Great Reads for Grown-Ups

The Flying Book: Everything You've Ever Wondered about Flying and Airplanes. Blatner, David. Walker. $22. ISBN 0-8027-1378-5.
Have you ever wondered how "a million-pound hunk of metal" stays airborne or why airplane food is so lousy? David Blatner's The Flying Book provides clear, succinct answers to these questions and many more. Blatner is a skillful decoder of mathematical and scientific principles. And his latest book, which is a terrific read, is eminently understandable and never dumbed down. Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Orville and Wilbur's historic liftoff at Kitty Hawk, Blatner asserts that "while almost everybody does it"—he's talking about commercial flying, of course—"relatively few people really understand how it works." Blatner is also keenly aware that for many travelers, the very thought of flying causes "a general sense of anxiety." No kidding! I've long viewed flying as an act of faith, rather than a practical application of well-defined scientific principles. Thankfully, as the author notes, studies show "that the more you know about airplanes and flying, the more comfortable a flier you'll be." It's true: after reading his entertaining introduction to the history of aviation and some of its greatest practitioners, I'm more at ease about air travel. Engaging, upbeat, and fact-filled, The Flying Book features an open, airy design with lots of charts and sidebars. Don't leave for the airport without it.

An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland.
Dirda, Michael. Norton. $24.95. ISBN 0-393-05756-9.
As Michael Dirda, senior editor of The Washington Post Book World and a distinguished literary critic, observes early on in this beautifully written memoir: "To be an indiscriminate reader—as the luckiest young often are—means the right books are all around you." Dirda's portrait of the writer as a young reader is an irresistible choice for librarians. Dirda began life as a chubby, nearsighted kid, growing up in the 1950s in the gritty factory town of Lorrain, OH. An omnivorous reader, he gradually sharpened his literary taste (and enlarged his world) on an eclectic mix of books and comics that included Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, the Green Lantern, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Raskolnikov. Dirda takes the reader along on his journey to Oberlin College (which he attended in the '60s on a scholarship), and concludes with an account of a romantic summer spent in Paris, at the impressionable age of 19.

The future Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism seemed to emanate "an invisible tractor beam for printed matter." SLJ readers will relish Dirda's candid, sometimes bittersweet account of his early life with books and his assertion that "childhood reading possesses an almost holy power." Dirda's boyhood reading list—consisting of weighty titles he managed to read in high school—is not to be missed: it offers some stiff competition to the American Library Association's list of "Outstanding Books for the College Bound."

Goya.
Hughes, Robert. Knopf. $40. ISBN 0-394-58028-1.
This brilliant and uniquely personal study of the 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes emerged out of Robert Hughes's personal pain. While lying in an intensive-care unit, recovering from a near-fatal car crash, the former Time magazine art critic experienced such "extreme pain, fear, and despair" that he was finally able to comprehend the often puzzling personality of Goya, an artist he had long admired. Goya was "an artist wholeheartedly of this world," writes Hughes, and "a mighty celebrant of pleasure"—yet he was also among the "few great describers of physical pain, [and] outrage."

Who was this complex artist? On the one hand, Hughes maintains that Goya was a court painter, a supremely talented purveyor of formal portraits, bucolic scenes, and tapestry patterns. But Goya was also an entrepreneur who created a successful series of satiric etchings of peasants, a patriot who painted horrifying scenes of war, and an isolated misanthrope who created the enigmatic Pinturas negras (the Black Paintings). Today, many art critics place Goya's heart-wrenching Perro semihundido (The Head of a Dog) and Saturno devorado a su hijo (Saturn Devouring His Children) among the greatest paintings of all time. Indeed, for Hughes, Goya is no less than a prophet, a bridge between the 18th century's Old Masters and the 19th century's more experimental artists. "Many… think of Goya as a part of our own time," says Hughes. "He was… the last Old Master; and… the first of the Moderns."

Appetites: Why Women Want.
Knapp, Caroline. Counterpoint. ISBN 1-58243-225-2.
"How hungry are we? How filled? How conflicted?" asks writer Caroline Knapp, reflecting on the status of women in a culture that is determined to shape and constrain their basic desires. Knapp, who died of breast cancer in 2002 at the age of 42, uses her own experience as a 19-year-old struggling with anorexia to explore the universal consequences of what can happen when women are separated from their fundamental need for food, love, work, and pleasure.

Knapp has thought long and deeply about these complex issues. For her, contemporary women dwell in another country, a psychic "Land of No," whose physical features include anorexia/bulimia, obesity, exercise/shopping compulsions, and a growing lust for cosmetic alterations. "[M]any of us view the body as an enemy and a locus of shame instead of a blessing or a gift," she writes. "The female body may represent one of feminism's least-touched frontiers, perhaps one of its final frontiers. [A] woman's appetite and her ability to indulge appetite with freedom and entitlement and joy, is both a mark of progress and a metaphor for it." Knapp offers no simple solutions for how to feed women's bodies and souls; instead, this book is a powerful, candid dispatch—one woman's journey from empty to full.

Limbo: Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams.
Lubrano, Alfred. John Wiley. $27.95. ISBN 0-471-26376-1.
In Limbo, journalist Alfred Lubrano examines "what people gain and what they leave behind" as they move from America's working class to its middle class. Lubrano, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a commentator for National Public Radio, draws on more than 100 interviews in an attempt to understand the lives of former blue-collar kids—so called "straddlers"—who have been assimilated into a white-collar world.

The author knows his subject intimately. When the blue-collar, Brooklyn–born Lubrano entered Columbia University, his accent, complexion, clothes, and urban ethos were hopelessly "wrong." His sense of limbo—an alienation from both his working-class roots and the white-collar, Ivy League academy—soon intensified when his father, a master bricklayer, ended up working at Columbia. In the evening, when father and son commuted home together, the only safe, uncontentious topic of conversation was their mutual love for the New York Mets.

Although overt references to class are taboo, it nevertheless remains "script, map, and guide," writes Lubrano. Class "is nearly everything about you and it dictates what to expect out of life and what the future should be." Lubrano is right-on when he asserts that although America sings of equality—"the same chance to get ahead"—it is not true for the children of most blue-collar and working-poor families.

Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care.
McWhorter, John. Gotham Books. $26. ISBN 1-592-40016-7.
Are you sick of the relentless "happy talk" that defines TV news? Wary of the cult of personality that has conquered cable newsrooms? Does your stomach clench each time your radio's search button serves up some of Rush Limbaugh's commentary or Dr. Laura's advice? Has the frequency of thoughtful discourse become increasingly scarce? If you're nodding yes, you have a friend in John McWhorter.

According to McWhorter, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, "Americans after the 1960s have lived in a country with less pride in its language than any society in recorded history." We have begun to blur the lines between our former formal language and newer, more informal speech and writing. And as a result, America has become a culture that "marginalizes the didactic potential of written-style language in favor of the personal electricity of spoken language." A "society that cherishes the spoken over the written," continues McWhorter, "is one that marginalizes extended, reflective argument." The media, of course, hasn't been immune to the progressive deterioration of language. On the contrary, writes McWhorter, it has turned into a "circus of personalities rather than a purveyor of information and a guide to analysis." Our increasingly casual American English dialects undermine "our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, …our interest in poetry, …and even our response to music," he says. In measured exposition, McWhorter helps us understand "what kind of eloquence Americans currently value most, and why." This is strong stuff and unerringly thought provoking.

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
Pépin, Jacques. Houghton. $26. ISBN 0-618-19737-0.
Fans of super chef, cookbook author, and TV host Jacques Pépin know that he's a terrific storyteller—and this rich account of an extraordinary culinary life is more proof of the pudding. Pépin, who was born into a family of restaurateurs in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, became an apprentice to a master chef in Lyon at the age of 13; after a three-year stint, he worked in many of Paris's great restaurants. In addition to prodigious talent, Pépin has had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. No ordinary Navy draftee during the 1954–1962 Algerian war, Pépin was assigned to President Charles de Gaulle as his personal chef. The peripatetic Pépin eventually emigrated to the United States, where he juggled a number of job offers—among them, chef of the Kennedy White House, which he declined—and took on the challenge of updating the venerable Howard Johnson restaurant chain. Over the years, Pépin befriended such culinary luminaries as James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey (his colleague at HoJo's), and the estimable Julia Child. Readers will need to resist the urge to drop this book, run to the kitchen, and cook up one of the many doable recipes at the close of each chapter. (I have already added his mother's recipes for a simple cheese soufflé and a home-style apple tart to my own repertoire.) The Apprentice is an irresistible mix of humor, energy, and self-promotion. Reading it is like spending time with an old friend and his warm extended family.

The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe.
Raymo, Chet. Walker. $23. ISBN 0-8027-1402-1.
Chet Raymo has a rare gift: he encourages readers to look at everyday life with fresh eyes. In this slim tome, Raymo takes readers along on his daily walk to work at Stonehill College in North Easton, MA, where he is professor emeritus of physics and astronomy. "For thirty-seven years I have walked the same path back and forth each day," he writes. "I have walked the path so many times, I believe I could do it blindfolded…. There has never been a day that I walked the path without seeing something noteworthy." Don't simply shrug off Raymo's description as New Age–speak: there's much more here than meets the eye. Raymo, a science columnist for the Boston Globe, has trained his eyes and his mind to observe the often-overlooked details that hint at life's deeper truths. For Raymo, his daily walk is "a thread that ties one human life and the universe together," and his message is at once simple and profound: walk with "reverent feet, stopping often, watching closely, listening carefully."

Since reading The Path, I hope that my own daily walk to work, through my Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood of almost 30 years, can become "deeper, richer, more multidimensional." Although few of us have an opportunity to rock the world, as Raymo suggests, "Most of us… will make our contribution for good or ill on the local scale, along paths that begin at our own front door."

Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages.
Rubenstein, Richard E. Harcourt. $27. ISBN 0-15-100720-9.
In 12th-century Spain, a group of Muslim scholars, Jewish teachers, and Christian monks discovered Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul). Until then, Aristotle's writings, like most of Greek culture, had been lost for centuries, following the fall of the Roman Empire around A.D. 480. Richard Rubenstein, a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University, views this pivotal discovery as the Middle Age's equivalent of a "Star-Gate"—science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's term for an iconic embodiment of ancient wisdom, long lost and then suddenly found. Aristotle's work, which was embraced enthusiastically by devotees of the three major religions, transformed the Dark Ages, reconciling faith and reason. Indeed, the impact of the Greek philosopher's new ideas (which focused on the material world, rather than the supernatural) was so far reaching that it created a revolution in thought that laid the foundation for the Renaissance and the 18th century's Age of Enlightenment. As direct "heirs of a medieval tradition that seems more intriguing and inspiring as the shortcomings of modernity become clearer," we have much to learn from "their vision of a science infused by ethics and a religion unafraid of reason," writes Rubenstein. Ultimately, he has high hopes for our fragmented world, and Aristotle's teachings can help us create a "more humane and integrated global future."

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.
Von Drehle, David. Atlantic Monthly. $25. ISBN 0-87113-874-3.
Until the tragic events of September 11, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 was New York City's largest workplace disaster: the final death toll was 146. Culling from more than 1,300 pages of first-person accounts, David Von Drehle documents the far-reaching effects of a fast-moving fire that raced through a crowded garment shop in Greenwich Village. Von Drehle, a journalist for The Washington Post, takes us inside the inferno. In less than 30 minutes, 123 young Italian and Jewish immigrant women (one as young as 14) died of burns and smoke inhalation or jumped to their deaths in futile attempts to escape the flames. The Triangle fire was an industrial disaster waiting to happen. Though the building was touted as fireproof, the exit doors opened inward (some were locked to prevent pilferage and late arrivals), the fire escapes were rickety, and the fire hoses lacked water pressure.

The deaths of these young blouse-makers accelerated an already burgeoning American social reform movement and led to many of the labor reforms that reached their peak during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. The aftermath of the Triangle fire also brought together an unlikely coalition of powerful personalities, including the Tammany Twins, New York State Senate leader Robert F. Wagner and Assembly majority leader Alfred E. Smith (who together pushed through 25 bills "entirely recasting labor law in the nation's largest state"), and social reformer Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a Cabinet post. Triangle is absolutely compelling social history.