other care to unmarried women. Esther, dazzled by the stage, becomes a maid and eventually the star performer at a burlesque house that doubles as a brothel. (There's also a flashback interlude depicting their gentle father's flight from the pogroms in Russia.) Corman's bold, simple art can nevertheless display remarkable subtlety and for all the intimacy of its subject matter, "Unterzakhn" conveys a sumptuously textured swath of Jewish immigrant life at that time.
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