Kansas.com: Books

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ART WINSLOW — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:07 CST

The son of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev recalled his father lamenting the cost of Russia's first intercontinental ballistic missiles, asking, "What will we do, we'll be without pants."

That anecdote, from Neil Sheehan's "A Fiery Peace in a Cold War," dovetails with the main premise of this book, both a biography of Bernard Schriever, the main mover behind America's development of ICBMs, and a history of the nuclear- tipped missiles: "In doing so much to foster a nuclear stalemate, Schriever and his associates contributed mightily to buying the time necessary for the Soviet Union to exhaust itself."

Sheehan offers a deep look at American defensive thinking in the Cold War, portraying the birth of the aerospace industry; illuminating the interlocking interests and personnel of government, industry and scientific academe; and opening the somewhat cloistered world of military life to wider view, from rivalries between the services to high-stakes internal battles over directorship of specific programs. We also see clearly how heavily policy and technology drove one another.

Plane talk keeps 'Highest Duty' aloft

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:07 CST

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Book looks at Kansas through all four seasons

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:04 CDT

"A Kansas Year" by Mike Blair (University Press of Kansas, 240 pages, $24.95)

Nov. 1 . . . Simply go to a lake, a pond, or a stream, and look. You'll see the beauty as you explore, and you'll naturally go where the views are best. Find an open shore where water can be seen from a low vantage, and hillside color will reverse itself in a magic way. A leaf, a tree, a ridge . . . the best of fall awaits in mirror image.

Running through life, seeing many of the same sights every day, we often overlook the beauty around us: plants and flowers, wildlife, weather. Plenty of it is right in our own backyards; some dwells in city parks; some can be seen a short distance out of town.

Dracula a romantic hero in sequel

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:03 CST

Long before Edward Cullen of the “Twilight” series and Bill Compton of HBO’s “True Blood,” there was the original vampire, Bram Stoker’s Prince Dracula, in the gothic horror novel “Dracula.”

Now, more than 100 years later, Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of the famed Irish novelist, and Ian Holt have written a sequel, “Dracula: The Un-Dead.”

The sequel begins in 1912, 24 years later, and it revisits original characters Mina and Jonathan Harker, Dr. Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood and famed vampire hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing.

Before the 'age of lead'

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:04 CDT

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Latest Connelly outing falls flat

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:06 CDT

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Truth casualty in Tillman case

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:06 CDT

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A flood without water

LISA MCLENDON — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:44 CDT

Will we end in fire or will we end in ice? Or what if we aren’t around long enough for the climate to kill us — what if a plague, whether natural or the result of our own meddling in nature, is the real threat?

“The Year of the Flood” — the year the plague hits — is the endpoint rather than the beginning of Margaret Atwood’s imaginative, gripping new novel. Set in the same dystopian future Atwood envisioned in 2002’s “Oryx and Crake,” “Flood” is neither a sequel nor a prequel — it runs concurrently, almost to the day, but the focus is different.

“Oryx and Crake” is a deep, complex, at times playfully satirical cautionary tale about environmental devastation and meddling with nature; “The Year of the Flood” takes a more personal, philosophical look at the same society, while not losing the edge. Some of the events and characters overlap, but readers don’t need to have read the earlier book to appreciate the later one, though the pair provides an even richer experience than either one alone.

Publishers Weekly best sellers

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:57 CDT

1. "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown

2. "A Touch of Dead" by Charlaine Harris

3. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

'Spooner' unfolds in three stages

DAVID HILTBRAND — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:45 CDT

For his seventh novel, Pete Dexter returns to small-town Georgia, the setting for 1998’s “Paris Trout,” his grim and gripping National Book Award winner.

This time Dexter has other perch to fry.

Spooner is the author’s Tristram Shandy, an often bawdy bildungsroman. The title character comes into this world, like Elvis, with a stillborn twin. He’s a kid whose instincts and urges are warped right from the cradle. Combine Spooner’s bent nature with poor impulse control and a notable lack of remorse, and you have the makings of a chronic headache for the boy’s honorable stepfather, until recently an exceptional naval officer with a promising career.

'Strength' thought-provoking

ANNE STEPHENSON — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:06 CDT

"Strength in What Remains" by Tracy Kidder (Random House, 304 pages, $26) —This is the story of how an African medical student named Deo fled the violence in his native Burundi and escaped to the United States. The early pages tell of his flight from Africa (the wealthy father of a fellow student paid for his ticket), his arrival in New York City and his effort to survive there alone, with no money or English skills. He earned $15 for 12-hour days delivering groceries and slept at first in an abandoned tenement and later in Central Park.

The next section traces Deo's memories of the slaughter in Burundi and neighboring Rwanda. The third, and most exhilarating, tells of his relationships with the Americans who helped him, including a couple who take Deo into their home and finance his return to school.

Kidder shows up, too (he meets Deo through Paul Farmer, subject of Kidder's book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains"), and goes with Deo back to Burundi. It's a thought-provoking look at a persistent human spirit, and at what it was capable of surviving.

Multiples no problem for most readers

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:07 CDT

Last month when I wrote about sticking to one book at a time — one novel, anyway — I asked for your thoughts on the matter. Judging from the response, those of us who are "single-bookers" are in the minority. Most people who wrote in said they have at least two books going at a time, and they offered some interesting philosophies on the subject.
Beth Evans put it simply, and elegantly: "I have more than one friend I visit with at different times during a day or week. Novels are my friends so I can read more than one at a time."
Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, who works at the Wichita Public Library, says she reads up to six or seven books at a time, usually with one nonfiction and one audio among the novels.

Imperfect 'Exiles'

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:07 CDT

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War novel mixes in a love story

LISA MCLENDON — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:50 CDT

War is gritty and messy, rarely as glorious as it is in the movies or as sanitized as it can seem from a distance. The Balkan wars in the 1990s — particularly the Serbian “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia — reached a level of horror Europe hadn’t witnessed in decades. Those horrors reach out and punch readers of “The Evolution of Shadows” right in the gut.
This debut novel by Wichita author Jason Quinn Malott doesn’t dwell on the fighting, or the mass executions, or the wanton rapes; rather, it intersperses swift, shocking glimpses of them into a compelling story set a couple of years later.
Three people meet in Sarajevo, gathered to search for a mutual friend, Gray Banick, an American news photographer who has been missing since he and his interpreter were separated during a battle. Bosnian Emil, the interpreter, is certain Gray is dead, but the search is a way for him to wrestle with his own losses. Englishman Jack, a veteran correspondent, has found he can no longer function outside of a war zone. American Lian, Gray’s onetime lover, has left her unfulfilling marriage in a desperate hunt for the love and passion she had once but pushed away.

A 'Lost' lecture

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:48 CDT

Dan Brown takes on some whopping metaphysics in his new book: “What happens to the human condition if the great mysteries of life are finally revealed?”
Good question. Pity he doesn’t bother to answer it.
Perhaps there are no definitive answers, but when a book alludes to someone’s ability to solve, say, the mystery of what happens after we die, a reader expects to learn what that process entails, not to wade through a lot of historical mumbo jumbo about symbols and allegory and how the Freemasons are really good guys.

Private eye V.I. is back with a bang

LISA MCLENDON — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:49 CDT

After a four-year hiatus — during which time author Sara Paretsky was anything but idle, publishing a collection of essays and the non-mystery novel “Bleeding Kansas” — Chicago private investigator V.I. Warshawski makes a characteristically noisy return in “Hardball.”
Smarting a little from a breakup but rested from a trip to Italy, V.I. takes on a 40-year-old missing-person case just as her human hurricane of a cousin, Petra, blows into town with a new job. As headstrong V.I. delves into the case, it leads her to prison chats with an incarcerated gang leader who may have some information, to a decades-old murder that happened during a violent civil rights demonstration, to her late father and his not-so-by-the-book comrades on the police force, to nuns who work at a social-justice center, and finally to the senatorial campaign her cousin is working on.
In her rich, unhurried story, Paretsky builds layer upon layer of seemingly unrelated connections, intrigue and long-buried secrets. But this is Paretsky, and we know she’ll tie it all together eventually, as well as weaving in social issues —contemporary and historical, in this book — along the way. A definite point of view comes through, but it’s part of the story, not tangential preaching.

Evangelical author in Wichita

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:06 CDT

Donald Miller, author of the bestselling book "Blue Like Jazz" and the new "A Million Miles in a Thousand Days" will discuss the relevance of Christian faith in everyday life Saturday.
Here are the details:

1) Miller is a writer, campus ministry leader and speaker who lives in Portland, Ore. His visit to Wichita is part of a 65-city national tour to promote his new book, which he says is the story of the journey he took in the process of turning "Blue Like Jazz" into a film.

A life well loved

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:06 CDT

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Once won't be enough for 'Twice'

Steve Johnson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:06 CDT

Children will want to hear " Once Upon a Twice" by Denise Doyan and illustrated by Barry Moser (Random House, ages 4-7, $16.99) again and again. For some it will be because they loved it; for others because it didn't make sense the first time.

The mice are "scoutaprowl" under a dangerous full moon. Predators lurk everywhere, but the group scurries on until "one mousling jams the middle!" Worst of all, he has put everyone in danger to smell a rose.

Hoard times

CONNIE OGLE — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:37 CDT

The Collyer brothers of Harlem serve as a horrific cautionary tale for anybody who keeps old junk around. Sent by a tip to the pair’s Fifth Avenue row house in the late 1940s, startled police officers had to fight their way through an appalling maze of garbage, boxes, papers, books, furniture, pianos, part of a Model T Ford and towers of miscellaneous debris — 100 tons of stuff — before they uncovered the body of Homer, the elder brother, who had starved to death. Weeks later, after a fruitless manhunt, they found another corpse. Langley had been crushed by a booby trap and partially eaten by rats.

The Collyers not only provide an informative lesson for the slobby and careless but also the rather slim framework for E.L. Doctorow’s latest novel, which lacks the grander scope of some of his earlier work but still resonates with haunting eloquence. Doctorow uses the reclusive brothers as a conduit through the decades, and while the book is too slight to provide much perspective into U.S. history, it’s still an intriguing character study and an elegantly written exploration of isolation.

Doctorow — whose Civil War novel “The March” won the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner awards and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 — has examined New York City’s past before. In such novels as “Ragtime,” “World’s Fair,” “Billy Bathgate” and “The Waterworks,” he deftly used historical characters to illuminate the time and place. Here he takes some liberties with the facts: Doctorow’s Homer loses his sight as a young man instead of later in life, although, as he tells us, “I am only blind of eye,” a detail that frees him to act as a semi-reliable narrator of decline.