"More Sex is Safer Sex"

Coming in April: More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Steven Landsburg's writings are living proof that economics need not be "the dismal science." Readers of The Armchair Economist and his columns in Slate magazine know that he can make economics not only fun but fascinating, as he searches for the reasons behind the odd facts we face in our daily lives. In More Sex Is Safer Sex, he brings his witty and razor-sharp analysis to the many ways that our individually rational decisions can combine into some truly weird collective results -- and he proposes hilarious and serious ways to fix just about everything.

When you stand up at the ballpark in order to see better, you make a rational decision. When everyone else does it too, the results, of course, are lousy. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of individual sanity and collective madness. Did you know that some people may actually increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases when they avoid casual sex? Do you know why tall people earn more money than shorter competitors? (Hint: it isn't just unfair, unconscious prejudice.) Do you know why it makes no sense for you to give charitable donations to more than one organization?

Landsburg's solutions to the many ways that modern life is unfair or inefficient are both jaw-dropping and maddeningly defensible. We should encourage people to cut in line at water fountains on hot days. We should let firefighters keep any property they rescue from burning houses. We should encourage more people to act like Scrooge, because misers are just as generous as philanthropists.

Best of all are Landsburg's commonsense solutions to the political problems that plague our democracy. We should charge penalties to jurors if they convict a felon who is later exonerated. We should let everyone vote in two congressional districts: their own, and any other one of their choice. While we're at it, we should redraw the districts according to the alphabetical lists of all voters, rather than by geography. We should pay FDA commissioners with shares of pharmaceutical company stocks, and pay our president with a diversified portfolio of real estate from across the country.

Why do parents of sons stay married more often than parents who have only daughters? Why does early motherhood not only correlate with lower income, but actually cause it? Why do we execute murderers but not the authors of vicious computer viruses? The lesson of this fascinating, fun, and endlessly provocative book is twofold: many apparently very odd behaviors have logical explanations, and many apparently logical behaviors make no sense whatsoever.

"Inventing Human Rights"

New this month from W.W. Norton: Lynn Hunt's Inventing Human Rights: A History.

About the book, from the publisher:

How were human rights invented, and what is their turbulent history?

Human rights is a concept that only came to the forefront during the eighteenth century. When the American Declaration of Independence declared “all men are created equal” and the French proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man during their revolution, they were bringing a new guarantee into the world. But why then? How did such a revelation come to pass? In this extraordinary work of cultural and intellectual history, Professor Lynn Hunt grounds the creation of human rights in the changes that authors brought to literature, the rejection of torture as a means of finding out truth, and the spread of empathy. Hunt traces the amazing rise of rights, their momentous eclipse in the nineteenth century, and their culmination as a principle with the United Nations’s proclamation in 1948. She finishes this work for our time with a diagnosis of the state of human rights today.

"Cold Day in Hell"

Published this month by Random House: Richard Hawke's Cold Day in Hell.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In the stew and dazzle of New York City, savvy, irreverent Fritz Malone – who Susan Isaacs called “the perfect balance of noir P.I. and decent guy” – is embroiled in a string of grisly murders that drags him behind the lurid headlines into the tangled affairs of some the city’s most beautiful people and their ugly truths.

When two women linked with charismatic late-night TV personality Marshall Fox are found brutally slain in Central Park, Fox becomes the prime suspect and is charged with the murders. At the tabloid trial, one of Fox’s ex-lovers, Robin Burrell, is called to testify – and is instantly thrust into the media’s harsh spotlight. Shaken by a subsequent onslaught of hate mail, Robin goes to Fritz Malone for help. Malone has barely begun to investigate when Robin is found sadistically murdered in her Upper West Side brownstone, hands and feet shackled and a shard of mirror protruding from her neck.

But it’s another gory detail that confounds both Malone and Megan Lamb, the troubled NYPD detective officially assigned to the case. Though Fox is in custody the third victim’s right hand has been placed over her heart and pinned with a four-inch nail, just as in the killings he’s accused of. Is this a copycat murder, or is the wrong man on trial?

Teaming up with Detective Lamb, Malone delves deeper into Fox’s past, unpeeling the layers of the media darling’s secret life and developing an ever-increasing list of suspects for Robin’s murder. When yet another body turns up in Central Park, the message is clear: Get too close to Fox and get ready to die.

And Malone is getting too close.

In Cold Day in Hell, Richard Hawke has again given readers a tale about the dark side of the big city, a thriller that moves with breakneck speed toward a conclusion that is as shocking as it is unforgettable.

The Page 99 Test: Richard Hawke's Cold Day in Hell.

"Untapped"

Coming in April: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil by John Ghazvinian.

About the book, from the publisher:

Although Africa has long been known to be rich in oil, extracting it hadn’t seemed worth the effort and risk until recently. But with the price of Middle Eastern crude oil skyrocketing and advancing technology making reserves easier to tap, the region has become the scene of a competition between major powers that recalls the nineteenth-century scramble for colonization there. Already the United States imports more of its oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia, and China, too, looks to the continent for its energy security.

What does this giddy new oil boom mean — for America, for the world, for Africans themselves? To find out, John Ghazvinian traveled through twelve African countries — from Sudan to Congo to Angola — talking to warlords, industry executives, bandits, activists, priests, missionaries, oil-rig workers, scientists, and ordinary people whose lives have been transformed — not necessarily for the better — by the riches beneath their feet. The result is a high-octane narrative that reveals the challenges, obstacles, reasons for despair, and reasons for hope emerging from the world’s newest energy hot spot.

"A Moveable Thirst"

Coming in April: A Moveable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in Napa Wine Country by Rick Kushman and Hank Beal.

About the book, from the publisher:

A ROLLICKING WINE COUNTRY TRAVELOGUE

plus, Get the Lowdown on 141 Napa Tasting Rooms, From Top-Name Wineries to Hidden Gems

Hank Beal is a wine pro — the executive wine buyer at an upscale supermarket chain. Rick Kushman is an ordinary Joe — a guy who loves wine, but doesn't know a lot about it. Together, they set out to visit all 141 public tasting rooms in Napa during the course of a season. The result is A Moveable Thirst — an engaging, often hilarious book that's part Sideways, part Wine For Dummies, and part Frommer's.

The first half recounts their uproarious adventures on the road as Rick learns to swirl, sniff, and spit ... but can't stop asking stupid questions. The second part offers the most comprehensive and detailed guide ever published to Napa's wine rooms, with incisive information on everything from service and atmosphere to tasting tools and picnic prospects. Complete with invaluable tasting tips, it's the only book you need to map out your own Napa Valley wine adventure.

NAPA KNOW-HOW ON THE GO

Learn from Hank's patient expertise and Rick's often-naive but relentlessly enthusiastic questions as they make their way around Napa tasting rooms

Find out how to charm the servers (hint: never, ever quote from Sideways),encourage generous pours, learn about wine, and have fun

Pick up essential wine-tasting dos and don'ts, from "Carry a cooler. Don't cook your wine" to "Eat. Seriously, eat"

"The Jesus Machine"

Published earlier this month: The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War, by Dan Gilgoff.

About the book, from The Jesus Machine website:

More than two-dozen amendments to state constitutions banning gay marriage. The reelection of George W. Bush by winning nearly 80 percent of the white evangelical vote. The Terri Schiavo congressional intervention. The Christian Right has achieved more in the last few years than at any time in its history. Yet the story of the man and the organization that have orchestrated those successes—James Dobson and his Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family—has gone almost entirely untold.

Until now.

In The Jesus Machine, U.S. News & World Report Senior Editor Dan Gilgoff provides the first inside look at Dobson’s vast national network, the most powerful web of organizations the Christian Right has ever known. From its origins as a Southern California radio show dispensing parenting advice, Dobson—not a minister, but a family therapist with a doctorate in child development—has turned Focus on the Family into the command center for an unrivaled grassroots army. Dobson’s radio show reaches up to ten million Americans a week and elicits so much listener mail that Focus needs its own zip code.

Gilgoff was afforded wide access to Focus on the Family’s Colorado Springs headquarters, its so-called Washington embassy, the Family Research Council, and its state-level affiliates. In addition to rare interviews with Dobson himself, The Jesus Machine showcases interviews with Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Chuck Colson, the scandal-plagued Ted Haggard, and scores of others, including politicians as diverse as Republican senator and presidential hopeful Sam Brownback and Democrat John F. Kerry. Besides chronicling how Dobson became more powerful than Falwell, Reed, or Pat Robertson ever were, The Jesus Machine shows:

• How Democrats applied the lessons of losing the “values” vote in 2004 to wage the congressional takeover of 2006.
• How a small handful of evangelical activists in Dobson’s network coaxed Congress into intervening in the Schiavo case, even as most evangelical Americans opposed the effort.
• How Focus on the Family’s Ohio affiliate organized the 2004 get-out-the-vote drive that sent Bush back to the White House.
• How Dobson overcame fierce resistance from within the Christian Right to the idea of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, turning the amendment effort into the movement’s top priority—and giving Republicans an issue to win on.

"Fatal Purity"

Due in April: Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?

Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre’s evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.

Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.

Scurr recently put her book to the Page 69 Test.

"The Raw Shark Texts"

Due out: Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts.

About the book, from the publisher:

I was unconscious. I’d stopped breathing.
I don’t know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the
human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have tripswitched,
responding to the stillness with a general systems panic.
Autopilot failure—switch to emergency manual override.
This is how my life started, my second life.

So begins The Raw Shark Texts, the startlingly original debut novel from Steven Hall that is already electrifying booksellers and publishers all over the world.

Eric Sanderson wakes up one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to call a Dr. Randle, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of memory loss and that for the last two years—since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while vacationing in Greece — he’s been suffering from an acute disassociative disorder.

But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric Sanderson begins to examine letters and papers left behind by “the first Eric Sanderson” and the staggering tale they seem to contain, he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and to escape the predatory forces that threaten to devour him. Moving with the pace and momentum of a superb thriller, exploring ideas about language and information as well as identity, The Raw Shark Texts is a brilliant novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and it will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.

"Emotions Revealed"

New from Henry Holt and Owl Books: Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, second edition, by Paul Ekman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions—anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness — and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues. As featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink, Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System offers intense training in recognizing feelings in spouses, children, colleagues, even strangers on the street.

In Emotions Revealed, Ekman distills decades of research into a practical, mind-opening, and life-changing guide to reading the emotions of those around us. He answers such questions as: How does our body signal to others whether we are slightly sad or anguished, peeved or enraged? Can we learn to distinguish between a polite smile and the genuine thing? Can we ever truly control our emotions? Packed with unique exercises and photographs, and a new chapter on emotions and lying that encompasses security and terrorism as well as gut decisions, Emotions Revealed is an indispensable resource for navigating our emotional world.

"Better"

New in April from Henry Holt and Metropolitan Books: Atul Gawande's Better.

About the book, from the publisher:

The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.

Gawande’s gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labor and delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors’ participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine, and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand washing. And as in all his writing, Gawande gives us an inside look at his own life as a practicing surgeon, offering a searingly honest firsthand account of work in a field where mistakes are both unavoidable and unthinkable.

At once unflinching and compassionate, Better is an exhilarating journey narrated by “arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around” (Salon). Gawande’s investigation into medical professionals and how they progress from merely good to great provides rare insight into the elements of success, illuminating every area of human endeavor.