only occasionally interrupts the parade of images with words that seem like little more than captions. Yet that annotation is crucial and illuminating, revealing an artist whose consciousness is as distinctive as his aesthetics, partly the result of “terrible” eyesight (“I have tried to convert this severe limitation into an idiosyncrasy. A pre-derangement of the senses.”) but more from a deep sense of worthlessness: “Typically, I loathe my strips nearly as much as I loathe myself.” The reflections force readers to consider Brunetti’s art through fresh eyes (though not the author’s bad eyes) and to understand the interrelationship among his aesthetic, his perception and his life. It also details a progression from a child’s scrawl to the three-dimensional work (which he resists calling sculpture) to which he has turned in depression. Like any good Italian boy, he also displays an obsession with (pre-Disney) Pinocchio. Essential for fans but fascinating for those new to Brunetti’s work as well.
CAPTAIN DAD The Manly Art of Stay-atHome Parenting Byrnes, Pat Lyons Press (256 pp.) $19.95 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-7627-8520-9
The superhero approach to raising kids. What father doesn’t want to be a superhero in the eyes of his child? With the guidance of New Yorker cartoonist Byrnes (Because I’m the Child Here and I Said So: A Joke Book for Parents, 2006, etc.), any parent, especially dads, can become just that. Having been a stay-at-home parent of two daughters for nearly a decade, the author is fully qualified to state, “Being a stay-at-home parent is the toughest job there is. For a woman or a man.” Byrnes wryly admits this statement to be true and writes, “I’ll even say it again in my deepest, manliest baritone, on behalf of every human male using those three little words every spouse longs to hear. You were right.” The author admits to his failures— e.g., his inability to keep the world of Disney away from his girls. But what’s a father to do when Mickey and other characters are printed on diapers, and he’s unaware that the “Disney Princesses had formed an alliance and intended to annex all of young female America.” Not to mention the intense pressure from Grammy to buy tickets to the Disney on Ice show before it left town. Sleep deprivation, the struggles to find a safe and clean place to change a diaper in a men’s room (not a chance), the attempt to “green parent,” and maneuvering through toilet training and preschool—these are just some of the many episodes Byrnes retells with gusto. He also provides helpful hints and lists of things you can and cannot live without when raising children. Amusing comic drawings round out this fun book. Droll and sometimes useful commentary on early child care.
40
|
1 may 2013
|
nonfiction
|
kirkus.com
|
TESLA Inventor of the Electrical Age
Carlson, W. Bernard Princeton Univ. (520 pp.) $29.95 | Jun. 1, 2013 978-0-691-05776-7
A scholarly, critical, mostly illuminating study of the life and work of the great Serbian inventor. Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) is so central a figure in the annals of modern science, writes Carlson (Science, Technology and Engineering/Univ. of Virginia; Technology in World History, 2005, etc.), that he has come to be regarded as “second only to Leonardo da Vinci in terms of technological virtuosity” and is sometimes portrayed as the single-handed inventor of the modern age, thwarted by the envious likes of Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi. The truth is more complicated, and though Tesla’s innovations figure in the everyday technology of the present day, he seems to have had more failures than successes, as well as a singular knack for having his thunder stolen by his competitors. Carlson examines Tesla’s processes of invention, experimentation and confirmation, as well as how he brought (or failed to bring) his inventions to market. Though the author protests early on that he will work from documentary evidence and not speculation, he hazards a few smart guesses from time to time (“I suspect that this willingness to seek the ideal grew out of the religious beliefs he acquired from his father and uncles in the Serbian Orthodox Church”; “I don’t think Tesla was at all worried as he had full confidence in his abilities as an inventor”). One, central if sometimes overlooked in other more celebratory studies, is the origin of Tesla’s notions of a rotating magnetic field, which may or may not have come from the work of a British contemporary—or, alternately, from an insight garnered from a between-the-lines reading of Goethe. Carlson also offers insight into Tesla’s urge to create disruptive technologies and to pursue “the grander and more difficult challenges.” Carlson tends to academic dryness and to a fondness for the smallest of details. Though Tesla deserves such serious treatment, his book is likelier to appeal to specialists than general readers. (56 halftones; 32 line illustrations)
THE POSSIBILITY DOGS What a Handful of “Unadoptables” Taught Me About Service, Hope, and Healing
Charleson, Susannah Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-547-73493-4
The compassionate account of the author’s experiences with psychiatric service dogs. For years, Charleson (Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog, 2010) was a dedicated