Books Reviews - Page 29

Although people frequently say, "Don’t have a cow," why not have a whole book of them? Respected photographer Carl Hileman, who lives in Tamms, Ill. (pop. 724), has created a tribute to these docile creatures that are often overlooked by society. "I wanted to set the cows apart from the usual comic, even dumb portrayal we often see," says Hileman, who created a traveling exhibit called About Cows in 2000 to draw attention to society’s reliance on cows. "My purpose was to make people aware of how important the ‘lowly’ cow really is. I wanted the visual images to elevate the cow in a way that hadn’t been done." Hileman visited small independent farms, where farmers know their cows by name, to find his models. The farmers’ personal stories shaped how Hileman photographed each cow, and the result is a collection of beautiful, respectful infrared portraits that shed new light on our old milk-making friends. He then issued a cattle call to a herd of celebrities, including singers Larry Gatlin, Tanya Tucker and Bill Anderson, who gladly shared their favorite bovine tales to accompany each photo. The result is a unique, amusing collection that you’ll enjoy until the cows come home.

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Sunday Morning Quarterback
By Phil Simms, with Vic Carucci
Harper Collins

Former Super Bowl quarterback Phil Simms picks apart myths and old theories as he provides an insider’s view of football for armchair quarterbacks everywhere. Now a CBS football broadcaster, Simms shows how to analyze ever-changing team strategies and takes readers with him through meetings with players and coaches held before every game he covers. Simms, whose son Chris is now a quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, attributes much of his work method to Bill Parcells, his former New York Giants coach and "the greatest influence on me as a player." Simms sees likenesses in how Parcells and legendary Green Bay Coach Vince Lombardi handled their players: "Beat ‘em up during the week. Love ‘em just before the game. On game days Bill never put pressure on me."

Simms doesn’t buy into the theory that "you shouldn’t play a quarterback as a rookie because it might ruin his confidence." His response? "I’ll show you a quarterback who had no business playing at all."

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Nashville’s Lower Broad: The Street That Music Made
By Bill Rouda
Smithsonian Books

In the late 1980s, Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville, Tenn., was "the place you most don’t want to be alone after dark." But the area populated by street people was also home to a number of bars and stores, including the legendary Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, that served up hope to rising songwriters and musicians, all eager to work in the proving ground of country music’s most famous stars. Bill Rouda’s black-and-white photographs of that changing scene—now largely sanitized with a host of predictable tourist traps—recall the grittiness of bygone eras. His portraits of the pickers and bar flies capture a back-room intimacy, while the introduction (and singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams’ foreword) sometimes speaks more eloquently than the pictures. The book’s beauty is that it thrives with the promise of a place where anything could happen, and usually did, no matter if polite society quietly avoided it.

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Rita Rubin, the award-winning medical reporter for USA Today, has penned a must-read book for pregnant women. Although approximately one in four babies is born via Cesarean delivery now, there have been few books to help expectant moms understand what’s become one of the most commonly performed operations in the nation.

What makes this book so valuable is that it’s written in an unbiased, thorough manner using humor and everyday language. This book explains the mysteries of C-sections and their after-effects while dispelling the myths surrounding the procedure. In addition to the latest medical research, the book is full of common-sense tidbits of helpful information on pregnancy, birth and afterwards. Numerous women shared their real-life experiences with Rubin, discussing such topics as recovery time, and traveling and exercising post-delivery. This will make an excellent shower gift, especially for nervous first-time mothers.

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John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth
By Michael Munn
New American Library

In 1995, 16 years after his death, John Wayne still topped a poll of popular film stars. No actor so symbolizes the cowboy, that enduring hero of American folklore, and Wayne became the conservative figure and might-makes-right character he embodied on the screen. With notable exceptions: In real life, he wore a toupee, swore like a sailor, and couldn’t stand horses.

Michael Munn gets to the heart of some fascinating stories, such as Communist plots to eradicate the star, whom Josef Stalin and Chairman Mao Tse-tung saw as a threat. The writer, an Englishman who had access to Wayne, paints the idol as smarter than many thought (he read Winston Churchill) and surprisingly funny. One night while filming the movie Hatari in the African bush, Wayne and comedian Red Buttons were playing cards. Buttons looked up to see a big cat approaching. “Duke, there’s a leopard walking toward us!,” he said quietly, trying not to sound scared. “Buttons,” the nonplussed Wayne replied, “see what he wants.”

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As major league baseball rushes toward October playoffs and the World Series, a book about the New York Yankees and its cash-rich, “hands-on” owner debuts at a perfect time.

In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, author Buster Olney belts a home run. Readers go behind the scenes of the Yankee machine that dominated the baseball world from 1996 until the night it lost the 2001 World Series. He reflects on its origins: impressive performances by draft picks of the early ’90s, coupled with an endless stream of high-priced free agents. It produced four World Series championships. But, as Olney writes, it came with costly consequences that depleted a once-promising farm system for the “win now at all cost” mission statement.

Olney, a former Yankee beat writer for The New York Times, takes you into the dugout and beyond clubhouse doors for a thorough look at owner George Steinbrenner’s pressure-packed pinstripe universe and its galaxy of superstars.

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James Segrest and Mark Hoffman
Moanin’ At Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf
Pantheon Books

The first serious biography of Chester Arthur Burnett, who rose from an illiterate Mississippi sharecropper to help define the Chicago-style of electrified Delta blues and inspire generations of white rock stars, is long overdue.

Moanin’ At Midnight, the authors’ first book, sometimes stumbles in weaving a lively narrative out of historical facts and detailed musical analysis, but Wolf is such a charismatic character that it barely matters. The text is most poignant in tracing his wretched childhood and his mother’s lifelong rejection of him for playing “the devil’s music,” and how that surfaced in his art.

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Nationally-known newspaper columnist Jim Davidson, who lives in Conway, Ark. (pop. 43,167), divides life into three phases—learning, earning and giving back. Since the average life expectancy in America is age 75, Davidson believes that we spend our first 25 years learning, our next 25 years earning, and our last 25 years giving back.

That’s where Learning, Earning, and Giving Back comes into play. A collection of his most inspiring columns, this book presents a broad spectrum of ideas, concepts and thoughts that, if added all together, equal the sum of a life well-lived.

With a conversational approach, Davidson offers honest, meaningful insights into many aspects of daily living. For instance, he tells of a man who filled a jar with 1,000 marbles to mark the remaining Saturdays he had left in his life. “Every Saturday since then, I’ve taken one marble out and thrown it away,” writes Davidson, recalling a conversation he overheard. “I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.” This book is a friendly reminder to slow down, enjoy life and hug your children a little more.

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Since the death of Elvis Presley on music journalist Alanna Nash’s birthday in 1977, her life has been intertwined with the spirit of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Nash, the author of five other books, has been covering the story of Elvis and his notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, since Presley’s funeral. She was the first journalist to view Presley’s body. But it was the sight of Parker at the funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and ball cap that particularly intrigued Nash and led her to interview the mysterious, complex King-maker several times.

In her latest page-turner, Nash once again enters the shadowy, clandestine life of Presley.

Nash plays part biographer, part detective, and part psychoanalyst as she expertly reveals the curious stranglehold Colonel Parker had on Presley. Nash lays out compelling evidence about Parker’s dark, dangerous secret, the mystery that drove every bad decision Parker made about Presley’s career.

The Colonel is a riveting book jam-packed with astonishing evidence about “the greatest carny con man of them all.” One doesn’t have to be an Elvis fan to love this story.

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Grandparents!
By Anne-Laure Fournier le Ray
Illustrated by Roser Capdevila
Kane/Miller Book Publishers

Funny and tender, Grandparents! captures the unique nature of the grandparent-grandchild bond in a humorous, yet heartwarming, way.

“Every grandparent is different,” the book, with its comic illustrations, reads. “Some are young; others are very old. Some are very strict; others are easygoing.” And, “At some grandparents’ houses, we can’t touch anything. At others, there are secret play spots.”

Despite their differences, all grandparents have something in common, the book concludes: “It’s because of them that we are a family!”

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