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CVE REPORTER
OCTOBER 2013
Cooke’s Look at Books By RICHARD WILLIAM COOKE
A monthly look at books of interest – new and, occasionally, not-so-new, fiction and nonfiction – available at libraries, bookstores and from online booksellers.
satisfying stories ever told .
City in the Sky
By James Glanz and Eric Lipton, Times Books, 428 Pages, $26
Ordinary Grace
By William Kent Krueger, Atria Books, 307 Pages, $24.99 If you’re very, very fortunate, occasionally a book cover catches your eye, you pick the book up, begin to read, and find it impossible to put down. This fine, new novel is one of those books. It is 1961 in a small town in northern Minnesota. Icecold beers in frosted mugs at Halderson’s Drugstore offers a touch of relief from the drowsy heat. The Minnesota Twins, formerly the Washington Senators are playing their first season. Everybody’s talking about the country’s dashing, young president – and the daring spaceship design of the new Studebaker cars. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, it was a fateful summer in which death assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. Now forty years old, the adult Frank tells the story of that summer. He tells us how the season began with the tragic death of simple, sweet-looking Bobby Cole. “All the dying began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses, killed on the railroad tracks outside New Bremen, Minnesota, sliced into pieces by a thousand tons of steel speeding across the prairie toward South Dakota.” Suddenly a series of unexplained tragedies strikes the little Minnesota River valley town. Even Frank and his family are not spared. Frank’s father, the pastor of the town’s Methodist church, has his deep faith in God tested. His wife, artistic and deeply unhappy with her life as a minister’s wife, drifts even further away from both her faith and her family. And the young Frank finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, betrayal and ultimately, murder. New York Times bestselling author Krueger writes, “Creating Frank’s story allowed me to examine memories and emotions arising from my own adolescence and to explore themes that have always been important to me.” Part mystery, part gripping coming-of-age tale, this new novel has been hailed by critics as a new masterpiece of American literature. Readers will find it to be one of the most
For anyone interested in the history of the World Trade Center, this book is the definitive biography of the skyscrapers and the ambitions that shaped them, from their dizzying rise to their stunning fall.
voters,” it was clear that church-state matters in the U.S. had reached a crisis – one that threatens to split the country in two.
Secret Life of Monroe TheMarilyn
For anyone who loves New York City, it is still painful, over a decade later, to scan the Lower Manhattan skyline and see the empty spot where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. Often, it’s an unexpected shock when they don’t appear in view and it takes a moment to realize that those soaring buildings are gone forever. According to the authors of this exhaustive and fascinating history of the once-fabled skyscrapers – subtitled The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center – postcards of the former towers are, these days, the most popular souvenir sold at shops frequented by tourists to New York City. Even though, this year, the glass-covered, shimmering new 1,776-foot-tall One World Center was topped out, for real New Yorkers, no replacement building will ever take the place of the iconic, 104-story towers that, when completed, were the tallest buildings in the world. Few writers know the history of the towers better than New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton. They recount how the project was born out of David Rockefeller’s ambition to rebuild Lower Manhattan and how Austin Tobin, the dynamic executive director of the Port Authority made that ambition his own – even redoubling its size. Politicians and business leaders overpowered local shop owners and community activists who saw the project as a giant rupture in the urban fabric. The emotionallyinvolved architect, Minoru Yamasaki, created previously-unheard of structural innovations which later determined who would live and who would die on September 11, 2001.
By J. Randy Taraborrelli, Grand Central, 560 Pages, $26.99 When Norma Jeane Baker became famous as Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s, she said her mother, Gladys Baker was either dead or not a part of her life, depending on the publicity campaign of the moment. However, neither was true. In fact, Marilyn’s mentally ill mother was very much present in her world, and according to the author of this compelling biography of her life, the complex dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes, as the star went from actress to icon, has never before been told. Author Taraborrelli has had much experience in writing about the lives of celebrities. His New York Times bestsellers include peeks into the lives of Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Princess Grace, the Kennedy women and many others. For any biographer when researching and writing about famous people, separating truth from fiction is often a herculean task. But Taraborrelli seems to have done his work well, as supported by a twenty-five page appendix at the end of the book as well as page notes throughout. The story of a world-famous daughter dealing with a parent’s severe schizophrenia, and the shocking scope of Marilyn’s own mental deterioration and her desperate attempts to help herself and her mother is heartbreaking to read. The suspicious circumstances surrounding the star’s death have given rise to numerous theories. Murder? Suicide? Accident? The author writes, “If the way Marilyn met her end is unknown, in an odd way that keeps her alive….in fact, debates surrounding that evening may never end, and whether or not they choose to admit it, that’s just how many people want it.”
Divided by God
By Noah Feldman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 306 Pages, $25 Even before George W. Bush gained re-election through a frank appeal to religiously devout “values
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As brilliantly put forward in this fascinating treatise, New York University law professor, author and New America Foundation fellow Noah Feldman writes, “No question divides Americans more fundamentally than that of the relation between religion and government. For many, moral values derived from religion are the lodestar of political judgment.” Stem cell research, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and the death penalty all generate vigorous debate, if not outright hostility between the religious on each side. Though polls tend to indicate that each year, fewer and fewer U.S. citizens claim membership in any particular religion – or even go further and disclaim a belief in the very existence of a God -- Feldman points out that when it comes to religion as a whole, ours, more than ever, is a religiously diverse society of primarily Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestant and Jews. Feldman writes this is nothing new. He describes how, again and again in our society, we have been forced to settle controversies over the Bible, the Pledge of Allegiance and the teaching of evolution through appeals to shared values of liberty, equality and freedom of conscience. In vivid, dramatic chapters, he describes how, throughout the history of our country, division over religious beliefs has erupted dangerously – and why it continues to do so. From this book, one can be convinced that this longrunning conflict has shaped the American people – and, for good or bad, made us who we are.
Volunteers Needed
Volunteers are needed to deliver Meals on Wheels to the needy residents of the Village. Please contact Donna Schreier at 954-570-3316. If you are eligible to receive Meals on Wheels and would like more information, Please call Glendora at 954-714-6946