"Impotence: A Cultural History"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Impotence: A Cultural History by Angus McLaren.

About the book, from the publisher:

As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence — and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture.

Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies — for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills — and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society.

From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

"Thick As Thieves"

Coming in May from Henry Holt: Steve Geng's Thick As Thieves: A Brother, a Sister -- a True Story of Two Turbulent Lives.

About the book, from the publisher:

A memoir about two siblings who loved each other (sometimes); the thrill of the shoplift, the power of the written word, the agony of addiction, and the joy of someone who understands you and still stays true

Steve Geng — thief, addict, committed member of Manhattan’s criminal semi-elite — was a rhapsody in blue, all on his own. Women had a tendency to crack his head open. His sister? Also unusual: Veronica Geng wrote brilliantly eccentric pieces for The New Yorker, hung with rock stars and Pulitzer Prize winners, threw the occasional typewriter, fled intimacy. They were parallel universes, but when they converged, it was . . . memorable.

Spanning decades of unresolved personal drama and rebellion, Steve Geng’s memoir, Thick as Thieves, is the story of their lives, the bond between them, and all the things they shared. Raw, real, and funny, Geng follows his unique family history from Philadelphia to Paris, Greenwich Village to Riker’s Island. We meet lovable, often treacherous characters (B.J. the Queen of Crime, Tina Brown). We hear the rants of the Geng’s father, the Colonel; the malicious invective of publishing; the patter of hardened criminals. This is a memoir that will lift your spirit, kick you in the shins, and help you remember the person who understood you the most. Geng has made a lot of mistakes in his life. Thick as Thieves may just make up for them.

"The Making of an Economist, Redux"

Published in March by Princeton University Press: David Colander's The Making of an Economist, Redux.

About the book, from the publisher:

Economists seem to be everywhere in the media these days. But what exactly do today's economists do? What and how are they taught? Updating David Colander and Arjo Klamer's classic The Making of an Economist, this book shows what is happening in elite U.S. economics Ph.D. programs. By examining these programs, Colander gives a view of cutting-edge economics -- and a glimpse at its likely future. And by comparing economics education today to the findings of the original book, the new book shows how much -- and in what ways -- the field has changed over the past two decades. The original book led to a reexamination of graduate education by the profession, and has been essential reading for prospective graduate students. Like its predecessor, The Making of an Economist, Redux is likely to provoke discussion within economics and beyond.

The book includes new interviews with students at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, and Columbia. In these conversations, the students -- the next generation of elite economists -- colorfully and frankly describe what they think of their field and what graduate economics education is really like. The book concludes with reflections by Colander, Klamer, and Robert Solow.

This inside look at the making of economists will interest anyone who wants to better understand the economics profession.

"Weapons of Mass Seduction"

Coming in June: Weapons of Mass Seduction by Lori Bryant-Woolridge.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fortysomething and still single, music-video exec Pia Jamison has given up her grandiose ideas on men and marriage but not motherhood. Her biological clock is on red alert, but after years of self-imposed celibacy she has no clue how to attract the man she needs to get the baby she wants. Help comes in the form of Pia’s savvy assistant, who tricks her boss into attending, under the guise of a business conference, a flirting workshop called Weapons of Mass Seduction. There Pia meets other women looking to amp up their amorous arsenals, including the devastated Texas belle Florence Chase, who’s trying to save her failing marriage; and Rebecca Vossel, a twenty-two-year-old small-town biracial girl who’s dying to release her inner diva.

What they learn about the art of sensuality and flirtation turns them into bona fide bombshells. The three return home, armed and deliciously dangerous, to spectacular results. Florence reunites with her husband, but the new and improved Flo must now determine if she’s staying in her marriage out of happiness or habit. The plain Jane Rebecca has transformed herself into the super-sexed “Becca,” but will she realize when she’s gone to far? And Pia is happily pregnant but unexpectedly falls in love—not with the father of her unborn child but with a sexy and very conservative candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Weapons of Mass Seduction is a fun and sexy book (think of it as a flirting workshop within a novel) that promises to unleash the sensual woman in you!

"The Declaration of Independence"

Published earlier this year by Harvard University Press: The Declaration of Independence: A Global History.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a stunningly original look at the American Declaration of Independence, David Armitage reveals the document in a new light: through the eyes of the rest of the world. Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow.

Armitage examines the Declaration as a political, legal, and intellectual document, and is the first to treat it entirely within a broad international framework. He shows how the Declaration arose within a global moment in the late eighteenth century similar to our own. He uses over one hundred declarations of independence written since 1776 to show the influence and role the U.S. Declaration has played in creating a world of states out of a world of empires. He discusses why the framers' language of natural rights did not resonate in Britain, how the document was interpreted in the rest of the world, whether the Declaration established a new nation or a collection of states, and where and how the Declaration has had an overt influence on independence movements -- from Haiti to Vietnam, and from Venezuela to Rhodesia.

Included is the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and sample declarations from around the world. An eye-opening list of declarations of independence since 1776 is compiled here for the first time. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world.

"The Scarlet Ibis"

New this month: Susan Hahn's The Scarlet Ibis.

About the collection, from the publisher:

In The Scarlet Ibis, Susan Hahn has created an intricately structured sequence of interlinked poems centered around the single compelling image of the ibis. The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician's trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all-death-where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight-both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role. All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry.

bird trick iv

It's all about disappearance.

About a bird in a cage

with a mirror, a simple twist

on the handle at the side

that makes it come and go

at the magician's insistence.

It's all about innocence.

It's all about acceptance.

It's all about compliance.

It's all about deference.

It's all about silence.

It's all about disappearance.

"The Castro Gene"

Coming in May from Oceanview Publishing: The Castro Gene by Todd Buchholz.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Castro Gene is seamless, suspenseful and shocking.

After killing a man in the ring, Luke Braden quits boxing. While toiling as a security guard and yearning to reinvent himself, Luke is swept up into the high-flying domain of Paul Tremont. Tremont, the hottest hedge fund hand around, has a penchant for the dramatic and a disquieting need to control. Being Tremont’s protégé has its perks – Luke trades in his ratty basement apartment for a penthouse view, his gym clothes for designer suits. But there are strings attached, and Tremont is pulling those strings.

Why does Tremont need a washed-up boxer? The answer lies not in what Luke is, but who he is. Luke Braden is the only man who can execute Tremont’s diabolical scheme.

Fidel Castro risks one last trip to the U.S., and one man will be forced to stand in his way. Luke Braden is in for the fight of his life – or the fight for his life.

Intricately plotted with unexpected twists and breathtaking turns, The Castro Gene is a knockout.

"A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both"

Published this month: A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love by Ben Greenman.

About the book, from the author's website:

From the author of Superbad and Superworse, a new collection of stories about giving, wanting, and the wonders of love.

A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both is a collection of stories about love, the most elusive and problematic of all phenomena. With a mix of traditional, literary prose and bold — some might even say irresponsible — experimentation, Ben Greenman explores the ins and outs of modern romance. Expect tears, nudity, and recrimination.

Both familiar in their humanness and wholly original, these imaginative stories take us all over the map in time, place, and circumstance. From the halfhearted summer affair between a part-time bartender and a married doctor in a Miami hotel to the cryptic pseudo-erotic love letters to a friend who is “more than a friend,” we experience the love of pop songs, the love of cohabitation in Chicago, and love that is so transporting it takes us to the moon — literally.

"The Impossibility of Religious Freedom"

Coming May 2007 in paperback: The Impossibility of Religious Freedom by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground.

Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains.

A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution.

"Black & White"

New this month from Knopf: Dani Shapiro's Black & White.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author of Family History (“Poised, absorbing ... a bona fide page turner” — The New York Times Book Review) and the best-selling memoir Slow Motion, a spellbinding novel about art, fame, ambition, and family that explores a provocative question: Is it possible for a mother to be true to herself and true to her children at the same time?

Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to fourteen. The Clara Series, which graced the walls of museums around the world as well as the pages of New York City tabloids that labeled the work pornographic, cast a long and inescapable shadow over its subject. At eighteen, when Clara might have entered university and begun to shape an identity beyond her sensationalized, unsought role in the New York art world, she fled to the quiet obscurity of small-town Maine, where she married and had a child, a daughter whom she has tried to shield from the central facts of her early life and her damaging role as her mother’s muse.

Fourteen years later, Ruth Dunne is dying, and Clara is summoned to her bedside. Despite her anguish and ambivalence about confronting a family life she has repressed and denied for more than a decade, Clara returns. She finds Ruth surrounded, even in her illness, by worshipful interns, protective assistants, and her conniving art dealer.

Once again, she is Clara Dunne, the object of curiosity, the girl in the photos. Except this time she has her own daughter to think about — a girl who at nine looks strikingly like the girl in Ruth’s photos — and she yearns to protect her, to insulate her from the exposure that will inevitably result when her two worlds, New York and Maine, collide.

As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro’s novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart. A brilliant examination of motherhood — a novel that pits artistic inspiration against maternal obligation and asks whether the two can ever be fully reconciled — Black & White explores the limits and duties of family loyalties, and even of love. Gripping, haunting, psychologically complex, this is Shapiro at her captivating best.

Visit Dani Shapiro's website.