“A friendly, well-written approach to enjoying wine, full of low-stress recommendations to help avoid wine anxiety.” from how to love wine
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2012
Ariely, Dan--Ed. Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (352 pp.) $14.95 paperback | Oct. 2, 2012 978-0-547-79953-7
Ariely (Psychology and Behavioral Economics/Duke Univ.; The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone— Especially Ourselves, 2012, etc.) presents a smorgasbord of top-notch science writing covering everything from the 1,000 species in the human gut to efforts to reverseevolve a chicken into a dinosaur. The two dozen pieces reflect the conclusion that “we are extraordinary yet flawed and predictably irrational creatures.” This is certainly the case in John Seabrook’s account of crowd disasters, including the 2008 “Black Friday” crush at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island, and in Jason Daley’s exploration of our human tendency in gauging risk to “focus on the onein-a-million bogeyman while virtually ignoring the true risks that inhabit our world.” The many other topics include allergies, marauder ants, lab-grown meat, airborne contaminants, the adolescent brain, the intelligence of octopuses and the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. Most of the essays combine lucid summaries of current research with vivid descriptions of the lives and goals of scientists from molecular biologists to paleontologists. The fact that many pieces come from nonspecialist magazines underscores the extent to which science now informs all aspects of modern life. Especially intriguing: Michael Roberts’ report from Outside on a young biologist’s efforts to spur increased conservation efforts by building on the calming effects many people feel in the presence of the ocean and Brian Christian’s revealing Atlantic account of the Turing Test and an annual event at which humans compete with artificial intelligence programs. Other contributors include Jerome Groopman, Rivka Galchen and Elizabeth Kolbert. A showcase for clean, plain-English science and nature writing and a treat for readers.
HOW TO LOVE WINE A Memoir and Manifesto
Asimov, Eric Morrow/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $24.99 | $14.99 e-book | Oct. 16, 2012 978-0-06-180252-2 978-0-06-219935-5 e-book A wine expert who finds fault with tasting notes, wine scores and blind tasting claims that “what’s missing in many people’s experience of wine is a simple sense of ease.” We live in a golden age of wine drinking, writes New York Times chief wine critic Asimov, and he wants readers to experience “the pleasure of enjoying the wine, then the pleasure of 2332 | 15 october 2012 | nonfiction | kirkus.com |
learning about it.” The author offers up his own unlikely path to falling in love with wine by way of Austin, Chicago and New York City. Asimov discusses American wine culture and its shortcomings, many of which contribute to the wine anxiety of fledgling oenophiles. “American wine culture,” he writes, “ignores the simple emotional relationship with wine that is the basis for a lifelong attachment.” To further your wine education, Asimov recommends finding a good wine shop and asking a salesperson to select a mixed case of 12 different wines in the $15 to $20 range. Sit down and linger over these bottles, he writes, enjoy them with meals and friends and record your experiences. Order another case informed by your own notes. Once you have narrowed your focus, Asimov advises reading books and maybe taking a class to help organize your thoughts. The author considers wine an expression of culture, giving hints of the nature and meaning of the wine and the region. He has a soft spot in his heart for smaller, older vineyards that still embody perseverance, tradition and the local culture. “[A] great wine can be so expressive of its origins,” he writes, “of where the grapes are grown, and of the people who grew them and turned those grapes into wine.” A friendly, well-written approach to enjoying wine, full of low-stress recommendations to help avoid wine anxiety. (Author appearances in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle)
SEX CHANGES A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On Benvenuto, Christine St. Martin’s (304 pp.) $25.99 | Nov. 13, 2012 978-0-312-64950-0
The brave, often funny account of how a woman came to terms with her husband’s decision to become female. When Benvenuto discovered that Tracey, her husband of 20 years, wanted to live as a woman, she was shocked. Suddenly, their shared closet became filled with women’s clothes ranging from “tarty and juvenile [to] conservative and middle aged.” The author watched with a mixture of sadness, amusement and horror as her husband began shaving his body hair and taking the hormones that would cause him to lose weight and permanently complain of “fatigue, stomach ailments and dizziness.” As difficult as it was for her to see Tracey’s transformations, it was even more confusing for her two young daughters and her pre-adolescent son. Was Daddy a man, a woman or, as her toddler asked, a “guy-woman”? Friends (especially female ones), therapists and even the members of a Jewish community group to which the pair belonged all seemed to side with Tracey and his struggles. Few understood Benvenuto’s own awkward position as a “transwidow” or the fact that she was unwilling to rewrite her past life with him so that Tracey could become “she.” The author finally divorced Tracey. Even in the aftermath, however, neighbors and strangers in the hometown she calls “the Valley of the