Review: And Then There’s This by Bill Wasik

Today in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Caroline Cummins reviews And Then There’s This by Bill Wasik. Says Cummins:

Bill Wasik may be the smartest guy in the room, but that doesn't mean he’s bright. A senior editor at Harper’s magazine, Wasik is the latest to shove his way into the crowded room of brave-new-media-world soothsayers, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Internet pundits Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) and Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) as well as such here’s-how-the-world-really-works types as Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) and the Freakonomics guys (Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt).

What these authors -- all male, mostly white, and generally middle-aged -- share is the Secret of the Scam: I will reveal the hidden mysteries of the universe to you, but only if you buy my book first.

The full review is here.

Review: Bonk by Mary Roach

Today in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, Caroline Cummins reviews Bonk by Mary Roach. Says Cummins:

Years ago, Mary Roach paid the bills as a freelance travel writer. Being Mary Roach, however, she tended to pick offbeat locations (Antarctica) or offer goofy takes on the familiar (poking gentle fun at taxi drivers for a three-days-in-London story). Roach is best known now, of course, as an irreverent science writer. But she’s still picking unusual destinations, or finding the funky hiding in the familiar.

Her three books -- Stiff, Spook and now Bonk -- boldly go where most other writers fear to tread, into the realms of cadaver research, scientific attempts at tracking the afterlife and the hush-hush history of sex studies. They’re beloved because, unlike most non-fiction books about science, they’re laugh-out-loud funny. But under the humor is a serious mission: to report on the valuable, if bizarre and/or embarrassing, work that science is doing on the nature of death and sex.

The full review is here.

Review: The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Caroline Cummins reviews The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor. Says Cummins:

The tenth novel in Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series, The Triumph of Caesar, feels a bit like a valedictory lap. The ambiguous ending of Saylor’s previous series outing, The Judgment of Caesar (2004), seemed to kill off both Saylor’s grizzled detective, Gordianus the Finder, and his wife, Bethesda. Yet here they are again, back in their house on ancient Rome’s Palatine Hill, Bethesda’s illness mysteriously cured and Gordianus none the worse for his apparent drowning in the Nile. Gordianus has officially retired, but, as always, for the right reasons he can be coaxed into a little light investigation.

The full review is here.

Review: Grave Matters by Mark Harris

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Caroline Cummins reviews Grave Matters by Mark Harris. Says Cummins:

Don’t dig the conventional funeral industry? As Mark Harris describes in his new book, Grave Matters, you don’t have to wind up six feet under.

Harris, an environmental reporter, has assembled a collection of short profiles documenting the experiences of families who have chosen different paths to the grave. Like Carlson’s book, Grave Matters is a handbook as well as a good read, with resources and how-to lists at the end of each chapter. The work is organized on a sliding scale from least environmentally friendly to most; it opens with a gruesome chapter describing a “traditional” embalming and funeral and closes with a chapter about “natural” burial, or burying an unembalmed, uncasketed body directly in the ground.

The full review is here.