Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE featured in USA Today

By Bob Minzesheimer
Monday, February 23, 2009; USA Today

In February, Black History Month, publishers release a flood of books about or by African Americans. USA TODAY recommends a dozen new titles for all ages.

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin, $27.95) by Martha Sandweiss is a fascinating slice of history: the double life of a socially prominent white geologist and explorer, Clarence King, who worked as a black Pullman porter so he could marry the black woman he loved.

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Deborah Cramer's SMITHSONIAN OCEAN a USA TODAY Critic's Pick

Critic's picks: Coffee-table books for the holidays
USA Today, December 3

Holiday shopping got you anxious?

USA Today comes to the rescue with a handy gift guide that will satisfy all your bookworm friends, from the fashionista to the animal lover. For the environmentalist in your life, this holiday season's "it" book is Deborah Cramer's Smithsonian Ocean.

To check out USA Today's review and the full list, click here.

James Galbraith's THE PREDATOR STATE in USA Today

'Predator' Urges Change in Definition of 'Free Market'
Steve Weinberg
USA Today, September 8, 2008

James Galbraith used to work inside Congress, as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. Then he settled in as a professor at the University of Texas.

Like his renowned father, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, James is an iconoclast. In previous books, polemics for national magazines and research studies for academic journals, he questions the central tenets of economic policy and the underpinnings of waging imperialistic wars on behalf of capitalism and democracy.

In a book published two years ago, Galbraith showed what he considered the intellectual dishonesty of Republican Party — and supposedly, "conservative" — economic policy. That book, Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire, sought to demonstrate the devotion of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan to helping the wealthy (including themselves) at the expense of equity (or at least a semblance of fairness) in American society.

Galbraith's new book, The Predator State, takes plenty of well-aimed, well-deserved shots at Republicans and conservatives, Democrats and liberals. Mostly, though, as the subtitle suggests, it is a denuding of an idea — the idea of how vital "free markets" are to a capitalistic, democratic nation.

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Rachel Herz, Scent of Desire in USA Today Books

Roundup: Non-fiction, in brief
By Deirdre Donahue, Bob Minzesheimer, Jacqueline Blais and Jocelyn McClurg
USA TODAY, November 1

The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell
By Rachel Herz
William Morrow, 266 pp., $24.95

You'll never take your nose for granted again once you've read The Scent of Desire. Rachel Herz explores what is considered our most mysterious sense, and the one often dismissed as the least important. But as Herz points out, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. (People who have lost their sense of smell often become dangerously depressed.) Herz examines the connection between taste and odor and the role smell plays in sexual attraction, as well as its power to evoke long-suppressed memories. But best are the weird facts. "Clean baby" is one of the very few smells every culture agrees is delightful.

For the rest of the books in this article, click here.