By Erik Larson
Crown | 464pgs
Release Date: May 10, 2011

Summary:
Bestselling non-fiction writer Erik Larson tells the electrifying true story of little known American ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd in In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. Dodd, previously a professor of history at the University of Chicago, assumed his post in Germany in 1933, at the dawn of Hitler’s power. The ambassadorship to Germany was not considered a plum assignment due to the country’s heavy debt to the U.S., but the professor and his family were initially charmed by members of the Nazi party. Dodd’s daughter, Martha, an unabashed party girl, was particularly taken with the extravagant soirées of Berlin’s social scene and engaged in a number of affairs with the Nazi elite. But, soon the immense evil of the Third Reich began to pierce through the veneer of civility, and the Dodd family grew fearful of Hitler’s greed for power. The ambassador’s warnings of danger to the U.S. State Department went largely ignored, as things grew worse in Germany. Tensions finally came to a head as the family witnessed Hitler’s bloody power-play during “the Night of Long Knives”, when the dictator quashed his opposition. Read more…

Scott Darsney, the climbing partner who accompanied author Greg Mortenson on the 1993 attempt to summit K2, weighed in this week on the controversy surrounding the veracity of the events recounted in the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson has come under fire of late with charges of fabricating parts of the blockbuster memoir, and misappropriating funds from his charity, the Central Asia Institute, for his personal use. Yet, despite the barrage of criticism from the media, Darsney is still firmly in his friend’s camp. “If Jon Krakauer and some of Greg’s detractors had taken the time to have three or more cups of tea with Greg and others–instead of one cup of tea with a select few who would discredit him–they would have found some minor problems and transgressions. But to the extent to call it all ‘lies’ and ‘fraud’? No way,” wrote Darsney in an e-mail to Outside Magazine. Read more…

To coincide with Earth Month, Penn State University Geology professor Richard Alley has released the book Earth: The Operators’ Manual (W. W. Norton & Company, 479pgs) as a companion the the two-part PBS special of the same name that aired earlier in April. The author, who also hosts the television program, addresses the issues of climate change and renewable energy in an engaging, interesting way, and uses scientific research to dispel the myths propagated by those who deny global warming. Outlining man’s reliance on fuel throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize winner utilizes scientific findings to show how our current hyper-consumption of fossil fuels is harming the environment and contributing to the greenhouse effect. Though tackling a serious subject, Alley, A former member of the UN climate change committee keeps the tone optimistic by suggesting solutions to the climate change problem using alternative energy sources like solar, geothermal and wind. He feels that today’s technology makes tapping into these resources a feasible option in healing the environment, and will thus stimulate economic growth and create a significant number of new jobs. Read more…

By Sarah Vowell
Riverhead Hardcover | 256pgs
Release Date: March 22, 2011

Summary:
Bestselling author and popular NPR contributor, Sarah Vowell, studies the history of Hawai’i during the 19th century in her new book Unfamiliar Fishes. The arrival of priggish New England missionaries in 1820 sets off a series of events that leads to eventual American annexation and U.S. statehood. While converting the native population to Christianity and attempting to tamp out prostitution with the visiting whalers, the missionaries also managed to nearly destroy the indigenous island way of life and begat a generation of children that would conspire with the U.S. military to overthrow the Hawaiian queen in 1893. With her rapier wit, Vowell describes the events of 1898, where in a spate of orgiastic imperialism, the U.S. annexed Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico in addition to invading Cuba and the Philippines, thus establishing the nation as an international superpower. Read more…

March 15, 2011: A Japanese search and rescue team searches the rubble near a high-rise building in Wakuya, Japan.

Today, Jacket Copy, the Los Angeles Times Book Blog, highlighted the March 28 issue of The New Yorker which will mainly focus on the devastating earthquake in Japan on March 11, the resulting deadly tsunami, and the current troubles at the Fukushima nuclear power plants. Articles in the issue will discuss the economic impact these brutal acts of nature will have on Japan’s future, and illustrate what the country will look like post-disaster. Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe also contributes a short essay on earthquakes and nuclear power in Japan. In a supplemental post on the The New Yorker website, Macy Halford comments on the deluge of images showing battered library stacks posted on the popular Japanese social network site Togetter.com. “Why libraries?, I wondered, as I scrolled through the images. I think it has to do with what is not shown in the pictures more than with what is. Books shaken to the floor provide a good visual measurement of the power of the quake…” she writes. Read more…

Seasoned art director Charlotte Strick struggled to find right visual balance when designing "Poser" book cover.

In an article for The Atlantic, Charlotte Strick, a seasoned art director for publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux, discusses the evolution of a book cover design from initial ideas to final concept. During her 11 years working for the publisher, the designer has grown adept at taking general or amorphous direction from editors and creating innovative solutions. But when she was tasked with designing the jacket for Claire Dederer’s book Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, she faced a unique challenge. Strick’s personal interest in yoga fuel her excitement about the project, but her initial idea of photographing propped up silhouettes of people in yoga poses spelling out P-O-S-E-R did not turn out as anticipated. “In my mind’s eye the concept looked brilliant, but in reality it was all too fussy and totally unreadable. What was clear early on was that the photographs of the posing women were too literal and that illustration would not only add a playfulness (in keeping with the author’s tone) but also allow for increased (if not somewhat superhuman) flexibility in the letterforms,” she writes. Read more…

Freelance journalist Jonathan Bloom is on a mission. With his book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), he hopes to educate people and open their eyes to the way the average American household carelessly manages food waste. In a world where innumerable people go hungry, even millions here in the U.S., it is a travesty that almost half of American crops end up in landfills. The tons of rotting food release methane gas into the atmosphere, thus harming the environment by contributing to the greenhouse effect. Through meticulous research and field-work, Bloom follows the food cycle from farms to the kitchen trash can, and documents the waste that goes on at all levels. A review in The Seattle Times calls the journalist “a fanatic against food waste”, and it is this fanaticism that drives him to study the economic and moral issues of how we as a nation treat our food, and come up with innovative solutions to the problem. Read more…

By Gabrielle Hamilton
Random House | 304pgs
Release Date: March 1, 2011

Summary:
New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton traces her unlikely path to gastronomic success in her new memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. The culinary entrepreneur spent her early childhood living with bohemian parents in rural Pennsylvania. But, her family fell apart during her early teens when her parents divorced, leaving Hamilton and her brother largely on their own. Though she became a bit of a wild child, experimenting with drugs, she was always drawn to the food business, and moved to New York at 16 to work as a waitress. She moved through several restaurant and catering jobs, and later back-packed through France, Greece and Turkey, often relying on meals provided by generous strangers to stave of her hunger. The culmination of all these experiences prompted Hamilton to open her small 30-seat restaurant Prune in the East Village during the late 1990′s. The chef had never ran a restaurant before, but achieved enormous success with the small eatery, winning acclaim with critics and the patronage of serious foodies. Her memoir, like her restaurant, emphasizes the link between food and human comfort. In Prune, Hamilton created a place where your server “would bring you something to eat or drink that you didn’t even ask for when you arrived cold and early and undone by your day in the city.” Read more…

By Angela Balcita
Harper Perennial | 240pgs
Release Date: February 1, 2011

Summary:
Angela Balcita’s sweet and amusing biography about life and love Moonface: A True Romance, arrives as many minds turn to romance in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. Yet, her story is anything but a fairytale romance. Suffering kidney failure in her late teens, Balcita was already dealing with the complications of her first kidney transplant, donated by her brother, when she met Chris Doyle in her junior year of college. As it became apparent that she would need another kidney, Doyle selflessly volunteered to be a donor, though their relationship was still new. This was the beginning of a deep love affair that has lasted 14 years and produced two-year-old daughter, Nico. “My big feeling was like we were transcending something magical – we were being united. I saw it as very emotional and spiritual, this gift,” Balcita expresses in an interview with USA Today. Doyle, now the author’s husband, has been her champion and cheerleader, helping her through illness and pain (she would eventually need an third transplant), and focusing their lives on a positive future. The couple’s coping mechanism of wit and humor is evident in the books narrative, and helps to craft an inspiring testimony of love’s endurance. Read more…

When The King’s Speech racked up 12 Oscar noms on Tuesday, the acting talents of Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were widely lauded. But it is the crux of the real-life relationship between King George VI of England and speech therapist Lionel Logue, that provides the actors with the basis for their compelling performances. Lionel’s grandson, Mark, inherited his grandfather’s archive of the work he did with the British monarch and the friendship they developed, and worked with author Peter Conradi to write The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy a companion book to the movie. What is not shown in the film is the longevity of the friendship between these two men, which began when Australian-born elocution instructor Lionel started work with the Royal to overcome his stutter. The two remained friends for the rest of their lives, and the collection of hundreds of letters between Lionel, George VI and his wife Elizabeth chronicle a long term bond. “The content of the letters between them is incredibly friendly as you’d expect between two friends,” Mark Logue tells CNN.com. “But there is a kind of etiquette that Lionel still abides by,” always opening letters with “your Royal Highness.” Read more…