Gentleman Boss: the Life of Chester A. Arthur

by Thomas Reeves. Knopf, 500 pages.

More an exhaustive overview of Gilded-Age U.S. politics then an actual biography, Gentleman Boss remains one of the few books to focus on America's forgotten 21rst president (he's so forgotten that he didn't even make it into the Simpson's classic "Mediocre Presidents" song). Chester "Chet" Arthur should have been an even more forgettable Vice-President, but Charles Guiteau changed that in 1881, killing President Garfield and altering Arthur's fate forever. Thomas Reeves makes a valiant effort to rehabilitate Arthur and for the most part he succeeds, although even he admits that Arthur might have achieved immortality if he had only been the bad President everyone expected him to me. Instead, he truly fulfilled the title of "caretaker President".

2030 by Albert Brooks

St Martin's Press, 375 pages.

It's too bad that the late Michael Crichton never got to write 2030, because in his hands it might have been a great book. Crichton was a genius at marrying an epic cast of characters with complicated exposition, all wrapped into a tense dramatic scenario - look at The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park or more recently, Next. Next (reviewed elsewhere) is perhaps the closest ancestor to 2030, as both take on clinical tones to discuss the not-so-distant future. But Next ends up being far more sinister in its implications. In the hands of filmmaker Albert Brooks, 2030 actually comes across as rather benign. Perhaps it's because the author's cinematic instincts are so much more honed then his literary ones: 2030 is dialogue heavy and the narration is short, brief and always to the point. Major events - earthquakes, deaths, China buying Los Angeles - all happen in the blink of an eye without any real attention paid to the drama of the moment. The entire novel reads like a treatment for a film that never got written.

Various Positions

by Martha Schabas, Doubleday. 361 pages.

Being a former theatre school brat, I couldn't help but be drawn to Various Positions, an affecting first novel by Martha Schabas that deals with adolescence, broken homes and the fact that when you're dealing with the artistic world, the "rules do not apply". This, at least, is the conclusion reached by Georgia Slade, Ms. Schabas' engrossing main character, who is accepted to the Royal Toronto Ballet Academy and promptly begins both an artistic and sexual awakening. A bit of Black Swan meets Fame, Various Positions took me back to my own days in dance school and successfully captured the tense student rivalry and unfortunate eating disorders that are the undercurrent of any artistic training. 

Bossypants

by Tina Fey, Reagan Arthur Books. 275 pages.

Like Kristi Koruna, the object of a ten year crush that lasted until I was 18, Tina Fey always manages to prompt a series of sweaty palms, giddiness and a complete inability to articulate my own thoughts. In Ms. Fey's case, however, this is a purely artistic crush. I usually respond to an episode of 30 Rock with the same sweaty-palmed uncertainty that happened whenever Kristi Koruna walked into the room: in other words, if my life was a summer camp social (and sometimes I think it is) Tina Fey's work is the girl I want to dance with to Stairway to Heaven. I probably won't ever get asked to write an episode of 30 Rock (mostly because I'd just screw it up), so I suspect that writing about Bossypants is as close as I'll ever come to dancing with Ms. Fey's talent.

Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in His Own Right

by John S. Goff

University of Oklahoma Press, 286 Pages. 

You know you're a history geek when you're reading a book about Robert Todd Lincoln - especially one written by John S. Goff. Written in 1968, this is a polite  look at a statesman who most people know nothing about, a fact as true now as it was forty years ago. A millionaire businessman of the Progressive era, Lincoln also did his duty in American politics, serving first as Secretary of War and then as Minister to England. He was associated with three assassinated Presidents at the time they were shot, a distinction that led him to say of his many White House invitations: "If only they knew, they wouldn't want me there." His name was bandied about in several Presidential races and, as Special Counsel for the Pullman Palace Car Company, he may or may not have been influential in putting down the famed Pullman strike of 1894. Oh, and he was the son of Abraham Lincoln. Can't forget that - especially since no one else did.

The Memory of All That:

George Gershwin, Kay Swift and my Family's Legacy of Infidelities

by Katharine Weber

Crown Publishers, 270 pages.

An unusual memoir penned by novelist Katharine Weber, The Memory of All That is essentially two books in one: the first concerns Mrs. Weber's relationship with her enigmatic father, the inimitible Sydney Kaufman who disappeared from the house for months at a time, worked in the movies, was either loved or reviled by his contemporaries and has a FBI file that corresponds with the career of J. Edgar Hoover. The other is largely an anecdotal biography of Mrs. Weber's grandmother, Kay Swift, who is remembered either as the first woman to have a musical on Broadway or George Gershwin's longtime paramour (sadly few people, I've found, seem to remember her as both). Despite my own Gershwin-mania, it's the novel's first half that made for a much more invigorating read; although of academic interest, the second half was less focused. For a hundred pages, Mrs. Weber fights an intriguing battle to understand her peculiar father; but she was so close to her grandmother and much of the second half is, to use Kay Swift's own word, mumpsy.

Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James A. Garfield

by Kenneth Ackerman

Carroll & Graf, 551 pages.

A book that should be required reading for anyone aspiring to a life in politics, Dark Horse is a surprisingly engaging historical epic that reads like a novel even as it delves into an under-appreciated turning point in 19th century Americana. Set in the stormy political years of 1880 - 1881, the book charts the rise of President James Garfield and sets about proving the thesis that his death by an assassin's bullet was as much a result of the era's political atmosphere as it was the assassin's own shattered ideals. If this idea sounds familiar, it should; it was the same one put forth this year after Jared Loughner's shooting spree in Arizona and it's just started again in the wake of Anders Behring Breivik's shootings in Norway: in both cases, a charged political atmosphere prompted disturbed people to take disturbing action. And this is just one of the eerie points of relevance between Dark Horse and the modern day: as we gear up for the 2012 Presidential election and the Republican National Convention, Mr. Ackerman's detailed portrayal of the 1880 convention - and the backroom deals that went along with it - will be of special interest.

Father of Frankenstein

by Christopher Baum. Plume, 276 pages.

Like author Peter Straub, I read most of this book in one sitting, a true compliment considering how restless one can get on a hot summer day. Reading this book so soon after Doctorow's Homer and Langley, I couldn't help but draw parallels, not because of the subject matter, but because both books create fictional versions of history that are true to the spirit of people involved if not the actual facts. Here, Mr. Baum's focus is the final days of James Whale, best remembered as the director of Frankenstien, who drowned himself in his Hollywood swimming pool in 1957. History is unapologetically subverted as Mr. Baum creates a tryptych of characters that are both wildly comical and deeply profound: Whale himself, his loyal maid Maria and Clayton Boone, an aimless yardman who shares Whale's final days.

The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions

by David Mamet. Vintage Press, 157 pages.

It is, I think, a glorious thing to read any essay by David Mamet, especially in a moment of disillusion. He has the ability to cut through the great chafe of life and, in a prose that is lean but never anorexic, reveal wisdom in all areas: art, lust, guns, even campaign buttons. I will probably forever remain undecided whether he is better served to be known for his plays and films or his essays: the former are more popular  and something has to be said for that. Then I read "The Cabin" for the twentieth time and I think "Hmmm...."

Dancing with Master D: Notes on Life and Death

by Bert Keizer

One of the great pleasures of book sales is the fact that everything's cheap, which for some reason always seems more interesting then when everything's free. I'm never half as excited at the library as I am at a book sale, probably because the library expects their books back. But at the book sale, I can own something for life - and all for only a dollar. The cheap price often means I'm more willing to take a chance on something strange or unusual and is almost always how I've discovered some hidden gem, some author I might otherwise never have read. It's how I came to meet Graham Greene; and now it's how I had the supreme pleasure of reading Dancing with Mister D which, aside from it's terrible title, is a moving, funny and thought-provoking mediation on mortality, aging, medicine, assisted suicide and, most of all, the fact that doctors are just as uncomfortable with death as everyone else.

Assassination Vacation

by Sarah Vowell. Simon & Schuster, 254 pages.

My literary crush on Sarah Vowell went from mild to obsessive after the introductory paragraphs of Assassination Vacation, in which Ms. Vowell manages to reference Stephen Sondheim (my favorite dramatist), Assassins (my favorite musical), 1776 (my favorite musical about the Declaration of Independence)  and more then a dozen references to obscure points of Americana, my favorite topic of conversation, especially when I want to either amaze people or bore them (usually I managed to do both). Given that Ms. Vowell is equally enamored with both American history and America's history of political murders, I suspect if we met at a cocktail party, we'd have a great deal of fun amazing / boring all the other guests. All of which is to say Assassination Vacation feels very much like it was written just for me. Thanks Sarah!

Family Sins

by William Trevor. Key Porter Books, 251 pages.

Any writer who has been declared "the greatest writer in the English language" by an army of prestigious critics - the New Yorker, the London Free Press etc. - demands a closer examination then most. Like Shakespeare, William Trevor might forever be a victim of his own praise: lauded by so many, the expectations for his work can be so high that one risks a book-ful of disappointment. This fear is not realized in the case of Family Sins, a collection of stories published in 1999 which more or less exists as a good testament to what the literarti have long been so excited about.

The Year of the Flood

by Margaret Atwood, McLelland and Stewart, 434 pages

The most interesting thing about The Year of the Flood is - sadly - not the book itself but rather the story behind it. The second book in what is presumably a sci-fi trilogy (?) by a Canadian icon known more for highbrow literary fiction, The Year of the Flood is a nice example of an author challenging herself and her readers by offering material that is not easily classified. This has no doubt provided consternation for the people who work at bookstore chains: do you shelf Year of the Flood in "literary fiction"? Or do you put it in science fiction? Who do you market this book to - the highbrow literary folk or readers who like nothing more than to curl up with Issac Asimov? All interesting questions that would make for a much more intriguing  book club discussion then any you might have about Year of the Flood, which is an admirable but utlimately messy book that (dare I say it) drowns in the waters of its own ambition.

Unfamiliar Fishes

by Sarah Vowell, Riverhead Books. 292 pages.

A remarkable and completely original book that I picked up for all the wrong reasons, Unfamiliar Fishes is one of the most unique takes on America's propensity for manifest destiny that I've encountered. After seeing Ms. Vowell on the Daily Show, I thought this book was about the Spanish-American War, the one that resulted in the annexation of the South Pacific and introduced America to the joys of world domination. In fact, the Span-Am War only enters the book just after the 200th page; before that, Ms. Vowell gives a sharply written course on Hawaiian-American relations, beginning with the arrival of New England missionaries and ending eighty years later when Hawaii's annexation is railroaded through Congress while everyone else is distracted by war.

Homer and Langley

by E.L. Doctorow. Random House, 208 pp.

It's always a joy to be reminded why one of your favorite writers is one of your favorite writers. I pretty much whipped through all of E.L. Doctorow's work in a two year period about a decade ago, returning to him only for The March in 2005. Mr. Doctorow is obsessed with history and is always mining it for his inspiration: but with Homer and Langley he gleefully abuses the facts of history to create a work that is at once both historical and mythic. In doing so he has written a heartbreaking and evocative work that has officially become one of my new favorite books.