Non-Fiction: Fully Charged by Tom Rath

Tom Rath creates self-help books aimed at the Ted Talk generation. Millions of people have read -- and apparently benefited from -- Rath’s nine books to date including Eat Move Sleep, How Full Is Your Bucket and Strengths Based Leadership.

Newly out, Are You Fully Charged? (Silicon Guild) challenges you “to stop pursuing happiness and start creating meaning instead, lead you to rethink your daily interactions with the people who matter most, and show you how to put your own health first in order to be your best every day.” Rath sums up the premise early on:

When you are fully charged, you get more done. You have better interactions. Your mind is sharp, and your body is strong. On days when you are fully charged, you experience high levels of engagement and well-being. This charge carries forward, creating an upward cycle for those you care about.

Rath says that he and his team “reviewed countless articles and academic studies, and interviewed some of the world’s leading scientists. We identified more  than 2,600 ideas for improving daily experience.” As they worked through these various items, they discovered that “three key conditions differentiate days when you have a full charge from typical days.”

The three key conditions are as follows:

• Meaning: doing something that benefits another person
• Interactions: creating far more positive than negative moments
• Enrgy: making choices that improve your mental and physical health

Are You Fully Charged i filled with the positive forward moving energy that is Rath’s trademark. No matter what you do with the information in the book, you can’t help but feeling engaged and energized while reading. There’s a reason he’s sold so many books. This is well thought out, positive stuff. ◊

New Today: Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee by William C. Davis

Few names from the era loom as large as those of the top generals from North and South each: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. In story and fable, both men have been elevated to the place of myth.

Author William C. Davis (Three Roads to the Alamo, The Pirates Lafitte) combs through the four historical meetings the two men actually had in an effort to uncover details that might have impacted where they both ended up.

Davis has said that Crucible of Command (Da Capo) is not a conventional biography. “I’m not interested detailing every incident of their lives.” Rather, “the focus is on their moral and ethical worlds, what they felt and believed and why.”

On that journey, Davis states more than once that, without the Civil War, neither man would have come close to his potential. “Without the war, Grant would have remained a civilian working in his father’s leather goods store… Lee… was dissatisfied with the army, with his life and just about everything else when the war came. It is not too much to say that both were heading nowhere when the war plucked them out of their old lives.”

Once activated, though, both men had a huge part in shaping the post-war nation.

Davis is the author of more than 50 books, and he demonstrates his experience in Crucible of Command, a magisterial dual biography that rises far, far above the average. Davis balances fact and research with searing action and penetrating personality. This very entertaining history is much more than the sum of its parts. ◊

Non-Fiction: The Science of Shakespeare by Dan Falk

Out in time to celebrate the 450th birthday of the Bard, author, science writer and broadcaster Dan Falk’s The Science of Shakespeare (Gooselane/Thomas Dunne) takes a sharp and engaging look at the science that formed and informed William Shakespeare’s still-beloved works as well as the science that was informed by him.

Falk’s books are accessible. I mean, they are also so much more, but that’s probably the best place to start. Falk tackles potentially mind-numbing topics and makes them not only understandable but enjoyable.

His first book, Universe on a T-Shirt, was about the quest for a unified theory of physics.

Next up, In Search of Time explored the physics and philosophy of time. These are the sort of science-to-philosophy journeys on which careers are made… and broken. But it’s that accessibility factor -- combined with real passion and knowledge -- that make me think Falk will end up in the former category.

In some ways The Science of Shakespeare is really about the history of science, but spun onto the axis of William Shakespeare. It’s a team up that works. What Falk is looking at here are the connections between the Bard and the beginnings of the scientific revolution and, as posited by Falk, how that combination changed the world as we know it forever.

The Science of Shakespeare is a triumph. A personal and yet informative look at science, literature and physics. This is great stuff. ◊

New in Paperback: All That Is by James Salter

A soldier returns from battles on the Pacific front and applies what he learned in WWII to the gritty world of publishing in New York City. Salter’s prose is startlingly muscular and economical. Sometimes there’s little on the page beyond raw power.

All That Is (Vintage) is PEN/Faulkner-winning Salter (A Sport and a Pastime, The Hunters) at his very best. How can a book this physically slight be this dazzling? War, peace, love, hate and raw, destructive ambition. Every detail is meaningful and every passage seems carefully wrought and effortlessly shared. Even the historical backdrop skillfully highlights not only how far we’ve traveled, but how little we’ve changed.

This is one of those books that has been very difficult to write about. James Salter’s first novel in 30 years so fills me with a desire to reach for hyperbole, even while the story itself is ultimately so simple, it’s difficult to explain. I’ll keep it simple and say it this way: All That Is may be the best book from a master. ◊

Jones Atwater is a musician, sports fanatic and struggling author. He lives in Ohio with his Fender Stratocaster, Pearl, and his cat, Rhea.

Holiday Gift Guide: Painters and the American West: Volume II edited by Joan Carpenter Troccoli

Art books make terrific gifts. Though they can be a little heavy for mailing, it’s easy to tailor your choice to the person you’re gifting, though finding the right art book for the right art lover is a big part of getting it right.

It seems to me you’d have a tough time going wrong with Painters and the American West: Volume II (American Museum of Western Art). It’s an impressive -- almost epic -- book, beautifully produced and lovingly annotated. It’s just a splendid art book, from any angle.

In a foreword, scholar and curator John Wildmerding offers literary and cultural context for the collection on view here. What started as the Anschutz Collection became Denver’s American Museum of Western Art in 2010, a stroke creating it as one of the foremost institutions to house a collection of the art of American West. And though that’s a compelling picture, Wildmerding insists it isn’t the complete one:

Through the collection’s concentration on the western story of the nation, we come to see what is distinctive as well as derivative about the region’s art, how it possessed its own vision while belonging to a larger American culture.

Because it is both a massive and luxurious book, the editors have been able to push the idea of “art book” to its widest edge. Examples of art by virtually every important western artist have been included, as well as many, many of the less important ones.

Each image reproduced gives context to a larger picture still as various important time periods in the shaping of the American west are explored, both historically and visually, through the art of that region and/or time. The result is… well, fantastic. Painters and the American West succeeds on virtually every level: art book, visual history and unthinkably heavy calling card for a museum that is one of the best of its kind in the world. ◊


Jones Atwater is a January Magazine contributing editor.

Biography: Under the Eagle by Samuel Holiday and Robert S. McPherson

Former soldier Samuel Holiday and history professor Robert S. McPherson get together to tell Holiday’s amazing story in Under the Eagle: Samuel Holiday Navajo Code Talker (University of Oklahoma Press).

Moving from Holiday’s childhood in rural Utah to the depths of the United States’ campaign in the Pacific during World War II when Navajo men were enlisted so the Marine Corps could use their native language for secret communication on the front.

Under the Eagle is deeply compelling. From the majesty of Monument Valley and the enchantment of beliefs very different from those likely to read the book, to the horrors of the Pacific theatre and back to an awkward readjustment in a world in which nothing is altered yet everything seems strangely changed.

Though there has been some discussion about code talkers in recent years, Under the Eagle touches on aspects that others haven’t brought us. The authors incorporate not only Holiday’s own life and background, but elements of Navajo beliefs and culture. This comes from Holiday’s own thoughts that the journeys he made as a soldier were “as much mental and spiritual as … physical.”

Though movies and books have gone before, Under the Eagle provides the only account of a code talker from the code talker’s own perspective. The view from that angle is riveting. ◊


Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

New This Week: Lazy Days by Erlend Loe

Last year I was enchanted by Norwegian novelist Erlend Loe’s English language debut, Doppler. This year I am equally impressed by Lazy Days (Anansi), a bestseller in Norway as Stille dager i Mixing Part when it was published in 2009.

If anything, Lazy Days is even more quirky and subversive and (okay, I’ll just say it) funny than Doppler. The premise is dark… especially for a book so comedic.

Bror Telemann is obsessed with celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. An obsession which comes to a head when Bror takes his family on a holiday to the Alpen spot that he believes spawned the birth of the Nazi movement. Bror is in love with everything British. Nina, his wife, loves everything German. So their Alpen vacation is bound to tension-filled… especially when Bror spends all his time virtually stalking the delectable Nigella.

Lazy Days is told primarily in unadorned dialogue between husband and wife. On the surface of things, not very much at all is happening, but it is Erland’s skill that he can move things along so forcefully without much apparent motion. This scene from early in the book:

Did you buy any red wine?

It’s on the worktop in the kitchen.

But, darling, this is German wine. 

I don’t like it when you call me “darling.”

I thought we loved each other.

Of course we do.

So what’s the problem?

You say “darling” when you’re annoyed, imagining that your on-the-surface friendly tone will give the impression that your aggression is subdued and under control. But the effect is quite the opposite. It has nothing to do with your love for me, even though you may think so.

I want wine, Nina, not a discussion about you and me.

The wine’s on the worktop.

As with Doppler, there is something darkly charming about Lazy Days, but also unexpected. It observes post-modern family life and the effects of celebrity culture and asks you to draw your own conclusions. Is it brilliant? It may be brilliant. But it is also funny as hell. Don’t miss it. ◊

Jones Atwater is a regular contributor to January Magazine.

Art & Culture: What W.H. Auden Can Do For You by Alexander McCall Smith

For some people The Art of War is a touchstone. A guide to living and to life. For others it is Tao Te Ching or even The Tao of Pooh. In his latest book, number one detective Alexander McCall Smith has an admission to make: his own personal touchstone is Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden.

“I believe  that reading the work of W.H. Auden may make a difference to one’s life,” Smith writes early in What W.H. Auden Can Do For You (Princeton), then spends the balance of the book convincing us. (In case we should need convincing.) But he does it gently, persuasively and even conversationally. “This is what Auden has meant to me,” he seems to be saying. “See what he, also, can mean to you.”

If you are a fan of Auden’s work, this is a must-read. If you have interest in it -- because of Four Weddings and a Funeral or for any other reason -- you would be well-advised to pick up this slender volume.

What W.H. Auden Can Do For You is the latest in a series from Princeton University Press. Others have been C.K. Williams On Whitman, Michael Dirda on Conan Doyle and Phillip Lopate on Sontag. According to the Princeton web site, the series is intended to be comprised of “brief, personal, and creative books in which leading contemporary writers take the measure of other important writers (past or present) who have inspired, influenced, fascinated, or troubled them in significant ways. These books illuminate the complex and sometimes fraught relationships between writers, while also revealing the close ties between creative and critical writing.”

In What W.H. Auden Can Do For You, historian, mystery writer and philosopher McCall Smith nails it on every count. ◊

Jones Atwater is a regular contributor to January Magazine.

Non-Fiction: To Save Everything, Click Here by Evgeny Morozov

I really wanted to like Evgeny Morozov’s new book. On the surface of things, it has everything going for it. Researcher and scholar Morozov is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a fellow at the New America Foundation. His byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement and many others. His voice is acerbic and confident and, if he is to be believed, Morozov has studied the future and what he found there terrified him.

As Morozov writes in the introduction to To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (PublicAffairs):

The ultimate goal of this book … is to uncover the attitudes, dispositions, and urges that comprise the solutionist mind-set, to show how they manifest themselves in specific projects to ameliorate the human condition, and to hint at how and why some of these attitudes, dispositions, and urges can and should be resisted, circumvented and unlearned.

Which as you read on, turns out to be a kind of fancy way of saying: All that stuff that computers make look easy? It’s kind of a lie.

Though Morozov is not yet 30, his acerbic voice has something of an old guy quality to it through some of this material. Or maybe it just seems that way to me because I’ve heard my Uncle Stan say a lot of this stuff in the past. (Albeit less elegantly and in less convincing tones.) In the end, the message -- like Uncle Stan’s -- seems to be: beware the ease of apparent freedom. Technology is the wolf and it’s dressed something like a sheep. Here again, Uncle Stan wouldn’t say it quite this way, but once he worked out the polysyllables, he’d applaud the sentiment:

For only by unlearning solutionism -- that is, by transcending the limits it imposes on our imaginations and by rebelling against its value system -- will we understand why attaining technological perfection without attending to the intricacies of the human condition and accounting for the complex world of practices and traditions, might not be worth the price.

I’m not advising you avoid To Save Everything, Click Here. In fact, the opposite is true. Morozov has crafted another thought-provoking work (after 2011’s The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Are we sensing a theme here?). It is not possible to read this impressive tome without being pushed to thought and sometimes to action. One should keep in mind, though, that this is a subjective work. Though Morozov’s voice is, at times, commanding, it’s best to keep an open mind while reading him. ◊


Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Cookbooks: Guy Gourmet by Adina Steiman and Paul Kita

There was a time that a cookbook aimed entirely at men were comprised of stacks of recipes for huge portions of fatty foods -- mostly meat -- and how to put them together easily into different, now edible stacks. And, truly, that time wasn’t so very long ago.

Despite its manly appearance, Guy Gourmet (Rodale) is a different sort of animal. While the design, presentation and even food choices all seem pretty testosterone-led, the emphasis here is on lean and healthy. Not surprising, in a way, considering the book was prepared by the editors of Men’s Health. But even that phrase has different, deeper connotations than it used to. Men have different expectations of themselves these days and most often “strong” and “lean” are included in the definition. And though the recipes are top-knotch and spot-on -- carefully selected for flavor, leaness and ease of preparation -- in some ways, they are not the heart of this book.

What, for me, took center stage was the bright new way in which food was talked about and shared. For instance, I loved a section called “Unhealthy” Stuff That’s Actually Good For You. Among other things, it lets you know why pork rinds, alcohol, beef jerky, sour cream and other “treats” can actually be good for you. Another interesting spread offers powerful small snack alternatives to the hundred-calorie snack pack trend. A very good section on the home bar includes not only drink recipes and bar staples but also discussions on health and alcohol and even the caloric content of popular drinks. (Your classic Tom Collins is only going to set you back 115 calories while a delicious Margarita will hit you with a whopping 237.)

For all of that, the recipes are tough to beat: and all perfectly selected for this particular collection. There is very little here that is predictable and even classic male “standards” are given new -- and often undetectably light -- twists.

Of the recipes I made, there were a few I enjoyed that I know I’ll make again. I especially loved the Caramelized Onion Dip which is a modern take on an American classic that here manages to be light and rich at the same time. The Asian Dumpling Bowl is fast food made at home that’s so good and so quick, I know I’ll make it again and again. And, from the Date Night section, I can’t think of a more perfect meal for a man to make the first time he cooks for a woman than Seared Scallops with White Beans and Bacon. It sends the perfect message of sensitivity and strength… plus you don’t need to spend all night in the kitchen.

I liked this one a lot. I can’t imagine changing a single thing. ◊


Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Non-Fiction: Strange Rebels by Christian Caryl

There are banner years. Years that make all the difference. Years that somehow count more than others and, according to journalist, scholar and all around brainy guy Christian Caryl, 1979 was the nexus. “History has a way of playing tricks,” Caryl writes in Strange Rebels (Basic Books), pretty much undoing everything anyone ever learned in grade 11. “As events unfold around us, we interpret what we see through the prism of precedent, and then are amazed when it turns out that our actions never play out the same way twice.”

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century, is mind-blowing stuff. Writes Caryl:

Rarely has the oats proven a more deceptive guide to the future than at the end of the eighth decade of the twentieth century. If youtake a certain pleasure in seeing the experts confounded and the pundits dismayed, then 1979 is sure to hold your interest.

As Caryl points out, in 1979, after 37 years in his comfy chair, the Shah of Iran “got on a plane and left his country, never to return.” Also in 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister just a few months after Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping had “heaved himself into the top job” in China. These and other things combined to make an irreversible difference. As Caryl tells us, “Like it or not, we of the twenty-first century still live in the shadow of 1979.”

Strange Rebels is both dense and staggeringly eye-opening. It is no one’s idea of a beach read, but take it with you anyway. It’s possible that only surf and sand will be able to quell your pulse as you follow the connections Caryl brings his readers to. This is a deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking book. ◊


Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

New Today: The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran

Imagine the creation of an author who lives in Bangalore, studied at Bryn Mawr and has lived in NYC. Imagine the best of all of that: wordly observations, cunningly made with sophisticated style and an observance of an inward eye and you have an idea of what the work of Lavanya Sankaran looks like.

The Hope Factory (Dial) is the second book of the author of 2006’s The Red Carpet, a collection of fresh and fascinating stories set in Bangalore. The Hope Factory seems to pull what was best about Sankaran’s first book and set it to the music of a full-length work. The result is a stunning debut novel. Sankaran’s voice is funny, wise and wry as she weaves her way cunningly through this novel of domestic disturbance in a newly industrialized Bangalore.

Anand and Vidya are the new, modern Bangalore. Anand gives every appearance of being the successful businessman, right down to his grasping, demanding wife, Vidya.

On the other end of the comfort scale is their maid, Kamala, a woman whose life is precarious in part because of an unsuccessful marriage and a son on the verge of bad-boydom, but in another part because Kamala’s happiness depends also on her employer’s wife, and that’s not a good place for anyone to be.

Despite this interconnection, Sankaran does a skillful job of keeping the two threads distinct until the time is right and we come to understand that the ultimate connection between these characters is deeper than we might have thought.

The Hope Factory is a pleasing and delicious book and Sankaran is a writer whose gifts we anticipate enjoying further in future. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Non-Fiction: A North Country Life by Sydney Lea

Vermont poet laureate Sydney Lea puts both his talent and his love of the sporting life front and center in A North Country Life (Skyhorse).

This is not a politically correct look at the world out of doors. Lea is a lifelong hunter and fisherman whose appreciation for outdoor life is unhampered by contemporary social mores. So imagine Bryson’s AWalk in the Woods, but overlaid with poetic language. And guns. It’s a reach. It’s a stretch. And if you’re not a PETA sympathizer, it’s a lovely book.

The essays collected in A North Country Life touch on the “Woodsmen, Waters and Wildlife’ mentioned in the subtitle. Written over a number of years, lovingly handle a lifetime relationship with the regions he includes here. Lea has taught at Dartmouth, Yale, Wesleyan and others. He founded the New England Review in 1977 and his essays, poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and others, but here he is rough and ready, passionately sharing his experiences and his relationships in language that is measured, beautiful, insightful, and sometimes quite funny.

“I remember a time when,” he writes at one point, “like many another hyper-hormonal young man, and in fact like too many anglers even now, I yearned to smack a big trout over the head on every outing.”

It is sentiments like these that seem intended to rile the PETA crew, but one gets the impression that Lea has other thing to care about. ◊

Jones Atwater is a regular contributor to January Magazine.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Official NASCAR Trivia Book by John C. Farrell

Clearly, if the person on your list is a big NASCAR fan, there are only so many gift ideas available, especially if you live off the beaten NASCAR track. An easy (and easy to ship!) answer is The Official NASCAR Trivia Book (Fenn & M&S) by NASCAR insider John C. Farrell.

As much of a game as it is a book, as the title suggests, The Official NASCAR Trivia Book rounds up a whole lot of NASCAR trivia, then offers multiple choice answers and as Marty Smith notes in his introduction, trivia is catnip to NASCAR fans:

NASCAR fans are a unique breed, among the most loyal in sport. They have a n insatiable desire to learn every morsel of information possible about their chosen drivers, teams and tracks that compose the sport they love.

That being the case The Official NASCAR Trivia Book delivers all of the above in style. A terrific gift for those who take their NASCAR racing seriously.

Holiday Gift Guide: Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films by David Konow

It should not be surprising that the author of the definitive guide to heavy metal music should come back with another, similar guide, this time devoted to what some would say is the film world’s heavy metal equivalent.

Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne) takes a long, loving look behind the scenes at the century long history of movies of the macabre.

Though contemporary works are given more space and love than the classics, Reel Terror still manages to infuse this ever-popular genre in the sort of lovelight that can only be generated by a true fanboy. In the introduction, author David Konow writes:

This book is not just a love letter to a great and underappreciated genre, but it also tries to show what makes a great horror film effective, even decades after it’s been made …. There’s a reason why the best horror films in the genre have lasted, and why many are still scary today.

Part handbook to the great films of the genre, part “love letter” to a part of film history that hasn’t had a great many of those, both fans of horror and classic film will enjoy many aspects of Konow’s well-researched and written book. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Holiday Gift Guide: Jack Kerouac Collected Poems

Looking over our shoulders, it’s easy to underestimate the poetic art of Jack Kerouac. We remember little beyond On the Road, one of the defining works of the Beat Generation. The book celebrated a life of drugs and jazz on the road in an elegant stream of consciousness screed. Helping the idea that there was little to the writer beyond The Road is the fact that Kerouac himself died too young. He was just 47 and died of an internal hemorrhage attributed both to a lifetime of heavy drinking and a bar fight a few weeks before. Life fast, die hard: this is not the epithet of a master. And yet.

I used to sit under trees and meditate
On the diamond bright silence of darkness
and the bright look of diamonds in space
and space that was stiff with lights
and diamonds shot through, and silence

(from Buddha)

Or this:

Someday you’ll be lying
there in a nice trance
and suddenly a hot
soapy brush will be
applied to your face
--it’ll be unwelcome
--someday the
undertaker’ll shave you

(from 2nd Chorus)

It’s been reported that Kerouac loved poetry and loved making poems and said that his novels were a direct outgrowth of the diverse poems that filled his notebooks throughout his life. Poetry was important to Kerouac, personally and to and for his art. A new book from The Library of America illustrates this as well as anything I’ve seen.

Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems is edited by poet, painter and short story writer Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell. “Jack Kerouac was like a man observing his river,” Phipps-Kettlewell writes, “sitting in the rain, letting it soak through his clothes, his skin, his being; a man weighed down, feeling the cold, his tears as opaque as his heart.”

The book brings together all of Kerouac’s major collected works along with many uncollected poems, some of which have been published here for the first time. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Fiction: Doppler by Erlend Loe

In a world gone mad for all literature with the smack of Scandanavia, Doppler (Anansi) seems at first like a sharply sweet joke. Canadian publisher, Anansi, calls Doppler an “enchanting, subversive, and very unusual story of one man and his moose.” Think of Doppler as Jonathan Livingston Seagull for the 21st century, but with a moose calf called Bongo, Scandinavian hipster attitude and a sharper narrative flow.

Stricken beyond pain by the death of his father, Andreas Doppler leaves everything behind -- home, family, job -- in order to live in a tent in the forest.

I realize that my behavior has been very trying for my wife and I’ve tried to explain that my little adventure has nothing to do with her …. At the start she suspected I had something going with another woman, but she doesn’t think so any longer. Now, in a sense, she has resigned herself to the fact that I live in a tent in the forest.

Doppler is witty, sly and surprising. And it’s slender enough, once you begin, you might never have to put it down. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Non-Fiction: Darwin’s Devices by John Long

Robotics viewed through a biologist’s lens, that’s a bit of what Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Tell Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology (Basic Books) boils down to. But with scientific precision from a professor/author with a poet’s soul. It’s intensely exciting stuff.

Long is a professor of biology and cognitive science at Vassar where he has famously used his robots Madeleine and the Tadros to both test and teach evolutionary theory.

When you surf along with the author’s engaged and engaging voice, it becomes very obvious that his topic is not rocket science. That is, it’s a new and evolving field, one that he’s championing and one that has been powerful in his own work.

What Long does is create an environment where his models and robots can evolve. Which is not nearly as odd as it sounds. The robots compete against each other for food and other basic survival needs and their responses provide important clues to the evolution of extinct species.

Long shares his disappointments as well as his triumphs and he does so in a lucid and sometimes even humorous way. We come away from Darwin’s Devices with the idea that, whatever work Long is doing here, it’s deeply interesting and even important stuff. I suspect that this will not be the final work on this topic, but Long lays the groundwork for a future filled with discovery and adventure. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Non-Fiction: Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff and Tony Angell

Think about it: few creatures are as misunderstood as the crow. Their black plumage and watchful demeanor can evoke fear and even shadows of future evil. But in reality, contend authors John Marzluff and Tony Angell, in many ways crows are much more like us than most people would care to admit. “The gifts of the crow are physical, metaphorical, and far-reaching,” they write in Gifts of the Crow (FreePress), setting us up for a journey of stories that demonstrate the almost magical intellect of the crow. From the book:

Most people consider birds to be instinctual automatons acting out behaviors long ago scripted in their genes, but Giifts of the Crow celebrates the fact that some birds -- particularly those in the corvid family, which we generally call “crows” -- are anything but mindless or robotic. These animals are exceptionally smart. Not only do they make tools, but they understand cause and effect. They use their wisdom to infer, discriminate, test, learn, remember, foresee, mourn, warn of impending doom, recognize people, seek revenge, lure or warn of impending doom, recogznie people, seek revenge, lure or stampede other birds to their death, quaff coffee and beer, turn on lights to stay warm or expose danger, speak, steal, deceive, gift, windsurf, play with cats…

In short, say the authors, crows are more like humans than most of us have ever suspected. The creatures depicted here could not be further from the classic birdbrain we think about when imagining our feathered friends.

This isn’t this authorial duo’s first visit in the corvid world. In the Company of Crows and Ravens (2007) gives a first intimate look at the birds. Gifts of the Crow extends the lessons shared in that work but does not depend on readers having read the first one. Apparently in a corvid world, everything must stand alone.

Gifts of the Crow (FreePress) is a deeply astonishing book. At the same time, it is also oddly satisfying. Somehow seeing the similarities between humans and crows makes us feel less alone. ◊

Jones Atwater is a contributing editor to January Magazine.

Fiction: The Sea Is My Brother by Jack Kerouac

First, let it be understood that Jack Kerouac’s first but-until-now-unpublished novel, The Sea Is My Brother was never actually lost. And, having never been lost, it can not now be found. Kerouac himself never tried to get the novel published. In fact, by all accounts, he didn’t really think much at all of the work. In Kerouac by Ann Charters, she quotes the author as saying that the book was “more an example of handwriting than of a novel.”

Though all of this may be true and, in fact, probably is, The Sea Is My Brother is still a worthwhile journey if for no other reason than to visit with proto Kerouac and see the embryonic writer -- a 21-year-old merchant marine when he wrote the book, 14-years-before On the Road -- struggling with the style we would later come to identify him by. And struggling here as much with ideas as with getting them down, something we see again and again in the prose.

Slowly, now, Everhart began to realize why life had seemed so senseless, so fraught with fully lack of real purpose in New York, in the haste and oration of his teaching days -- he had never paused to take hold of anything, let alone the lonely heart of an old father, not even the idealisms with which he had begun life as a seventeen-year-old spokesman for the working class movement on Columbus Circle Saturday afternoons.

Read in isolation, I can’t imagine that anyone would think The Sea Is My Brother is a terribly good book. And one wonders if Kerouac would have cringed to see it in bookstores and libraries now, alongside the more cleanly crafted works he would later create in a style that would come to be all his own. That said, for his admirers and students of his style, the book is a worthwhile read, if for no other reason than to spot the glimmers of the manic genius he would later release with such skill.