TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/cal/89choice.adl

Text File | 1991-05-04 | 28KB | 744 lines

Adult Editor's Choice

Nonfiction

General Works

Hart, Jeffrey. Acts of Recovery: Essays on Culture and Politics.
Univ. Press of England, $19.95 (0-87451-504-1).

Whether examining the poetry of Robert Frost, declaiming on the
failure of socialism, or poking fun at the pretensions of left-wing
academicians, Hart operates according to the overarching assumption
that Western culture is a unique and inestimably valuable commodity
with a rational moral purpose that is in the process of being
forgotten. A stimulating and refreshingly affirmative collection
of intellectual essays.


Social Sciences

De Larrabeiti, Michael. The Provencal Tales. St. Martin's $16.95
(0-312-02968-3).

De Larrabeiti traveled briefly with the shepherds of Provence,
France, and eavesdropped on their fireside conversations, which
were replete with handed-down fables. Decades later he has
presented this multilayered story of his trek and interlaced it
with the sheperds' timeless folklore.


Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern
Middle East, 1914-1922. Holt, $39.95 (0-8050-0857-8).

A brisk and entertaining survey of all the political maneuverings,
military adventures and catastrophes, and diplomatic intrigues that
went into the formation of the Middle East as we know it today. The
period the book covers is one of epic turmoil in which such
larger-than-life figures as Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence
helped shape the course of nations.


Gioglio, Gerald R. Days of Decision: An Oral History of
Conscientious Objectors during the Vietnam War. Broken Rifle Press,
P.O. Box 749, Trenton, NJ 08607, paper, $14.95 (0-9620024-0-2).

A Vietnam-era draftee who spent a year fighting for discharge
relays the stories of other COs-in-uniform, provocatively and
powerfully revealing the tip, he says, of an iceberg of dissent
within the military.


Hirsch, Kathleen. The Songs from the Alley. Ticknor & Fields,
$22.95 (0-89919-488-5).

This humane, candid portrait of the homeless integrates a
discussion of social policy (including a history of poverty and
aid) with the searing personal stories of two young women.


Isay, Richard A. Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development.
Farrar, $17.95 (0-373-11012-3).

The most important, accessible book on its subject since Weinberg's
Society and the Healthy Homosexual strives to reconcile
psychoanalysis and gay male sexuality and, thanks to Isay's
professionalism and disinterest, largely succeeds.


Kidder, Tracy. Among Schoolchildren. Houghton, $18.95
(0-395-47591-0).

A wonderfully moving and revealing look at one fifth-grade
classroom and at the indefatigable teacher who struggles to educate
and inspire her pupils.


Lappes, Frances Moore. Rediscovering America's Values. Ballantine,
$22.50 (0-345-32040-9)

The author of Diet for a Small Planet sets up a dialogue between
two voices--one expressing traditional middle-of-the-road American
ideology, the other a more ecologically and internationally minded
point of view--about what the nation's operative values ought to
be, but wisely leaves the reader to resolve the disputes.


Mehta, Ved. The Stolen Light. Norton, $19.95 (0-393-02632-0).

The latest entry in the blind Indian writer's series of
extraordinary memoirs finds Mehta entering college in California
and continuing his assimilation into American culture.


Mulvagh, Jane. Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion. Viking, $50
(0-670-80172-0).

This remarkable volume, celebrating the eightieth anniversary of
Vogue magazine, offers an expert text and a superb layout of
drawings and photos--all charting the evolution of fashion, from
the garb of stately Edwardian women to the more obstrusive modes
of the 1980s.


Nelson, Richard. The Island Within. North Point, $18.95
(0-86547-404-4).

On an uninhabited island off the Pacific Northwest coast, an
anthropological researcher immerses himself in the awe-inspiring
spectacle of nature's realm.


Pizzo, Stephen and others. Inside Job: The Looting of America's
Savings and Loans. McGraw-Hill, $18.95 (0-07-050230-7).

The authors conducted a wide-ranging investigation of savings and
loans that revealed fraud, corruption, gross mismanagement, and
irresponsibility. Their findings, which put much of the burden for
degeneration of the industry on the shoulders of the Reagan
administration, make fascinating and disturbing reading.


Simon, James F. The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felex Frankfurter, and
Civil Liberties in Modern America. Simon & Schuster, $19.95
(0-671-47797-8).

A study of the ideological differences and personal friendship
between two U.S. Supreme Court justices whose views and opinions
influenced legal history in the first half of the twentieth
century.


Pure Sciences

Waal, Frans de. Peacemaking among Primates. Harvard, $29.95
(0-674-65920-1).

An ecologist who is also a masterfully lucid writer complements all
the studies of aggression as the definitive primate--especially
human--behavior with close observations of how four species of
monkeys and apes get along with others of their kind and reconcile
after conflict.


Technology

Outerbridge, David and Outerbridge, Graeme. Bridges. Abrams, $45
(0-8109-1239-2).

Exquisitely designed and accompanied by lively essays on the
history and structure of bridges, this breathtaking, ravishing
photographic celebration of engineering's most poetic achievements
matches them in beauty and power.


Plans and Gardening

Tankard, Judith B. and Van Valkenburgh, Michael R. Gertrude Jekyll:
A Vision of Garden and Wood. Abrams/Sagapress, $35 (0-8109-1158-2).

Gertrude Jekyll became famous as a gardener and landscape designer
in the years before World War I. This stunning collection of her
own black-and-white photographs offers a remarkable look at her
lovely garden at Munstead Wood in Surrey, England.


Health and Medicine

Dorris, Michael. The Broken Cord. Harper, $18.95 (0-06-016071-3).

The author of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water turns to nonfiction in
this searing memoir about his adopted son, Adam, a victim of fetal
alcohol syndrome. Combining the perspectives of an anthropologist
and a father, Dorris offers both a potentially controversial
investigation of the effect of FAS on native American communities
and an infinitely sad story of the burdens one young man has
inherited as a result of his birth mother's drinking.


Gonzalez-Crussi, F. The Five Sense. HBJ, $16.95 (0-15-131398-9).

Considering the human sensoria, the pathologist-essayist waxes ever
more reminiscent, finally giving us, in the long concluding essay,
"TASTE," a memoir of his father full of wonder, clear-eyed insight,
and forgiveness--classic of its kind.


Cookery

Child, Julia. The Way to Cook. Knopf, $50 (0-394-53264-3).

Child's excellent seventh cookbook offers instruction in the basics
and finer points of food preparation and presentation, with many,
but certainly not all, of the recipes derived from her six-part
video series (which shares this book's title).


Goldstein, Joyce. The Mediterranean Kitchen. Morrow, $22.95
(0-688-07283-6).

This sensational cookbook evokes the light, smells, and spirit of
the Mediterranean, re-creating a cuisine infused with the sensory
joy of sunshine.


The Arts

Antekeier, Kristopher and Aunapu, Greg. Ringmaster! My Year on the
Road with the Greatest Show on Earth. Dutton, $19.95
(0-525-24757-2).

Antekeier was ringmaster of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and
Bailey Circus for one year. In this readable and revealing memoir,
he shares the glamour of his position as well as the drudgery,
grime, and tragedies of caravan life.


Greenough, Saran and others. On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One
Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography. Little, Brown/Bulfinch, $75
(0-8212-1757-7).

The best of the year's many commemorations of photography's
sesquicentennial capaciously presents 450 images by some 200
photographers, accompanied by historical and critical essays by
four expert commentators.


Recreation & Sports

Berger, Phil. Blood Season: Tyson and the World of Boxing. Morrow,
$18.95 (0-87795-962-5).


Torres, Jose. Fire & Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson. Warner,
$16.95 (0-446-51485-3).

These volumes, both focusing on the current boxing scene in general
and heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in particular, offer equal
parts ring savvy and insider accounts of the fighters, trainers,
and managers. Berger, in particular, does a special job of
humanizing Tyson, who emerges, in fact, as a very complex man.


Literature

Haines, John. The Stars, the Snow, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in
the Northern Wilderness. Graywolf, $16 (1-55597-117-2).

Memoirs and reflections upon life in the Alaskan interior by
arguably the most distinguished twentieth-century American poet of
the Far North.


Miles, Barry. Ginsberg. Simon & Schuster, $24.95 (0-671-50713-3).

A sympathetic and frank biography of American poet Allen Ginsberg
explores the writer's innermost compulsions and the
autobiographical implications of his works, while documenting as
well the complex relationships of the Beat generation.


Parker, Peter. Ackerley: A Life of J.R. Ackerley, Farrar, $25
(0-374-10050-0).

This biography of the English literary editor rivals Ackerley's own
memoirs in its provocative style and frankness, while supply a
balanced view of the subject's personality and achievements.


Sherry, Norman. The Life of Graham Greene: Volume One, 1904-1939.
Viking, $24.95 (0-670-81376-1).

Retracing his subject's awesome geographical footsteps and drawing
uncanny parallels between reality and the art of Greene's fiction,
Sherry has produced a massive and forceful biocritical opus of the
formative years in the life of a major figure in world literature.


Soyinka, Wole. Isara: A Voyage around "Essay." Random, $18.95
(0-394-54077-8).

Joy and pride, grief and sorrow mix in the Nigerian novelist's
memories of his family and of the country form which he was once
a political exile.


Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. Houghton,
$19.95 (0-395-45374-7).

A stunning study of the suicidal poet that explores the
contradictions in Plath's personality and the evolution of her
writing.


Updike, John. Self-consciousness: Memoirs. Knopf, $18.95
(0-394-57222-X).

Six autobiographical essays by one of the country's premier fiction
writers provide a splendid opportunity to witness a fine mind
encountering and coping with truths about his experiences and soul.


Wolff, Tobias. This Boy's Life: A Memoir. Atlantic Monthly Press;
dist. by Little, Brown. $18.95 (0-87113-248-6).

The son of a born scoundrel proves blood will out in this
exceptionally funny and moving portrait of a checkered rite of
passage.


Poetry

Berryman, John. Collected Poems: 1937-1971. Farrar, $25
(0-374-12619-4).

Berryman's unique vision is central to the American poetry of the
last half-century. This long-overdue collection, a landmark volume
in contemporary literature, spans 34 years and gathers seven books
under one cover.


Carruth, Hayden. Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies
across the Nacreous River at Twilight toward the Distant Islands.
New Directions, paper, $8.95 (0-8112-1104-5).

Ruminations upon poetry, jazz, nature, metaphysics, and love and
a musical elegy to his mother constitute the consistently
impressive latest collection by one of America's most passionate,
intelligent, sensible, accomplished poets.


An Ear to the Ground: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.
Ed. by Marie Harris and Kathleen Aguero. Univ. of Georgia, $30
(0-8203-0952-4); paper, $15 (0-8203-0953-2).

Written in a contemporary, conversational voice, the poems in this
exemplary collection bring together the work of "native, Asian, and
black Americans, Chicano and Puerto Rican writers, gay and lesbian
poets, writers of working-class backgrounds, poets writing from
American prisons." A testament to the multicultural diversity of
America--and one that ignores neither social context nor aesthetic
tradition.


History

Burns, James MacGregor. The Crosswinds of Freedom. Knopf, $29.95
(0-394-51276-6).

In a chronicle that begins with the arrival of FDR at the White
House in 1933 and ends with RR's departure from the presidency in
1989, the historian examines the nation's search for democratic
rule and the continuing debate on goverment's proper role.


Campbell, Bebe Moore. Sweet Summer: Growing Up with and without my
Dad. Putnam, $18.95 (0-399-13415-8).

Campbell, from an adult perspective, tells of growing up in the
1950s and 1960s, spending the school year with her very correct,
black middle-class mother in Philadelphia and her summers in rural
North Carolina with her father, whom she idolized.


Drucker, Peter F. The New Realities: In Government and Politics,
in Economics and Business, in Society and World View. harper,
$19.95 (0-06-016129-9).

This provocative study by a management guru and best-selling author
offers a wide-ranging, farsighted discourse on current problems
facing society.


Eisenhower, John. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico,
1846-1848. Random, $24.95 (0-394-56051-5).

While the 1845-48 war with Mexico has been greatly overshadowed in
the public mind by other U.S. conflicts with foreign nations, it
remains an embroilment that arouses historical controversy.
Eisenhower's balanced account of the hostilities engages the reader
in a full understanding of both sides of the clash.


Flood, Charles Bracelen. Hitler: The Path to Power. Houghton,
$29.95 (0-395-35312-2).

Hitler's political apprenticeship is focus of this fresh, deeply
analytical biography exploring the German leader's life between the
end of World War I and his release from prison following the
abortive 1923 Nazi insurrection against the Bavarian state
government.


Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. Farrar, $19.95
(0-374-15894-0).

Friedman, reporter for the New York Times, spent most of the 1980s
living and working in Beirut and Jerusalem. This book the product
of his sojourn in those two cities, recalls his experiences in that
troubled region, provides historical insights, explains the roots
of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and offers his impressions of people
and places in the Holy Land.


Gage, Nicholas. A Place for Us. Houghton, $19.95 (0-395-45517-0).

Picking up where he left off in Eleni, Gage writes of what became
of himself and his family following the execution of his mother by
Communist partisans during the Greek civil war. The story of his
growing up in America, where he and his sisters were reunited with
a father whom the hadn't  seen in over a decade, makes for
compelling, even inspirational reading.


Hoffman, Eva. Lost in  Translation: A Life in a New Language.
Dutton, $18.95 (0-525-24601-0).

Coming to Canada in the 1950s from Poland, Hoffman tells the
memorable story of her family's cultural displacement and her own
experiences as an exile in a foreign land with a strange new
language.

Keegan, John. The Second World War. Viking, $12.95 (0-670-82359-7).

Keegan's chronicle of the world's most dreadful war is a virtuoso
performance of military history writing. Eschewing the exhaustive
piling-up of events, Keegan presses ahead almost impetuously,
paying scant attention to the war's day-to-day unfolding but never
taking his eyes off the Big Picture. The literary equivalent of a
blitzkrieg, impossible to resist.


Markovna, Nina. Nina's Journey: A Memoir of Stalin's Russia and the
Second World War. Regnery Gateway; dist. by Kampmann, $21.95
(0-89526-550-8).

Writing from the perspective of the teenage girl she was at the
time, Markovna records in painful detail how life under Stalin's
rule was a constant affront to human dignity. The story of her
travails before World War II and, later, during the war
itself--when she toiled as a slave laborer in Nazi
Germany--provides a powerful and illuminating portrait of an
extraordinary woman with an indomitable spirit.


Middleton, Harry. The Earth Is Enough: Growing Up in a World of
Trout & Old Men. Simon & Schuster, $17.95 (0-671-67459-5).

A boy nearing adolescence is sent to live with his grandfather and
great-uncle in the Ozarks. The lessons they teach on fly casting,
family, and farming stay with him through the years and are
beautifully recounted in this humorous, moving memoir.

Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.
Knopf, $29.95 (0-394-55948-7).

A revolutionist history that brilliantly analyzes the conflicting
impulses that produced the French Revolution and the bloody
violence that followed.


Fiction

Bowels, Paul. A Distant Episode: The Selected Stories. Ecco; dist.
by Norton, paper, $10.95 (0-88001-204-8).

A superb selection from Bowles' 40 years as author of some of the
most elegant tales of moral and physical horror ever written
(characteristically about being adrift in a foreign culture).


Boyle, T. Coraghessan. If the River Was Whiskey. Viking, $17.95
(0-670-82690-1).

Humor that's both black and poignant erupts in this collection of
short stories that find the writer at the top of his comic form.


Davies, Robertson. The Lyre of Orpheus. Viking, $19.95
(0-670-82416-X).

The production of an elusive and unfinished opera sets the stage
for a hilarious satire on academic careers, foundation funding,
and, most important, human foibles.


Desai, Anita. Baumgartner's Bombay. Knopf, $17.95 (0-394-57229-7).

In a somber and elegiac portrait, an elderly German Jew who found
refuge from the Holocaust and World War II in India discovers the
passage of years cannot hide the memories of the past he has
escaped.


Doctorow, E.L. Billy Bathgate. Random, $19.95 (0-394-52529-9).

The story of the downfall of notorious gangster Dutch Schultz as
told from the keen perspective of 15-year-old Billy Behan. In
masterfully tapping into the seductive allure of crime, America's
romance with the bad guy, and our perverse fascination with grisly
deeds, Doctorow evokes the era of the 1930s, if not as it actually
was, then as it should have been.


Drabble, Margaret. A Natural Curiosity. Viking, $19.95
(0-670-82837-8).

This sequel to The Radiant Way offers further evidence that, superb
literary skills aside, Drabble writes old-fashioned social dramas,
heavily detailed yet delicately phrased.


Eco, Umberto. Foucault's Pendulum. Tr. by William Weaver. HBJ,
$22.95 (0-15-132765-3).

A post-Derrida plunge into the labyrinth of the intellectual mind
(Eco's and his characters') produces a conspiracy theory so
all-embracing that it seduces with its power.


Follett, Ken. The Pillars of the Earth. Morrow, $22.95
(0-688-04659-2)

A mystifying puzzle involving the execution of an innocent man is
interwoven into this monumental story of medieval intrigue and
ingenuity.


Haasse, Hella S. In a Dark Wood Wandering: A Novel of the Middle
Ages. Tr. by Lewis C. Kaplan. Ed. by Anita Miller. Academy Chicago,
$22.95 (0-89733-336-5).

Originally published in the Netherlands in 1949, this epic tribute
to the Middle Ages is an authentic re-creation of fourteenth-and
fifteenth-century France. Haasse's remarkable attention to medieval
detail vivifies a spellbinding tale of human tragedy and triumph.


Hamill, Pete. Loving Women: A Novel of the Fifties. Random, $19.95
(0-394-57528-8).

Hamill's memoirlike coming-of-age novel concerning a young,
Brooklyn-born sailor is tough, immediate, funny, filled with vivid,
breathing characters, and propelled by a fierce sense of time,
place, and unbridled macho desire.


Hijuelos, Oscar. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Farrar, $18.95
(0-374-20125-0).

In the 1950s, Cesar Castillo, a hedonist nonpareil, and his brother
Nestor, a melancholic dreamer, were the Mambo Kings, Cuban
immigrants riding high in New York and even landing a guest shot
with Desi Arnaz on the "I Love Lucy" show. Now it's 30 years later,
and Cesar has returned to the Hotel Splendour, scene of his
greatest erotic triumphs, to die in the "agony of pure memory." An
ineffably sad, exuberantly raucous story of music and life.


Hospital, Janette Turner. Charades. Bantam, $18.95 (0-553-05346-9).

A young Australian woman's search for her father exposes both the
entanglements of family and the myth of the past. Drawing elegantly
constructed analogies to nuclear physics, Hospital explores "our
fallible ways of knowing" with both a scientist's love of detail
and an artist's humanity.


Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. Knopf, $18.95
(0-394-57343-9).

A little masterpiece of restrained prose exploring the subtle roots
of fascism through the life of a well-intentioned but misguided
butler.


McGuane, Thomas. Keep the Change. Houghton, $18.95 (0-395-48887-7).

In relating the story of Joe Starling, a lost soul waiting to be
found, McGuane writes with customary grace, compassion, and high
hilarity. His descriptions of the empty Montana landscape are
typically evocative, his dialogue is often uproariously funny, and
his supporting cast of beautiful women, eccentric relatives, and
oddball friends is thoroughly engaging.


Miller, Rex. Profane Men: A Novel of Vietnam. NAL/Onyx, paper,
$4.50 (0-451-40169-7).

Perhaps the meanest, nastiest, most depraved, most morally
appalling of the recent crop of Vietnam novels--and also an
entirely stunning piece of work. A Joe-college type joins a CIA hit
squad peopled with perverts, homicidal maniacs, sport torturers,
and other similarly twisted creatures. Like a disturbing nightmare,
the novel possesses a spooky, feverish quality that lingers long
after the last page is turned.


Mojtabai, A.G. Ordinary Time. Doubleday, $17.95 (0-385-26416-X).

In a small Texas town, intersecting lives are played out on a bleak
but moving canvas of human experience, catching the characters'
most private moments in lightning flashes of revelation.


Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. Grove, $17.95 (0-8021-1032-0).

In this stunning picture of an immigrant's identity crisis, an
Indian woman who now lives in the U.S. can't quite shrug off her
past but still pursues her cultural transformation as an American
with a reckless intensity that is shocking and yet uproariously
compelling.


Mulisch, Harry. Last Call. Tr. by Adrienne Dixon. Viking, $19.95
(0-670-82549-2).

An aging actor is called back from retirement to play the greatest
role of his career, as a flood of memories unlock his spiritual and
emotional secrets.


Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. Knopf, $12.95 (0-394-57976-3).

This slender but potent volume offers a second chance to read two
numbingly superb works--two interrelated stories dealing with the
Holocaust, both first published in the New Yorker and now brought
together in book form.


Perucho, Joan. Natural History. Tr. by David H. Rosenthal. Knopf,
$17.95 (0-394-57058-8).

A bildungsroman, a vampire tale, and a historical novel all at
once, the first book by a major Catalan author to be translated
into English relates the stalking by a positivistic young
aristocrat of a creature that defies scientific explanation.
Arguably the most sophisticated "horror story" since Frankenstein.


Reidinger, Paul. Intimate Evil. Donald I. Fine, $17.95
(0-55611-140-1).

A young attorney's life unravels as he becomes progressively more
involved with a teenager death row whose mandatory final appeal he
has taken on pro bono. Reidinger's second novel, very different in
style than The Best Man, is again about hard life decisions and the
individual's irreducible right to make them.


Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. Viking, $19.95
(0-670-82537-9).

A riotous fantasy of survival and reincarnation, as two Indian
actors emerge alive form an airplane crash in highly altered
states. A novel unique for the quality and breadth of the writer's
scorn and contempt, which leave no subject safe from devilishly
caustic rebuke.


Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Putnam, $18.95 (0-399-13420-4).

This quietly elegant first novel tracks four Chinese women who in
1949 fled warfare in their homeland and came to San Francisco,
where they instituted a weekly ritual: gathering to celebrate life,
play mahjongg, and tell stories.


Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Storyteller. Tr. by Helen Lane. Farrar,
$17.95 (0-374-27085-6).

The latest novel by one of Latin America's foremost writers attests
to the richness, the uniqueness, of Amazon civilization--and in the
process becomes an entrancing lesson about cultural preservation.


Weir, John. The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket. Harper,
$17.95 (0-06-016162-0).

An almost unthinkable book, a comic as well as tragic novel about
a young man dying of AIDS and those who help him--or don't. Weir's
bittersweetness and romanticism recall the heyday of F. Scott
Fitzgerald, without any lugubrious lost-generation symbolism.


Wolf, Christa. Accident/A Day's News. Farrar, $15.95
(0-374-10046-2).

The life of an East German writer is subverted by an unlikely
conjunction of personal worries and global disaster as everyday
existence is agonizingly transformed by technology and politics.


Mystery and Espionage

Gill, Bartholomew. The Death of a Joyce Scholar. Morrow, $17.95
(0-688-08713-2).

McGarr, chief superintendent of Dublin's murder squad, is up to his
eyeballs in scholarly tomes and academic politics as he
investigates the brutal annihilation of a professor of literature
at Dublin's Trinity College. An unrelentingly compelling, humorous,
intelligent, and well-conceived piece of entertainment.


Higgins, George V. Trust. Holt, $18.95 (0-8050-0955-8).

Higgins once again populates an urban New England wasteland with
the most perfectly awful people you could ever not want to meet.
Little action and lots of tough, trashy dialogue are the hallmark
of his style, and somehow it all works. Characters yak incessantly
in their hardboiled patios, the plot moves forward, the reader is
totally enthralled.


le Carre, John. The Russia House. Knopf, $19.95 (0-394-57789-2).

Spies, in the world of le Carre's utterly absorbing glasnost novel,
are no longer tortured heroes but bureaucrats with "dead suburban
souls." In a story that places people ahead of ideals, human values
ahead of espionage objectives, le Carre dares to redefine the terms
of his genre, thus becoming the first spy novelist to come in from
the cold.


Peters, Elizabeth. Naked Once More. Warner, $17.95 (0-446-51482-9).

Using the romantic suspense genre she knows so well, Peters (aka
Barbara Michaels) has written a witty mystery that is also a comic
moral fable about a writer's life (with especially venomous asides
aimed at the publishing industry).


Science Fiction

Lem, Stanislaw. Eden. Tr. by Marc E. Heine. HBJ, $19.95
(0-15-127580-7).

Six men crash-land on a planet whose inhabitants perplex and whose
culture ultimately appalls them in the Polish sf master's most
powerful novel in many years.


Source: Booklist Magazine, Jan. 15, 1990.